Neurodiversity » Autism

Predictions (regarding aspects of autism)

Andrew Lehman — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:05:43 +0000

Writing these daily entries, I discover something new almost as often as I record something I’ve earlier discovered. A year ago this is what I collected connected to the hypotheses or predictions of this work.

1. Relative testosterone levels in males and females inform matrifocal vs. patrifocal societal structure. High T females choose low T males for their cooperative abilities, creating more egalitarian, matrifocal cultures. High T males choose low T females for their ability to be the complement to male authority, forming patrifocal cultures.

2. Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.

3. Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed.

4. Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics while autistic females should show less neoteny than contemporary populations.

5. If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, the two variables will be related in that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

6. Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm.

7. A high percentage of artistic, narcissistic males and females with borderline personality disorder, particularly those from families with left-handers, will have more frequent incidence of autism in their family.

8. Narcissistic males will frequently mate with borderline personality females. The males will have lower testosterone, the females higher testosterone than the average.

9. The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years of no interbreeding, should reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism.

10. Among contemporary cultures, patrifocal societies will exhibit increased sexual dimorphism compared to matrifocal cultures.

11. Over the last six thousand years, female brain size will decrease at a smaller rate than male brain size, or even increase over the same period because the female is being selected for an exhibition of neotenous characteristics.

12. Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Watching teeth grow smaller over millions of years, might researchers find that they have grown larger in males the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold?

13. Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, then we might observe a display of personality and physiological features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of eons. An older mother should more frequently have children with maturational delay, including autism.

14. Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone levels), particularly those that are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children.

15. The teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. It should be reversed for females.

16. If the low testosterone (T) males and high T females are late born, and high T males and low T females are the oldest children in a family or the first born, then first-borns will mate with first-borns and late-borns will mate with late-borns a higher percentage of the time than would normally occur.

17. In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the females earlier and earlier.

18. Hypothesizing that social structure has political correlates, it would be likely that in a politically conservative family, if liberals would emerge, it would be with the youngest sons and daughters. One would also expect a higher incidence of divorce or serial monogamy with youngest children.

19. Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin.

20. Equatorial peoples transplanted to northern climates will display higher percentages of maturational-delayed male children, and maturational-accelerated females, including autistics, with the births congregating in certain seasons.

21. If mother’s allergies influence testosterone levels, for example, hay fever causing testosterone increases, then allergies might be a factor in the cause of autism in her children. Birthdays of these autistics should cluster in certain months.

22. Female infanticide is patrifocal culture’s method for keeping only high T males in the procreation pool. In societies engaging in female infanticide, there are far fewer females than males to mate. The males considered least desirable as husbands by the fathers of the females to be married go mateless. Female infanticide is the co-option of female selection by patrifocal society to maintain a patrifocal society over time.

23. Puberty or progenesis in humans when dropped to a younger age by several years has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to an increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

24. Eating healthy (the caveman diet) brings puberty later and provides a longer time for the brain to grow. Putting autistic children on such a late-puberty-enhancing diet may enhance their ability to connect.

25. Periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, by changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts to increases in the variety of acceptable features in the procreation population will result in increases in cultural and technical variation. For example, if female infanticide is a tool used for patrifocal cultural stability, decreases in female infanticide over time within a culture will correlate with increases in societal and economic variation.

26. If rhythm and dance were the media driving human evolution through rituals of sexual selection, then the sound and feeling of nonstop rhythm may be necessary to encourage the development of an autistic child. Rhythmic environmental triggers may be essential to the healthy growth of maturational-delayed children. Comparing congenitally deaf left and right handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left handed group.

27. If neoteny is a powerful force influencing the transformation of society, then we might predict societal increases in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication as features of aboriginals and the very young are prolonged into the character of contemporary times.

28. Teleological interpretations of cultural evolution are often the observations of the dynamics of neoteny. By prolonging the features of the smallest bands into the largest societies–transparency, horizontal communication, equality–society is invested with specific features and a predictable direction.

…

Proceed to author’s FREE book download on this subject (The book is called Evolution, Autism and Social Change). 10 minute introductory video here.

Predictions first appeared at Shift Journal on November 30, 2009.

This re-posting (edited slightly for numbering) is part of a series of resurrections from Shift Journal’s archives.

Can One Assign the Wrong Intentions to Triangles?

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:37:51 +0000

I’ve recently run across two studies in which an ability to impute mental states and empathize with others was measured by having the research participants look at inanimate objects moving across a computer screen. Needless to say, I find this particular method rather questionable.

Here’s the rundown: A 2000 study by Abell, Happe, and Frith attempted to measure theory of mind by asking the participants to describe two moving triangles in computer animations. The researchers showed the animations to a group of adults, a group of eight-year-old autistic children, and a group of eight-year-old typically developing children. The animations were constructed by the authors to show random behavior, goal-directed behavior, and deceptive behavior. Most of the adults used intentional and emotional terms to describe the actions of the animations. The autistic children ascribed mental and intentional states to the triangles less often than the non-autistic children, and when they did ascribe mental states, the researchers described their answers as “inappropriate.”

