I have wanted to share this. It’s a little long, sorry. My 18-year-old son is autistic and intellectually disabled. He has always been in special ed. Very protected, a little more isolated than I’d like from NT kids. The point is, he never really heard anything about any of this. We are not a religious family, and where we live, it’s very Christian overall. Anyway, my son was about eight or nine, functioning at that time at around a preschool to kindergarten level. We were reading a story on my bed. Suddenly he turned to me and said, “After I’m one hundred years old and I’m very very old and I die and I’m a baby again, can I be your baby again?”
I was kind of in shock so I just said “Of course you can” to see what he’d say next. He said, “Will I have blonde hair again?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Can I be a boy? I want to be a boy when I’m a baby again.” Then I said, “I’m sure you can choose.” And he said, “If you can’t be my mom again can you still be family?” I said, “yes.” We hadn’t watched any shows about reincarnation, we didn’t talk about it and I assure you his special needs class didn’t sit around comparing relative religion. So…it blew me away. It still does, when I think about it. Just wanted to share.
-Melanie