Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): Compendium Thread

[Coal]

Removing barriers for autistic workers
Submitted by Matthew on 18 May, 2016 - 12:09

Cathy Nugent reviews Autism Equality in the Workplace: Removing barriers and challenging discrimination by Janine Booth.
Available to buy online here.

This is not a book of advice for autistic people on how to adapt to work or how to socialise with colleagues. There are other books and resource that do that.

This is a book, based on many interviews with people with autism, as well as the author’s own experiences, which says employers should remove barriers that autistic people face at work. As Janine argues, “if we wait for employers to make their workplaces autism friendly voluntarily we will be waiting a long time — far longer than a fair society would expect anyone to wait for progress and equality.”

Not least because some autistic people need a good deal of support and employers just don’t do “support”! Janine advocates a political goal — wider democratically-organised public ownership of industries and services, where equality and inclusion for all is at the heart of work organisation. But she also recognises we need to mobilise our labour movement to fight for this goal, and in the meantime as much equality as we possibly can. In the meantime labour movements (and the socialist movement) need to educate ourselves about the relevant issues, exactly what an autism-friendly workplace (and world!) would look like.

First and foremost Janine says we need to expand our appreciation, acceptance and tolerance of neurodivergence, human qualities which relate to the austic spectrum (but also to conditions such as dyslexia and ADHD).

It's a laudable goal, but forcing organisations to become 'supportive' is unlikely to work. A better idea might be to capitalise on the unique talents of (for example) the autistic, such as they exist, so that a benefit exists for both parties.

I had the good fortune some years ago to work in a team with an individual with some measure of autism (I'd hazard) and while his social skills were manufactured, he could code like a demon. So we kept him working in his comfort zone where his productivity was twice that of anyone else. That's an extreme example (as not all the neurologically divergent are specially talented) but in principle I think that would be a better way to go.

At the moment societal emphasis on adaptation is creating problems and distress. It is for instance pushing people on the autistic spectrum who are able to adapt into “masking” (e.g. by anxiously “practising” social skills).

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/26663

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/26663

I think 'adaptation' is an overstatement. Whoever we all are, we have to communicate and one of the big 'takeaways' from the book 'Neurotribes' is that many of the 'symptoms' of some neurological conditions are attempts to communicate. It sticks in my mind that one particular individual didn't understand 'cat' generically, but had in essence a category for every individual cat. So it made no sense to this person to say "Look at the cat". However "Look at your next door neighbour's cat" was perfectly understandable.

IMHO we might better define 'adaptation' as 'communication'. It's much like learning a language to get by. Far better I feel to teach communication on both sides of the fence, than 'adaptation'.

One can learn French, but one doesn't have to be French. There's no loss of identity in this way.

Going back to my ex-colleague, we asked him to code up a simple terminal based menu driven user interface. He did it blindingly fast (of course). It worked perfectly, then I pressed lots of other keys at random and broke it.

"People shouldn't do that. You didn't tell me do stop it doing that." said he. He was right. We didn't, we should have.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Going back to my ex-colleague, we asked him to code up a simple terminal based menu driven user interface. He did it blindingly fast (of course). It worked perfectly, then I pressed lots of other keys at random and broke it.

"People shouldn't do that. You didn't tell me do stop it doing that." said he. He was right. We didn't, we should have.

I have come across the same thing in my years working in the software industry.
A code demon isn't necessarily a good software designer, because they only know how it should be used - and don't have an awareness of how it should NOT be used.

I have worked alongside plenty of people who might have Aspergers or be autistic (there are rather a lot working in the tech sector in the Cambridge area).

 

[ramonmercado]

Difficult to prove as perhaps it moves more into the area of Anthropology but an interesting article.

About 100,000 years ago, people with autism were championed, not shunned, and may even have shaped human evolution

ALEXANDRU MICU NOVEMBER 16, 2016 0 2,011

A University of York study found that roughly 100,000 years ago, primitive societies stopped shunning people with autism — in fact, they were embraced as respected specialists in their groups for their unique abilities, allowing them to play a central part in human evolution.

Characteristics associated with the autistic specter, such as attention to detail and exceptional memory skills, can be identified in cave art.
Image credits University of York.

Humans are social animals. The life we know today, with roads, grocery shops, smartphones, is only possible because generation after generation, we’ve worked together, pooling our abilities to improve our collective lives. But it hasn’t always been the case. A study now estimates that this group-oriented attitude, known as collaborative morality, emerged through a subtle evolutionary shift some 100,000 years ago. By changing the focus from a person’s characteristics to their abilities, skills, and value to the group, collaborative morality opened up a social niche for one demographic likely ostracized before — people with autism.

Rather than being left behind, the team concludes that they assumed an important role in their social groups due to their unique traits. This, in the long run, allowed them to play a major part in human development and evolution.

“We are arguing that diversity, variation between people, was probably more significant in human evolutionary success than the characteristics of one person,“ said Penny Spikins, senior lecturer in the archaeology of human origins at the University of York and lead author of the study.

Geneticists believe that autism has a long evolutionary history in humans, likely appearing before the stone age. Today, fields such as engineering, mathematics, law, and other academia attract a high rate of people with autism, most notably Asperger’s syndrome. Coping with autism even in the modern world is difficult at best. But, the team argues that the traits which push modern individuals towards these fields provided a powerful advantage for the early social groups of a hunter-gatherer society.

For example, autism is often associated with heightened visual, olfactory, and taste perception, as well as exceptional memory skills (very useful in navigating the world without GPS). Asperger’s syndrome is associated with a heightened attention to detail (recognizing different plants or animals), understanding of systems (such as the behavior of prey), and increased focusing ability.

What these people lacked in social integration, they more than made up through sheer group utility.

“It was diversity between people which led to human success and it is particularly important as it gives you different specialised roles,” Spikins added.

In essence, they formed society’s first specialists, filling in roles that the others couldn’t perform as well. Neurosciencenews cites the example of a 2005 study of an elderly reindeer herder with autism from Siberia who “revealed a detailed memory of the parentage, medical history and character of each one of his 2,600 animals.” His knowledge made a huge contribution to the herd’s management and survival, having a direct effect on the group’s prosperity and well-being. Despite being “more comfortable in the presence of the reindeer than humans,” he was a well-respected and important person in the group, had a wife, a son, and even grandchildren. A person with similar abilities would have likely received a similar treatment in a group of early humans.

But finding verifiable proof of autism in archaeological records has always been tricky for researchers. There is no skeletal record of the condition. There is indirect proof to be had, however, in observing how other people that differ from the norm were integrated, as well as cave art or other artifacts from which autistic behavior can be inferred.

“There has been a long-standing debate about identifying traits of autism in Upper Palaeolithic cave art,” Dr Spikins said.

“We can’t say some of it was drawn by someone with autism, but there are traits that are identifiable to someone who has autism. It was also roughly at that time that we see collaborative morality emerging.” ...

http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/autism-stone-age-evolution/

 

[David Plankton]

Characteristics associated with the autistic specter, such as attention to detail and exceptional memory skills, can be identified in cave art.

 

[rynner2]

The speling on this bord is getting worserer and worserer!

 

[ramonmercado]

The speling on this bord is getting worserer and worserer!

Not my fault guv! I only posted the article.

 

[Graylien]

There seems to be an awful lot of guesswork in that article. This whole business of retroactively diagnosing people strikes me as rather woolly.

I wonder if it says more about our own times than it does the past? We seem obsessed with paying lip service to 'diversity', though whether we truly value difference is up for debate.

 

[rynner2]

Not my fault guv! I only posted the article.

I know, the press nowadays is awful. I used to give typos a 'sic', but nowadays it's often easier to correct the crap the media puts out before I post it.

 

[Coal]

Difficult to prove as perhaps it moves more into the area of Anthropology but an interesting article.

About 100,000 years ago, people with autism were championed, not shunned, and may even have shaped human evolution

ALEXANDRU MICU NOVEMBER 16, 2016 0 2,011

A University of York study found that roughly 100,000 years ago, primitive societies stopped shunning people with autism — in fact, they were embraced as respected specialists in their groups for their unique abilities, allowing them to play a central part in human evolution.

Characteristics associated with the autistic specter, such as attention to detail and exceptional memory skills, can be identified in cave art.
Image credits University of York.

