Here’s my take on statistics: they are interesting, but really don’t have any relevance on real life.  I mean, in the scientific  research community, they are incredibly important, and results of studies with certain data lead to more studies, and that’s how we make discoveries and find cures.  I get that.  But the funny thing about statistics is that you can manipulate them to say whatever you want them to say.  And if I believed statistics from every little study that was reported, I’m not sure I’d leave the house.  I’m not sure I would have had children or gotten married.

Statistics are not your friend when you are the parent of a child with autism.  They can get depressing and make you quickly lose sight of the most important indicator of your child’s success — your child.  He’s not a machine or a robot or a lab rat.  There has never been another child like him.  So while studies can try to predict everything about your child, they still have no clue.  Your child is an unknown quantity, and you and he (or she) will have everything to do with his (or her) success in life, and not much else has any bearing.

Statistics are not your friend when you are getting married (and even a worse friend when you are getting remarried).  They strike fear into the hearts of even the most brave among us.  But again, the most important indicators of the happiness of your marriage are the two people in it.  Nothing else.

So while society may decide that “the odds are against” us, I have decided nothing of the kind.  No one knows these people like I do, and no “preponderance of evidence” is going to tell me something I didn’t know.  No statistics are going to tell me what is “significant”.  This is my life, and these are the people I love.