Auties, Aspies, and other CloudCuckooLanders!

Daft's mom appears to be a real life example of The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes.

Makes me wonder how/why she got her job. I had a nice conversation with my older brother about how my younger brother (yes, the Austrian economics-supporting libertarian misogynist nutjob) got into the medical field only for the money. "I don't like the idea of him taking care of people." (My younger brother, to his credit, does show a lot of genuine interest in my dad's many health problems) My older brother even talked about how, as a college professor in said field, he encounters students who very clearly should not have jobs working with patients - including students who are academically gifted but have serious flaws.

Wow. That's not good. Get another psychologist for yourself. Parents should never be the primary counsellor for their own children.

Edited by IsaacTheRed on Jul 21st 2018 at 2:56:22 PM

Yesterday, I was talking to my friend who's blind about the "constant struggle" view of disability. The idea that people with disabilities suffer 24/7, that every waking hour of our lives is a struggle. Being blind, she gets that a lot, even more than I do. People assume her life must be a constant hardship. It's not. She's been blind since she was a baby, so she barely even thinks about it. It's just another trait she has, like her height or hair color. She thinks about it just as often as I think about my hair being brown. Not very often. And with a few adjustments, she's able to live quite easily. Being autistic, I get a similar treatment.

This is the kind of thinking that fuels "inspiration porn". The belief that a disabled person's life is a non-stop tragedy, and therefore receiving five seconds of happiness is worthy of celebration.

What do you guys think about this?

I just got an intriguing email from my school accessibility counselor

Hmmm. Where to begin? Where to begin? There's no word limit on what I can submit. They wanted a few sentences, but they're getting a novel

edited 29th Jun '16 8:38:28 AM by Cailleach

Well that sounds interesting.

Do you guys have any input? I'm typing as fast as I can and have a page so far, but I'm going to keep going for a while

I would have no idea where to begin on that. Other than to warn them against falling into the trap of inspiration porn.

You know, I have heard people say it's a constant struggle. Not for autism yet, or blindness, either, but there are some problems which some people feel to be a constant struggle. Unemployment, for example. Or depression in some cases. Or trying to get the government to work. Or raising a child.

I can relate to those problems. I'm currently unemployed (although I do volunteer work of a charity bakery the next town over), and I haven't heard a word from my employment agent for months now (last time we talked, she said she'd get back to me when places started hiring in March, and here we are in June). My old hometown had the highest unemployment rate in Ontario, and I still managed to get a job there.

As for government assistance, my family's been struggling with that my whole life. My mom fought the Ontario education system tooth and nail so I could have an educational assistance throughout my elementary school years, and I've had a few struggles regarding government assistance in my adult life as well.

I just met with my school's accessibility office's employment services. I filled out a bunch of paperwork and they gauged the kinds of things I was interested and what my skillset was. The first thing I did when I walked into the office was identify the flags on the door (Quebec and Sri Lanka) and all the art on the walls (Monet, Degas, and Matisse) before I was launched into a loud, stuttering, incoherent speech about my overarching goals, so they know what kind of nutjob they're working with But I should be getting a job soon, so that's good. And hopefully it'll match up with my skillset well

edited 29th Jun '16 2:30:53 PM by Cailleach

Oh that's good

Good luck!

I hope it does. With autism at the moment, there's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" thing going on where if you don't come out as autistic, eventually there will be problems when people start to complain about your quirks. But if you do come out, people will assume you can't do anything and that you're intellectually disabled and incompetent.

Fortunately, there is a growing understanding that autistics can be genuinely good or great at many different kinds of things, and there are organizations starting to get that and convince companies to think that way as well.

I hope it works out for you. In your case, I think you mentioned that your autism is obvious? I think mine is. To some degree, certainly. I was told bluntly by my online female friend, the one who visited me for my birthday, that I'm visibly lower functioning than her.

It's definitely obvious. I stutter when I talk, I rock back and forth when I sit, I'm terrible at small talk, and I am REALLY shy

But I do defy a lot of expectations just by the way I present myself. The way I dress shows how creative I am (My counselor could tell I was waiting out in the hallway because she heard two people complimenting someone's outfit ) so thankfully the "uncreative robot" theory is disproved immediately. And my ability to spew out facts about just about anything that happens to be in the room I'm in tells people that I'm at least somewhat clever (It also works as a great ice breaker for someone like me who hates small talk. Instead of talking about the weather, we can talk about the painting on their wall)

But my follow-up isn't until July 19th. I don't know what I am going to be doing until then. My need for money is imminent. My schedule is completely empty until then. Like I literally have nothing to do for two and a half weeks.

edited 30th Jun '16 3:30:12 PM by Cailleach

Other than hang out on tvtropes, I like browsing the internet's collection of free lecture videos if I can't find something to do. There was a really good series on differential mathematics somewhere.

edited 30th Jun '16 6:02:19 PM by war877

My itinerary for today was to use my new art supplies, edit my novel, brush up my French, brush up my programming skills, practice piano, brush up music theory skills, learn some new math concepts on Khan Academy, cook with all the stuff that's wasting space in my freezer, and watch the new Voltron series. So I am pretty busy. But I really need to do something outside my house. Like I have a lot of casual hobbies, but I really want to do something worthwhile for a change. Also I need experience to put on my resume

So I've been working on something in response to that email I mentioned. Apparently they want something in narrative form (a short story, a poem, or something like like that) and not just a rant. Which makes it fun, but now I need to rework my tirade into something eloquent and structured

I'm going to start doing tae kwon do.

Hopefully, it will help me become faster and more efficient with daily tasks.

Unless those tasks are physical, I am not sure it will.

I'm very slow physically.

