General Autism Discussion

Couple with Asperger's syndrome finds love online

Which I'm sure never happens. But still, a cute little human interest story. Btw, on a side note, they're a mixed race couple. White man, black woman.

I'm curious about that 73%.

edited 24th Feb '17 1:11:19 PM by BonsaiForest

I'm not sure it would be easier to talk to a random person who, like me, has asperger. Probably easier to talk with someone who understands how it works and what effects it has on me, and whom I already know for a while(hard time adapting to change, the other understanding and anticipating my continues(How do I spell that) rambling about something I like)

I have been in a single relationship. Looking back I don't think I was ready, nor was she. I liked the bit in the video where that lady says you need to look at two things: chronological age, and development in this field. I think that's a great point, as with some subjects(astronomy) I could do high school level stuff when I was 10. However on a relationship level I now consciously play with 8 year olds after church(am 16), because I understand them better then I understand the teenagers talking about all kinds of stuff like the relationships of people in their schools and other stuff.

So... This has been getting on my nerve a lot recently: People saying 'anti-vaxxer' when referring to people who refuse to vaccinate their kids.

No!

The term 'vaxxer' refers to a specific subset of people who refuse to vaccinate their children. The term originates from autism advocacy and refers to these people's belief about the main cause of autism, not their stance on vaccination. Hence 'vaxxer', because they believe autism is caused by vaccines.

People can have reasons other than being a vaxxer to be opposed to vaccination (not, you know, good reasons, but other reasons nonetheless). And people can be vaxxers (and therefore wrong) and still vaccinate their kids just because they think diseases are worse than autism, like the example Zendervai mentioned earlier in the topic.

A Letter to Autism Parents, from an Autism Parent

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I haven't seen this side of autism.

I do have thoughts on that as an adult with autism myself, but they're fairly blunt and under-nuanced, because I haven't really worked through them fully. Nevertheless I'll share them and perhaps someone will challenge them and help me polish off the rough edges.

Short version:
Jesus wept, lady, next time you want to complain about parents of autistic kids using handicapped spots even though they're really not supposed to, just write a damn article to complain about that specifically, rather than getting so general to hide that this is a petty single issue complaint that you hand people you're actively opposed to a new, stronger argument.

Long version:
First off: parents of kids with autism, which applies to both this mother and the people she's complaining about, need to take some damn time and realize that autism is primarily something that has, does and will affect their kid, not something that's happening to them personally. Being the parent of a kid with autism doesn't give you any extraordinary knowledge on anything other than what it's like to be the parent of, specifically, your kids, same as any other parent. And quite possibly, if you're paying attention, a few glimpses of what your kid has to deal with because of their specific experience with autism. Acting like anything your own kid needs is obviously fair, while any thing anything another kid might need automatically becomes 'special treatment' if your kid doesn't need it isn't unique to parents of kids who don't have autism and it's never f-ing helpful.

What bothers me about that article is that Jasmine Cardinal is not complaining about special treatment, but specifically about how parents of kids with autism aren't legally allowed, and therefore shouldn't try, to use handicapped parking spots. After mentioning early in the article that she herself tried to get permission to park in handicapped spots and was denied, that really just comes off as personal grudge along the lines of 'if I'm not allowed to, then neither should they!' Especially since that's literally the only example of the special treatment that parents of kids with autism aren't allowed to ask for according to her. She doesn't define what the alternative fair treatment that parents of kids with autism should be asking for instead entails at all.

And that solidly puts her just as much in the 'not helping^tm ' category as the people she's complaining about when it comes to creating confusion among the general public. Because this just hands more ammunition to the exact kind of care-nothings she mentions disliking so much in this and several of her other Huffpost opinion pieces.
Next time when they want to ignore a request for help for the extraordinary needs of autistic kids and, through that, their parents, they won't say 'Everything has way too many labels these days' or 'My kids acts like that sometimes too and they don't have autism'...
They'll say 'Autism Mom on Huffpost said being a parent of a kid with autism doesn't entitle you to special treatment! You should ask for fair treatment instead (and since no examples were given, I will consider nothing that would possibly be actually helpful to be fair).' and 'That 30 year old widow with three kids with autism has it way harder than you with your still-living spouse and single autistic kid. So if she isn't asking for special treatment, neither should you!'

edited 16th Mar '17 9:57:28 PM by Robrecht

NVM

edited 16th Mar '17 11:24:59 PM by M84

I should probably get myself over this thread. I'm Cail, for those who don't know me, and I frequent the autie & aspie troper coven but never here for some reason. I am highly opinionated.

And on the whole asking for special treatment thing, that really comes back to bite autistic people in the ass when we're trying to apply for jobs and no one wants to hire us because of the assumption that we'll be unproductive and impossible to deal with, because that's how some parents like to paint us

edited 17th Mar '17 11:38:38 AM by Cailleach

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, I think. Either admit that you may have difficulties related to your condition, and risk not getting hired, or don't, and risk getting fired later for reasons related to autism itself. Many autistics who get jobs don't keep them. Reasons for being fired range from petty "I don't like this weirdo" crap to genuine difficulty with some aspect of the job. Things like high skill in one area but low in another can be gotten around by a flexible boss, but many (I'd imagine probably most) bosses are not flexible.

