General Autism Discussion

The problem with self-diagnosis is that you could get mistake what you have for the wrong thing. There are a number of conditions that can share the same general symptomatology as high-functioning ASD. Some even physical.

This is why a professional diagnosis is preferable to self-diagnosis. (And, even then, you do need to be aware that even the pros can get it wrong when trying to narrow things down: they're human, too.)

How is my programming? I never progressed beyond QBASIC (and the most advanced stuff I did was games with ASCII characters), but as a result, I understand how programming languages work. But I don't actually know any modern programming languages.

I don't know about notable skills. I don't think I have any. I'm just better with computers than the average person and I can understand them. Maybe that's a skill, but it's not the same as being a programmer.

Here's an article about a school created in Oklahoma (a socially conservative part of the US) originally to be gay-friendly, but whose goal is ultimately to be a safe educational haven for kids who are often bullying victims elsewhere.

These parts of the article stuck out to me the most because it shows how working to solve one problem can also help treat other problems. The school was created to be a safe haven for bullied students, and that helps not just gays, but autistics and others as well.

But another aspect that I think is important is the focus on individualized education tailored to students' specific interests, and working to get them experience and jobs. Autistics in particular have trouble with that, and this could help them get out into the real world and actually find employment.

I really hope this innovative school becomes successful.

If you were referring to that Specialisterne program, I think they do offer training you can go through before they place you in a job, so possibly you might not need to know any programming languages to get involved with them. But yeah, it does seem like their lack of presence in the US is an issue right now.

See now that makes me think of my boarding school, we learned how to learn, we learned how to be functioning members of society, we learned how to take responsibility for our actions.

I think a lot of that stuff helped me without me realising it, as we were made to take responsibility for our actions by each other bullying wasn't really a thing, likewise we all learned to be part of society, so I ended up learning a lot of social rules just by being one of many people learning how to be a functioning member of society.

Yeah, specialized help can help a lot.

My last two years of high school was in the International Baccalaureate and in hindsight, that school system is god-awful for anyone with special needs. Because of the enormous bureaucracy the system uses everyone is treated exactly the same way, regardless of how little sense that makes. This is a system that works by advertising their failure rate. It's consistently been 20% for years. They've been making the system harder and harder and more and more arbitrary to compensate for the modern ease of research. I have to wonder how many of those failures just needed special help the IB was completely unequipped to give.

So yeah, if you have a kid on the spectrum, avoid the International Baccalaureate at all costs.

But I don't actually know any modern programming languages.

If you want to get into programming, I'd recommend learning Python. Python is beginner friendly and easy to learn, and it's useful for everyday usage and in the workplace.

You'll probably also want to learn C++ and Java eventually if you're looking for a programming job, but those are more old fashioned and harder to learn, so you should definitely become comfortable with Python first.

edited 30th Jul '14 8:24:30 PM by storyyeller

I am pretty sure there is a programming thread elsewhere that can probably answer the programming related questions better.

The New York Times has a super long article called The Kids Who Beat Autism. I recommend reading it if you have the time and you're interested. It's about people who were diagnosed autistic - and very obviously so, even low-functioning - as kids, but who later got to the point where they no longer even qualified as having high-functioning autism. They "beat" autism.

Part of the story involves a boy named Mark, who was severely autistic, running into and banging into walls, and was very obviously low-functioning, worse than I ever was when I was little.

"Despite some lingering social deficits". But he "no longer met the criteria for autism". I'd really like to know more about him. Does he really not have it anymore? Or is he way better at hiding it? I wonder if he relates better to Aspies than to NTs. I wonder if he's suppressing stims, or found socially appropriate ones. I wonder if his eye contact truly is 100% normal, or if he has to consciously think about it. It seems though as if the enormous amount of training he got "forced" him to act "normal". Did it actually make him NT?

Well now, that provides some hints. He still is ever so slightly autistic. It does make me wonder though to what degree they can "make" an autistic a neurotypical. It kinda of scares me too. Autism has both pros and cons, and honestly, seeing the social world of people who bullshit their way through job interviews, manipulate people to get ahead, bully each other over subtle social differences, and more, I really don't think having autistics exist as a type of different way of thinking is a bad thing, provided of course it's high-functioning.

The article suggests at one point that there's more than one "type" of autism; similar symptoms triggered by different things, and they have no way of knowing who will become high-functioning or low-functioning, and who will be "no longer autistic".

Anyway, the article is massive and I'm only halfway through. I'll keep reading. You guys might find it interesting.

