Aspies For Freedom - Make me normal (C4)

First, off, the title had me freeze in a panic attack when I "twigged" that this was not "yet another makeover show" with a kid on that looked just like the boy with AS from Junior Mastermind (Nor the same kid btw.).

The school featured wants to both show the very real problems facing people with autism, as well as teach the individuals about their strengths and the positive aspects of autism.

It is on Thursday 2nd June, C4, 9pm.
http://www.channel4sales.com/programming...02-06-2005

Quote:

In the first film of Only Human , a new series of revealing, thought-provoking and inspiring documentaries told by the people at the heart of their stories, Make Me Normal meets four students at Spa School, one of Britain's largest state schools for autistic children.

The series follows the unexpected success of last year's The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off in which terminally ill Jonny Kennedy told his uplifting, confounding and provocatively humorous story from beyond the grave.

Filmed over several months, the teenagers reveal what it is like to grow up with a condition affecting more than 500,000 people in the UK. Moneer, 12, has a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. When he loses his mother to cancer, the teachers struggle to help him deal with his feelings and manage his violent behaviour.

Roxanne, also 12, just wants to be a normal teenager, but her realisation that autism is for life is extremely painful.

Roy, 18, is trying to make sense of the world during his last year at school, but what he really wants is a girlfriend.

And Esther, also 18, has a special gift for explaining the autistic world.

Other films in the series meet a teenager going through chemotherapy for testicular cancer and the inhabitants of a Yorkshire village where eccentric behaviour is the norm. For more information about autism contact the National Autistic Society Helpline on 0845 070 4004 or visit http://www.autism.org.uk. Dir: Jonathan Smith; Prod: Zac Beattie; Exec Prod: Brian Hill; Prod Co: Century Films

Amy Wrote:

That sounds really good, will be nice for my son to watch too.

Just don't read the Radio Times review - they took it all "ah those POOOOOR people" :?

so where is this yorkshire village where eccentric behaviour is the norm? sounds great
becca

becca Wrote:

so where is this yorkshire village where eccentric behaviour is the norm? sounds great
becca

IMHO the whole of Yorkshire.... :lol:

But I shall update this when the programm has been on.

Sincerely,

Noetic, Yorkshire, UK :wink:

many thanks- we shall wait some time to see this in NZ :smile:
becca

Gareth Wrote:

I was very annoyed with the display of violence - they seemed to choose children who acted in a violent way and then blamed this violence on autism. This makes me worry a lot about the public image of autistics that is being painted.

As someone wrote elsewhere - well-behaved kids don't boost the ratings :?

rocobley Wrote:

I'm really interested in getting some thoughts on the words of the girl doing the narration - I don't remember her name - about how she didn't understand that you can't have a relationship with a boy without their consent. It surprised me and I am wondering how common that would be?

I don't have any numbers, but it is mentioned in Patricia Howlin's "Autism and Asperger syndrome: preparing for adulthood" (Great book!) at length http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=544&a=4999

Amy Wrote:

I have that book too! And I was lucky to get to meet and discuss various issues with Pat herself.

Oooh I'd love to get a chance to do that   Cool

I was lucky to get the book at all, since I ordered it from the NAS along with a lot of others earlier this year - they did not have it in stock so I had to write to them several times to get it black on white that they would contact me before sending it off, as we moved at the end of February. And what do they do? Send it on 1st April TO THE WRONG ADDRESS  :?

Luckily when I contacted them a month later, they were very good about it and immediately sent off another copy which I got delivered the next day   Cool

Lili Marlene Wrote:

I believe this erroneous idea that autism is a cause of violence could lead to children who have the geuinely anti-social personality disorders or discipline problems being misdiagnosed as autistic. Have a look at this quote that I found in an academic article about

Misdiagnosis *alone* may not be all that tragic, it's when children with such antisocial tendencies get put in residential schools with Aspies and Autie kids that it gets dangerous, IMHO:

http://uk.geocities.com/gnrboo/nothelping.htm
Excerpt that is v. relevant:

Quote:

This school claimed, on the start of my employment, that they took a 'behaviourist' approach to rectifying behaviour problems. This means, ignoring bad behaviour or seperating offenders if it is dangerous, and rewarding good behaviour. In other words, the teachers should focus on students who are willing to learn and showing good behaviour, and reward this. However, for doing exactly that, I was later accused of showing 'favouritism' towards some of the students.

