Aspies For Freedom

When I was a baby and a child, my parents didn't use "baby talk" or overly simplistic language. Of course, they supplemented with gestures, showing me objects, and repeating things in different and/or more simple wording. But I learned the cadence of speech before the meanings of individual words, so that when I did start developing my language skills, I started having that "documentary narrator" cadence.

Yeah, there are times when I really just need to be alone. I don't think it's good to encourage an "always must be doing things" attitude in kids, or anybody really. It's like what I have observed in the special services staff at my high school: they would make the students always be working, even if they were done, and the class lasts an hour and a half.

Even in the general student population, not including people with ADHD, or other learning and attentional difficulties, I've never EVER seen a class of students high school age or younger keep focused attention and always working for all that time with little to no breaks.

Even when they can manage to keep up (such as with lectures), you can nearly always pick out the person falling asleep over their coffee, or texting, or doodling or drifting off. That's why it's encouraged that when learning and doing homework that you take short breaks fairly frequently.

And I'm like this too, though instead of texting or doodling, I'm more likely to stare at a wall or my desk or my hand, or fiddle with my pencil or something. I NEED to have time to recoup throughout the day, and just rocking back and forth typically won't cut it - I'll need breaks when I get to stare out or something without having someone yell in my ear and shake my desk or call the principal in. I do this when I go on the bus - forget about writing useful notes for my fiction, or reading, I usually have to stare, sometimes rock, and that's the way it goes.

I'm quite sick of being disciplined for just being as I am (especially when I was like 6 and didn't have any context for all these confusingly negative reactions), and hopefully as I am an adult, that I will at least have more say-so for myself. - Living in a dorm independently in college may not be the easiest thing, but if it means not having to put up with this crap so much, then it's worth every ounce of effort.

Yeah, in my experience, about 50% of the people I've met in special services, while often very well meaning, are completely incapable at their jobs, or at least with interacting with children who don't give the "typical" signals and responses.

It's not that NTs are incapable of it, or even that every NT has a natural impairment that inhibits from good interactions with autistic people, as some NT friends have been very good at reading and understanding me.

The 50% of people in special services I've met that I'm talking about, they seem far much worse impaired than the most clueless NT outside of the profession that I've met.

I mean, it goes beyond just believing in a few of the common stereotypes - I'm talking about people who have read a lot of the literature and been trained and taken classes, and could easily recite why some prevalent autism myths are not true, and yet they don't understand basic things about communication differences, variation of functioning level, auditory processing difficulties that are common... the list goes on. Things that you could just look at a few blogs on the Autism Hub and be swiftly and easily corrected on.

That's the thing that gets dangerous - when they easily know why some common myths are myths, but then have deeply ingrained some very damaging and prevalent stereotypes, that nobody told them about why they're wrong or bad. And then if you try to correct them about it, however tactful and articulate, or what references you may have provided, it bounces off them because they "have degrees and training, therefore we know much more about why you do the things you do than you do" - a very damaging assumption that can come from these professionals, particularly when they're the ones who decide things like educational opportunities and provision of services.

Thanks for taking the time to keep in touch ATM. I am happy to know you have found fruitful employment. Your post was inspiring and it seems you are inspired with your new job.
I will read your post a few more times to better understand and take on board your message. I have heard of Paulo Freire - but I can't remember the context. I guess he is a philosopher with an interest in education.

I need quite strong structures in my day to help me to cope. Perhaps this teacher uses structure to help her feel she has control in her place of work. Maybe it helps her to cope with her role.

Why would it be dangerous? Is it your intention to hide your Autism?

Well, considering I got fired after revealing I had Asperger's, yeah, it can be dangerous. I would want everyone to come out, say they were autistic, and take their chances; but I have to leave it up to them. There are people with a lot more to lose than I've got--people with children, people with jobs. Every civil rights movement in history has gotten people killed just for speaking up, and that's pretty darn scary even if you aren't looking at a risk that extreme.

