General Autism Discussion

Yes, everyone will learn different things at different rates. It doesn't matter, autistic or allistic, this is true of everyone.

The problem for us is that society seems to have a difficult time comprehending people learning things both way faster and way slower than others, which is common for autistics. A year behind in one skill and a year ahead in another? No big deal. Five years behind in one skill but five years ahead in another? People have a hard time understanding how such a mixture of, as Hans Asperger described it, "intelligence and disability" could possibly coexist in the same person.

You know, reading those excepts from that no you don't editorial is getting my general activism riled up. This ignorant suppression of a person to the point their will is crushed and they end up in inescapable poverty, is what I imagine is happening in the case of most social issues I look at. It looks the same to me, and feels the same.

It makes me really hate the way things are done these days, just in general, because the system working adequately for everyone but one in a hundred is what I consider a laughable failure rate. It makes me perceive those in power and with influence as massive fuckups who have no clue what is going on or how to manage a system effectively or with minimal competence.

It makes me want to set things on fire.

Oh, how I agree with that. Imagine being unable to hide the fact that you're gay. Or that you're of a particular minority religion. Or being outed as an atheist in certain areas. And then there's race, which is something you can't hide.

Autistics are an "invisible minority" much of the time, except when they're very obviously autistic, in which case they are assumed to be capable of nothing. Our disability (and let's not kid ourselves, even if we go by Hans Asperger's description of "mixture of intelligence and disability that cannot be separated from each other", even that still includes disability) is difficult for people to see and understand.

So we're in the unique position of being discriminated against by people who don't see us as a minority, or even realize that we are what we are. In their minds, they're kicking out the person who looks funny sitting at their desk, the person who looks awkward, who doesn't make small talk all the time, etc. They don't see it as discrimination, because they don't see a group being discriminated against.

This reminded me of an incident of a customer who wear sunglasses inside the wholesale market that I am currently working. My coworkers looked at them as weirdos, but I chided them, in exact words, "what is so weird about that"? If we can accept people of different skin color, language, color and sexual orientation, why not we go beyond neurobuild (can't think a better term, if the actual term for different neural setup exist that would be great)?

Speaking of this, it was said that the aviation industry is incredibly discriminatory towards autistics. Is that true? I was looked at suspicion by airplane crew and almost hit with boarding denial just because I wear my winter gear inside the plane and found my hands are full of mosquito bite scars just when I want to wear my winter gloves, thinking that I am carrying some sort of communicable disease, nevermind that the airplane's air conditioning is comparable to that of my company's freezer room. Yep, it's that cold.

What about your hands? If they really were covered in mosquito bites, that sounds like a legit reason to keep someone off a plane.

Active bites are red, scars are brown. This should be obvious to anyone.

They could think you were hiding something within or under the winter gear. It's their job to be suspicious.

edited 19th Oct '16 8:43:02 AM by Greenmantle

Screams, slaps & love (1965 article)

An article written in 1965 about Ivar Lovaas and his brilliant techniques to make autistic children be non-autistic. If you read it, be prepared to see very upsetting stuff.

I hate to say it, but I can kinda sympathize with what they were trying to do. When nothing else seems to be working, it's easy to get desperate and try anything, anything to get through to these kids who are unable to talk, who ignore people and are off in their own little worlds, and try to get them to function by looking at and responding to people.

My time in the institute (not giving its name since it's regional) wasn't like that, of course. But even as a kid, when I got "higher functioning", I started to wonder what the hell was going on when I saw how some of the kids were treated and how they responded. For example, one teenage girl who was rather, well, "low functioning" (sorry, but I have to use at least some kind of term or description) was told, "Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down" again and again as a punishment for something. Even then, I figured that she probably had no idea what she was being punished for, and it was painful to witness.

I will quote the article later. But the article is from 1965, and it portrays Lovaas's techniques as positive. Which I can understand, since how would they know any better?

Nowadays, however, so many autistic children have grown up and are telling their stories online, that there's no longer an excuse. Although one might say that all the researchers had to do was do follow-up studies on Donald Triplett, the very first diagnosed autistic in the US, to see how he turned out later in life, to get some idea of what autism looks like in later age. Sadly, they thought of autism as merely "childhood psychosis" and other childhood-only things, so they didn't bother to look at what became of these children after their autism was allegedly gone. Instead, many lost the diagnosis as they grew up, and were either considered "cured" and ended up going through all kind of hell due to their disorder, or were later diagnosed with something else and institutionalized as adults for a different condition, like schizophrenia.