A related 2006 study by Knickmeyer et al. attempted to measure whether fetal testosterone is inversely associated with empathy. To do so, the researchers analyzed the levels of fetal testosterone in the amniotic fluid of 38 typically developing children who had reached the age of four and, as in the 2000 study, showed the children cartoons with two moving triangles. The result was that more girls than boys used terms reflective of relationships, emotion, intention, and mental states to describe the triangles, and that levels of fetal testosterone were directly correlated with a lack of intentional thinking and the use of emotion-neutral propositions. The researchers reached the conclusion that the result shows a correlation between fetal testosterone and social development. Because a previous study had shown that autistic children score more poorly than typically developing children on the same task, the researchers also concluded that their findings support the extreme-male-brain theory of autism — that is, the theory that autistic people have male-gendered brains.

Before I continue, let me summarize the logic of both studies:

a) Autistic children do not impute mental states to inanimate objects as often as non-autistic children and adults,

and

b) Typically developing children who had higher levels of testosterone in their amniotic fluid do not impute mental states to inanimate objects as often as children with lower levels,

therefore,

c) Autistic people have extreme male brains.

You’ll note a few missing pieces in the logic here. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the researchers failed to pose a number of critical questions:

1) How does a failure to anthropomorphize inanimate objects indicate a problem with mentalizing, empathy, or pro-social behavior? An alternative explanation would be a bias in the autistic children toward seeing the world as it really is.

2) Given that triangles are inanimate objects and don’t have mental states, how could anyone possibly measure, scientifically or otherwise, whether the mental state one ascribes to a triangle is correct? Showing the participants a computer animation and telling they’ve gotten the answer wrong is like giving respondents a Rorschach test and telling them they’ve failed.

3) What, exactly, in a scientific paper, is the objective, quantitative definition of “inappropriate”? To my ears, the word translates as “You haven’t given the answers we had in mind when we set up the test.”

4) How exactly does a higher level of fetal testosterone make the culturally defined construct of “male” as “high systemizer/low empathizer” biologically determined in autistic brains?

Of course, the chief flaw in the study is the subjective nature of the ways in which the researchers view the cartoons. For instance, in the 2006 study, the researchers see the motions of two of the triangles as a mother coaxing her child to go outside, and they expect that their view will be shared by all of the participants. When the participants don’t see the shapes in the same way, the authors conclude that the participants are lacking in empathy and pro-social behavior. I can’t see any evidence that a failure to anthropomorphize inanimate objects indicates a problem with empathy or social relationships. An alternative explanation would be a bias toward simply calling a triangle a triangle, which is in no way opposed to empathic response.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because the same thought occurred to me: “Autistic people tend to take things literally. Of course they just see triangles. Why does that have anything to do with empathy?” But you see, in the logic of autism research, the fact that autistic people take things literally is itself evidence of impaired empathy and theory of mind. Here’s the (very circular) logic:

a) Autistic people take things literally because they have impaired theory of mind

and

b) Autistic people don’t ascribe mental states to inanimate objects, but see them literally,

therefore

c) Autistic people have impaired theory of mind.

Sometimes, it just amazes me that scientific studies purporting to result in objective and quantitative measures are informed by so much subjective bias. But of course, given that such studies are constructed from inside the consciousness of one set of human beings in order to describe the consciousness of another set of human beings, they are, by definition, permeated by subjectivity. It’s not the subjectivity I mind; if the subjectivity of the researchers were fully factored into the research, as is the case in qualitative research, then the issues would be clear for all to see, and the questionable nature of the conclusions would be more readily apparent. It’s the pretense of objectivity that I find most objectionable, and that I consider one of the most serious issues in the research.

Sources

Abell, Frances, Frances Happe, and Uta Frith. “Do triangles play tricks? Attributions of mental states to animated shapes in normal and abnormal development.” Cognitive Development 15, no. 1 (January-March 2000): 1-16. doi: 10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00014-9.

Knickmeyer, Rebecca, Simon Baron-Cohen, Peter Raggatt, Kevin Taylor, and Gerald Hackett. “Fetal testosterone and empathy.” Hormones and Behavior 49, no. 3 (2006): 282-292. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2005.08.010.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg blogs at Journeys with Autism, and presides at Autism and Empathy.

Can One Assign the Wrong Intentions to Triangles? appears here by permission.

The most recent installment in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s published memoirs is Blazing My Trail.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Non-speaking, “low-functioning”

Amy Sequenzia — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:45:58 +0000

I am autistic, non-speaking. I am also labeled “low-functioning”. This label is a pre-judgment based on what I cannot do. It makes people look at me with pity instead of trying to get to know me, listen to my ideas.