Back to the original topic--I really, really agree. For the most part, autistic people need time alone like we need oxygen! For that matter, introverted NTs get exhausted with too much socializing; how can you expect an autistic child not to get similarly exhausted? Processing time is needed; rest is needed. 24/7 interaction isn't good. There is no "world" that we "withdraw" to, not any more than NTs withdraw to their own worlds when they daydream or enjoy a good cup of coffee. It's rest, plain and simple; and it's cruel to withhold it.

I wonder if the reason that there's NO ONE there who stims but you, is if maybe the kids had their stims trained out of them. I was able to hide my more obvious ones when I was younger, to some extent, and I've never been put into a formal behavioral program.

Yeah, I used to be told to 'stop fidgeting'. I learned to stim in less obvious ways.

Yeah, me too. Then, when in 7th grade history class, when a bunch of kids in the class were pointing and laughing at me, I realized that at that very moment I had been rocking (my body awareness wasn't too much back then). So I definitely kept my stimming much less obvious, but I have been doing them for a number of years.

Not exactly the best encouragement.

For me, it wasn't so much about the amount of socialisation as a kid, but the kind of socialisation.

I was not diagnosed.  Nobody had a clue there was anything "wrong" with me, and because I had very good (if, in hindsight, somewhat echolalia-tinged) language skills it was assumed I was much much more aware of what was going on around me than was really the case.

Maybe for most "normal" kids you can just dump them in a playground or a PE class or a camp or whatever and they'll sort themselves out into their little cliques and groups and make friends by whatever weird process normal people do that stuff.  But, you could have stuck me in every playground, camp, team, class and other group on the PLANET and I wouldn't have made a damn friend... because nobody had actually explained the concept of what friendship was and how this social stuff was supposed to work and what it meant.  It was just assumed I knew that.  I didn't.  And I think maybe possibly that's where Miss Routine is coming from - she assumes the kids know what Making Friends or Having A Conversation means, they just need structure to make it happen.  That's actually a pretty massive assumption to make in relation to a small person who's brain's wired up differently.

On the other hand... I could have been socialised much LESS, and got a lot more BENEFIT from it, had I had some sort of actual social skills training.  But, Aspergers wasn't even in the manual when I was a kid.  So I'm trying not to be bitter that I had humiliate myself so many times and make so many enemies and piss so many people off just because nobody took the time to EXPLAIN what the hell was going on.

However, in a way I'm glad I wasn't diagnosed until my 20s.  I think had I known earlier I'd have used Aspergers as an excuse to NOT do things I actually can, on the assumption that I couldn't.  I communicate for a living, for goodness sake!  If a little Aspie said they wanted to be a radio presenter, would they be told it was an unsuitable job because it requires so many things - social skills, conversation skills, empathy, multitasking - in which Aspies are considered deficient?  I think they would be.  But I do it, in my own idiosyncratic eccentric way, and don't suck too badly.

I do not like the idea that autistic children are special little angels who need to be wrapped up in cotton wool and protected from socialisation.  I worry that not encouraging autistic children to interact with the mainstream world - frustrating and painful as it may be - is to cut them off from realising their full potential.  Being protected is lovely I'm sure, but being in charge of your own destiny is a million times better.

I HAD to survive in the real world, with no mollycoddling or special allowances, because I had no damn choice.  But if I hadn't been through that, I wouldn't have the life I have now.  And I quite like my life.  No, it wasn't easy.  And there's stuff that could have, should have, been avoided.  But, on the whole, I'm glad I didn't know any sooner and I'm glad I was given the opportunity to find out just how strong I am, which I wouldn't have done if I was allowed to sit in my room whining "I have Aspergers!  I can't do that!  Don't make me try!  I DON'T WANNA!!!!"

I think that to wrap autistic children up as special little angels is ultimately dehumanising.  It  automatically means that any autistic person who is NOT INTERESTED in being a special little spiritually evolved prophet, is a failure.  That if an Aspie is quite happy doing some part time IT work and smoking some weed and playing on their computer and not hurting anyone, they're a big disappointment and they're letting the team down.  

Actually, the point is not to be anything in particular - to be a prophet, to be a millionaire, to be a sex goddess, to be enlightened, to be a purple elephant.  The point is just to be.

Thank you Ethel for your whole post, and that last bit in particular!

