What can you tell me about Autism?

The over-medicalization of the humn personality that some people talked about is also a concern of mine; we are socially constructing 'disabilities' that once just suited someone to a unique place in the social division of labor. The autistic person who was unable to deal with social cues would perhaps do focused, complex work like woodcarving, copying manuscripts, being librarian, census-taker or some other job that required cataloging and attention to detail. Now that so much of that is done via computer, it doesn't surprise me that many of these people end up computer professionals and collectors of various things.

One of the things the Time article brought up was that autistic kids are fascinated by spinning objects, and prefer structures (bridges, buildings) over people when they are able to choose a photo of one or the other thing.

Keep it coming and thanks for the input! I'm having to learn a lot about ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities, medications, conditions that mimic other conditions and so on. It's a bit overwhleming, and all the input is very much appreciated.

Newsweek, for the week of September 8, ran a couple of articles on gender and autism. Basically posits the idea that autism is just a sign of someone being more masculine in their traits than feminine (er, I am way over-simplifying here). I'd link to the articles, but it's a pay-per-view site, so you might want to Google it or see what you can find at the library. The research that the article referenced might be of assistance, too. (My mother photocopied and sent the article[s] to me, and if I can find where I filed them at I'll scan them into pdfs and pass them along.)

Oh, something else interesting ... the article talked about early-intervention research, with children as young as a year old, and that seemed to have some good results, overall.

Anyway, I'll continue to pass stuff along as it crosses my path.

This makes sense, since people who have this condition are attracted to computer jobs, and numeric language is finite. Autistic people I've dealt with have difficulty with multiplicity of meaning - it makes sense that they would become increasingly frustrated as the signs multiply.

Just brainstorming here.

Guys my best friends 2 y/o kid was just diagnosed with Autism. They think with the communication level he has (eg pointing when he wants something) could mean that the diagnosis could be reversed at some point, posibly before he starts school but he needs serious therapy right now for that to happen. Her drs have told her he nedd software called B04rdm4ker (image recognition etc) which runs at the ridiculous price of $339US ($500+ AUD) which she cant afford. ANyway Ive looked around the internet (ebay included)and cant find anything cheaper. Any suggestions?

nowhere you can nick a copy on the net? a torrent or something?

i dont know. i cant work that stuff out. any sites you can suggest?

if you google "boardmaker +torrents" there's quite a few hits. dunno how many are still up, i'm sure you must know someone who could help you out with this sort of thing without downloading a million viruses or whatever. i'm loath to recommend anything that might screw up your computer.

thx guys!!

http://www.thirdage.com/news/dsm-update-to-remove-aspergers-from-autism-spectrum_05-24-2011

This is good news for people with mild autism that don't want to be classified alongside Asperger people (whom have very different mild autism characteristics).

Now if only the new DSM update will change PDD-NOS diagnosis so that it's no longer a free-for-all categorization of all autistic folk that don't fit into other autism diagnoses. I mean that's just lazy diagnosing.

Would prefer they used "Condition" rather than "Disorder". As a guy with Asperger's once pointed out to me, who's less disorderly than peeps on the Autism spectrum?

i dunno abt that, ilx can get pretty restive at times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/health/rate-of-autism-diagnoses-has-climbed-study-finds.html

what will the world be like when autistic ppl outnumber non-autistic ppl? will non-autistic ppl be labeled empathetics? will they learn how all the faces on the chart mean the same thing?

what will the world be like when autistic ppl outnumber non-autistic ppl?

― Mordy, Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:21 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how im gonna make up something universal, doesnt even make any sense: IT"S THE TOP 100 COMEDY FILMS RESULTS THREAD

haha

crooked timber posting some good stuff about autism this week

Today my son was punching me, scratching my face, trying to gouge my eyes out, he ripped my shirt and he grabbed my glasses and snapped them. This violent anger is a newish thing to him, it was a rough day. People with ASC can be the worst and best people in the world within the same hour sometimes.

love to u both, xelab

Thanks for your sentiment NV. Was talking to a teacher today about the best way to restrain violent kids, because on friday I was worried about getting arrested. She said she wasn't allowed to tell me the best way because if we get injured following her advice it becomes a litigation issue. I hold his arms and push him towards the ground. His mother can't do that because she is very ill and frail right now. It is a bit of mess right now but we will get through it.

tight hugging is a good way of trying to restrict arm movement i think, has the benefit that some children with autism spectrum conditions find that kind of overall pressure soothing. using your body to deflect them and keep them in a small controlled space feels relatively safe but obv you're vulnerable to kicks/punches at that distance. in general blocking and hugging feel the least dangerous to me but obviously you can judge for yourself.

if you can find/create a safe space that you can withdraw from but contain them until they've calmed down that's best i think. obviously that isn't always an option. most professionals can't express an opinion about restraint and i've got to admit i'm wary of those who are too gung-ho about it.

you will get thru it together, you'll get better and better at spotting potential causes of frustration/outbursts, and your boy will learn ways to deal with that frustration that don't involve violence. i can't imagine how tough it must be at the moment. hope i'm not being presumptuous in talking about this.

It probably sounds a bit savage, but I was restraining him by his arms because his attack occurred next to a busy road and at this flashpoint it seemed the only way. The truth is I was caught cold and even after almost a decade of experience of ASC behaviour I am still not an expert. He has been so chill for the last couple of years and the meltdowns became more infrequent and shorter and easier to bring him out of at times I almost forget about autism.

He had a lot of triggers on that particular day like a long train journey to his fave leisure pool only to find out the timetable has been reduced to weekends only, so then we had a disappointing return journey on a shitty virgin train with no seats, rammed carriage and no air conditioning, full of irritable, sweaty, stressed people. Strangely he coped with all this very well. The attack came after his downgraded swimming session at the local, very basic swimming pool.

Now that I am mentally prepared for any future incidents it will be a lot easier to deal with. My key failure on friday was losing my calm and letting the gawpers distract me, when you worry about gawpers you become self-conscious and less effective at dealing with the situation. Going to start carrying my Autism Alert cards again, anyone got anything to say? Here have a card. That saves a lot of energy and arguing.

just been playing chase with a student round work. gawpers are my weak point too.

Autism risk genes also linked to higher intelligence

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Queensland analysed almost 10,000 people recruited from the general population of Scotland. Individuals were tested for general cognitive ability and had their DNA analysed.
The team found that even among people who never develop autism, carrying genetic traits associated with the disorder is, on average, linked to scoring slightly better on cognitive tests.

I guess that if you are going to carry out a study, you're also going to release the results and summarize them in a way that highlights whatever information you were able to glean, if any. But it seems to me that discovering a slight increase of cognitive ability among those who carry genetic traits associated with autism is such a qualified and watered down finding that I doubt it sheds any meaningful light on autism at all.

Its akin to the results that find genes predisposing to sickle cell anemia protective against malaria, genes predisposing to schizophrenia are associated with creativity, or genes for lowered skin melanin and higher skin cancer protective against rickets and multiple sclerosis at high latitudes. Its offers an evolutionary rationale for why genetic traits with some very bad potential outcomes have persisted.

There's such a broad spectrum diagnosis of ASDs with the DSM it renders correlations like this meaningless.

I personally believe that throughout human history it is people who would be considered to be on the autism spectrum who have consistently been the inventive outsiders who have been the driving force in engineering, technology etc - all the stuff that has sent apes to the top of the food chain. I can't really back this up with a coherent argument and am slightly biased as someone with an ASD son and a spergerish bro who is a top programmer. But this is just my strongly held unresearched opinion!

Its offers an evolutionary rationale for why genetic traits with some very bad potential outcomes have persisted.

It is clear that the researchers hoped to establish a link of that sort, but it is not clear that the results they obtained are strong enough to prove that link. If this study were to be repeated on further groups of a similar size, with similar results for each study, all it would do is firmly establish that any linkage is too weak to be decisive. Cognitive ability is not very analogous to resistance to malaria.

Just saw the film x+y and I am fucking incandescent with rage

(i'm slightly autistic btw)

Absolutely the biggest pile of reductive, sentimental, poorly-characterised, sloppy, soppy, useless horseshit I can imagine. This Richard Curtisification of mainstream 'British' cinema needs to fucking die. A film about autism by and for non-autists. The irony is inherent. NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE REAL

if any of you liked it I hate you forever

Oh and the soundtrack! Keaton Henson, whoever you are, Google yourself and feel this, my hatred

what do you mean by 'slightly autistic'

And throw in a crude, faux MS sufferer to distract people from from the fucking sub CBBC level of autism knowledge inherent in the script. I only saw the trailer and I wanted Rafe Spall to fucking die!

nakho if you had seen me between the ages of 4 and 20 you would not have asked that question

have been diagnosed at 18 by a psychologist as aspergic, now I know you dispute that is a thing and I am not convinced myself, but I have a large number of tics, some based around the idea of my left side and others based around my hair touching the back of my neck, that act as residual physical manifestations of whatever weirdness - let's call it mild autism - that a slow, slow process of exposure to social grace & developing of empathy have whittled down. also I'm a maths pedant, also I would burst into uncontrollable anger all the fucking time over the most minor things, I could go on

xelab otm obv

I was diagnosed with aspergers quite young (maybe 8-10?), I disregarded it for a long time because I didn't see much similarity between myself and other aspergers youths, but recently I started thinking there might be something to it, so I got reassessed. They couldn't really tell me anything other than I might have a form of it that manifests in very subtle ways, so it was best to keep note of "mild aspergers" at the job centre.
One woman told me that she thought the word "aspergers" would not be used by professionals in 10-15 years; she also said tv/movie depictions of autism drove her nuts, even documentaries because they tend to focus on extreme types of autism, that doesn't indicate the immense variety of autistic types.

I really don't know what to think, sometimes I feel totally normal with more or less normal difficulties, but sometimes I feel like I have hardwired limitations. My math skills are horrendous and I just never seemed to get beyond primary school basics with it.

Like all the stuff asperger kids are supposed to be good at is the stuff I'm worst at.

The movie version of the autism spectrum really sucks a lot of shit, if you are not male, cute and gauche and brilliant then are you are part of the invisible morass of the unwanted disabled in their world. Clair Danes did a fine job of depicting someone with classic autism but the fact remains if she was plain looking it would never have been made and she was depicting someone on the remarkable genius end of the ASC spectrum. Ordinary existence for people on the ASC spectrum is not very hollywood, it involves a lot of discrimination, alienation & depression and more often than not bad endings that wouldn't befit some prettyboy-prick driven movie project.

i spent some time with a childhood friend of my gf at a bar a night or two back and she clued me in prior that he was on the extreme end of the spectrum. i met him in front of the bar and he before going in he delivered an agitated two minute monologue to no one in particular about the faulty ergonomics of the entryway, then spent most of the time at the crowded bar wincing painfully whenever there was noise nearby and reacting with OTT exasperation when he couldn't find a place to comfortably stand.
we had an hour long conversation that was almost painfully intense (the crux was that his sister was shot and killed by the cops a year and a half earlier) and exhausting both in what he required from me as a conversational partner and how very much I empathized personally with those needs. basically everything that was bothering him was bothering me, only i've established tactics to cope more internally. it was a real reminder how close i run alongside these issues and how vulnerable being around people who are just a bit (or a lot) more damaged than i am makes me feel. we had several moments of genuine connection and I'm happy we made that happen but i walked away very anxious and claustrophobic.
gf spends at least a few days a week working in classrooms with autistic students and some of the horror stories she relates are very depressing, less in terms of behavior and more about the long term prospects for a lot of the kids. as a social issue, it's gonna hit a new level of critical density in the next few decades and i don't think there's any real system in place or being put in place. one love to everyone on board who has to deal with this either personally or with a loved one, it's a helluva fight.