I am a self-advocate and I can type my thoughts. But, at the moment I show up with my communication device and an aide, my credibility, in the eyes of most neurotypical people, is diminished.

This is a constant battle for non-speaking autistic. Even the ones among us who have demonstrated, many times, their capabilities, and who have succeeded despite all the hurdles a disability imposes, these successful cases don’t seem to be enough to end the myths: that non-speaking autistic cannot self-advocate; that the so-called “low-functioning” cannot think by themselves, cannot have ideas or opinions.

We can, and we do. We keep moving forward despite the many labels we are given because it is assumed we need others to speak for us, to decide for us. Labels like: “low-functioning”, “severe”, “mentally retarded”, “needy”, “incompetent”. They all show how the neurotypical world sees someone like me. Someone who looks “more different”, acts “more different”, needs more help with things pre-determined, by the neurotypical, as simple tasks.

Looking very disabled or needing more physical help does not make us unable to think, being critical, being able to analyze.

There are too many neurotypical “experts” claiming to know more about us than ourselves. They say they can make us “better”, as if we are “not-right” or “wrong”. Most of them never thought about asking us what could make our lives more productive, less anxious; or try to understand a non-speaking autistic who has not yet found a way to communicate. All the conversation has been about “fixing” us, with the expectation that we finally look and act “more normal”.

Autism is a big spectrum. Some of us have better cognitive function; some of us might have intellectual disabilities; some take medication; most, if not all, have sensory issues. The ones labeled “low-functioning” need aides for everyday tasks.

For example: What does it mean if I don’t pick the right shape when asked? For the “experts”, it probably means that I am, in their words, “mentally retarded”. It is, in reality, more complex than that. It could be that my mind is obsessing over something else; it could be that I had a seizure or that the anti-seizure medication is making me extra drowsy; it could be that I believe I deserve a better treatment, since I am an adult and I am past childish tests. Even if I am indeed intellectually disabled, the fact that my opinion is being ignored remains.

Non-speaking autistics that fail to make eye contact, and that can’t say, or are never asked, why they can’t, also receive the “low functioning” label.

Forcing someone to make eye contact or insisting on assessments more appropriate for a child – with the inevitable “good job!” – are nothing more than a training program, a useless one. It causes more anxiety and does nothing to improve our self-esteem.

All the labels given to us only help to make myths seem like the reality. By classifying non-speaking autistic as low-functioning, one is lowering expectations for the autistic individual. He or she is not given a chance to express him/herself and maybe show hidden abilities.

We, autistic, have tried hard and accepted the neurotypical way of doing things to make it easier for non-autistic people to understand us, interact with us. Despite some progress there is still very little reciprocity. This is even more evident when the autistic person is one of the so-called “low functioning”. There is little patience in listening to us. When one of us succeeds, he or she is considered an extraordinary exception.

Look around. There are many of us trying to be heard. We did not put the “low” in “low-functioning” and we are speaking out. It is also up to the non-autistic to reciprocate in this communication exercise.

Amy Sequenzia’s Non–speaking, “low-functioning” is published here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

related: The Iceberg Speaks

Saving a Theory, Dismissing its Subjects

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:19:38 +0000

I’ve been spending the weekend putting together my preliminary research questions and a working bibliography for my graduate program. To my great surprise, I’ve actually been able to read some of the blazingly unempathetic papers about our supposed lack of empathy without spluttering in a fit of moral outrage every five minutes. I call that progress. In fact, I read several articles and found myself able to critique the problems in them rather effortlessly. I credit this development to two things: a) the critical theory I’ve been reading, which helps me to see the larger issues of power and privilege that weave themselves throughout the literature and b) my support network of over 40 people I can call on when the going gets tough.

And then, I read a 2004 article by Uta Frith, and I moved away from my stance of critical detachment toward one of absolute moral outrage.

There I was, enjoying a quiet day at home, reading by the woodstove, minding my own business, and wanting nothing more than to have an enjoyably uneventful time, when I stumbled upon the following piece of remarkably nuanced thinking and stellar prose in Frith’s Emanuel Miller lecture: Confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome:

“One way to describe the social impairment in Asperger syndrome is as an extreme form of egocentrism with the resulting lack of consideration for others.” (Frith 676)

Don’t you just love when these kinds of prejudicial statements rise up and punch you in the gut? I know I do. It’s just so much fun to read about myself in these terms. You have no idea. And what makes it all the more fun is that the irony of the statement is entirely lost on the writer. She engages in a prejudicial generalization about an entire group of people (otherwise known as a stereotype) and, in the same breath, tells us that we’re the ones with a “lack of consideration for others.”

And here I thought it was autistic people who couldn’t understand irony.