A lot of that is connected to US labour laws, which make it very easy to fire a person.

What you can do and is what I could have done with my previous job is make sure you write your disability down on your contract/hiring form, even if you don't explain the disability to them they've now been notified of your disability and can get in legal trouble if they discriminate, it's their job to learn about your disability once you've notified them of it.

It's my understanding that I earned major brownie points for not causing havoc when I quit my previous job, which as I quit due to them suddenly changing my role and adding a customer interaction aspect to a non-customer interaction job (barback) I could have make things pretty difficult, forcing the Asperger barback to suddenly deal with customers is a good way to face a constructive dismissal case for disability discrimination.

I chose not to make things difficult for my own reasons and I'm pretty sure that got me a good recommendation when I applied for my current barback position.

edited 17th Mar '17 3:00:49 PM by Silasw

I'm posting this here also, as it didn't get a response on the coven.

I would like to bring back up the question of friends.

How many of you think of them. If you have ones that are close, or if the ones you have are all "buddies" to hang out and do things with. If you have ones you can talk to about personal things or not.

It's been said that autistics prefer quality over quantity - and I wouldn't be surprised if life experience is the reason why. Quality is so hard to find.

I'm also in a position now where I'm very afraid I may lose my closest (and almost - but not quite - only) friend. Not right away, but over time. I mentioned the possibility of driving over to visit her at her new graduate school. She said she's afraid that if I did visit her, it would become "a last visit". Her visiting me at my house for my birthday did not work out great, though there are multiple reasons for that. We're both afraid something may go socially quite wrong if I visit her at school and that whatever it is could possibly make things much worse.

We've been through a lot - I helped her with some situations like a social situation that went horrible for her where normal autistic behaviors were mistaken for flirting with her platonic male friend, and we talked about a lot of things. But I'm terrified of drifting apart. Every other person I've talked with online, added to Skype, or such, ended up being at best a "buddy", and usually not even that. I want more friends like her, and I've gone nearly my whole life with no-one like that. Buddies back in elementary school plus a few online later on was the most I ever had before that.

I can get along with most people, I suspect that I have a pretty large number of acquaintances who enjoy my company and spending time with me, but close friends, I've a few.

Here's the thing, that constant fear of loosing them, even if it makes sense based on loosing past friends, it isn't healthy. I've twice before had people who I consider my closest friend basically just up and walk out of my life without an explanation, that should (and kinda does) make me very afraid of loosing another close friend that way. However I don't let that fear control me, because if I'm constantly panicking about the idea of loosing a friendship I'm going to destroy it myself, so I manage my fear and have learnt to trust my friends, even if I don't speak to them for months they're still my friends, they will still be there for me if I'm in trouble and will still tell me if they're in trouble (well if they're in super serious trouble and I need to call an ambulance/get them back into town he country, anything short of that I may well hear nothing).

Friendship is more or less a fleeting thing to me on top I found dealing with humans a tedious chore. Perhaps that's why I no longer care if my friendship would fade later. (I don't even considered dating, let alone getting myself a wife at that!)

My only offline friends are arcade players, but we meet only once per month at most because I can't afford weekly gaming spending like they do. I don't consider my colleagues friends, but we are still in friendly terms.

The weird part of all this is that I feel closer to my online friends a lot more than offline friends. Then again, when people who share interests with you can be found only in the internet (and sometimes not even then!), this is the awful truth that you have to swallow in whole.

edited 18th Mar '17 2:43:38 AM by murazrai

Autistic (or "autistic" in name only, in some cases) characters keep appearing in more TV shows and movies.

Recently, we got Julia, the autistic muppet in Sesame Street, who is now an official in-show character and not a side character who appeared only in books and a website and the like, which she originally started out as.

And now, in articles that are blocked at work and which I am unable to read (due to being from entertainment sites), we get an indication that the blue Power Ranger, Billy is now also "autistic". Here's one of the articles that isn't blocked at work, and a relevant quote:

I hope they don't screw that up. I suspect Sesame Street will do a much better job, considering they did a lot of research.

And now it's time for comments!

Autism awareness as we know it today is a very recent thing. People barely knew shit about it even just a decade ago. I don't think there's been "decades" of attempts to make the public aware of autism at all.

Maybe as a supplement to other portrayals, and even then, only after they actually know what they're seeing.

So seeing which parents look at your kid like a freak indicates which kids will likely do the same. I can totally see that.

I'm in my thirties and I can confirm that in the Netherlands at least, there's indeed been autism awareness campaigning for decades.

Not much more than two, but still...

90% (not an actual number, but not an inaccurate one either) of all autism awareness programmes focus on kids though, which is singularly unhelpful when, you know, most people with autism spend the majority of their lives being adults with autism rather than kids with autism.

