Your child can't be autistic because ...

[IDrinkaRum]

1.) She's so friendly! Yes, my daughter is friendly, but it's inappropriately friendly, and she can't read cues from people on whether or not they want her in their space at all.

2.) She can talk. Not all Autistic people are mute. There are all forms of communication that Autistic people can use. The most prevelant are PECS which help children communicate quite effectively. After a year of using these Child Rum literally woke up one morning and started talking exactly 1 week before her 4th birthday.

3.) She's nothing like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Again, not all Autistic child are the same. Dustin Hoffman's character was based on a real person who was an idiot savant. Yes, my daughter is smart (she's figured out door knob covers in less than 30 minutes, she's figured out the DVD, the TV, the VCR, etc.) However, she doesn't know all the stats of a certain baseball team since the beginning of that team's start. She's only 6 for goodness's sake!

I might update this from time to time, but so far, these are the ones I've come into contact the most.

[Greenday]

I was unaware most autistic are mute. I've never heard that before. Most autistic people I know have no speech problems at all. One did, but all of a sudden he just started talking like it was nothing and hasn't had a problem since his childhood.

[joe hx]

one of my nephews is Autistic, and his new school in Texas says he's not autistic because he's too smart!

from what little I know about autism, it's the epitome of the really smart person with no social skills and common sense. extreme intelligence may not only accompany autism, it may be a symptom of it (or vise versa)!

[violetyoshi]

People have such a difficult time coming to terms with the reality that there is an Autism Spectrum. People can have different abilities with the same diagnoses. A person with Autism can speak, but may have problems with other issues. I don't see why that's so difficult for people to get, I guess it's because then they can't put people on the Autism Spectrum in a convenient box.

Most people believe people like myself with Asperger's Syndrome don't have a form of Autism, when it is on the Autistic spectrum. I have Hyperacusis, a sensitivity to loud sounds. I have seen sites offering cards with information you can show people like let's say at resturants, explaining you have Autism. However, I have been reluctant to use it, due to people's snap-judgments and they would most likely assume because I'm not classically Autistic, I must be making up my concerns with feeling pain when a small child yells, or a balloon pops.

There is much more awareness being spread about the Autism Spectrum, by people who are on it . The fact that people desire to assume Autism only involves people who behave classicly Autistics, are spurned on by Autism eugenics groups like Autism Speaks, which tries to gain support by showing people with Autism, as people who never grow up, throw tantrums constantly, ect. Autism Speaks does not speak for people with Autism, they speak for people who would like to see people on the Autism Spectrum eliminated from the human genome. Hitler also wanted to eliminate those that were deemed neurodiverse, from the human genome too.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Here's an addition:

4) You can't be autistic! You have a job!

ORLY? So, just cuz I have Aspergers, that automatically means I am unable to hold down a job and contribute to society. Bitch please.

[IDrinkaRum]

There is a woman named Temple Grandin. She was diagnosed with Autism about 10 years after Autism was first realized as a disability. She has a Doctorate in Animal Science and she was the one who came up with the way animals are led to the slaughter barn so they're not aware of what is happening until the last minute. I've ordered all of her books that pertain to her life with Autism and how she has lived with it. I'm seriously considering letting my parents & my in-laws read them so they can understand Child Rum more.

There is a man in England (I saw a little bit of a documentary about him on some channel a few years ago), who didn't speak, didn't really do much but sit there wherever he was placed. Then in his late 20s/early 30s, his parents woke up to him playing the piano and singing! That's the only time he's ever used his voice. He can hear a piece of music just once and imitate it perfectly.

My daughter does have some "classic" Autism "symptoms". She twirls around in circles, walks on tiptoe, etc. But she's still a little girl (albeit at a few inches over 4 feet tall, she's tall for her age).

There is a young boy in her Autism class at school who doesn't speak. He can grunt a few things, and screams a lot but doesn't communicate. The teachers are now teaching him sign language. Plus, I've been taking Child Rum to Speech Therapy so that seems to help her. And it's not like I don't talk to her at all, so she's learning from me too.

The "worst" things about her are: Once she sees something done once, she knows how to do it (making it difficult to keep her safe or trying to keep her from driving the car, though it's handy because she can put her own DVD in the DVD player and set it up herself. ). Also, she's a runner. She bolts out the door and I have to chase her and she thinks it's a game. (There's a mix up in the wiring of her brain that causes this - can't remember the name for it though. Let's say I'm chasing her and she narrowly misses getting hit by a car. I'll be crying and hysterical and she's laughing. Instead of feeling fear, she's feeling the opposite. Not sure if I described it correctly, but that's what happens).

[RecoveringKinkoid]

People have some serious preconceived notions about things like Autism, various learning disabilities, dyslexia, dyscalculia, etc. I wish I had a nickle for every time I've heard "You have a LEARNING disability? But....but...you seem so...smart!!!"

As if any sort of cognitive dysfunction automatically means you have a low IQ. Makes me absolutley cringe.

The ironic bit is that many of us are actually way "smarter" than the clueless people making these comments. Dyslexics, dyscalculics, acalculics, etc. have average to very high intelligences. I know a couple autistics and/or Asperger's folks and they all tend to be very, very intelligent.

Hell, Silicon Valley, I understand, is overrun with Asperger's.

Here's something fun...one of the markers of dyscalculia is that there is a huge disparity between numerical and/or sequencing skills and everything else. In other words, you will be in remedial math but Honors English. It's one of the ways they diagnose you for the LD. However, ignorance is so ramant among educators (and even testers) that they will frequently give a negative diagnosis based on the fact that "well, the student does so well in everything else, there's no way he's got an LD."

It's a bad problem.

