I don't think that is what she meant. I do know she is not a fan of ABA and is one of the few peers we have who consistently says that there are other ways to help young people.

       As far as what she thinks of people at the protests, I think it is a stretch to imply that she thinks they are all bums. I have never heard her say that.

                                          Jerry Newport

        Well, one thing I take exception to is that Temple is quick to generalize without grounds to do so. Part of it is because as a PhD, she gets away with it. Part of it is because she was the first of us to really gain public recognition, officially diagnosed. She was the only one for a long time and she is not really used to being challenged.

      For example, she just assumed that I am not a visual thinker and told an audience that. I was in the audience and politely corrected her after the talk and she hasn't made that mistake again

      So I doubt if Temple can say for sure what the makeup is of the protests. But I agree with her that if it is mostly aspies, their expression of autism is relatively mild compared to the full dose but that is another generalization which will not be completely accurate.

                                 Jerry Newport

          That is my take on how she feels, based on more dinners I have shared with her than I can count. Temple, however, does take a dim view of people she regards as "professional auties." In that regard, I think she tends to forget the breaks she had that most of us didn't enjoy.

    Temple was born filthy-rich, availed of the best services in her day, was mentored into a career and never really had to work a day of her adult life, thanks to the royalties her family continues to receive for the invention of a grand-parent ( one of her grand-fathers invented a transponder, used in aviation to help locate airplanes )

      However, Temple was wise enough to use those breaks. I just think she is a little harsh on some of the folks who have "gotten lucky" and found that life after their books etc was preferable to the relative misery of their lives before. ( and I am not talking about myself here

                         Jerry Newport

   Jerry:     I got a college diploma with no clue what to do with it. I couldn't make it through interviews and had no useful help. I could get a PhD now but at 57, why bother?

Same here.  When I graduated, I had no idea that the interviewers were going to discriminate against me because of my voice and body language.   I didn't know what was going on.

I'm not sure if the reason my parents didn't tell me was because they didn't know, or didn't want to upset me, or just thought I didn't need to work anyway because I was female.

After staying home with my kids for several years, I was able to figure out the workplace enough to get a reasonably good job, but I certainly could have avoided a lot of stress and confusion if I'd had some career guidance when I was younger.

     Jerry: Took me over twenty years to finally get a decent job. That was because a friend of mine, on the local ASA board, helped me get hired at UCLA. Temple has no clue how hard it has been for most of us and I remind her whenever I can, politely

Yikes. Thats pretty uncomfortable reading. Thanks for posting that Amy.

That's the story of my life!

You made a very good point that the quality of life for an autistic person born into the upper/middle classes can be a lot different to the average aspie/autie situation. The combination of autism and being working class can be a very unattractive scene.

When I read "Thinking in pictures" by Grandin I got the impression that she was very much an advocate of the autistic point of view, and a strong advocate of developing the strong points of autists rather than emphasizing developing the weakest points to a "normal" level, which is what most NTs seem to want to do. I also thought she is a fine example of how far an autist can go career-wise, given the optimal support and some lucky breaks.

It looks to me like she is saying that there are some autistics who need therapy of some kind, so that they can become more independent. I don't think she meant to put aspies down.

I often jump from one thought to another thinking that the missing links are obvious or have already been stated. It confuses people, and I think that is what happened with Temple's statement. She was saying that even though mild aspies don't see any use for therapy, it can be of use for auties who are elsewhere on the spectrum. I think.....

      I think you are right about what Temple means. Too many of us see our own experience as defining the spectrum and that just isn't accurate no matter who we are. It is like parents who say, " if you aren't like my kid, you can't possibly be autistic or ever have been."

                               Jerry Newport

Even now in the state of Australia were I live there is a barrage of advice to parents from the govt and various kinds of "helping" professionals that argue that deviations from "normal" development, including speech development, are caused by a poor environment for the child, even emotional deprivation.

We have had high-profile Australians (Fiona Stanley, Mem Fox, Mark Latham) pleading in the media for parents to read books to their kids, and they really do seem to believe that this kind of intervention prevents all literacy and language difficulties before they start. These people don't seem to know anything about dyslexia or SPLD or autism or any other neurologically-based condition that can delay or compromise language or literacy development, or else they assume that these conditions are too rare or unimportant to bother considering. So this gives rise to a common belief in the populace that kids who are a bit slow or different in development are being neglected or mistreated by their parents.

I have to say, for the people promoting ABA. I don't really feel I should include the parents, they might be conned into sending their kids to these programs, and just not know any better.

They're no better than Nazis.