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I have a bugbear with organisations like the one in the OP. Both my children are Autistic, one higher functioning asphergers and one is a worst case scenario coupled with learning difficulties. I find a lot of people in the media, and often worryingly in a position of some sort of power be it working for someone like disability services or on the board of a group like this can't seem to grasp that the learning difficulties is a completely separate thing to the Autism, although it often goes hand in hand with it, as do other disabilities like blindness or hormone issues. It's radically different no matter what level the autism is at if you add in learning difficulties as it's infinitely easier to teach coping strategies to someone of normal abilities no matter the level of autism. My son is disabled, not because of the autism but because it is unlikely that he will ever progress beyond a mental age of 7. This is Autism 101 stuff and people who don't know this and don't understand the difference between higher and lower functioning autism and the fact that many many people with autism are capable of making their own informed decisions have no right working in disability or to form groups speaking for people who are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. Also we really need to start again with the autism names, aspergers is the only one with one and this seems sill. I know it's a spectrum but it would make it a hell of a lot easier if the most common types were given names. My son has "classic" sound sensitive Autism which is mostly to do with senses and fear of change, but fear of change on it's own is a thing and just as autistic. It makes actual real common sense to have the sensory ones as sound autism, touch autism, and so on because it clearly identifies triggers and even someone who knows nothing about the condition would know that "he has touch autism" means don't try and pick him up. As for some of the arguments in this thread, believe me, the only people who know what's really going on inside an autistic person's head is the autistic person themselves and then it probably is only anywhere near the same was of thinking as someone in the exact same place on the spectrum, or not, we just don't know. I have 12 years 24/7 of being on the outside looking in and although I can talk about coping strategies all day I wouldn't have a frigging clue how to begin describing what goes on in my kid's heads and I don't think my daughter could describe it either.
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Jul 2, 2014 00:50
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Arglebargle III posted:Welp some mildly afflicted people are "creeped out", better give up on a cure. If you could give me a magic pill that would cure my boy of his autism I would give it to him in an instant. It's about quality of life, his life would be better without it without any question at all and as the learning difficulties make him unable to make decisions for himself it's on me. Personally I don't think it will happen as I'm firmly in the "it's genetic" camp and from my own completely anecdotal real life experiences I believe that the more sever end of the scale is far more like downs syndrome than it is asphergers to the point where I think they may be separate conditions but with similar symptoms, or people with classic autism can also have asphergers or something, it's complicated and we need more research but I personally would not be remotely surprised if in 10 years time they find out that many of the things currently under the umbrella of "ASD" are to do with abnormalities in several different genes. As for that side of things, we are now able to screen for a number of genetic conditions, it is then up to the potential parents to decide if it's worth the risk, many people decide not to have the kid and adopt instead. I would absolutely welcome the ability to screen for any and every genetic condition. I love my boy but why would I want others to have autism, it's a lovely condition and if we can breed it out of humanity then good. Downs is different, people know that absolutely everyone has a higher risk of having a downs baby the older they get, if you are over 30 and it's not accident then you are either an idiot for not doing research and finding out the risks, or went into it knowing full well that you were going to be tested and that if it came back positive you were either going to keep it or have abortions till you get a normal one.
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Jul 2, 2014 14:34
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Ethiser posted:I could have sworn they actually added Aspergers to the Autism spectrum a few years ago after it being a separate thing for a long time. I think that one is complicated by different countries but the long and skinny of it is that Aspergers is classified as ASD everywhere now.
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Jul 3, 2014 07:12
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