Now, you might not think it could get worse, but that’s because you haven’t read a lot of papers on autism and theory of mind. As it turns out, not only are we egocentric, but we’re unlike those “normal selfish” people who can use egocentrism to their advantage. At least, with them, someone gets something out of it, right? But with us — well, we just can’t help ourselves:

“The self-absorption and disregard of others is not like the strategy that a normal selfish person might deliberately adopt and flexibly use according to what is currently in his or her best interest. Autistic egocentrism, by contrast, appears to be non-deliberate and not determined by what might currently be in the best interest of the individual.” (Frith 676)

In other words, nature has made us selfish. We were just born that way. It’s taken us over and it’s out of our control.

And guess what happens once you peg a whole group of people as being egocentric and selfish? Everything becomes our fault. All the problems in our personal relationships? All our fault! All the problems in our social world? All our fault! You don’t believe me? Read on, my brothers and sisters:

“This egocentrism seems to present a huge difficulty in forming successful long-term interpersonal relationships. Spouses and family members can experience bitter frustration and distress. They are baffled by the fact that there is no mutual sharing of feelings, even when the Asperger individual in question is highly articulate.” (Frith 676)

Yes, you heard it here. We cause people “bitter frustration and distress.” Of course, they do not cause us “bitter frustration and distress.” No. Never. Just doesn’t happen. If we feel “bitter frustration and distress,” it’s all our damned fault for being so, you know, abnormal. If we were only normal, we wouldn’t feel frustrated and distressed. Problem solved!

And, of course, it’s absolutely UNHEARD OF to find a neurotypical person who has difficulty expressing his or her feelings. It just doesn’t happen. Those men I dated and broke up with because I couldn’t get them to articulate a feeling to save their lives? I must have misunderstood where they were coming from. When they were telling me I was hormonal — or refusing to speak altogether — I guess their body language was actually saying, “Yes, honey, I understand and am awash in feeling.”

But of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that, because apparently, I’m just not able to imagine what other people might be thinking. Or so says the author:

“One obstacle seems to be an inability on the part of the person with Asperger syndrome to put themselves into another person’s shoes and to imagine what their own actions look like and feel like from another person’s point of view. Another way to describe the social impairment is as a failure of empathy, involving a poor ability to be in tune with the feelings of other people.” (Frith 676)

I’ve just spent the weekend going through dozens and dozens of articles, and these kinds of statements keep coming up, over and over and over. I can only conclude that the researchers are perseverating on a theme. And I don’t mean for a day, or a week, or a month, but for years and years and years. It’s incredible. You’d think they’d be more flexible and want some change — a broadening of perspective, so to speak — instead of this incessant sameness.

But you know what happens when you try to separate a person from his or her perseverations? It’s not a happy moment. Witness then, the way that the author responds to the fact that autistic people have been writing self-reflective narratives for some time. In a section whose title, “Listening to people with Asperger syndrome,” should really have been “Dismissing people with Asperger syndrome” (or did I miss the intentional irony?), the author makes the following assertions regarding people with Asperger’s who see themselves as having a different experience of the world and a unique perspective on life, rather than being a collection of deficits:

“Researchers and clinicians can agree with this to some extent. However, they may point out that a peculiar lack of insight and an egocentric viewpoint are typical of the syndrome, throwing doubt on at least some of the self-assessments of needs and expectations.” (Frith 681)

In other words, the “experts” have determined that we lack insight and suffer from egocentricism, so whatever we say about our own desires, our own needs, our own experiences, and our own expectations of other people is suspect. Got that? If that’s not a perfect formula for disempowering hundreds of thousands of autistic people, I don’t know what is. And it very neatly closes off the potential for measuring the external validity of the research findings, too.

But, of course, those of us who reflect upon ourselves and others in insightful ways probably don’t have Asperger’s anyway:

“One problem with the autobiographical literature is that the authenticity of the diagnosis is not guaranteed” (Frith 681-682).

Will people ever get tired of the perseverative need to keep saying this? Would it be possible for them to just walk in our shoes and say, “Oh, I see. Now I understand. Thank you for providing a reality check on my lab tests”? Would that really be so terribly difficult?

But the zeal to save a theory from the clutches of reality does not simply extend to talking about our inherent egocentricism and casting doubt on our diagnoses. Oh no. It moves into misinterpretations so extreme that they beggar belief. Take, for example, the following:

“The autobiographies of individuals with Asperger syndrome indicate a high degree of retrospective self-analysis that came with adulthood. This can be seen, for instance, in Gunilla Gerland’s autobiography (1997) and in Clare Sainsbury’s collection of over twenty individuals’ reminiscences of their school years (2000). These works suggest that self-knowledge and sharing of knowledge with others was poor in childhood.” (Frith 683)

So, let’s get this straight: Because we now look back on our childhoods and understand things that weren’t clear before, that in itself is evidence that we lacked self-knowledge and understanding of others as children. Of course, the questions that jump immediately to mind are the following: What self-reflective adult doesn’t look back on childhood and understand things that were opaque before? And what small child understands things the same way as an adult? When non-autistic people look back, reinterpret, and reweave the stories of their lives in narrative form, we laud them for being mature, creative, and insightful. But when autistic people look back, reinterpret, and reweave the stories of our lives in narrative form, we’re told it’s evidence that we lacked theory of mind in childhood.

