Misconceptions myths and stereotypes about autism

Well, it's why NeuroDiversity came together, stupid comments like that. I guess the faddists moved on from PTSD, once we pointed out that the D for Disordered mans we're completely dysfunctional, afraid to leave the house, dropped out of all social activity, and resolving it removes the protection from the fears and memories behind. The ND test for trendies's equally easy, ask them when it started.
 
Definitely a big need for change. When I asked for a referral my GP tried to put me off, saying that neurodivergence was a "popular thing" at the moment. Then the local CASS service has regularly sent me emails as if I was a parent with am autistic child, rather than an autistic adult. They also don't run any services where you can bring along a baby - so a stereotype that autistic people can't be parents. I've tried to educate in each of these instances but as with all discrimination it's a big burden on the individual. More education needed.
I honestly don't think top down law making has much impact. Despite laws, equality in the fields of race and gender aren't moving much. Usually a big shout out in the media achieves results for individuals but doesn't develop a change of heart in the population.
I would suggest starting at the beginning - all ( no private/ religious schools) children attend their local primary school with small enough groups and enough TRAINED specialist staff to help all the children learn to accept each other as is and offer help and support as they can. That's not to support the child with difference but so the child considered neurotypical does some learning about difference.
Second problem will be to get parents to accept the idea!
 
I honestly don't think top down law making has much impact. Despite laws, equality in the fields of race and gender aren't moving much. Usually a big shout out in the media achieves results for individuals but doesn't develop a change of heart in the population.
I would suggest starting at the beginning - all ( no private/ religious schools) children attend their local primary school with small enough groups and enough TRAINED specialist staff to help all the children learn to accept each other as is and offer help and support as they can. That's not to support the child with difference but so the child considered neurotypical does some learning about difference.
Second problem will be to get parents to accept the idea!
That sounds like a wonderful environment to learn in for everyone!
 
That sounds like a wonderful environment to learn in for everyone!
I'm still after better understanding of what we actually are, given we've the proverbial 12 Blind Men and the Elephant going on in current diagnosis. Or is it elephants?
What is it that makes us think differently? Set overload/meltdown aside, that's a secondary result, starting at the beginning, are your perceptions different, a sixth sense, other forms of awareness (I've postulated awareness of the intangible and hyperfunctionalities, for example), did you build a large knowledge base as a kid, how do you use it, how do you deliver the results? That's a process approach, but the skills also extend to influencing others covertly, empathically.
 
I'm still after better understanding of what we actually are, given we've the proverbial 12 Blind Men and the Elephant going on in current diagnosis. Or is it elephants?
What is it that makes us think differently? Set overload/meltdown aside, that's a secondary result, starting at the beginning, are your perceptions different, a sixth sense, other forms of awareness (I've postulated awareness of the intangible and hyperfunctionalities, for example), did you build a large knowledge base as a kid, how do you use it, how do you deliver the results? That's a process approach, but the skills also extend to influencing others covertly, empathically.
I found reading ' The Four Agreements' helpful. Written by a cardiologist of Toltec heritage after an out of body experience. The description of each of us growing up in a bubble created through life's experiences. That individually created bubble distorts how we see the rest of the world.
It was a viewpoint that made sense to me.
 
That sounds like a wonderful environment to learn in for everyone!
I'm a retired teacher who dislikes the current systems. Though on media reports it sounds like Finland has the healthiest model. In the 80s I read a translation of Althusser's 'Schools as Systems of Social Control'. It was a gut punch realising the truth of it.
 
Of course they are, but it comes from the charitable angle of giving those unable to be original some framework, even if dogmatic, to stop them drifting out of total ignorance into serious trouble. The application of philosophy isn't that common, and the maths from my last tested IQ 153-4 is a nightmare: let's put it this way, the distance from there to the median (the most common IQ) is the same from the median to barely functional - the problem being that there's not many off the end, but half of humanity blow that midpoint. Even in the other half, I was barred from accessing those with an IQ compatible to mine, so there was no point. They gave up on us with Dabrowski, completely breaching Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:
  1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
  2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
  3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
In my case, how can you educate an 8 year old whose General Knowledge tests as that of a 14 year old, when there are those in the class who can barely read? By 11, I was into true spookery, by 14, as a researcher, I'd made my first permanent mark on the world. I was fortunate in my neighbours, I avoided the pitfalls which brought Sabisky down, but who knows what else I examined out of unbridled intellectual curiosity? The real point wasn't that, though, the attack was simple feral xenophobia, and my response is based in that experience, over 60 years, which is a fairish sample. The US has a Gifted provision, but doesn't understand what it means!
Before you can teach, you must know your subject. They don't.
 