Any of that sound familiar? Those are classic severe autism symptoms.

edited 20th Oct '16 7:45:14 AM by BonsaiForest

Continuing the article.

Many things wrong with this. Looking someone in the eye makes it harder for autistics to pay attention to what's being said. We know this now. (Of course, most allistics do not)

Also, the idea of changing people's behavior to in turn change how they think? Lovaas attempted to try that whole "change behavior to change internal psychology" thing on gays as well. It didn't work; I read a very long article on a patient of his who was treated by him for feminine behavior as a child, who later grew up to be gay, and committed suicide as an adult. His family accepted him, but a lot of damage had already been done.

In other words, she got overwhelmed. Which is easy to have happen when your senses (not just sight and touch and hearing, etc., but possibly others that are not the main five) are overwhelmed. And no, she didn't lack anxiety. She withdrew, a common response to being overwhelmed. Normal autistic behavior, and its meaning is misinterpreted.

Instinctive cunning?! Sought to mollify him with hugs?? And punishing autistic behavior caused by things like the abnormal senses and being mentally exhausted doesn't do a damn thing except, at best, get the autistic to try their damndest to suppress the behavior.

But it's fake. At the place I went to as a kid, when I was in 5th grade, I was put in a room with a "lower functioning" teenager and our interactions were filmed. Any they felt incredibly fake.

The boy said questions that felt more taught than spontaneous and genuine - and yes, 10-year-old me picked up on that. "What's your favorite movie?" "Home Alone." "Me too!" He also randomly asked for high fives. I could tell how fake and "trained" it was, and I wasn't learning a thing about social interaction in the real world - and if that's not enough, I actually had a few friends back then (I was in elementary school, and said "friends" were more like "buddies" rather than close, but still). Keep in mind I had no idea I was autistic back then, and I failed to grasp what I had in common with these other kids.

Suffice to say I didn't apply that artificial behavior to the real world.

Not showing affection is not the same as not having it. Autistics can have difficulty expressing love, but that doesn't mean they don't feel it. As a child, my dad did worry openly if I was capable of feeling love. It was common back then for people to think autistics didn't feel it; that belief has been around for so long that there's even a children's novel about an autistic who learns to feel empathy. Which is ludicrous; she could already feel empathy!!

The problem is in knowing how to express emotions so that others can understand them, and in recognizing the emotions other have, and why.

As for poor Pamela, of course she "reverts to her bizarre autistic ways". Those ways are likely the result of her mind being overloaded and overwhelmed, her senses being overpowered, and her way of dealing with that. She's learned how to force herself to not engage in the behaviors in front of the researchers, but that's it. And I bet forcing herself to suppress her natural behavior is taking a huge mental toll on her. Hence the previous breakdown.

The next section of the article is called The nightmare of life with Billy.

Imitating adults is in fact natural allistic behavior even in babies. There was actually a study published I believe less than a year ago that looked babies and how they reacted to adults. How often they looked at faces and mimicked them. The babies were followed up on years later to see which ones later were diagnosed with autism.

The results? Baby boys tended to look at faces less than baby girls. Autistic babies looked at faces less than allistic babies. Or to put it another way, from looking at faces least to most, the order was: autistic baby boys, autistic baby girls, allistic baby boys, allistic baby girls.

Mimicking other people is a natural, common part of learning for allitsics. Granted, it can lead people to learn to engage in awful behavior just because others do it, but it's how allistics learn behavior, period. Autistics are taught it. This may be why so many autistics are resistant to peer pressure... however, others are very susceptible to peer pressure due to their desire to be accepted.

I was about to say "he is NOT cunning", but then I read this:

Whoa. There's something extra going on here. Autistics can have any personality, so that doesn't preclude having anger or desire to upset someone they're angry at, even if the autistic has a severe form.

edited 20th Oct '16 8:21:17 AM by BonsaiForest

While the treatment is genuinely horrible, I can't understand the idea of fake, artificial or anything that suggest unnaturality of things. Isn't that what they are more important that whether they are "real(ish)"?

