When I wrote that, I had to stop the video just before the
interviews with the two mothers, because I had to go. Now I'm
watching the rest of it. One mother said she'd been told that
autistic kids are in a group home at 25. She said: "Not my kid. That
was the first step to recovery." But you don't have to stop being
autistic to not be in a group home as an adult. You can even be
nonverbal and have severe self-care problems, self-injury,
aggression, the whole bit, without being in a group home, AND have a
decent life! A number of the contributers to
http://www.autistics.org/library - which is a compilation of
writings by autistic people - are living proof of what I said.
Oh, and that kid Matthew has a lot of autistic mannerisms. And
Spencer doesn't seem to understand the full effect of autism.
And they use the puzzle symbol, considered offensive by most
autistic people. One autistic woman described putting together a
puzzle with missing pieces, and said that finding out pieces are
missing makes the puzzle worthless for her. And rather than realise
that those aren't missing pieces, that autistic people are whole,
are wonderful AS WE ARE, they keep searching for the pieces that
they think we should have. One autistic woman proposed a rainbow
moebius strip. Rainbow for diversity, since the autism spectrum is
diverse, and a moebius strip looks like an ordinary strip, but if
you take a closer look, it has only one side, because it has a half-
twist in it. So it's not an ordinary strip. It's different. And it's
not broken, it's a well designed moebius strip.
And in part 2, they say something about a new life, a child being
born, and then say "when autism steals your child's words, steals
your child's smile, it feels like all hope is lost". But autism is
not a child-stealing monster. It is a different way of being. Your
child may be late to talk or never talk, but if given the chance,
they can communicate in their own way. Your child may not smile when
xe's happy, but xe can be happy. Xe may just show it differently.
Autism is not depression. It doesn't steal your happiness. But an
autistic person may show happiness differently, may enjoy different
things. And poor fit with society can cause depression in autistics,
like any other people.
They describe "children considered untreatable, hopeless cases" who
experience a spurt in development. Well, maybe the doctors who
described them as "hopeless cases" just don't understand how uneven
autistic development is. Even if they get no treatment,
developmental spurts can happen. You can't look at an autistic kid
and predict with certainty what they will be like as an adult or
older child.
I know of autistic adults who were considered to have "lost" their
autism, who realised they were still autistic. Donna Williams,
Temple Grandin, and many others. The central aspect of autism is not
the observable behaviours, used for diagnosis, but the thought
patterns, the way the person processes information. Some autistics
can pass for normal, but they still have the underlying brain
differences, and once they get enough self understanding and
understanding of others to notice the difference in thought pattern,
they realise they haven't stopped being autistic.
One woman said of her son: "normal speech... at three years old he
couldn't speak, at five, he came up to me and said 'Mom, do you know
that sharks are cartilagenous?'". That is very common in higher
functioning autistics, part of autism that overlaps with giftedness.
A lot of gifted kids have autistic traits, a lot of autistic people
have talents.
And they say "there is hope". Well, I agree. But not where they see
it. Not in terms of curing autism. But in terms of autistic people
succeeding, leveraging their strengths, working around their
weaknesses, so they can live a wonderful life. But curing autism is
not the answer:
"The people who gave 'hope' of a cure and the people who gave the
dismal prognoses were seen as very different by others. But to me,
they were the same... They both declared an identical view of the
world in which only people with certain innate traits were deserving
of freedom. The only difference between them was where they drew the
line. I needed someone to show me there didn't have to be a line."
Anonymous autistic adult, http://www.gettingthetruthout.org/
The same woman who described her son talking about sharks said "you
have a chance to get your child back". In response, I quote Amanda
Baggs, at http://www.autistics.us/library/more-autistic.html :
"It was also not pleasant to be talked about in front of me as if I
had died and someone else had taken my place. I was perfectly
capable of hearing this, and the implications — that I was
undesirable and inferior to people's fantasy of who I could have
been — came through loud and clear. It made me feel like an unwanted
person who had mysteriously taken the place of a real, desirable
person, or like I was being haunted by other people's fantasy-ghost
of who they wished I was. The person after I lost these skills, and
while I was losing these skills, was and is still undeniably me. I
was aware of many things people thought I was not aware of, and
being regarded by many as irrevocably damaged and inferior took its
toll."
She was talking about the times she lost skills.
They describe "repairing" the children. We are not broken normals.
We are autistic people, and we don't need "repairing". We need to be
respected, included, helped with our difficulties, recognised for
our strengths, and basically seen as the beautiful people we are,
not obscured by stereotypes.
"if you are the parent of an autistic child, know that autism is
treatable. There is hope for the future."
What kind of hope? In my opinion, the most important thing is to be
happy with your life. Any other kind of success is hollow without
happiness. And the lives stereotyped as pityful, that disabled
people lead, are not incompatible with happiness.
"never stop believing in yourself or your child"
Never stop believing that your child can find their own way to
happiness, even if it is not what you would enjoy.
--- In voices_group@yahoogroups.com, "ettinashee" <ettinasatot@f...>
wrote:
>
> Those kids they showed looked high functioning autistic. A lot of
them
> had autistic mannerisms, a couple did subtle stims there, and a
few
> seemed to have mild language processing problems.
> And despite the claim the man who interviewed them made, of
breaking
> stereotypes, he was actually reinforcing stereotypes. The idea
seemed
> to be "they couldn't do X, Y and Z if they were still autistic".
> Ettina
> --- In voices_group@yahoogroups.com, ummezahid@a... wrote:
> >
> > Click here: www.autism-recoveredchildren.com
> >
> > The best thing you can spend on your children is time.
> > http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/
> > Think Autism.
> > Think Cure.
> > http://www.mercola.com/
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>