I'm still after better understanding of what we actually are, given we've the proverbial 12 Blind Men and the Elephant going on in current diagnosis. Or is it elephants?
What is it that makes us think differently? Set overload/meltdown aside, that's a secondary result, starting at the beginning, are your perceptions different, a sixth sense, other forms of awareness (I've postulated awareness of the intangible and hyperfunctionalities, for example), did you build a large knowledge base as a kid, how do you use it, how do you deliver the results? That's a process approach, but the skills also extend to influencing others covertly, empathically.
In the U.K. supermarkets for example, controlled by the corporatist leftists in service to their deep state globalist masters, we as sick and disabled people are simply regarded as “freaks and weirdos” with “mental health issues” - plans by U.K. Labour under Starmer as PM want to abolish the disability discrimination act of 2010 and the globalists want to abolish”euthanise” all over 30’s in 2030, which is really a code for “euthanising” all sick and disabled people, as they are already doing via the DWP, trying to force sick and disabled people into employment (when there clearly are no jobs) and most businesses don’t want to take up the role of “hand-holding” disabled people in many workplaces, yet also, forcing sick and disabled people into employment, in at least some cases, can make their conditions worse - it just shows the level of contempt that Labour and their deep state globalist masters have for sick and disabled people in a supposedly civilised society and is therefore a moral and ethical issue
 
Of course they are, but it comes from the charitable angle of giving those unable to be original some framework, even if dogmatic, to stop them drifting out of total ignorance into serious trouble. The application of philosophy isn't that common, and the maths from my last tested IQ 153-4 is a nightmare: let's put it this way, the distance from there to the median (the most common IQ) is the same from the median to barely functional - the problem being that there's not many off the end, but half of humanity blow that midpoint. Even in the other half, I was barred from accessing those with an IQ compatible to mine, so there was no point. They gave up on us with Dabrowski, completely breaching Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:

In my case, how can you educate an 8 year old whose General Knowledge tests as that of a 14 year old, when there are those in the class who can barely read? By 11, I was into true spookery, by 14, as a researcher, I'd made my first permanent mark on the world. I was fortunate in my neighbours, I avoided the pitfalls which brought Sabisky down, but who knows what else I examined out of unbridled intellectual curiosity? The real point wasn't that, though, the attack was simple feral xenophobia, and my response is based in that experience, over 60 years, which is a fairish sample. The US has a Gifted provision, but doesn't understand what it means!
Before you can teach, you must know your subject. They don't.
I believe as an Irish patriot and on moral grounds, that fundamentally, parents have an absolute right to homeschool thier children if they so choose - I do not trust globalist deep state bodies like the UN
 
I believe as an Irish patriot and on moral grounds, that fundamentally, parents have an absolute right to homeschool thier children if they so choose - I do not trust globalist deep state bodies like the UN
As long as they're actually able and committed to do so. It's been a dismal failure in this sector for sure, as the diagnoses were a stepping stone to exclusion and thence criminality in an unrepresentatively high number of cases. As one OP put it yesterday, criminality was bing used as a diagnostic marker.
 
We have to bring it back to its simplest and most basic terms, especially education about autism in Primary and Secondary Schools and we need strong laws to protect the rights of those diagnosed and with serious legal obligations placed on health providers - since my later in life diagnosis in 2021, I’m no closer to getting any proper post-diagnostic assessment, an essential and vital path to getting appropriate post-diagnostic adult supports and frankly, this is a moral and ethical issue
 
As an exteacher I dislike the school structure. Why are kids herded according to age? Why assume mental/ emotional development corelates with age? Not that emotional development is catered for anyway. Funny how all classes in streamed or set schools even out at around 30 pupils. Suggesting that each group of 30 just happen to be at the same ability level.
Start times have got earlier to meet the needs of working parents when research has shown secondary age kids need a later start because of sleep needs.
The whole structure has very little to do with meeting the needs of the pupils - it's about training them.to fit in and do as their told.
 
Have a look at the American Gifted education stream, which focuses on precocious prodigy. This week's implosions brings me more to the fore, and that might impact anyone with Giver-giftedness, in the 1 Corinthians 12 v4-11 sense, hyper-skills.