Why do you think it's going to "hit a new level of critical density"?

loads and loads of diagnosed kids aging out of the system with no social safety net in place whatsoever

highly recommended documentary about autism in the Hoboken NJ school system
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/70287268
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/best-kept-secret

I don't see how it's different than loads and loads of undiagnosed kids aging out of a system, or there being no system at all. I agree that autistics and their families should have services available and that we should determine what services are most effective, but that doesn't mean that the population is changing in a catastrophic way.

i'm aligning myself less with alarmists suggesting GMOs or vaccines are causing autism and more with those allowing for a broader definition, especially when it benefits an undersupported group of parents and sufferers. Awareness is rising, the diagnostic tools are being applied much more rigorously, the symptoms considered as qualifiers are more widely defined. it's not gonna be politically expedient much longer (i hope) for administrations to ignore a growing constituency. so i'll walk that back to a "new level of critical density within the culture" but i would hope, given the context of that post, you can understand where a more emotional phrasing comes from.

Autistic UK believes in the central principle of the Madrid Declaration; “nothing about disabled people without disabled people” and seeks to ensure that autistic voices are heard.

It seeks to include as broad a range of autistic people as possible.

It seeks to challenge the consensus view of the meaning of the word “autism”.

It seeks to encourage the emergence of a consensus view on the nature of the autistic experience within the autistic population of the UK.

Autistic UK believes autism is not something a person “has” any more than a person “has Englishness” or “has heterosexuality”.

It does not seek to answer the question, “What is autism?”; it seeks to ask the question, “What does it mean to be autistic?”

It applies the social model of disability to autism arguing that autistic people are disadvantaged because society disadvantages them, not because they “are autistic”.

It challenges the various myths and falsehoods regularly propogated concerning autism.

It insists that autistic people must be invited into the discourse regarding the nature of autism and what it means to be autistic.

It challenges

the Triad of Impairments as a meaningful summary of autistic characteristics
the terms “high-functioning autism” and “low-functioning autism”
the concept of the “autistic spectrum”
the claims that autistic people “lack empathy”, are “emotionally illiterate”, are socially illiterate, lack a sense of humour, lack imagination, lack creativity
the claim the autism is “predominantly a male condition”

Autistic UK promotes the concept that being autistic involves difference rather than deficit.

Autistic UK operates on the principle of inclusivity.

The autistic population is an extremely heterogeneous group.

It is probable that the only feature common to those people diagnosed autistic is the fact that they are all diagnosed autistic.
It argues that all those interested in addressing the various questions surrounding the experience of being autistic ought to be involved in that conversation (including those whose views are sharply divergent with those of Autistic UK)

Autistic UK recognises that many autistic people are struggle to represent themselves and some are incapable of representing themselves

Some can represent themselves without support
Some would benefit from support
Some need support
Some need a high level of highly skilled support
Some, even with support, will be unable to represent themselves

This last group, although they might be able to express preference and even participate in, for example, designing their own “care package”, nonetheless will struggle to engage with a “political” or “strategic” agenda (such as designing local services).

We are aware that in some situations the most appropriate people to speak on behalf of these people are their parents or other family members.

In other situations it might be more appropriate for these people to be “represented” through the involvement of more able autistic people.

We encourage family carers to represent themselves as carers.

Some autistic people are family carers of autistic people too.

Non-verbal or uncommunicative autistic people should always be given “the benefit of the doubt” in terms of IQ.

The definition of a “person with a learning disability” in British legislation follows that of the World Health Organisation; a person with an IQ of 70 or below.

Autistic UK challenges the assumption that non-verbal or otherwise seemingly “low-functioning” autistic people must be learning disabled.

If a person has little or no verbal communication then administering an IQ test is problematical and determining the IQ of such people is not a straightforward matter.

