Aspies For Freedom

Didnt we see this before all the time????

Yes, I am afraid you're right about that.

Happy Birthday.

I believe this mainly relates to very small children, i.e. toddlers who appear so precocious due to echolalia (like, 2 year olds repeating whole films word for word), and are put under a lot of pressure because the parents see their difficulties as much worse than they actually are, since they take the echolalia as 'proof' that their child is a genius and treat it like a precocious NT instead of an autistic child.

You yourself may not have had this level of echolalia, but many autistic children do at first, and rather than encouraging the use of echolalia to help the child communicate, parents often seem to take this level of 'language' as an indicator of what they expect from the child.

Sadly, when the child doesn't 'deliver' (because the level of understanding is lower than that assumed by the parents), it is often put down to laziness, obstinacy etc. because the parents cannot understand how a child who can recite complex texts can't follow simple directions, control their bladder or bowels or eat by themselves. To understand how echolalia works is a step towards understanding how their child works - echolalia can become a very useful tool for a child, but unless the parents understand its nature, echolalia often leads to a lot of misunderstandings and lack of support for the autistic child.

I never had that kind of level of echolalia, but experienced a similar thing insofar as I parroted words and phrases from an early age on, but the speech I produced spontaneously when trying to communicate was quite far behind that level. So my parents expected me to act and behave like a precocious toddler, while for the most part I was pretty much unable to string together a sentence of more than 2 words until I was about 4.

I have a question to those of you who find this article really dreadful - other than nit-picking the odd detail in its wording, have you got any actual factual criticism about its content? I am sometimes at a loss as to why NTs still bother trying to understand us at all, when any efforts on their part to try and get people to understand us and view us as different rather than defective gets slagged off in such a fashion  :?

Chain letters *are* tedious

I think it would be taken more seriously if it wasn't posted as chain letters - they bug the heck out of me!

I agree

That could be 1a)

1b) "Other people may not feel the same way about this, and prefer to be referred to as 'a person with autism' or something else entirely (perhaps they just want to be 'a person'?). Wherever possible, please consider a person's preference and remember to use whatever term they prefer."

I prefer to call myself autistic not "an adult with autism" but for all those who would object how about:

1. Autism is part of who I am.

For the next one how about this:


2.  Autism is a neurological variation, not a disease.  Autism often includes differences in social behavior and ability.

Thanks, I recently read in a book about how the whole person first language was originally an attempt by people to be "politically correct" and not make a person all about a disability or condition, but look at the person themselves, regardless of whether they may be autistic, paralysed etc.

I think it's always dangerous to generalise statements like that - I particluarly like the original article because for the most parts, it uses the words "may" more often than similar attempts at broadening the public's understanding of autism  - I appreciated the wording of things like "I am not defective, but my senses may...", because it describes pretty accurately how these things are for some people, while still making clear that this is not the same for everyone (hence the use of "may", "can" and so forth).

Great idea, Amy!  You can post it in the Articles section of AFF when it's finished, and we can all link to it from our websites.

We should also add some explanatory paragraphs under each statement, like the original article does.

How's this for # 1:

Acknowledging my autism as a part of me is entirely compatible with respecting me as a person with thoughts, feelings, and talents. In using words such as overweight or myopic, one would not typically resort to awkward sentence constructions such as "a person with obesity" or "a person with myopia" in an effort to draw attention away from these characteristics.  Please do not use language that suggests autism is an unmentionable misfortune.

That's very good Amy. We're getting somewhere. One of the difficulties that I have is that I have what seems to be the "inappropriate facial expression". NTs constantly ask me if I'm alright, then they say I look as if I am upset.  Usually I am upset, usually at the bizarre world of NTs. But if NTs want to characterize it as "inappropriate facial expression" so be it. Actually it works out well for me. What this means to me is that I will never make it in employment as the door greeter at a department store like Walmart. I'm glad to have escaped the fate of those other disabled people who've been hired by Walmart just to stand and say hello to shoppers as they come in the door. Can you imagine being forced to say, "Have a good day!" over and over? Anyway, I would add this:

"9. I do have emotions, autistics are not emotionless like some stereotypes suggest. But I may express them in a different way.

What may make someone else cry, can be different for me, it doesn't mean that I don't care, or am an uncaring person." My facial expressions might not always reflect my emotions.

That's also true of an autistic person's voice.

This article is starting to look pretty good, Amy!   :smile: