Aspies For Freedom

i just finished watching a piece about an aspie kid, that is very curebie.  it was on the discovery health chanell (amerian), the program was medical incredicle, it wasn't the subject of the whole show, but parts of two segments.

basically, kyle (the kid) was diagosed with aspergers at 4 or 5 years old, and the parents put him in son rise, saying that he had emtional deficits, reaional deficts and emthaiphic deficits.  they talked about how he improved and became normal, and throughout the peice, normal was better.  they claim son rise can retrain autistic (bad) brains into normal (good) brains.

near the end of the peice, the father talks about how wonderful to hear him say i love you, and that  "he wasn't a human being and now he was."  and that's why we are seen as monsters.

at one point, the doctor said that most autsitic children are somewhat mentally retarded, a false statement.

the child is brainwashed, saying normal was better for him and of course, sappy music came over when they became normal and how they worked so hard to become normal, etc.  it was digusting.

at the very end, the kid says that he was liberated from isolation, and then the narrator says "son rise has made autistics belong".  and also assumes that without it, he would have been a miserable wretch.

well, what a very biased picece.  and ironcally, this was on medical incredicle.  being autistic and being independent isnt' a miracle. :evil:

this was during the on camera interviews, not with the son in the room.

but i'm seeing parells with him and the mother with the bridge bit.  saying that autistics are not human is digusting.

i think this was about a 10 minute story, taking parts of two segments of the hour long show, medical incredicle.  the first part was decrbing the symptons of being an aspie, then the second part was about the son rise program and how is supposedly made him better.

in the same show, they show a guy's nose being cut off, a big tumor on a baby's neck and the such, just in case it airs again.

if you are on the west coast, this will air at 7, although the segment is a bit more than halfway through the show.

tape it via the vcr.  i assume you have a blank tape somewhere, and you don't need to tape the whole show, just start at the halfway point.  i don't have tivo ethier.

Thanks for mentioning this. As it so happens, I do have TiVo, so I just went downstairs to set this to record.

Although the description of the show said nothing about a guy's nose being cut off or a tumor on a baby's neck, so I'm not sure it's the same episode.

yeah, it's the same show.  the show descritions tend to be not very detailed.  they usually only put in one or two of the stories in the show desrction.  but if it's the one with the nose cut off, yeah, it's that one.  it also has a story about a dancer without legs and a story about tissue babies or something.  there are a bunch of stories in that show, and none of them are extensive (covering more than two segments).

near the end of the peice, the father talks about how wonderful to hear him say i love you, and that "he wasn't a human being and now he was." and that's why we are seen as monsters.

That's very insightful. Do you think that people in a close relationship with others class the person as a monster if they cannot say I love you?
Maybe that, along with being able to talk, is what NTs need to regard someone as real (generally speaking).

It is also quite significant that a parent can only cast their own child's humanity in terms of that child being able to meet the parent's emotional needs.

Perhaps a bit of 'humanity' (using the word to denote 'socially acceptable' connotations of emitting the 'correct' emotional responses), on the part of the parent would have been helpful.

It seems rather 'inhuman' of parents who cannot accept their children for who they really are, rather than trying to squish a square peg into a round hole.

From what I have heard, the Son Rise programme is a very expensive therapeutic intervention and presumably, this 'documentary' was advertising the services on offer.

This is an example of why I stopped taking educational television seriously.  There is no scientific rigour applied to it; I wouldn't have been surprised to see a chelation add on there somewhere.

Spinning objects is "disturbing?"  I guess running around a field and taking steroids is better.  As if anything unusual was so horrible.  

What bothers me most is that they considered him "cured" because he said "I love you mom."  The poor kid thinks he's normal now, even though he's shut away in a special ed class.  They're in for a rude awakening one day.

If his father didn't regard him as a human being before, maybe the father never said "I love you," or else, like many NTs said it but didn't mean it.  Also, how can this therapy have "made autistics belong" by somehow changing this boy's behaviour so that it mimics that of an NT? That's just camouflaging, not belonging.  What a horrible program!
Alison

clarifcation: the father kept saying i love you to the child, hoping he would say i love you back for several years, then when the child finally said it, he felt that he became human, as mentioned on the camera interview during the piece.

and conlang, i assume you also saw the show.  any other commentary on it?

to call an autstic functiong well in the mainstream world is not a medical incredicle.  many of us have gone many years undiagonsed (more so for aspies) and have functioned in the real world.  even those of us diagosed have grown up and matured to be useful in socitey.  autism is a deveptoental diffrence, not statis like this program was trying to protray.

i missed the very beginning of the piece, but they were saying that the autistic behaviors they were dersbiing of the kid was very worrying, that he didn't want to interact with anyone and was in isolation.  i did alot of the things the kid did when i was younger (yes, i hid in pillows), and my parents didn't have too much of a problem with it (unless it was certian pillows that were off limits)  just as long as i didn't cause personal harm.  my parents weren't worried that it was something wrong, they knew i was having fun.

also the boy says that i was "rescued from isolation" about being nt.  nt isn't nesscarly better, it's just diffrent.

Yes, I watched it.  Normally I find shows like that disgusting, I hate watching operations, but I figured I ought to know what was being said.  The part about the tattoos was actually rather interesting, but I squirmed through the entire nose section.  

But the autism part--

Essentially, they said he was normal until two years, then he stopped being social, and started being wierd.  The way they said it, too, was just outrageous: "He became obsessed with spinning objects and playing in cushions and blankets."  It was hideously melodramatic.  

And it was so wonderful and happy when he started playing sports!  If that doesn't mean your brain is okay, I don't know what does! </sarcasm>

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy climbing, which is definitely a sport, but really!  Surely there is something to be said for scholarship?  But I don't remember them mentioning any of the kid's special interests (I admit my attention may have lapsed by the end as I turned it off after the son-rise segment was over--really needed the sleep at that point) and I get the feeling they think he shouldn't have any.  

As for making progress in special ed, I've been in special ed, and it's even less scholarly than other areas of public education--one time I was supposed to do something with this grid of pictures to "learn."  I think they were playing bingo, but to be perfectly honest I was more focused on the book I was reading!  Of course, it was "least restrictive environment" so they didn't stop me, but I could just as easily have done that at home.  It wasn't long before I was put back in a normal classroom.  Still poorly designed (I needed an aide throughout my public school career), very easy to be distracted there, but at least there was something intellectual to pay attention to.  

I'm sure that there are many people that certain special ed programs can benefit, but I really do not think it is apropriate for an aspie.  The ideal, of course, would be a self-directed continuous progress curriculum based on individuality (exactly the sort of thing that is impossible in a government operation, but I digress), but even a normal classroom is better for someone of scholarly inclination.

Just watched it.

The first thing that's horrible is that (I think) they said he was a late talker, which makes the AS diagnosis innapropriate. And while descriving AS, they were quite cruel towards the rest of the spectrum.

Towards the beginning of the segment, the mother commented on having thought it was all her fault; she had not loved him enough. Seems that is the case since she put him through what is essentially "brainwashing therapy."

the first part of the segment, the mother must have bought into the old refrigator mother myth, that not loving him enough made him autistic.

and yes, he had a speech delay, so he should have been diagosed autistic, but in the show, they also say that most "autistics" are "mentally impared" in some way, which isn't true.

and another thing, normal isn't better, it's just in what you percive it.  i think autism is normal, and nt is werid.  in that persective, i think normal, which is autistic is better, because i like being autistic.  nt i find boring and very challenging.

They actually said "Asperger syndrome is high-IQ autism."  I wanted to scream.  Someone who doesn't even know the diagnostic criteria shouldn't be talking about it on TV.

I didn't watch that episode, I like Medical Incredible. When I saw the ad for this episode, I thought "Oh great some curbie BS". Apperantly I was right.