By the way, not learning from other people's behavior has cause me, in my parents words, "walked the harsh paths that most would have avoided in the first place". I have eventually learned that everyone, allistics and autistics alike, have to eventually develop a method to learn from others so that what we have learned will be useful.

edited 20th Oct '16 8:24:00 AM by murazrai

The idea at the time was to make kids "fake it til you make it" - an expression we use in the US. That saying has two meanings - one is to pretend to be something you're not until you no longer have to pretend; the other meaning, used here, is to pretend to be something you're not until you actually become that something (or to put it another way, no longer have to pretend).

They had the belief that if the kids faked certain types of behavior, they would internalize that behavior, and the reasons for it, and later engage in those behaviors for real, for the normal reasons. Like, give a hug, no matter how unnatural it feels to you, so that later you may give hugs for real.

But a bigger belief that Lovaas himself had was that people could be made to be what they're not simply by mimicking behaviors. That what people do influences how they think. He tried this on gay kids - the result was ruined gay adults. He tried this on autistics - the result was traumatized adult autistics.

With his severe problems and how dangerous he was to others, the family was suggested to institutionalize him and tear up all pictures of him, remove all home movies, etc. That was the common suggestion for how to deal with autistic children back then. Again, severely autistic children - since children who are, well, like most of us here were when we were kids, would not have been considered autistic. His parents decided instead to take them to an institute run by Dr. Lovaas.

The article ends shortly after that.

edited 20th Oct '16 10:58:29 AM by BonsaiForest

Well my diagnosis is finally going somewhere, the phone appointment with my mum has gone ahead and she got to spend two hours talking about cute I was as a small child, most of the questions focused on my early development (up to around age 6). Was I a late talker (yes, but some of that may have been second child syndrome), how did I deal with change to routine (we barely had any routines and the few we did have never changed, the nativity set is still done in chronological order and not just setup with everyone in the stable), how did I manage change of circumstance (we always eased me into it naturally, anywhere new I was gonna go my brother had normally been going to for two years and I'd being introduced to slowly during that time).

Should get my own appointment in a few weeks for the sit down. When talking with my mum afterwards I noticed a few old traits that just have new forms now, when I was little I always liked to follow the instructions for my Lego and such rather than freebuild, now I like to play computer games as I buy them and not use mods.

edited 20th Oct '16 8:57:34 AM by Silasw

Is it normal for children to give hugs to their parents? I don't remember ever doing that.

Normal in what context? Normal for neuro-typical kids sure, physical affection is a pretty standard thing is many cultures. However it's pretty standard for kids on the spectrum to not engage physically due to sensory overload, the fact that I did engage physically is probably why it's only now that I'm getting diagonised.

I've never experienced sensory overload like that.

I don't mean just reciprocate a hug if someone else initiates. I mean, do allistics normally initiate hugs ever? What about autistics withouh sensory overload from hugs?

An Aspie female friend of mine does in fact initiate hugs. She says hugging and being touchy-feely is big where she's from (the US south), but I assume she also has no problem with hugs either.

This is more of a cultural thing. Asians tend to hug when there is something significant between two people, whether they are friendship, romance or family. Even teachers do that on their students, if not frequently seen and done.

If anyone is curious, this YouTube playlist shows a lot of the very sort of thing I witnessed all the time at the institute when I was a kid.

A bit of history.

I was diagnosed at the age of 3 because I was unable to talk, I pushed away and rejected all attempts at affection (I still feel uncomfortable with physical affection even today), I ignored people and was always daydreaming and doing my own thing. So I was sent to this particular place, as my parents had the money to afford it.

I have like no memories of age 3, and my sole memory of age 4 (I think it was 4) was reading a book and asking what the word "is land" (island, as I didn't know how to pronounce it) meant. Since I could read at that age. (So could my non-autistic older brother, who has told me he realizes he has some very mild autistic traits. One of them being the whole "learning how to read on your own" thing.)

