On Sunday evening I was wandering around in Twitterland seeing if anything interesting was going on, and I noticed a certain hashtag popping up in my timeline not once, not twice, but many time. For those who are not Twitterites like me, a hashtag is a topic that people are Tweeting about – kind of like a conversation. So if you’re tweeting about broccoli (and really, who would tweet about broccoli?) you would add the following to your tweet: #broccoli.

Anyway, the hashtag that was appearing on Sunday night was this: #youmightbeanautismparentif.

Well, this looked like fun! Autism parents were tweeting about some aspects of raising a child on the spectrum. Some of the tweets were poignant, some were downright hilarious, and every single one of them was true. So I thought I would share some with you. What follows is a sampling. To get the full picture, go to Twitter and search for the hashtag #youmightbeanautismparentif.

So here goes. You might be an autism parent if:

• you start to write your coworkers a social story about why they shouldn’t use your stapler (@BartimusPrime1)
• Your child is self-taught on both a PC & a MAC, preferring to operate both simultaneously (@theblondeview)
• You celebrated and took a pic the first time your daughter drew on a wall. (@NationalAutism)
• you know there are TOO MANY ways to end the sentence, “The bathroom is NOT a good place to…” (@FroggyPrinceMom)
• you wouldn’t change your child for the world- but want often to change the World for your child (@helenhamill)
• you have a swing. In the middle of your living room. (@RaisingASDKids)
• one moment, you feel completely alone & the next, you’re a part of a large, passionate & supportive community. (@autismfather)
• you are happy when your child gets in age appropriate trouble (@RaisingASDKids)
• you constantly praise your kid for NOT peeing down the air vent (@laughinblues)
• your kid just dropped a grape and now the ENTIRE day is ruined. (@WhacamoleLife)
• your child is offended that Robin Hood called a big man “Little John” because that’s a lie. (@BobbiSheahan)
• the Christmas Nativity scene on the mantle includes dozens of animals facing the same direction. (@LeftCoastJeff)

I made my own contributions to this thread. Here are a few of them. You might be an autism parent if:

• your kid screams the roof off because the letter M on his computer keyboard broke.
• you’ve ever had to defend your vaccination choices to complete strangers.
• the dishwasher ALWAYS has to be closed and the living room door ALWAYS has to be open exactly 3.26384 inches.
• cutting the cheese sandwich into triangles instead of squares starts World War III.

What do you think? Feel free to add to the list in the comments, or join the Twitter conversation and be sure to follow me @running4autism.