Plus, to move faster, you have to think faster. So when this sharpens up my mind, it'll be good.

edited 30th Jun '16 9:06:48 PM by DaftPunch

Martial arts are actually really good for that sort of thing. They require intense focus, discipline, and attention (In other words, executive function, which a lot of autistics have trouble with)

Good luck

Thank you very much!

I actually did MMA for a while when I was a lot younger. I'm hoping I do well!

So I just got back from working at a camp for autistics the other day and I figured, what the hey, I might post up my experience here, because I had a heck of a experience. I didn't really enjoy it; I can tell you all that much, though that might have been due to the nature of why I signed up for it in the first place. When I first heard about the camp, (which I can't give you the name of, protocol and all that,) I didn't really think much about the fine details; of what camping up there for a week would actually entail, or what it might take to really deal with these kids. (Mind you, I say 'kids', but most of them were anywhere from their teens to their mid twenties; it's really just because most of them acted like kids that we called them that.) All I knew then was that I wanted to work with autistic children; to give back to the community and make a difference, and this would give me the opportunity to do so. It was only when I actually got up there and was stuck there for the week that I realized just what I was getting myself into.

During our day of training, the full scope of just what camping with these kids would be like dawned on me, so much so that I nearly felt like I was going to throw up at times, and I wasn't sure if I had what it took to deal with these kids. When the kids actually came and I was assigned to my camper though, it didn't turn out to be nearly so bad as I thought, or at least at first. Over time, I got used to both the kids and looking after my camper, but just because I got used to it didn't mean I liked it. There were a LOT of things I didn't like at camp, and by the end of it all, I learned some hard truths about myself, some of which weren't easy to admit.

First off, I'm not an outdoors guy. Everyone else was smiling and swinging and swimming and playing and having fun, but I just walked around with my camper and let him do what he wanted to do, because I wasn't having any of it. That's one of the things I didn't really consider when going up there. Another was that I wasn't fond of the overly friendly and borderline saccharine atmosphere they had up there either, with the big one being 'Music Time.' The music was ridiculously catchy, but also very simple and childlike, which I guess was the point. It just wasn't for me. (Like most of camp, come to think of it.)

But the biggest problem was what working with these kids did to me, and of my general attitude toward it all. I went in there not with the intent of just having a good time here and helping these kids have a wonderful experience, but to instead gain my own experience to break into the Public School System and help the kids that I could to be more independent and eventually integrate into society. I wasn't there simply to enjoy myself or to put all of my own interests below the campers. On top of that, my own camper kept on asking me questions nearly every ten seconds or so, most of which were either self-explanatory or ones I couldn't answer, which wore on me after a while. Because of all of that, I started seeing them less as wonderful, lovely human beings, and more of a nuisance; something to be looked after and kept in check. I actually grew up with Special Ed assistants who treated us much the same way, and as I grew older and stepped out of my own little bubble, I began to hate them for it. Well, near the end of the week, I snapped at a camper for touching me even though he was just trying to reach over and grab something, and it was then I realized I was turning into the kind of person I hated. I needed to get out of there, though thankfully, camp would be over the next morning after that, so it wasn't really an issue.

I thought that because I had autism, I would have natural connection with these kids; a way of speaking and dealing with them would allow me to natural connect with and handle them. But it was anything but. I had become so high functioning that I was no longer able to truly relate to or understand these kids, most of which were only moderately or even low functioning, so in a sense, I understood them even less than a neurotypical person, because at least a neurotypical might not have such a set idea of just what autism is after only having had a very mild version of it for so long. I now only understood very high functioning autism from the get-go, and had to try and connect with these kids like everyone else which, depending on the kid, could be harder than it sounds. I actually relate better to neurotypicals these days, if only because I've learned to act like them as much as possible. It's a part of who I am now, and so wasn't just something I could drop to better understand these kids.

In the end, I did not enjoy camp, at all. I'm not even sure if I should try and work with autistic kids in a school setting anymore, though that's something I'll have to think long and hard about. But I guess the moral of the story is that just because you're autistic doesn't necessarily mean you can automatically connect with other autistics, in part because they might be so far away from you on the spectrum that they might as well have something else altogether. (Or maybe it's the other way around. I was originally going to do 4 weeks of this, but at this point, I think that first week is the only I'll be doing, because palling around with these kids up north is just not for me.

I've been a camp counselor for four year, and a CIT (counselor in training) for the three years before that, and I've been going to camp since I was five, so I have a lot of experience with that sort of stuff. It is a much harder job than people think it is. Even if you kids are all neurotypical, it is a hard job. Every year there are first year counselors who quit on us in the beginning because they think it's just going to be like a babysitting job where you just had to make sure the kids didn't get into trouble while you just did homework or watched TV. We had a day camp and an overnight camp, and a very diverse selection of campers. It was Girl Scouts, so it was girls only, but we had girls on the spectrum, girls with severe anxieties, girls with Down Syndrome, girls who had bad home lives (I've had campers who had just lost close relatives. I've also had campers who are in foster care.) And all these kids were together in the same unit, along with neurotypical kids from functional homes with varying levels of patience. Also it's really hot and everyone's covered in bug bites and getting dehydrated. I adored being a counselor, because I adore the outdoors and I adore working with kids, but it definitely wasn't easy. Being a mandated reporter, I was involved in a few child abuse cases. I've had to work with severe discipline issues, while still being responsible for the other 10+ kids in my unit. Being a counselor is something you have to enjoy doing. If I didn't like my job, I would have lost my mind. And if you hate your job and are just going through the motions, the kids are going to be able to tell. It's not one of those jobs you should be doing even though you hate it, because your campers can pick up on the fact that you don't want to be there, and that ruins their fun too

edited 2nd Jul '16 11:39:04 AM by Cailleach