The badly behaved but less autistic students were constantly rewarded by attention, special activities and treats (which were supposed to be for the better behaved children). I was disgusted with the way that students were told that there would be rewards for good behaviour, and then these were withheld from a child who, for example, left a lesson due to bullying by other students, and the bullies were then rewarded, just because they had stayed.

The badly behaved students were always the ones with LESS autistic characteristics, and who were quite able to behave politiely e.g. towards more senior staff, but then attacked the weaker students, demonstrating a clear understanding of social heirachy and socially manipulative abilities.

In my opinion, these children should never have been allowed in the school in the first place (except that the head teacher had an idea that bad behaviour=autism, which was characterised in what another teacher told me, that she believed that the boys who murdered James Bulger were 'asperger'. I find this characterisation of Asperger people disgusting).

(By Gnrboo from Aspergia)

On a similar note:

I have just read the whole of Uta Frith's book on AS which includes Asperger's translated paper. Particularly Digby Tantam's contributions were very interesting, he continually emphasises that only VERY few individuals show a lack of emotion and empathy, and that most are very law-abiding and at great pains not to hurt or offend people.

Many authors, including Margaret Dewey, kept emphasising that Asperger's portrayal of malice, aggression and vindictiveness as a core aspect of 'autistic psyhcopathy' were NOT an integral part of autism and AS.

Also, it was pointed out (and I have long suspected this) that this bias of his own patients towards such behavioural tendencies were both due to his misinterpretations (of innocent behaviour as malicious) and due to his strong interest in psychiatrically abnormal children who had violent and antisocial tendencies.

He is said to have been very fascinated with 'deviant' children, so no wonder the patients he dedicated most time to were those who displayed these less positive elements! Out of the 4 children he portrayed in his original paper, the ONLY one he hardly dedicated any time to (the last case) was one who, while quite severely affected, did NOT display any aggression or malice, so it seems quite clear that such cases simply did not interest him all that much.

Is it really all that surprising that those he DID describe in greater detail were also those who displayed the most disturbing and antisocial behaviours?

Lili Marlene Wrote:

I've read that same translation of Asperger's paper a few times, but I didn't really get the impression that he thought the boys were especially malicious. Asperger did note emotional indifference, but that's different to malice. Asperger did mention the fact that some of these boys were bullied, so the reader can draw their own conclusions about the origin of any malice.

Well I am not sure if this was the same translation then, because in this one he very frequently emphasises the malice, the delight in it etc.

Quote:

Thus parents suffer deeply from the unfeeling behaviour of their children. It is thus mainly within the family that 'autistic acts of mailce' occur. These acts typically appear to be calculated. With uncanny certainty, the children manage to do whatever is the most unpleasant or hurtful in a particular situation.
...
There can sometimes be distictly sadistic acts. Delight in malice, which is rarely absent, provides almost the only occasion when the lost glance of these children appears to light up." [p.77]

(There are also many other examples in there - I do however feel that a LOT of this is due to his seeming desire to 'see intelligence' and deliberation in *every* single behaviour, even those that are generally well-known to originate in many other autism-characteristic things, such as obsessions or sensory preferences.

He DOES describe really delightfully sensory preferences but I find it sad how much he still seemed to interpret this as deliberate obstinacy, ESPECIALLY since he seemed to describe sensory differences [aversions and preferences] in greater detail than Kanner!)

Quote:

The one thing that did bother me about Asperger's paper was that he described one boy (Hellmuth) who obviously had some kind of feminising genetic syndrome or general brain damage, and few characteristics that were uniquely autistic, so he didn't belong in that paper in my opinion.

I find that interesting, since Helmuth also seems fairly typical (granted, in his case perhaps there were definite medical conditions that caused his different wiring, but then some of the things like lax joints etc. do seem quite frequent on the spectrum), APART from the socially manipulative behaviour (only briefly does he mention malice towards objects and 'aggression' but perhaps this is not as interesting as the more socially manipulative children that seemed to fascinate Asperger so much) - he was slightly delayed in motor skills and talking, but quickly started 'talking like a grown-up'.