Not too much confirmation bias there.

But the theory must be saved. Oh, yes. And its subjects must be dismissed.

Source

Frith, Uta. “Emanuel Miller lecture: Confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, no. 4 (May 2004): 672-686. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00262.x.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg blogs at Journeys with Autism, and presides at Autism and Empathy.

Saving a Theory, Dismissing its Subjects appears here by permission.

The most recent installment in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s published memoirs is Blazing My Trail.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Anatomy of an Autistic (V/V)

Julia Bascom — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:00:56 +0000

Anatomy Of An Autistic

So it looks as if I have two options. Pass and learn, perfect, the art of being a person I’m not. Or don’t, and let everyone else define me as some entwined version of monster and victim, pity and revulsion and terror.

But there’s actually a third option.

I can humanize myself. I can define myself. I can speak for myself, as myself.

I can find out who that self is.

I can learn what it is to be an autistic adult.

To be honest? I don’t have the faintest idea how to do that, and I don’t think you do either. It’s not as simple as flapping in public or typing on my laptop when speech is too much. All I know how to do is pass, and to interrupt that passing with moments of confusion, furious honesty, rawness and vulnerability. The emphasis in education and intervention is to make the child look nonautistic, not to prepare them for a future as an autistic adult. And there a million more posts in here, and I will go back to writing them eventually, but the point is that a whole generation of us have graduated, we can pass now, and we don’t know who we are or what to do.

The anatomy of an autistic is a lot of sketched out, smudged charcoal lines and open uncontained spaces. It’s a free space to develop. It’s something that will fill in as disability is humanized, normalized, as autism is accepted, as I am allowed to be who and what I am and to drop the poor facade that got me so far without risking losing it all.

The anatomy of an autistic is perhaps a scary thing. So few people have filled it in before, and even those fleshed-out illustrations have been crossed out by the dehumanizing, pitying, horrifying interpretations superimposed by others. But there’s a whole generation of us coming.

And I? I at least am going to work it out.

Hi, my name is Julia, and I’m autistic. It’s probably the best thing about me. Check your assumptions at the door.

We write to fill a silence here.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Anatomy of an Autistic (IV/V)

Julia Bascom — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:00:40 +0000

Anatomy Of A Monster

And what none of us passers want to talk about is what our passing does to those who can’t. Passing is necessitated because without it, we would be stuck being a Scary Disabled Person and everybody knows how well their lives are allowed to go. There is a pervasive, fundamental belief that disabled people are monsters, or else possessed by monsters. That disability is monstrous, and disabled people, by implication are either victims or monsters ourselves. And therefore any and all talk of accessibility, universal design, human rights, equality, self-determination, alternative modes of communication, interdependence, what it means to be human and in a communication, what needs are and what it is to have them, etc etc etc goes out the window. Our bodies and lives and minds can be medicalized and politicized, but our voices are silenced and we get redefined as not quite, or not even close to, human.

Maybe it’s that view, of autism as monster and we as victims, which makes people recoil so much from the word, from the idea, from the concept of someone who will need 24/7 assistance and someone who won’t but has the same label. People don’t know how to treat victims, except by recoiling, as if bad luck is catching. People don’t know how to treat disabled people except as someone blend of horrific and pitiful, and by doing so we are dehumanized and re-conceived as something manageable and avoidable and yes, monstrous. Unhuman.

To be disabled is to be dehumanized. To pass is to be re-humanized as an acceptable, safe version of yourself that does not actually exist.

Well. Hi. My name is Julia, and I am autistic, and I am neither horrific nor pitiable nor monstrous, and if I am so what? And I pass. Mostly. For now.

That’s right. There’s a monster in your midst.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Anatomy of an Autistic (III/V)

Julia Bascom — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:00:57 +0000

Anatomy Of A Passing Person

Passing is….

Passing is…

Well, passing is difficult, first of all. It’s constant anxiety, calculation, cognition, because remember, those of us who pass are trying to be a person we aren’t, a member of a species that, should it know our true identity, expels us. The trick to passing, to passing well, is to make it look natural.

Passing means repressing, memorizing rules, sublimating, jumping through hoops, and turning tricks so we can get the human treatment. It means making it so that when you reveal your diagnosis to someone they “never would have guessed it”.

Passing is supposed to be a good thing. It’s convenient for the enabled and beneficial for the passing. The passing gets college, health care, respect, an audience to speak to, friends, work, a house, etc.

What I want to know is why do I have to pass in order to implicitly deserve any of these things?

What I want to know is since when did being treated like a human being have requirements?