Humans are social animals. The life we know today, with roads, grocery shops, smartphones, is only possible because generation after generation, we’ve worked together, pooling our abilities to improve our collective lives. But it hasn’t always been the case. A study now estimates that this group-oriented attitude, known as collaborative morality, emerged through a subtle evolutionary shift some 100,000 years ago. By changing the focus from a person’s characteristics to their abilities, skills, and value to the group, collaborative morality opened up a social niche for one demographic likely ostracized before — people with autism.

Rather than being left behind, the team concludes that they assumed an important role in their social groups due to their unique traits. This, in the long run, allowed them to play a major part in human development and evolution.

“We are arguing that diversity, variation between people, was probably more significant in human evolutionary success than the characteristics of one person,“ said Penny Spikins, senior lecturer in the archaeology of human origins at the University of York and lead author of the study.

Geneticists believe that autism has a long evolutionary history in humans, likely appearing before the stone age. Today, fields such as engineering, mathematics, law, and other academia attract a high rate of people with autism, most notably Asperger’s syndrome. Coping with autism even in the modern world is difficult at best. But, the team argues that the traits which push modern individuals towards these fields provided a powerful advantage for the early social groups of a hunter-gatherer society.

For example, autism is often associated with heightened visual, olfactory, and taste perception, as well as exceptional memory skills (very useful in navigating the world without GPS). Asperger’s syndrome is associated with a heightened attention to detail (recognizing different plants or animals), understanding of systems (such as the behavior of prey), and increased focusing ability.

What these people lacked in social integration, they more than made up through sheer group utility.

“It was diversity between people which led to human success and it is particularly important as it gives you different specialised roles,” Spikins added.

In essence, they formed society’s first specialists, filling in roles that the others couldn’t perform as well. Neurosciencenews cites the example of a 2005 study of an elderly reindeer herder with autism from Siberia who “revealed a detailed memory of the parentage, medical history and character of each one of his 2,600 animals.” His knowledge made a huge contribution to the herd’s management and survival, having a direct effect on the group’s prosperity and well-being. Despite being “more comfortable in the presence of the reindeer than humans,” he was a well-respected and important person in the group, had a wife, a son, and even grandchildren. A person with similar abilities would have likely received a similar treatment in a group of early humans.

But finding verifiable proof of autism in archaeological records has always been tricky for researchers. There is no skeletal record of the condition. There is indirect proof to be had, however, in observing how other people that differ from the norm were integrated, as well as cave art or other artifacts from which autistic behavior can be inferred.

“There has been a long-standing debate about identifying traits of autism in Upper Palaeolithic cave art,” Dr Spikins said.

“We can’t say some of it was drawn by someone with autism, but there are traits that are identifiable to someone who has autism. It was also roughly at that time that we see collaborative morality emerging.” ...

http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/autism-stone-age-evolution/

It's speculation from end to end.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Characteristics associated with the autistic specter, such as attention to detail and exceptional memory skills, can be identified in cave art.

I bet he's a isolative little ghost and gets upset when the other ghosts "whoo" too loudly

 

[Ermintruder]

A close friend of mine who is autistic (though she 'hates being defined by just one word') pointed-out this recorded exchange between an autistic girl, and a writer. I found it very interesting.

Having had a life-long interest in ASD (and a nephew genius who is a genuine profoundly-autistic savant) I can say it is a truly-fascinating area of study, and worthy of our best efforts at valuing and understanding it.

https://autnot.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/autscriptic/

You don’t look autistic.

Yes I do.

You don’t act autistic though.

Yes I do.

Yeah, but you’re not like “properly” autistic.

Yes I am.

You can make eye contact.

Yes I can.

You don’t flap all the time.

I do at birds.

You flap at birds?

I flap at birds.

Why do you flap at birds?

It would be rude not to wave at them when they wave at me.

That’s a bit weird.

Is it?

But you don’t do all that proper stimming and stuff, do you? Or do you?

Every day. Most moments of every day. See this?

Looks like a tiny bead mat.

Yup. I made it, I made lots of them, for when I lose them. I get distracted easily.

Can I have a go?

Go for it.

It feels nice.

It feels essential.

Why do you do it?

I’m an addict.

But it’s not like proper stimming, is it? I can feel that that’s nice.

Yes it is.

But you don’t look autistic. You’re not all twitches and movements.

Not at the moment.

What do you mean?

At the moment I’m devoting a certain amount of my brain to keeping my legs still and not twitching my nose. Even though my forehead feels too tight.

But if you can stop it, why don’t you just stop all the time?

I can’t process at that level all the time. It takes energy, I’d rather use that energy on something fun.

You’re smiling, that’s not very autistic, is it? We’re talking and you’re reacting?

Do autistic people not smile?

Don’t you, I mean they, I mean you, have less… Feelings? See! You’re smiling again.

No. I have feelings. Lots of them. I have huge empathy. I feel. I’m just not always great at putting out those feelings as visual signifiers.

As what?

Give me a second to think about how I want to say this.

Ok.

Right, when I feel something I react to it. I imagine it’s in a similar way to the way you do, but that reaction is an emotional one, it’s not necessarily an action.

What do you mean?

If I’ve got spare processing power, then I’ll use that to make sure that my face and my hands look like they’re supposed to when you have a feeling. I’ll behave appropriately. If I’m stressed or overloaded, I might look cold and expressionless. It’s not that I’m not feeling, it’s that I can’t project that emotion in a way you can understand it.

So you have to think about it?

Essentially, yes. Not always, at least not so I’ll notice, I’ve been doing this for decades, it’s not new. I do the relevant action almost automatically, but the action is not automatic.

But you move your hands when you talk. You gesture a lot.

Do I?

Yes, not always, but I’ve seen you do it. You’re doing it now. I thought autistic people didn’t do that.

Am I? Have you watched what I’m doing?

Not really.

See how I wave pointedly, and in between waving or emphasising something, I’m rubbing one hand against the other?

Yes.

It’s all just stimming. I noticed people do it. I do the waving to give myself some sensory information to have more of an idea of where my body is, and then I use the gaps inbetween to quickly stim in a way that isn’t obvious. It’s not a social gesture. It’s a designed one.

Really?

Yup.

It all sounds a bit… Exhausting.

It is. I get tired easily. When I was small I never had to be put to bed. I’d do it myself. Then I’d read for hours to try to calm my thoughts enough to sleep.

I do that sometimes.

That’s nice.

Is it?

It must be nice to only do it sometimes.

Oh. Have I offended you?

No.

So when you say that your emotions don’t always lead to actions, what does that mean?

It means I get a choice.

In what way?

Ok, for years I thought people were pathetic when it came to phobias.

Because you don’t have them.

Oh god no, I’m as irrational as the next person. Because they couldn’t choose their actions.

Is this an autistic thing then?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a ‘me’ thing. But it comes from black and white thinking. I’ve always been scared of cockroaches. I don’t know why. But they terrify me. I think I have a fear that they’re winning on an evolutionary scale. Whatever it is they bring out the fear in me.

I’m like that with spiders.

Like you and spiders. So when I went to a local animal place, and they had hissing cockroaches, I felt the fear. The woman noticed my interest and asked if I wanted to hold one.

That’s horrible.

It was. I said yes. She put it on my hand and I held it up to my face. I’ve never been more scared.

I don’t think I could hold a tarantula to my face.

You could. All you have to do is move your hand and it happens. The woman said I was very calm and that she didn’t think I was scared of them at all. I was terrified. But I held it and looked at it all over its ridged body.

Why did you do it?

Because emotions aren’t actions, I guess, and I wanted to know it applied to all fears. That I could overcome them. That I didn’t have to be held back by them.

There must be more to it.

Because as much as I fear cockroaches, I can avoid them. All my other fears are everywhere.

What do you mean?

Coming here today, to a new place. Not knowing what the room looks like, where the switches and air vents are, how the doors open, who would be here, what they’d say, who they’d want me to be, what patterns might be on the floor, and so on and on, the fear that causes is immense.

You don’t look scared. You’re smiling again.

If I told you that everything in my head is currently in fight or flight overdrive, and I’m surprised you can’t hear the whirring of gears as I concentrate on decoding what you say and how you say it, in an unfamiliar place, whilst maintaining my look of relaxed interest, would you believe me?

I don’t know.

But it’s ok. Because I don’t look autistic.

No you don’t. I mean that as a compliment.

Because you don’t know what looking autistic means.