Often no attempt is made to determine the IQ of such people.

Without formal IQ testing the term “learning disabled” ought not to be applied to anyone.

Tools with an inbuilt language bias such as the Wechsler Scales (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children or WISC and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale or WAIS) should not be relied upon with autistic people non-verbal or otherwise and whatever their apparent IQ.

Tools such as the Raven Matrices should also be used in order to obtain an accurate IQ score and to gain a better understanding of how difficulties with language might be affecting the individual.

One of the sad things is, when someone is what you could facetiously call "non-verbal", even the nicest, well-meaning people tend make lazy assumptions and tend to talk to them like they don't have their own complex internal world and lack the cognitive ability to receive, just because they have difficulties transmitting.

It isn't all doom and gloom, earlier today I signed a consent form for him to go on a group trip to Pizza Hut before the easter break as part of his curriculum. It isn't as frivolous as it sounds and there is an emphasis on teaching independence skills. But fuck it, it sure sounds like fun for a school day!

what can you all tell me about raising a child on the autism spectrum? my older son was diagnosed a month ago.

Do you live in the UK? If so you might want to make contact with the NAS or other organisation for advice and experience. I worked within adult services for an autism charity for a while. One thing for certain is that autism or autistic spectrum disorders as they were under the DSM4 can manifest quite differently in different people / children. One person or one family's experience will differ from another's. Services in different regions will vary also.

yea we are in the US, we've been getting early intervention services for speech and developmental delays already (he's 2.5 years old) and we are working with an agency right now to expand more services for ASD, services seem good right now but we are a little worried about what's available when he starts elementary school in a few years, the public school system in boston is gargantuan and a horrible maze and we haven't heard positive things from other parents of kids with ASD

I just heard this absolute cunt called Henry Normal, reading a supposedly "moving" poem about his 20 year old son with autism. The crux of it was "I saw a hint of the neurotypical man my son could have been and boo hoo hoo!". Offensive and pathetic self-piteous neurotypical drivel that only other myopic bang-average arseholes will appreciate.. just fucking awful .. I feel sorry for his kid for being related to such a prize twat!

i roll this out every so often and i wish i didn't feel the need but hey

https://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html

getting easy plaudits from clueless pundit-class poltroons that don't know shit about autism, whilst undermining your own kid's sense of identity is classic centrist-dad behaviour tbf

You'd think after 20 years of living with a family member with autism you'd think some of these dickheads might actually learn something rather than spreading trenchantly ignorant attitudes that make autism seem like a disease or a curse rather than neurodiversity. But then getting applauded for it by people who are even more ignorant just compounds the offence.

Bless the NHS but...

I've slightly lost track but I make it 30 months since I got a referral for an ASC assessment. There is literally no way to speak to someone at the neurodevelopmental department about waiting times (or anything else), the phone line is a recorded message and the email address sends an auto response that says they sre "unable" to discuss waiting times for people who have waited less than the current estimate (which is now 2.5 years according to the email.)

One irony being that autistic people can tend to like to have definite information about when things will happen, especially potentially stressful and unfamiliar appointments.

i might as well say it - i'm autistic. and one of my special interests is music. anybody else deal with this? one of my friends posted a meme yesterday saying "i got diagnosed with ASD after I wore a DEVO shirt to an appointment with a therapist and they called DEVO a one hit wonder and I spoke uninterrupted and aggressively for 40 minutes about how it's not right to call DEVO a one hit wonder" and I feel extremely called out by this given that my reaction to that message was "Well of course who would actually think DEVO was a one-hit wonder, that's absurd!" Right now I am struggling to keep myself from recounting Dave Van Ronk's entire life story to people whose entire knowledge of him is that he was arrested at Stonewall despite not being queer and this makes him, I think, a "sigma male" in their eyes? Which is good?

why would the therapist have said that in the first place? Was it part of the assessment? ... or was it a joke and not an actual experience?

i don't know, i'm _reading_ it as either a joke or the sort of small talk people make at the beginning of a conversation. i can relate since my infodumping and monologuing has been super bad lately, that's kind of what i started my blog to try to keep under control but it's only going so far.

that's absurd!"