When I am actively, deliberately passing as nonautistic, I am supporting power structures I benefit from. I am saying through my actions that it is okay to divide the human race along these lines, to treat people who fall outside of these lines like this, to save all the privilege and benefits and nice things for the safe normal people, etc. And you know, there are a million reasons to deliberately do this, some of them okay and a lot not, but in the end I am still supporting and ironically benefiting from a power structure designed to oppress and disable me.

But there is nuance to this. Silence is safety, of course, and being safe is important. And we aren’t all cut out to be radical, kyriarchy-smashing activists.

And what of those of us who pass without really trying all that hard?

There is a certain amount of ridiculousness to that idea, of course. Of course we have to try hard, speaking (speaking!) and socializing and reacting and parroting like the neurotypicals around us takes effort even (especially?) when we don’t realize it. Being a fake person, a half person, a glass girl or a ghost takes work. We tend to burn out eventually, no matter how brilliant a job of faking it we were doing. Or maybe we develop depression, anxiety, dissociation secondary to our autism as a result of this facade? Perhaps we take an increasingly upped litany of pills to cope. At the very least, we spend so much time learning how to be an acceptable human being that we forget, or never learn, how to be an autistic one.

Or to question why the one isn’t the same as the other.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Anatomy of an Autistic (II/V)

Julia Bascom — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:00:57 +0000

Anatomy Of A Meltdown

My brain likes to alternate between being made of swiss cheese (full of holes to fall in and through and down) and wax (for optimal melting). I have meltdowns a lot, in part because I use the term “melting” very broadly. Meltdowns, moments in which one’s brain melts, are a physical thing, though they look different moment-to-moment and person-to-person. But they all start out the same, with that pressure behind the skull and the feeling of your thoughts evaporating, your language freezing, your body retracting inward. It’s called shutdown, meltdown, violent meltdown, tantrum, outburst, dissociation, a million different things, but they all refer to the moment wherein your body or your brain, independent of your vote, decides that it simply cannot and will not continue to function in this charade that wasn’t really working anyways and…

Well.

Maybe you don’t bang your head, scream, throw things, leave. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I incur brain damage. Sometimes I just sit frozen for an hour.

Passing tends to come to a halt when this happens.

Meltdowns are of course a bit more complicated than all of this. What they are, to me, is a descent. A black hole opens up and draws you in, in, in. It’s empty and silent and ringing with screams and your intestines get itchy and try to crawl up out your throat, or maybe that is just the pressure everywhere building, building until it explodes out or locks you down.

The worst part about any of it, for me, is the silence.

The complete and utter silence. Silence so deep it fills up your ears. Silence like a scream.

And what’s worse is that, when I’m melting, as I enter or exit, I am silent too.

It’s why I type so frenetically. Why I get so upset when the words don’t mesh just right, or when they build up and won’t come out. That silence is to be avoided at all costs. When I’m silent, when I have no voice, I might as well not exist. I don’t, really. I’m not properly a person. I must speak, type, make my voice project over their heads and into someone’s ears.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Anatomy of an Autistic (I/V)

Julia Bascom — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 06:00:46 +0000

Writing is a struggle against silence. ~Carlos Fuentes

Passing as a non-autistic, passing as neurotypical, means that you never get to actually be human. Be a person. You just learn how to get really good at faking it. It’s not good, it’s not healthy, and yet how can you say no to a trick that gets you the human treatment, college, a job, a future, some sham at self-determination?

But that’s all it is: a sham.

These things have costs and consequences. You can bottle things up for so long; you can pretend to be someone and something you aren’t and never will be; you can do things which are exhausting, even actively harmful in pursuit of “passing”…

But in the end you are still an autistic. An autistic who doesn’t know how to be an autistic, much less a person, never mind an autistic person. And that’s an important thing to know how to do.

How to be.

Who to be.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

If Public Opinion Penned an Autism Diagnosis …

Autism & Oughtisms — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:00:43 +0000

I’ve spent far too much time lately fighting with those who have no understanding of what is required for an autism diagnosis. The arguments and myths I’ve encountered are at times upsetting, and other times absurdly ridiculous. So I’ve decided to pull together the most common “diagnostic criteria” that I’ve encountered, into a brand-new public-opinion-approved autism diagnosis:

****

Autism and Aspergers Diagnosis (note: Rett’s, PDD-NOS and CDD are not part of the Autism Spectrum. Anyone who mentions these terms must be met with a stony confused silence. Aspergers may be mis-spelt as “Assburgers” in order to provide a sense of personal superiority, and the illusion of cleverness, as required.)

The person being diagnosed must be no younger than three years old. Any diagnosis prior to age three is necessarily an incorrect diagnosis and is evidence of a paranoid parent seeking attention. A diagnosis after the age of three is too late for any meaningful intervention and is evidence of inattentive parenting. Diagnosis on the third birthday is the ideal.

An autistic person must not be able to lie or empathise with others. If you can catch your child out in a lie, teach them to lie, or to care what you feel, then your child was never autistic.