No I don’t.
And you think not being autistic is a compliment?

I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just… No one wants to be autistic, do they?
I don’t know. Do you want to be neurotypical? I bet there’s awful bits of being normal that I don’t have to deal with. The only difference is the world is designed to make life easier for you. Not me.

That makes no sense.

Doesn’t it? It made sense in my head.

It’s just hard when you look so… Normal.

What do you think autistic looks like?

I… A bit… Not as conversational.

Do you believe me when I say I’m autistic?

I believe you have a diagnosis.

Ah, weasel-words. That’s not answering the question.

I suppose it’s hard when…

When we look like versions of you?

Yes. Have I offended you again?

I’m trying to decide… No. I don’t think so. I don’t think I should be surprised that I look like everyone else when I’m trying to look like everyone else.

I think I believe you do that.

What? Pretend to be normal?

Yes.

I used to think everyone pretended to be normal all the time. That it was some big secret. That you all knew what I knew and thought how I thought.

Why did you think that?

For the same reason you’re assuming I’m just like you. Because I assumed you were just like me. I just thought everyone else was better at it. I couldn’t work out how people did it so effortlessly. It turned out it was because it involved no effort on their part.

Oh.

Anyway. I’d best be off or I’ll miss the school run.

You work with kids? Autistic kids?

No. My kids.

What? I thought autistic people didn’t like to be touched?

Haven’t we already established that you don’t know much about autistic people? Do you really think it’s appropriate to ask me about my sex life?

No! I mean, I didn’t mean to! Sorry. I won’t hold you up. Nice to meet you.

It was an education.

You’re smiling again.

I do that

 

[Swifty]

Tokyotoys attempts to appeal to customers who are autistic ..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36560792

 

[Swifty]

It's world autism awareness day so please share this link on behalf of these kids with autism .. they've made this song

 

[Vardoger]

There seems to be an awful lot of guesswork in that article. This whole business of retroactively diagnosing people strikes me as rather woolly.

I wonder if it says more about our own times than it does the past? We seem obsessed with paying lip service to 'diversity', though whether we truly value difference is up for debate.

It's almost revisionism, like black African history revisionism.

 

[rynner2]

William Stuteley says first word after Hear Will's Voice campaign funds therapy for autism

The young boy at the centre of an ongoing Helston fundraising campaign has said his first word in a groundbreaking moment for his family.
William Stuteley is the inspiration for Hear Will's Voice, an appeal set up to help raise £50,000 for intensive therapy.

Will is on the non-verbal end of the autism spectrum, something that affects only one in four children with autism, which means that he has been unable to communicate verbally and does not understand the world around him.

Last year, when Will was three, his parents Joe and Rebecca began fundraising for therapy that is not a available on the NHS, which helps parents and the children themselves manage and live functionally with the condition, even eventually helping them to speak, so that Will could hear his voice for the first time.
Now, after 18 months of treatment, Will has echoed his first word: "baby."

The four-year-old is now also able to complete tasks such as getting himself dressed, having his hair cut and even eating chicken and vegetables - all of which Rebecca said she "wouldn't have imagined" when they started.
Will started at Wendron Primary School last September on a part-time basis, with most of his therapy taking place at home.

Rebecca said: "The progress made over the last year since his programme started is amazing.
"The two main steps for us in terms of his progress are showing interest in others - especially the other children at school - and started his language development programme, having echoed his first word ‘ baby’."
...

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/new...s_for_the_first_time__aged_four/?ref=mr&lp=16

 

[INT21]

' wish I hadn't started reading this thread. I suddenly need somewhere nice and dark to go sit in and think.

INT21

 

[ramonmercado]

Interesting review/essay on a book about Dr Asperger revealing his nazi links and his involvement in the killing of children. Not just his reputation us challenged but also the very diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome.

Dr. Death
by Lisa Appignanesi

JULY 19, 2018 ISSUE

Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

by Edith Sheffer
Norton, 317 pp., $27.95

Long-deceased Viennese doctors, unless they’re called Freud, rarely make newspaper headlines. But one has recently done so on both sides of the Atlantic. On April 19, the academic open-access journal Molecular Autism published a detailed article by the Austrian medical historian Herwig Czech about Hans Asperger, the Viennese pediatrician whose name has since the 1980s designated a syndrome that forms part of the wider autism spectrum. Like many prominent Austrian medical figures of his generation, Asperger’s wartime record of involvement in some of the deadliest aspects of Nazi medical practice had long remained unquestioned or was glossed over. Now he stood exposed as having been far from an opponent of Nazi thinking; racial hygiene was, in fact, at the center of his beliefs.