Yeah the idea that adults have autism is still relatively new here in the UK, it's certainly not something businesses are going to be prepared for.

I think one way to help would be to do more teaching about how people on the spectrum can fit into normal jobs. We've all heard a million tales about incredibly smart autistics who either have brilliant jobs in STEM or who would have said jobs if only they could manage the politics btus re instead stuck in a dead end job. The impression one gets from that is that autistics either have super technical jobs in high flying careers, or are working dead end jobs that are beneath them.

I work in a bar, I'm part of the service industry and that's something most people would assume that an autistic couldn't do, but that's not true. Back of house is a role even in the service industry and I'm very good at it, I keep the place organised, I know where everything is, I instantly notice if things are not in the most efficient place for them to be, I have system for ensuring that things run efficiently, I instantly jump to it if somebody comes into the back and needs something.

My job isn't a dead end, sure it's no career but it's a solid job that pays the bills and I'm good at it, I'm bloody good at it, possibly one of the best in the industry. That's because I know how my autism can be used to make me good at a job that's not STEM but in fact service, because I've got enough confidence and social skills to push the fact that I'm can improve things and make them better and because my bosses are able to recognise that I'm actually doing a lot of good by doing my job the way I do it.

My manager got asked by a visiting bartender why "the barback is in charge", he basically shrugged and went "it's easier that way", dam right to is, I'm good at what I do and my bosses know it.

TL:DR, we need to stop pushing every autistic person towards STEM, recognise what they can do in traditional jobs and train both them and the people in thosue industries on how people on the spectrum can be an asset.

I came across this article which claims that people in the spectrum tends to muster large amounts of courage on things that people take for granted. I can certainly relate to that.

For an instance, during my trip to Japan in which I attend Music Media-mix Market, going beyond buying music discs from artists takes a lot of courage because I am well aware that they are Japanese (duh) with near 100% local fanbases and they are unlikely know, let alone care about their foreign fanbases. I still do it because I want to them to know that they have foreign fans who will support them from afar. After that trip, I became more willing to speak my mind, perhaps because they show approval towards me as a foreign fan of theirs which gave me the courage.

Related to that, on the flip side, is it a common occurrence that people in the spectrum has courage on things that normal people normally don't have? Or perhaps this isn't true?

NPR: The Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of A Special Education Student

I can say that applies to me, as well as the inverse. I'm really nervous engaging in small talk, but I can get up and give a presentation in a room filled with experts without breaking a sweat. I'm also immune to stage fright. I love performing on stage, so I always gladly volunteer to sing impromptu solos and stall crowds at concerts while most others I know couldn't imagine having the confidence to do that.

I knew I wasn't the only one that has that. I used to do (semi-)public speaking (I've temporarily forgotten the concise term, but basically TED talks, except only on one subject and not for TED) for an autism awareness and advocacy group and most of the other speakers, being 'parents of' and healthcare professionals, were amazed at the ease with which I went onto the stage to engage with (because my talk was a sort of audience participation thing) the people in the room and fielded questions.

I've never felt comfortable with public speaking at all.

I totally get that. I'm in a disability advocacy club at my school (as well as a ton of other clubs) and I love making speeches about it, and I also adore doing recruitment events. I'm actually in charge of the club's HR. Yesterday was the club fair for newly accepted students and I ran the booth recruiting that club, and I loved every minute of it. "Hi, have you heard about our club?" "Well, some of the things we do in the community are..." I was totally in my zone.

When it comes to things like that, I'm so much more enthusiastic and engaging than stereotypes say an Aspie can be

I'm good at public speaking (and simply talking in general) in part because it was always part of my life. When I was little my mum made us that I always spoke with someone whenever we went out shopping (I had to get my own gingerbreadman from the supermarket bakery counter) so that I always got some social interaction, on top of that my school meant that I was speaking infront of groups of 40-50 people twice a week for around six years, so I got used to talking in front of groups.

I suspect my social assertiveness is very rare amongst people on the spectrum, I give my colleagues orders and yell at them (in a friendly way) often.

In personal news, still waiting on my report from meeting with the specialist, have rung the hospital up twice asking what's happening with it.

The thing about public speaking is you dont really have to be able to read nuanced interpersonal signals to become good at it. If you are at an event and are the designated speaker, almost everyone will politely listen, unless you say something really controversial.

I've actually been called by social workers and teachers, "the most expressive autistic person they've ever met." I love any talking that has a purpose. I go to research conferences and other academic events all the time and mingle like crazy. Because we're talking about things with purpose, the research presented, our academic experiences, things we're applying to, etc. I stay in the middle of the room engaging person after person, and I end up with at least 5 new business cards by the time those things are over. I'm a social butterfly.

It's just small talk and gossip that kills me. When there's a group of people just chatting and gossiping, then I stay quiet because I just don't know how to handle those sorts of things. People who only see me in those situation will peg me as shy, but those in the former situation would peg me as extremely outgoing.