[MystyGlyttyr]

I've only been "out" for a couple of years. I'm still in the "Holy fuck, everyone DOESN'T do that??" phase, I think. (I was absolutely bewildered when I found out that some people think being afraid of the vacuum cleaner noise is weird! That noise is fucking terrible, who in their right mind could possibly be able to put up with it?! ...oh right, people in their right mind. *snickers*)

I don't go around in life telling everyone I meet because in just random day-to-day operations, no one notices. I'm just that quiet punky teenage girl in the store listening to headphones and snapping my fingers. People who I'm going to be around more often, though, I have to pull aside and go "Look, just warning you..." And I can usually tell that at first they're skeptical but then as time goes on and they get more used to me, they notice. I feel like Strong Bad sometimes when people ask me "How can you type while you're rocking back and forth like that?" And fortunately no one who's come into the office has ever commented on the fact that I spend the entire time talking to their neck/chin region and occasionally glancing at their eyes like a deer in headlights before looking back down. (Yeah...no matter how much you practice, that shit does NOT get easier. Lying liars who lie.)

The one that really amazes people with me isn't that I hold down a job, interact mostly with people, or am actually not terribly clumsy and am in fact fairly athletic (though I do have a nasty habit of smashing through doorframes), it's how I dress. At work, standard shirts and pants, but outside, fishnets, wild hair extensions, sequined shirts, cut-up clothes, etc. Basically like, you know...a kinda punky teenage girl. That just baffles folks for some reason.

(Random aside, I'm not a teenager, I'm 27. But I'm pretty well stranded emotionally and psychologically at 16 and most people guess that I'm somewhere between there and 20, so I've pretty well decided why fight it? LOL)

Edit to add: It has come into play recently at work though. There's a new article/weekly feature I've taken on. Now, my other things, obits, church news, etc., have very specific rules for how they work. This goes in, this doesn't, end of conversation. The new feature has incredibly loose rules and what might fly for this entry won't fly for THAT entry, and there's no real reason why other than it just doesn't. I couldn't get the hang of it at ALL, mangled it horribly for the first few weeks, and I absolutely despised doing this feature because didn't make any SENSE. I finally cornered the editor and demanded concrete rules. He didn't really understand though why I couldn't just do it the way it was always done until I said "I can't grasp that abstraction, I NEED it to be laid out for me. I cannot figure out why this bar is deserving of this mention and that bar is not. It's not logical for it to be that way. If you have to make up a reason why, do it and write it down for me!" Since then, so much smoother. What used to take me a full morning of struggling and near-tears now takes about an hour, tops.

I gave him a cheat and told him to just pretend he had a Vulcan working for him...logic rules everything. We haven't had that problem again, heh.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Heh, I still dress in a weird way; cept mine is a mix of gothic and mosher clothes, rather than punk.

I don't tell anyone unless they have to know; I don't see it as important. I tell a lot of people online tho, so they know I'm not just some horrible bitch person.

[Dreamstalker]

So, just cuz I have Aspergers, that automatically means I am unable to hold down a job and contribute to society. Bitch please.

That seems to be what some camps think. The group that runs the website "autismspeaks.org" (they produce PSAs which, depending on the specific one you're watching, put the odds at 1/150, 1/166, or 1/140...which is it?) takes a "telethon" pity approach to autism; anyone on the spectrum can't possibly contribute anything useful.

[joe hx]

I'm confused. Is autismspeaks.org good or bad?

[tropicsgoddess]

I was unaware most autistic are mute. I've never heard that before. Most autistic people I know have no speech problems at all. One did, but all of a sudden he just started talking like it was nothing and hasn't had a problem since his childhood.

The really severe ones are the ones that barely talk or don't at all. Then you do have the high functioning ones or the ones with Asperger's.

[IDrinkaRum]

My daughter's first developmental pediatrician said that she was a high-functioning autistic person with a high intelligence.

As I said before, she can watch you do something once and she knows how to do it.

I love my daughter to pieces, don't get me wrong. But sometimes ... I just wish ... I don't know that she was neurotypically "normal" just for an hour.

She does obssess. If I tell her we're going to do something after a certain time, from that point on, until the appointed time, she'll talk about it. And talk about it. And talk about it.

Her twirling does make me very dizzy and nauseous(sp?). I've told her to stop and she will.

I ordered a weighted lap blanket for her today. Hopefully, it'll keep her seated at the dinner table instead of running around.

My daughter had a speech delay. Not sure if she'd have it if she wasn't Autistic, but she had one.

Mr. Rum's middle bro is dyslexic. There is a teacher I know who says that dyslexics are on the autistm spectrum (at the very low end, but they're still there). Which is interesting because all the pediatricians who've seen us always asks if #1. There are peolple in the family with ADD or ADHD and #2. if there are people with dyslexia in the family. (I have to answer yes to both).

I do let those around us, when we're out, that she's autistic.

She's still in the fascination of tattooes and she'll just stop people, grabbing their arms, to look at their tattooes. Fortunately, people are cool about it, but I still tell her she has to ask people first before grabbing them.

I'm looking for a behavorial pediatrician near my home, but they're all either to the far north or to the far south.

[Nyoibo]

I'm confused. Is autismspeaks.org good or bad?

Yes.

She's still in the fascination of tattooes and she'll just stop people, grabbing their arms, to look at their tattooes. Fortunately, people are cool about it, but I still tell her she has to ask people first before grabbing them.

She's young, I don't know anyone who has a problem with that, hell, even hardcore bikies I've known just laugh at that sort of thing.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Holy crap. I just looked it up, based on your post here. Dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia are all on the Autism spectrum. I did not know that.

That is very, very interesting. I got to learn more about that.


It actually kind of annoys me that I didn't know that.