All autistic children are extraordinarily beautiful in physical appearance; if your child is beautiful, and they don’t lie to you, they might have the autism. It is important to call your local naturopath as soon as possible.

All autistic people have ears that are ultra-sensitive to touch. To rule out a diagnosis, touch the ear. If the person doesn’t cry or rage, it isn’t autism.

Autistic people walk on their tip-toes. If your child walks on their tip-toes at all as a preschooler, they are probably autistic. Avoid ballet class. Lots of extraordinarily beautiful people can be found in a ballet class too; the coincidence of tip-toe walking and physical beauty in ballet classes, is a growing area of research.

Autistic people are all exceptionally talented in at least one of the following ways. They can:

■ Solve a Rubik’s Cube. If you meet an autistic person, give them a Rubik’s Cube. (Or just throw a bunch of toothpicks at their feet; they like counting those too.)
■ Perform astounding mathematical feats. No autistic person requires a calculator.
■ Hack a major computer system, or
■ Write a major computer system (then hack it).

If a child is intellectually gifted, they have Aspergers. If they are shy, they have Aspergers. If they are intellectually gifted and shy, they have severe Aspergers.

In regards to cause, autism either has (a) no known cause; no one has ever figured out a single cause, genetic or otherwise, or (b) is known to be caused by immunizations, bad parenting and excessive computer use. The causes listed under (b) can also be generally categorized as “shitty parenting decisions” as an overall category. The “shitty parenting decisions” can take the general form of either (a) active abuse, or (b) neglect, and often both. The parent is to blame. Even when you know the genetic cause, the parent is to blame. If the parent isn’t to blame, it’s not autism.

Autism can be completely cured by a change in diet or by chelation. If the treatment is ineffective, then you are not doing enough of it and must do it more. Autism never improves with age, so if you were using a treatment and the child improved at all, the only possibility is the treatment has worked. The plural of anecdotal evidence, is “data.” The more emotional the anecdote, the better the data.

In summary, if your child looks extraordinarily beautiful, is exactly three years old, tip-toes, counts toothpicks, cries when you touch their ears, and has horrible parents, you should treat them for heavy metal poisoning.

****

Or, you could just look up the actual diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum conditions.

If Public Opinion Penned an Autism Diagnosis … first appeared at Autism & Oughtisms, and is republished here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Delayed Reactions

Meg Evans — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:00:05 +0000

Going away to college can be overwhelming at first. Being in a different place, away from family, and having so much to do… it’s a lot to handle. Even after it looks like everything has settled into a manageable routine, that may not mean the adjustment period is over.

When I started college, I thought that it was going pretty well after the first month or two. My roommate was friendly, I knew how to get to my classes and meals, and the coursework didn’t seem too hard. There was some annoying stuff, like the ugly flickering fluorescent light tubes in the dorm and the noisy people down the hall who always wanted to party all night; but I thought I could deal with that, too.

One day in November, while I was standing in line in the crowded cafeteria, I just burst out crying for what seemed like no reason at all. I hadn’t been feeling sad about anything in particular, and I wasn’t worrying about my grades or for any other reason that I could identify. As far as I could tell, my life had been going along just fine. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. What was wrong with me? Had I suddenly developed some mysterious new illness for which I needed treatment?

I was advised to go talk with one of the school’s counselors, which I did; but the counselor didn’t seem to have much of an explanation for what had happened, either. After a while, I decided that it was just something I was never going to understand. I didn’t give it any more thought until many years later.

Then something similar happened after my husband and I bought our first home. Getting used to a new place and having to manage the money carefully was a challenge, but I thought it was all under control. I decorated the house for our first Christmas there. One afternoon, when we were getting ready to go out, I got my coat and started to put on my scarf. All of a sudden I literally didn’t know what to do with this fuzzy soft thing I was holding. I couldn’t remember how to wrap the scarf around my neck. I ended up walking outside just holding the scarf, wondering what the heck had gone wrong with my brain.

Eventually I realized it’s not all that unusual for people to have delayed reactions to stressful events. The human brain is very complex, and there’s a lot going on beneath the level of awareness. When we are putting most of our conscious energy into coping with a new situation — whether it’s going away to college or something else — we may not be aware of just how much subconscious effort goes into it as well. Every now and again that subconscious processing takes up the equivalent of too many CPU cycles and causes weird glitches to happen, just like on a computer. It doesn’t mean there is necessarily a major problem (although anyone who is having suicidal thoughts or other serious issues certainly should seek help), nor does it mean we can’t deal with change. It just means we’re human.

Meg Evans’ Delayed Reactions first appeared at Navigating College, and is republished here by permission.

