Autistic girl (7) pens letter to mother: 'Does being autism make me bad?'
A letter written by a young autistic girl, detailing her thoughts about the condition, has gone viral only hours after it was uploaded to Facebook.
Seven-year-old Cadence from Queensland in Australia shared her feelings on autism in a touching letter to her mother, Angela.
Cadence was so overwhelmed by negative news stories about autistic children that she was reduced to crawling under her teacher's desk to write the letter in order to feel safe.
Angela shared a photo of the letter on the 'I am Cadence' Facebook page yesterday, where it has since received more than 450 likes and 730 shares.
In the moving letter Cadence asked her mother if “being autism” made her “bad”, giving examples of autistic children being restrained in order to “keep others safe”.
“I was born autism but that doesn’t mean I was born bad”, Cadence writes.
She then asks her mother “Are you crying?”
Angela answered her daughter's questions by writing in the spaces provided in the letter.
The proud mother admitted she was reduced to tears by the little girl's words.
“I have happy tears that you know what is true; and I have sad tears because there are lots of people who don’t know what is true," Angela wrote.
Angela captioned the photo : “What messages are our autistic children hearing – from ourselves, from other parents, at school, from media and in the general community?”
Facebook users expressed their admiration for Cadence and her beautifully written letter.
“What an amazing, articulate little girl,” one commenter said.
“It's heart breaking to read but so insightful.”
You can get information about autism on the Irish Autism Action website.
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