30 kids is 3x 10-kid packets, 1 being helped, 1 defining problems, 1 getting to grips with the work. 10 is about the maximum interpersonal activity an adult can handle. Yes, I've instructed squaddies.

A lot of it's because teachers are often challenged themselves, so focus on problem kids rather than the Sapsbisky s who had no guidance.
 
As long as they're actually able and committed to do so. It's been a dismal failure in this sector for sure, as the diagnoses were a stepping stone to exclusion and thence criminality in an unrepresentatively high number of cases. As one OP put it yesterday, criminality was bing used as a diagnostic marker.
I still see stupid comments and discriminatory comments and attitudes directed against autistic people such as “you are autistic because you were not slapped often enough and hard enough by your parents when you were a child” or “you are autistic because you got a vaccine as a child” (vaccine damage in childhood) or “you have a “hidden agenda” for wanting to be diagnosed now” and some suggesting that “there is too much over-diagnosis of autism” - well, if the latter is true, then it is equally true of those pushing people towards diagnosis in adulthood, because they know perfectly well that there is only autism support in childhood, not in adulthood, so the true intentions and motivations of those pushing adults towards autism diagnosis must be fully questioned and investigated
 
As I've said countless times, I sailed through life in utter ignorance, possibly helped by good foundations in theatre so I could shape-shift easily. The diagnosis was forced on me on top of a shedload of other BS which presumed Neurotypicality and was wrong. That's because they've built a fabulation by not listening to us. Both Attwood's misclassification and the fundamental errors in the original diagnostic base led me at times to give up in complete revulsion, which in fact helped me clarify the mendacity in the noise, and finally summon up the courage to face the reality that some poor sod had to draw the short straw of being the biggest snurge in existence and that poor sod was me.
 
Definitely a big need for change. When I asked for a referral my GP tried to put me off, saying that neurodivergence was a "popular thing" at the moment. Then the local CASS service has regularly sent me emails as if I was a parent with am autistic child, rather than an autistic adult. They also don't run any services where you can bring along a baby - so a stereotype that autistic people can't be parents. I've tried to educate in each of these instances but as with all discrimination it's a big burden on the individual. More education needed.
That’s true for a lot of mental health services I think, not being able to take a child. And a lot of mums can’t access the service without being able to take their child. And mums of young kids need more help than most really too.
 
I'm still after better understanding of what we actually are, given we've the proverbial 12 Blind Men and the Elephant going on in current diagnosis. Or is it elephants?
What is it that makes us think differently? Set overload/meltdown aside, that's a secondary result, starting at the beginning, are your perceptions different, a sixth sense, other forms of awareness (I've postulated awareness of the intangible and hyperfunctionalities, for example), did you build a large knowledge base as a kid, how do you use it, how do you deliver the results? That's a process approach, but the skills also extend to influencing others covertly, empathically.
My knowlege and experience is way below that of most people in this forum, given my own childhood experiences of the Irish state education system, still largely governed in the 1970’s by still dominant Catholic Social Teachings, where I was raised a Vatican II Catholic myself (I since became a traditional Catholic), but since my later in life diagnosis in 2021, given accounts of those in the Irish truth and patriot movement, they talked about teaching children (how) to think, rather than (what) to think, which they consider to be indoctrination, mental programming, brainwashing and mind control of children (as part of the globalist agenda) in Irish state schools today - what I find horrific as a conservative-minded older gay man about this, is how they are teaching Irish primary school children (and even in preschool) about things like trans issues, gay issues, gay politics, gay sexual morality and identity politics, of how they are teaching children to hate themselves and I honestly believe that no child should be taught this stuff below the age of 21 nor should they be dragged into the culture wars by activist teachers who were clearly radicalised in the universities - I strongly believe that this content has no place, especially not in a primary school curriculum, just like “drag queen story time”
 
It's super frustrating to see those attitudes still around. Awareness makes a huge difference. When people learn about autism, they realize it’s not just about strict rules; everyone's experience is unique. More open conversations and education could really help break down those misconceptions.
The only way that these attitudes can be robustly challenged at every level and in every way is by a legal framework of strong, radical and strictly enforced legislation with severe penalties for non-compliance, both to force a change in attitudes and to give us a breathing space, a datum from which we have the freedom to create a world based on common sense, respect and dignity, allowing the grown up, sensible people, the professionals, to do their work without hindrance, rather than the current situation