Aspies For Freedom

I saw a previous show with a boy diagnosed with asperger's or autism.  They said they were going to help him and take him for a brain scan.  They just showed the worst of the meltdowns and the parents were contributing to the spiral towards them as far as I could tell.

It's definitely another autistm=violent tendencies type of portrayal.

I only saw part of the show yesterday.  Mostly the show seemed to be talking about the parents' problems.  The father worked 80 hr per week.  The mother was always going out to exercise and even lied about it.  What the doctor told the mother about autism was stupid -- that they would lose friends etc.  I guess he was practicing for when the prenatal test is available.  

Dr. Phil was trying to help but he is no expert in autism.  He is more a relationship counselor.  Having someone with autism can affect a whole family but so does having someone with diabetes, alcoholism, smoking habit, a parent who has a job that they need to travel often, physical disability or serious illness, a large screen television, the internet.  

What did he actually recommend for the child?

i watched dr phill yesterday but the show didnt seem to be about autism so i changed the chanel. maybe it wasnt aired here? did anyone actually see the whole thing? or is there any way i can get a transcript?

Great post!

Interventions are often overrated by the way.

Well, it's an individual decision. Not everybody has the money or the time to do intensive interventions and the others in the family also have to be considered. People shouldn't have to feel guilty if they can't spend 40 hrs a week or whatever on intensive training for an autistic child.

Yes, I wasn't very impressed with the other show Dr Phil did about the autistic 16 year old a couple of years ago (I think the boy either has Asperger's or HFA). The parents were going on and on about how hard done by they were and often stirred the boy up by being unnecessarily confrontational.

When Dr Phil spoke to the lad on his own, he said he just wanted to be left alone more and not put under so much pressure by his parents. That was the best part of the show. I know the parents were worried about their boy and probably didn't understand how damaging their continual nagging was to their son but they really needed to be told to back off more and just let him be.

He would have been picking up on all of the tension, plus he'd have had all the normal hormonal things going on that most 16 year olds do. I've known of even fairly quiet aspie men who said when they were teenagers, they would do things like punch holes in a door or wall because they felt so frustrated.

My brother-in-law's parents sold their house and got a small unit when his younger sister turned 18 so the kids couldn't come back home and live with them. My family thought that was rather strange as we'll always find a bed somewhere for a family member or their friend if they need a place to sleep for a night or more.

Maybe that's why my comments were not generally listened to a lot when I joined an autism support group. I think the hope was that they could show parents an example of a child born with autism who grew up to be "normal".

They must be hoping their children can be cured if only they work hard enough with them.

Unfortunately, I do have strong opinions on a few aspects of parenting eg. dummies, homework, tantrums but then on a lot of other things, I'm fairly neutral.

It now occurs to me that the parents in the support group I used to attend were so caught up in day to day survival that they had little energy left over for anything else.
They wanted some hope that their kids would eventually be independent.

The adult aspies could give a certain amount of hope that the children would improve over time but could not guarantee that they would ever be cured. The fact that we still struggled with issues such as interpersonal relations, jobs, living independently was no doubt somewhat discouraging.

Although we were doing our best under the circumstances, it still fell somewhat short of the reassurance they needed. I didn't feel I could lie and say everything was okay now that I'm grown up but I made sure to say I improved a lot in some areas over the years.

To be honest, I think that making a documentary on the 'curebie' attitude may get more awareness for the anti-cure standpoint. Especially when you would let adult Aspies do the talking and do the production. I do have experience in film/video production but don't have the facilities and the manpower to pull it off. If we can get a project in the UK going I'd be more than willing to help.

Tigger, I'm not saying babies shouldn't be given dummies. I just think older children shouldn't have them ie. better to get rid of them while the child is still at the baby or early toddler stage.

Ah, I've had a strong opinion against them since I was 8 or 9 but now I've mellowed to the extent that I think they are okay for babies as long as they aren't having them all the time.

I don't think it's okay for kids older than 3 to have them under any circumstances because it's making them into perpetual babies and even sissies and it makes them look unintelligent.

There are some types of dummies that don't look too bad, but many other brands are huge and ugly looking. Nuk and Pigeon seem to be the best of a bad lot here, and a couple of other brands are not too shabby eg. Mam. Tommee Tippee has had some really horrible looking things.

DAMN!

So that was what those parents at the norwegian were so happy about.

norwegian board*