After I became "high functioning" rapidly, I was mainstreamed into kindergarten. I had some behavior problems in school, but they tended to be mild, until third grade. My mom always hated my second grade teacher, who she - a teacher herself - saw as being lazy and allowing me to languish. In third grade, the toll that took on me became more clear and I was getting in trouble a lot for various things that I don't remember. I ended up leaving third grade early and going back to the institute. I have very little memory of that time.

In fourth grade, I would occasionally have behavior problems big enough to cause the institute to make a deal with my parents - if I got in enough trouble for certain things at school, I'd go to the institute the very next day, for the whole day. And I did. Only a few times in fourth grade. But a lot of times in fifth grade, when my behavior got worse. Certain types of stimming were punished. And inappropriate laughter - which I couldn't control - got punished. I was getting in trouble for what was essentially a Tourettes-esque symptom, and I didn't even realize it. I didn't even think to tell anyone I couldn't control (or, at best, could barely suppress) these random outbursts of laughter, and instead wondered why I had this problem and no-one else seemed to.

It was that time that I do have memories of the institute. I took a lot of intelligence tests, did worksheets, and was involved with strange things like, say, being told to ride my bike for a few minutes. I did, and I held my head down due to being self-conscious and not wanting to be seen by anyone. Once inside, I was asked why I did that, and I didn't have any good answer to give. However, I felt spied on, like I had no privacy. I didn't like that feeling.

I do distinctly remember seeing the other kids there, going through exercises like the ones seen in the video playlist I linked to in this post. And I remember wondering what on earth was with those kids. I could not remember being like them at all. I did not see the relationship between me and them. But I do remember thinking they were strange, and also thinking some of their treatment wasn't right.

One time I went to a restaurant along with a few of these other kids. One of them, a boy from India (his parents went to the US to get help for their kid - wow, being told that sure raised my self-esteem!), vomited. He said, "I'm sick," and he was told that he wasn't sick. He insisted he was sick, and was told again that he wasn't. No effort was made to even explain to him that throwing up doesn't automatically make one sick; instead, they appeared to merely dismiss his understandable concern out of hand, as if it were unimportant. That made me angry, but I was afraid to question authority figures, even when I could tell they were clearly wrong.

Another time, we were taken to Sesame Place. I was 10. It was clearly a place for little kids, and I was no little kid. During some kind of parade, they were looking for kids to volunteer, and one of the teachers (or whatever you'd call them) from the institute pointed me out. I was "volunteered" to march in this embarrassing, little kid parade at Sesame Place, along with other little kids, and people in muppet costumes. I felt judged and out of place, a big kid in a little kid parade. But hey, I'm autistic, despite having had my IQ tested in the above-average range, so therefore that means I have the mind of a small child, right?

I do remember food as a reward. Once (I think this was during the summer after third grade) I was told to ask a certain person for M&Ms (obviously a test of my social learning). So I went to her and said, "Will you give me M&Ms?" She responded, "My name's not Will. Try again." I thought at that moment, of course your name isn't Will. I never implied it was. Why would you say something like that? But she was an authority figure, so despite her logic being unsound, I said what I was clearly supposed to say, "Can I have M&Ms?"

I may have more stories later, but anyway, if you watch the video I link to and/or others in the same playlist, you'll see examples of what I saw and heard all the time there. I remember thinking the kids were being abused, going by the crying and sometimes screaming I heard from them. Looking back, I don't think they were abused at all; some forms of autism have that kind of screaming and crying. Mine didn't. I don't know if I was like that when I was 3 or 4. But being older and hearing that, I thought of these kids as being abused, and myself as too afraid of the adults in charge to say anything about it, including to my own parents. These were the rules and I had no choice, right?

edited 24th Oct '16 6:15:32 AM by BonsaiForest

It's kind of hard to say, but your examples are clearly a form of social conditioning and even allistics do get hit with it. I am no exception.

edited 23rd Oct '16 12:32:17 AM by murazrai

Well, I have fucking jury duty next month. My excuse ("I was diagnosed with autism at age 3") was rejected. Nice.

I am so sorry

I really hope that that's not an excuse that the court accepts, even if you wanted to get out. A lot of times people judge guilt not by hard evidence, but the witness's behavior. When the defendant themself is autistic that's problematic as we tend to express our feelings in non-standard ways. Purging the jury of autistic people doesn't help with that bias.

You've got a great point.