Is it like when you know that something isn't just wrong, or maybe not even wrong by some measures, but implies a category error. And you know that explaining this in a real way is going to come across awkwardly, so, not to be too much of a pedantic ass or bend their ears off, and, crucially, keeping within the bounds of the inital assertion in order to meet them half way, you settle on boiling it down to.. you know they had a couple of albums that were moderately large hits as well as the single you're probably thinking of. All of which empathic consideration innevitably really pays off with expressions interest and gratitude from the recipient / victim.

(I'd probably try and duck the whole thing tbh, but I'm not particularly a Devo-tee, if that's the right term. I'm sure given the right trigger I'd be off.)

I wonder which snitch neighbour will be the first to report me for filling the pool in the garden today. It might be the drug dealer next door, who I kid not phoned the cops on me once when Alex was having a severe meltdown (what kind of a bootlicking dealer tries to get an autist in trouble with the law ffs!). Alex is a priority services customer, suckers - snitch away! Anyway some frequent hydrotherapy throughout this summer break from college has been very important in keeping him on an even keel and maintaining good mental health and isn't a frivolous use of water during a hosepipe ban. Although I wouldn't bother explaining this to people who are bigoted to the core.

I've just had a communication from post 16 transport via a passenger assistant that from now on if the students aren't ready to leave the college within 10 minutes then the taxi can leave without them. It's easy to understand why with a group of mostly autistic young adults engaging in different activities and lessons that it can be difficult to get them to disengage in a timely fashion and be ready on time every day.

I told the passenger assistant that this shit is rank disablism and her line manager who is coming out with this shit ought to be sacked. It's also dangerous because many of them have other health conditions and loads of them have epilepsy. One of his 20 yr old classmates died in his sleep during half-term. The college is out in the sticks and not all parents/carers have cars nor the means to pay £50+ for a return journey taxi to pick them up because transport have decided that they are fucking amazon packages rather than human beings with complex needs. I'm fucking livid rn!

I feel like there should be a neurodiversity thread but buggered if I can find one. This might be a bit niche, I'm not sure, but this podcast chat with Robert Chapman is good and his book sounds excellent: https://www.everand.com/podcast/702055056/The-Rise-of-Anti-Capitalist-Neurodiversity-Robert-Chapman-s-Empire-of-Normality

By 'niche' I think I actually mean 'theorising about neurodiversity' when there are people battling with real-life consequences of a fucked system that does little to aid them or their dependents. I feel like I'm stating my credentials, but ftr I have a neurodiverse kid (and then some) and teach plenty of neurodiverse kids.

Chinaski, apologies if I have over-shared on this but. I am looking after a child with a severe intellectual disability.

Neurotypical / non-neurotypical is, for us, a severe understatement. He's not someone with some sensory issues, or a learning disability that can be accommodated for with extra test time or being allowed to use a calculator, but will otherwise be okay.

My son cannot talk, will not go to college, will likely never have a job or date or get married. I know I have already posted about this and it's probably tiresome, but it is where we are.

In the meantime I have nothing but good wishes for all others.

I am aware Puffin, as I am with Calzino, that's why I'm cautious about sharing stuff and sounding insensitive. I can only offer compassion for what you both carry with this.

Fwiw, my son is coming up 18. 'Neurodiversity' doesn't do justice in naming his struggles, even if that's how he's labelled. At present, he's being treated for severe OCD and has been out of education since he was 15. There have been periods in the last four years where he hasn't been able to leave his room (these periods have been up to a month at a time; people take 'can't leave his room' to be a metaphor. It isn't.) He has various ASD traits but has never been formally tested.

(It goes without saying but: he is fucking awesome.)

Best to you Chinaski