I have been wracking my brains for a way to express what I felt was the underlying wrong assumptions in the original, without causing offence; and, as usual, you heve expressed it clearly and succinctly.

I learnt the best of my social skills because no-one told me I couldn't.

I had to learn them my own way, through trial-and-error; painful trial and embarrassing error to be sure, but that is what helps give someone humility and consideration for the struggles of others.

Actually, Mic, someone round here (Can't remember who it was, to give credit where it's due, sorry) said much the same thing re: speech development.  An autistic kid might start out with pure echolalia, repeating phrases as they're heard, move on to more refined echolalia where they repeat phrases in more appropriate settings, then to using stock phrases as a means of basic social interaction and self expression, and eventually full self-expressive speech.  So, does it MATTER that they developed speech differently and maybe a bit later than a "normal" kid, if they get the same end result basically?

Uh, didn't explain that too well, did I?  How that relates to Mic's daughter is the sense of doing things by numbers, through logical deduction, rather than intuitively - the way a kid might repeat phrases 'by the numbers' before generating their own words.

I think I might understand, micgrace, because I had been teaching social coping strategies to my kids long, long before it was suggested that any of them were on the spectrum. It was only long after that suggestion and all the investigations that I realise that most people don't teach their children social skills, because they don't have to.

I am so old that not only was Asperger's not in the manual when I was growing up, even my older three (now in their mid-twenties) were too old to have been picked up at school and will have to choose for themselves what, if anything, they do about it.

And the only one who actually needed the formal diagnosis to get the help he needed was almost thirteen when he finally 'got the label' and that was after extra discussions. Realising he had trouble recognising facial expressions (he only knew two: Big Grin = Happy, Everything Else = Angry) I had been coaching him to think harder about what people might be feeling other than happiness or anger. The psychologist had given him pictured faces to evaluate and said she had been surprised at the large emotional vocabulary he seemed to have, much better, at first impression, than she would have expected; until he failed to describe any of the angry faces as such!

Because many of us are good at applying our intellect most of the time it can be difficult for people to diagnose on outward behaviours; and they cannot know how differently we are processing information except by outward manifestations. The older we get and the more accurately we learn to ape social behaviours the harder it is for a diagnosis to be made; unless they catch us on a bad day, and then it could be that they throw everything in the DSM-IV at us to see what sticks!

"Because many of us are good at applying our intellect most of the time it can be difficult for people to diagnose on outward behaviours; and they cannot know how differently we are processing information except by outward manifestations. The older we get and the more accurately we learn to ape social behaviours the harder it is for a diagnosis to be made; unless they catch us on a bad day, and then it could be that they throw everything in the DSM-IV at us to see what sticks!"

Yes, exactly! I also think because of the particular societal expectations put upon women, we hide our aspie symptoms even better than men in general. It usually takes some crisis for us to be able to find a diagnosis and even then, we too often get labelled as "bipolar" or "borderline personalities".

Some Aspies with specific learning difficulties would find this offensive.

I used to think, when I first came on AFF, that Asperger's was supposed to come with a package that contained these things: math skills, academic ability, and giftedness.  And that I was inferior or "lesser abled" than most of you because I don't have those gifts.

I used to believe that.  It did a lot of unnecessary harm.  Now, I'm trying to "unlearn" it.  What I hope is that I don't start believing it again, just because some Aspies with academic gifts can't comprehend how other Aspies don't have the same skill set.

Let's try to disprove what they say about Aspergian "impaired imagination", mmmkay..?

I'm a bit odd about facial expressions: while I have difficulty consistently producing expected expressions, I have always been pretty good at understanding the emotions that typical facial expressions are supposed to represent. however, on tests, they thought I was not good at this, because while I can connect an emotion to a face, and know a lot of words relating to emotions, I usually find it difficult to find teh word for a particular emotion I'm thinking of, and will tend to say "I don't know" or some random word that may be related to emotions, because I can't find the right one.

That came about mainly because from early on I learned that people react negatively when you have a big long gap between question and response, and also when you answer by repeating the question echolalically, so I learned to cope with auditory and speech difficulties by giving answers that are probably false rather than annoy other people.