The historian Edith Sheffer’s book Asperger’s Children was published a month after Czech’s exposé. Her research was contemporaneous with his and draws on the same archival sources, but books take longer. Hers is an impassioned indictment, one that glows with the heat of a prosecution motivated by an ethical imperative. She charges Asperger with a heinous medical crime: sending at least thirty-seven of his child patients to their deaths. Herta Schreiber, who had suffered meningitis and diphtheria, was just short of three when her de facto death certificate was signed, in part on the grounds that she was “an unbearable burden to the mother.”

Accused with Asperger is the whole of the Nazi ideological apparatus that converted a diagnosis—a highly personal form of human assessment—into the first rung of a routine killing machine. Finally, Sheffer wants to indict the entire capacious category of autism, which she argues includes too many different kinds of people alongside the high-functioning, often talented, but somewhat relationally challenged people who have been given the diagnosis of Asperger’s—a diagnosis that for the US has now been shifted, in the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), into the broader autism spectrum. ...

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/20...c4c86&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Dr Death

 

[Dropship]

The label "autistic" seems to be a new thing, as I don't think we'd ever heard the word back in the 1960's/70's, but it seems much more common nowadays, so maybe mass immunisation programs can cause it like some people have suggested?
But regarding autism generally, if a kid's a bit slow or eccentric, so what?
A woman in a chat room a couple of years ago said- "I'm fed up with my young autistic son, he's going through a 'Bob the Builder' phase and keeps wanting me to buy him Bob the Builder books and toys and things".
So I said- "Well just buy them for him then, and stop your nagging".
She never replied, so maybe I'd made her see sense, I dunno.

 

[Tribble]

The label "autistic" seems to be a new thing, as I don't think we'd ever heard the word back in the 1960's/70's, but it seems much more common nowadays

The word was first coined in the 1900s. Asperger's in 1944. There's documented cases going back centuries before they even had a word for it. Psychology has come a long way since then and professionals know what to look for, how to test for it and how to treat it. So it's not that it's more common, it's that it's more diagnosed.

P.S. If anything, mass vaccination prevents autism.

 

[catseye]

Not that simple, Dropship. My best friend's son is autistic - early diagnosis is EXTREMELY important, so knowing your child is more than 'a bit slow and eccentric'. It might be easier to live with when they are school age, friend's son is 24, will never live independently, and has behaviours that cause his mum a lot of anxiety. He will never work either, and she worries what will happen when she dies.

How old was the 'Bob the Builder' lad? What's cute and eccentric at seven, is very hard to deal with at thirty.

Early diagnosis helps parents to manage both behaviours and expectations of their child.

 

[Dropship]

Not that simple, Dropship. My best friend's son is autistic - early diagnosis is EXTREMELY important, so knowing your child is more than 'a bit slow and eccentric'. It might be easier to live with when they are school age, friend's son is 24, will never live independently, and has behaviours that cause his mum a lot of anxiety. He will never work either..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if autistic kids are HAPPY, what's there to worry about?..
Or are you saying they're NOT happy and need diagnosing and treatment to cure them?

 

[Yithian]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if autistic kids are HAPPY, what's there to worry about?..
Or are you saying they're NOT happy and need diagnosing and treatment to cure them?

I'd say that the world and the human societies that exist within it are not at all tailored for those with anything more than 'mild' cases of autism. 'Happy' (hard to quantify, of course) is extremely difficult to achieve when you are not able to take part in normal everyday life.

As to your earlier post, please put aside the common misuse of the word 'autistic'. Being very interested in one topic or activity need have nothing to do with autism (or indeed any clinically diagnosable problem), and although repetitive behavior is common in many cases of autism it is it is likely to be just one issue among many. To take just one point, between 30 and 50% of those with autism never develop natural enough language use to communicate at a normal level in life.

