Introducing: The Autistic Freedom Network | The Rob Maness Show EP 607

I’ve made no secret that I am the Dad of an autistic son, who I homeschooled from junior high through high school graduation, and the challenges our family and he faced in various government and non-government systems and what we had to do just to figure how to help him. That is why I am very excited to do this show today about the Autistic Freedom Network and have its founder as my guest who you just saw. Why do we need this? I’ll let them tell you from their website: People on the autism spectrum have been forgotten for several decades while facing unbelievable abuse. Our struggle is worse than that of a third world country, from the highest rate of social isolation to the highest unemployment rate in the world, to an unbelievable rate of trans identification. The reasons for this struggle go far beyond autism, or other neurodivergences alone. We face inhumane treatment from our doctors, teachers, social workers, and politicians. All of them are using our diagnosis to justify the so-called treatment we’re put through and will cite misconceptions & outright lies to claim it’s all evidence based. To get a picture of what we’re dealing with, imagine if COVID lasted your whole childhood from infancy to coming of age. That should give an idea of what it’s like to grow up diagnosed autistic. For those who haven’t been diagnosed, the struggles of their neurodivergence go untreated, leading to loneliness and neglect, but they’re not usually subject to outright discrimination. In this tragic status quo, the Autistic Freedom Network was founded by Sven Scharpen, my guest today. The AFN vows to make sure that every person on the autism spectrum or with some other form of neurodivergence (e.g. ADHD OCD bipolarity etc.) is properly supported, treated, and has their biblical & constitutional rights respected first and foremost. No child deserves to grow up without a childhood, and we will end this hardship with the goals that the
AFN has laid out.