He was clumsy, had preoccupations with objects, was pedantic, obsessional, socially unaware (talked incessantly and did not understand why other kids were making fun of him etc.) and was highly gifted verbally, both in the way he spoke and in his writing.

Wing annotates that, since this seems to be one of the more severely affected children (lower-functioning), perhaps this is why Asperger did not get interested enough to describe him further.

Stella Wrote:

Hans Asperger wrote what he could in the context of Nazi Austria during the Second World War.

Stella

That is a good point. I think there were even some 'snipes' at the Naxi regime in there, especially in what he writes about how autistic parents tend to be more likely to have only one child, and how 'outside forces' can interfere with the parents's preferences [p. 86]

Lili Marlene Wrote:

What does it say about the intelligence of the teachers when they are fooled into thinking the sociopaths are better students than the autistis?

I guess they are still looking at the kids with NT values, and perhaps, because they expect all pupils to be autistic, they totally ignore the possiblity that they might lie or manipulate (since autistics aren't *supposed* to be able to do that!)

Quote:

The autistic kids might be better off in mainstream schools with "normal" peers.

I liked Daniel Tammet's comments on the recent documentary (see Savant thread), about how he'd always been "too weird" for people so he didn't really get bullied, he was mostly just left alone because they didn't know what to make of him. I am sure autistics are better off in a tolerant and non-aggressive environment than in a special school that also contains some very manipulative and aggressive individuals.

becca Wrote:

I think the only way i have come to deal with my problems is to accept them as part of who i am, but that i am also evolving.

Sounds like a very sensible and helpful approach Cool

Here is the reaction of the National Autistic Society to 'Make Me Normal' http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.j...53&a=7044.

They are very pleased that Channel 4 screened the documentary as it raised awareness of autism and Asperger Syndrome. Although most of the feedback they received was positive; there was some negative reaction, mainly from parents of autistic children. No mention of negative reaction from autistic people.

Kev Wrote:

I find it quite puzzling how you come to the conclusion that people wanted certain things from this documentary. As all we knew about it prior to its airing was that it was centered arounf spa school, it would be very difficult to place any kind of expectation on it in that respect.

Do you really mean that? But *everyone* tends to have certain expectations of programmes like this, *especially* if they have very little information about which slant it would put on things!

I have seen views of people who were prejudiced AGAINST the programme because of one or two words taken out of context from previews, and I have seen people prejudiced FOR it because they know someone who went ot school there, but both "sides" already had their judgement made long before they even sat down to view it.

Anyone else however, who did not have their mind made up before even watching this, had to have *some* kind of expectation, or wish, of what the programm would be like, or what it would say about autism.

It's "normal", isn't it, to have expectations and desires about something you only vaguely know what it is about, especially when that something is concerned with a subject you care deeply about?

So of course what someone WANTS a programme to be like (or to be about) has a major influence on what they later think of it.

If someone watched "Make me Normal" expecting to get an advert for how great autistics are, they would have been disappointed, and the same goes for someone expecting a detailed and informative documentary about teaching methods used with autistic students.

The disappointment they would experience does not mean the documentary was necessarily BAD, it just means they had expected or wanted it to be something that it could never be. Because it was not about autism or about the positive sides, or about educational methods and strategies, but about how four teenagers in one specific school experience and deal with the more problematic aspects of their autism.

You may disagree with aspects of it but I think it is ludicrous to spew the kind of filth I have seen written about this programme in various places simply because someone's expectations for the programme had nothing in common with what the programme was about, and was advertised as being about!

The same goes for "Autism is a World" for example... on another forum, someone had a neighbour who watched the film hoping to learn something about autism, because judging by the title, they felt the documentary ought to be about that. However, since it is a documentary about Sue Rubin's autism, it was more autobiographical, more about what autism means to Sue Rubin than about autism in general, and so the neighbour was very disappointed.

The poster themselves however, having an interest in autobiographical works, was over the moon with it because their expectation of the programme was more in line with what the programme actually provided, even though she disagreed with some of the points made.

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