I wish I had seen that. There was a guy a few years ago who advertized a mental math system. He seemed very aspie. He was very intense and easilly distracted by any deviation from his focus. His name was Scott Flansburg and what cracked me up was to find out that he was born in the same remote part of upstate NY that produced me.
Was it the water?
I hope somebody else watched the show and remembers who this fellow was on the Letterman show.
Jerry Newport
Leslie Lemke, Stephen Wiltshire, Kim Peek etc. There is already a Hall of Fame of used/abused savants. I hope this guy doesn't wind up there.
Jerry Newport
Would any of them join AFF? If we can get our act together, one day we would be able to retain lawyers on their behalf and others like them
Unless memorising pi was his obsession. I can't even keep enough focus to memorise 'The Raven'... But it's still a pity he'll probably only end up being some freak curiousity in the minds of others.
Since the parents are involved in the exploitation, it would be a tough battle anyway.
Jerry
Parents and Parents LOL
Ask me if I give a damn. :wink:
I'll settle for makeing them miserable for the rest of their lives.
Not all parents are that way.
No they are not . human beings are too far complex to easily generalised. But parents with low functioning autistics are the ones who are making the decisions and when asked about why HFA have very little say , their immediate response is that they have an autistic child. So they obviously have more standing.
What really irks me is seeing ppl like shelley reynolds who has an LFA son that has ameliorated over the years and claim that he is "recovering" from autism in order to raise money and to give hope. and of course as a parent she implicity takes credit for it. I only wonder what the poor parents of a LFA child that will never "recover" feel when they see that? I can only imagine they will blame themselves even more. Our viewpoint is the most charitable for the parents - It is not their fault at all whether the child LFA permanent or not. Though as I must stress therapy can be helpful tho it will never change the child's true nature.
What really irks me is seeing ppl like shelley reynolds who has an LFA son that has ameliorated over the years and claim that he is "recovering" from autism in order to raise money and to give hope. and of course as a parent she implicity takes credit for it. I only wonder what the poor parents of a LFA child that will never "recover" feel when they see that? I can only imagine they will blame themselves even more. Our viewpoint is the most charitable for the parents - It is not their fault at all whether the child LFA permanent or not. Though as I must stress therapy can be helpful tho it will never change the child's true nature.
We have actually just had such a woman on a German forum, and yep the parents of kids (not just LFA) reacted precisely how you predicted. Of course if someone waltzes in there telling them just how good a Mum she is and how her parenting and loving and 'acceptance' managed to get her child to 'improve' from nonverbal and how now he is just a gifted kid who has all the skills etc. etc. of his peers, and their own kids who may have started out AS are still experiencing massive problems all around (school, anxiety etc.), that's like a slap in the face.
Also she keeps ranting on about Son Rise etc. and while she presents herself as someone who "unconditionally loves and accepts" her son, she cannot get it into her head that it is not possible to "unconditionally accept" someone if the so-called acceptance is merely a tool to get the child to become "normal"!
In my first response I pointed out that, while some aspects are very good (playful, based on accepting the child etc.), ultimately the aim is to make the kid non-autistic so the 'acceptance' is not precisely genuine.
I read that Son-Rise has been planting paid "moles" on autism forums to give testimonials. Don't know how much truth there is to that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I read that Son-Rise has been planting paid "moles" on autism forums to give testimonials. Don't know how much truth there is to that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Me neither. I mean at first glance, the ideas sound great - unconditional love and acceptance, teaching skills in a playful way that accepts the child's behaviour as part of their individual personality etc. etc.
But then you start thinking about it. "Hang on a minute, if they really preach unconditional love, how come they are advertising themselves as something akin to a cure, and the ultimate aim is "recovery" from autism?" :shock:
I have posted a news item about Daniel Tammet previously, not sure of the link right now.
Bonnie said "I read that Son-Rise has been planting paid "moles" on autism forums to give testimonials. Don't know how much truth there is to that, but it wouldn't surprise me."
I can seriously believe that, I went to the Son-Rise forum to ask some polite questions about methods and they ban quickly with no explanation, it seems anyone who doesnt gush praise about their "product" has to go, and their posts deleted.
I went to the Son-Rise forum to ask some polite questions about methods and they ban quickly with no explanation, it seems anyone who doesnt gush praise about their "product" has to go, and their posts deleted.
This is what we have to show people - that these people see autism as nothing more than a commodity that enables them to pedal drugs and torture while manipulating their 'customers' by feeding their hopes and fears. The logical argument to that is that some of these organisations are genuinely trying to do a good thing so how do you tell the difference? Actually it is very easy to do that. All you have to do is look at how they handle things. It is my opinion that for alot of these bad organisations it is purely about making money in addition to making themselves look good in the eyes of the unwitting public - a very powerful combination of incentives. That would require that they know exactly what they are doing - that is also my opinion.
But how do you address a problem of that scale? Certainly not by negative action. I think we should focus more on promoting the work of groups which genuinely try to help people. Most of us are very able and intelligent people. We want more people able to get what we want out of life. If we do that then we are taking away the commodity which lets the bad groups retain their power. I think that is the best thing we can do.
Certainly not by negative action.
please define negative?? and tellme if we or any of us engaged in such negative action?
please define negative?? and tellme if we or any of us engaged in such negative action?
By negative action I mean direct confrontation and I define it as negative because its the kind of thing these bad groups can easily turn around to make us look bad (because they can).
All I'm saying is concentrate more on things they CANT twist around.
A large amount of direct confrontation might either put lot of Aspies off who are so to speak "floating" i.e not sure or just plain in the centre.
It could even turn them against the autistic rights movement as they wouldn't want to be "tarred with the same brush" (assumed to be the same as) as those who were in engaged in direct action.
If any confrontation turned violent because of agitation from Aspie Protestors then that would be the ultimate reason to put as much social distance between those who were protesting and those who weren't.
I'm glad that as far as I can see we all use peaceful, informative protests and action.