Autism is not simply 'being different', it's a developmental impairment that prevents people establishing and maintaining the interactions and relationships that most of us take for granted.

 

[catseye]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if autistic kids are HAPPY, what's there to worry about?..
Or are you saying they're NOT happy and need diagnosing and treatment to cure them?

They don't need diagnosis to 'cure' them (there is no cure). They need diagnosis so that schools and their parents can work out the best way to deal with each individual to enable them to reach their potential. Every single case is different.

Yeah, my friend's son is reasonably happy. Although he is aware enough to know that he is different, he lacks the awareness to know 'how' different, or how it affects his mother. SHE is the one worrying about his future.

 

[Dropship]

I never married or had kids so what do I know, but if I had an autistic child I think I'd just let him/her do his own thing without any pressure from me or anybody else to conform or "fit into" the world..

 

[Frideswide]

the joke for me is that this article gives the impression that all Autistic people can actually understand language.....or that they can even speak.....many do not, or even possess the most basic skills necessary for independent survival......“getting” jokes is a long way down the list of their priorities)

Are you might be confusing autism and learning differences/difficulties? Autism is separate and has no direct correleation with IQ, or any other proposed measure of educability.

It seemed strange to me at the time that the observations/experiences of many parents I spoke to who had also noted loss of social skills/awareness in their Autistic children did not appear to be reflected in the literature or acknowledged by the specialist clinicians.

This has been part of the knowledge about autism since the 1960s as far as I remember from my postgrad studies. Could this be a national issue? Where are you (roughly) geographically @Fairlight?

 

[Frideswide]

The label "autistic" seems to be a new thing, as I don't think we'd ever heard the word back in the 1960's/70's, but it seems much more common nowadays, so maybe mass immunisation programs can cause it like some people have suggested?

And your evidence for this?

Autism at the time was diagnosed under other labels - and people were locked away if they couldn't or wouldn't conform.

 

[Frideswide]

Autism is not simply 'being different', it's a developmental impairment that prevents people establishing and maintaining the interactions and relationships that most of us take for granted.

Not quite

It's a pervasive developmental disorder, but there are at least three er... "prongs" to the way NTs discern it For example a talent for systemising, less need for time-consuming social ritual that allistics enjoy so much, and a positive enjoyment of repetition and routine. All of these things to a degree where there is friction between the outside world's expectations and the inner world's delight and creativity.

Which means that autistics have a very poor life expectancy compared to those allistics, especially the NTs. htt//ww.nhs.uk/news/neurology/people-with-autism-are-dying-younger-warns-study/

Original link dead, wayback machine version below

https://web.archive.org/web/2020051...le-with-autism-are-dying-younger-warns-study/

mods.

The combination of autism and the common co-morbids can make life very difficult - learning differences/disabilities, epilepsy, neurofibromatosis, connective tissue disorders and so on.

Edited becuase I missed out half a sentence!

 

[Frideswide]

I never married or had kids so what do I know, but if I had an autistic child I think I'd just let him/her do his own thing without any pressure from me or anybody else to conform or "fit into" the world..

yeah... abandoning basic parenting sounds really cool!

Did you know that one of the very early medical theories about autism was that we had been brought up by wolves?

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I never married or had kids so what do I know, but if I had an autistic child I think I'd just let him/her do his own thing without any pressure from me or anybody else to conform or "fit into" the world..

Our autistic son is 25 now, and that's pretty well been the process. He has something called 'atypical autism' which means he does have whole areas of his life where all is well - then other things he struggles with. He has a job, a stunning fiance, just got his degree - he is able to go about much of his day the same way as anyone else does. Other son who was in the year below him at college said that most of his mates didn't even know he was autistic. He's super autistic at home, though.

Interestingly, he never felt he was 'other' at special school. The feeling alienated and weird only started when he was shunted into the mainstream.

 

[EnolaGaia]

The label "autistic" seems to be a new thing, as I don't think we'd ever heard the word back in the 1960's/70's ...

Recognition of the distinct condition we now call autism traces back to Leo Kanner's seminal 1943 description of the syndrome, which he labeled autistic disturbances of affective contact.

Hans Asperger (for whom Asperger's syndrome is named) had used the terms 'autism' and 'autistic' 5 years earlier (1938).