More food for thought from the article:

That bolded part makes me think of how Applied Behavioral Analysis (behaviorism) affects many autistics. I'm guessing the "no longer autistic" people are ones who geneuinely changed in the direction of neurotypicality. But it doesn't change the fact that for most autistics, punishing autistic behaviors and rewarding "normal" ones is essentially asking them to self-censor. Some behaviors they can get into and even find comfort with, like talking to people and staying on topic (though that varies depending on the individual). But ultimately, we don't necessarily know which behaviors are being genuinely rewired to be replaced with more socially appropriate ones and in turn changing the autistic's way of thinking, and which behaviors are merely being suppressed. It's something to think about.

Great quote right there with that last one. Forcing normalcy really is about forcing behavior that's unnatural to us. I agree that autistics do need to learn certain things, but people emphasizing shit like eye contact while not giving a damn that doing so reduces mental activity elsewhere in the autistic brain just shows an example of the problems of society forcing us to act the way they want us to just to make us more comfortable for them to be around.

And immediately after I make this post, I then read this paragraph. A lot of these "no longer autistic" people aren't no longer autistic.

So there you go. He had to make a conscious effort to act non-autistic. A conscious effort. It took years for him to make this a built-in habit to the point where it became "normal" for him. Years. It was essentially suppression.

edited 31st Jul '14 12:23:25 PM by BonsaiForest

And now from the comments section of the article.

She ended up exiting her autism diagnosis, and yet if you look at how she's described, she obviously still has autism.

Anyway, all these stories, and the "residual symptoms" indicate to me that none of these people actually lost autism. But it does make me wonder what causes the change. Why did I go from a non-verbal low-functioning 3-year-old who would spin and ignore people and push them away, to what I am now? Are we really changing into "normal" to some degree? What is causing the change? Or are we becoming higher-functioning in many cases?

It scares me. I like Aspies more than NTs. But what is an "Aspie" anyway, and what makes us what we are?

And this:

Another person essentially saying what I'd been saying.

edited 31st Jul '14 12:33:20 PM by BonsaiForest

Bonsai, I know you are feeling happy and all that, but easy down, you just quadruple posted'.

I realize that. However, I figured it was best to split it up rather than have one enormous post longer than most mainstream news articles (though to be fair, mainstream news articles are pathetically short).

Mmmm, I do the flappy hands thing very often when I am angry or frustrated, or just bored.

Update, I'm getting better at communicating with girls, so that's good! Nice to be able to speak with my own gender.

I only flappy hands sometimes when by myself and excited.

Btw, have you (and this is directed at everyone here) had the problem with eye contact where looking someone in the eye makes it harder to concentrate on what they're saying?

In that article, there was a great quote, "I can either look like I'm paying attention, or I can actually pay attention." The problem is that most people would rather you look like you're paying attention. It's as if they just don't get it no matter how much you try to explain it to them, or maybe they just don't care and they demand you follow social cues that mean everything to them and nothing to us, simply because it makes them feel more comfortable, regardless how artificial it is.

I tend to stare at people's mouths, but I think that's more related to my hearing loss, since I easily miss parts of a sentence, so I lipread to fill in the gaps.

I do have to say, having had a hearing loss since I was born does make it kind of difficult to determine what are aspergers symptoms or what are symptoms of hearing loss.

I do the flappy hands thing occasionally, but never in public. I may have actually picked it up from a friend of mine who's further down on the scale than I am.

edited 1st Aug '14 9:04:03 AM by Zendervai

I suspect this is part of why I didn't last too long at my previous temp job. They threw a ton of new information at me right off the bat, and one of the things they said about me was that I wasn't taking any written notes and asked too many repetitive questions (even though the person who was training me had said the questions I was asking were different each time and a sign that I was in fact paying attention). It's true that I wasn't taking notes, but I actually feel that doing that is more of a distraction than anything else. I feel I learn best when I am allowed to just listen and absorb the information. In fact, that quote up there is almost word for word what I said to my mom when I was talking to her about that job.

On the repetitive movements, I do catch myself shaking my knee up and down when I'm sitting sometimes.

edited 1st Aug '14 9:09:05 AM by CombatC122

Yeah, tons of people do that. (the leg thing) It can be really irritating sometimes.

I don't really take notes or ask questions. When people ask why, I just say that I pay attention. I do ask questions though when I need clarification, I just usually don't.

It was kind of funny when I went on a study trip to Israel, I was basically the only person who knew what was going on and where we were supposed to go and when. There was one guy I basically dragged around who was essentially incapable of paying attention, who still managed to forget his passport every single day. When the trip repeatedly went back and forth into Palestine. He got past only because I kept ragging him on it. I got an A+. He got a C-.

edited 1st Aug '14 9:15:07 AM by Zendervai

With the attention thing, I can't pay attention to somebody talking. At. All. I will try to look them in the eyes, but then I can't hear what they're saying. And every time I don't look, I'm just in a zone where I can't hear anything.

If the world had more typing, more non-direct communication, it could help us.

Hey, a thought experiment. What do you think the world would be like if autistics were the majority, and we were the "normal"? Or if it was half-and-half? What things would be different? Like how would job interviews work, what activities would be popular, what things would be built differently, etc.

Ne’eman says society’s effort to squelch autism parallels its historical effort to suppress homosexuality — and is equally detrimental. He points out that in the 1960s and ‘70s, Lovaas’s team used A.B.A. on boys with “deviant sex-role behaviors, ” including a 4-year-old boy whom Lovaas called Kraig, with a “swishy” gait and an aversion to “masculine activities.” Lovaas rewarded “masculine” behavior and punished “feminine” behavior. He considered the treatment a success when the boy looked “indistinguishable” from his peers. Years later, Kraig came out as gay, and at 38 he committed suicide; his family blamed the treatment.

As a gay aspie, it's kind of lucky to live when and where I do. It could have been a lot worse.

Except for my city's current supermajority unemployment. That sucks.

Autistics also tend not to follow too closely to gender norms. Instead, they tend to be their natural selves, which isn't super-macho or ultra-feminine, and in some cases is closer to the center. A lot of idiots can't handle that.

I saw a thread on WrongPlanet where the Aspies there told their dislike of gender roles, and how limited they felt by them. Plenty of guys complaining about "macho" culture, plenty of women complaining about how they were forced to be "feminine" when they were kids, etc. One woman said that she's considered a tomboy, but if she were male and had the exact same personality, she'd be considered a sissy. A married Aspie woman says that people joke that she's the husband and the guy (also an Aspie) is the wife.

It's not as though autistics don't receive societal pressure to act like their gender (or even race, as I've noticed that most black Aspies I encountered don't "act black", so to speak). I think NTs are more heavily influenced by social pressure than we are, to the point where they actually internalize it to a greater degree, and are more willing to suppress anything they do that doesn't match their gender role. But us, not so much, even if everyone around us makes it abundantly clear what they expect from us.

Btw, regarding that case that had been quoted, there is an in-depth article about it here. I'm reading it now. It's unrelated to autism specifically, so I won't be talking about it here unless I can find some way to relate it to this topic.

edited 5th Aug '14 12:41:14 PM by BonsaiForest

The New York Times now has a follow-up article to "The Kids Who Beat Autism". It's in response to questions that people are asking. Questions about Kids Who Beat Autism

Some people understandably questioned if it's true that the people in the article are "no longer autistic", or instead if they are simply "passing" for neurotypical. A number of people wrote in to say that they can "pass" as neurotypical until someone gets to know them intimately, whereupon the autistic characteristics become clear.

The article said that scientists believe that if behavior changes, the brain changes (which is in line with other things I've read, such as studies showing that bully victims have changes to their brain structure, for instance). But they don't know if the brain of these "no longer autistic" people has changed to be "normal", or if instead it has found new wiring to compensate for challengs of being autistic in a society designed by NTs.

This I think provides a possible clue. It's good to see that some of the aspects of autism, the clearly positive ones, are being kept. That's one thing I was worried about.

And still am. A comment from one person said that his interests became less intent at the same time he started developing better social skills. Like, both happened at the same time. It makes me wonder.

Autism experts say testing fails to detect condition in girls. Article is from Australia.

Low-functioning autism is often said to be 4 times as common in boys, but high-functioning is said to be even more rare in girls. But there are a lot of girls and women on the spectrum just starting to get diagnosed, and speculation that the rate of high-functioning autism/Aspergers is far more common in girls than previously believed.

"Passing" is often said to be easier for females. Still, they are often mimicking what they see, rather than understanding the underlying thoughts of NTs.

In high school, I had a classmate who I am convinced is on the spectrum and was never diagnosed. She was always kind of quiet, and looking back, she seems kind of detached or not as "connected" as the other girls I'd seen her sit with at lunch. She also had a learning disability of some sort: when she wanted to join the army, she asked me to come visit and help her with the test to get in. The test asked the most basic questions - I'm talking elementary school stuff - and she couldn't do it. She didn't understand. I felt bad for her.

One day while going for a walk, I happened to see her walking past me holding a large bag. She said hi and kept walking. I went up to her and started talking, walking with her. She had apparently been kicked out of her house by her boyfriend/husband or something (sorry, don't know the details), and was walking, for hours, to somewhere else to stay (she had a place). Anyway, we talked until I had to go back home.

Her aloofness, her mixture of "masculinity" and "femininity" (she's also a big gamer, in addition to wanting to join the army and having a job that involves heavy lifting), her overall presentation - it's subtle, but I'm convinced that she has Aspergers and went undiagnosed, and it's really affecting her.

I wonder how many more females there are out there like her. Or guys who were never diagnosed for that matter; I wonder what the ratio is.