Navigating College the book is available both for download and for purchase in print form, and is a project of The Autistic Self Advocacy Network. From the website:

Navigating College is an introduction to the college experience from those of us who’ve been there. The writers and contributors are Autistic adults, and we’re giving you the advice that we wish someone could have given us when we headed off to college. We wish we could sit down and have a chat with each of you, to share our experiences and answer your questions. But since we can’t teleport, and some of us have trouble meeting new people, this book is the next best thing.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Seeing the Best in Every Child: The Importance of Neurodiversity

Thomas Armstrong — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:00:45 +0000

Imagine that all of the people in the world have been magically transformed into flowers. Some of us are petunias. Others are begonias. Still others are tulips. Now, let’s say for the sake of argument that the psychiatrists in this culture are the roses. I want you to imagine the rose psychiatrist beginning his work day and seeing a child who happens to be a sunflower.

The rose subjects the sunflower to a thorough examination (including measuring its height) and at the end of the exam offers his diagnosis: “I’m sorry, but you have hugism. It’s usually treatable if caught in time, but I’m afraid in your case we didn’t catch it early enough.” The sunflower leaves the room with its head drooping. The next child to see the doctor is a tiny bluet. The psychiatrist spends some time examining the bluet, and eventually comes to this conclusion: “My informed diagnosis, bluet, is that you have a growing disability. We believe it’s genetic. But with appropriate identification and treatment, you can learn to live a successful and productive life in a plot of sandy loam somewhere.” The bluet leaves the office feeling even smaller than when it came in. Finally, a calla lily enters the psychiatrist’s office. The doctor doesn’t even need to do a formal assessment to make a diagnosis: “You, my friend, have petal deficit disorder. It’s a tricky syndrome, but there are medications out there that can help. In fact, a herbicide representative left some free samples with me, in case you like to try some.”

This little imagination game may sound a bit silly. But, in fact, psychiatrists are doing this all the time when they label children as having “autism,” “learning disabilities,” “attention deficit disorder,” and a wide range of other mental health labels. We have become a culture of disabilities. Back in the early 1960’s, with the publication of the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (AKA the psychiatrist’s Bible) there were about 100 mental disorders. In the current edition, this number has tripled, and the version slated to come out in 2013 threatens to have even more disabilities, including “psychosis risk syndrome,” “temper dysfunctional disorder,” and “hoarding disorder.” An article in the Archives of General Psychiatry reports that over the course of their lifetime, roughly one half of all adults in the United States will suffer some form of mental disorder. One Harvard psychiatrist says that in addition to diagnosable psychiatric conditions, there are also “sub-clinical” disorders that he calls “shadow syndromes” that afflict even more Americans. Ultimately, we’re getting to the point where virtually everyone will have some kind of psychiatric disorder. At this point, it is no longer meaningful to talk about disorders. Instead, we need to shift paradigms and speak, instead, of diversities – specifically of neurodiversity.

Continue at Funderstanding …

Thomas Armstrong is the author of fourteen books, translated into twenty-five languages, including The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain. He has presented to educational and parent organizations in 43 states and 18 countries over the past 25 years.

Thomas Armstrong’s eponymous website and blog can be found here.

Seeing the Best in Every Child: The Importance of Neurodiversity previously appeared at Funderstanding.com, and is excerpted here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

What I need and want

Alicia Lile — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:00:08 +0000

I want to be loved and accepted.

I wish others to tell me that it’s wonderful that I was born.

I feel guilty of existing, tell me I am wrong.

I need to see others talking about how happy they are with knowing and living with Autistic people, not despite of Autism and not only knowing suffering.

I don’t want to be seen as the source of my loved ones suffering. I want to know I don’t ruin anyone’s life, I don’t want to be a burden.

Know I want others to be happy, even more than I wish to be happy.

I wish you were my friend, I wish I have found friends and not bullies and abusers.

When I finally manage to gather my strength to tell you something, listen and know all the effort that costs me, respect what I have to say even if you don’t understand.

If I think or feel differently it doesn’t mean I am wrong, it doesn’t mean you are wrong, it means that there is not right way of perceiving the world and that my brain works in a particular way.

Do not deny what I feel, do not think I am lying if you don’t understand.

Don’t dismiss things as me being too sensitive or irrational.

Validate my experiences.

If I can’t hug you it doesn’t mean I don’t love you or that I am insensitive.

If I don’t talk it doesn’t mean I am being rude.

If I don’t talk it doesn’t mean I can’t listen.

Communication is difficult, talking is really difficult.

If I look angry, it’s not always something I can control.

I can’t always control the tone of my voice, I may sound angry when I am not.

Know I can only focus on one thing at a time and changing focus is hard.

If I am happy and really liking a subject don’t say I am obsessed and that this is wrong.

Things that are easy and automatic for you are difficult and need concentration and effort for me, be patient if I take longer or don’t do something.

I was taught to comply to everything, even what causes me pain and what makes me suffer, I feel guilty when I feel I deserve better, help me understand this is not how things should be, help me understand I can have rights without feeling guilt.

If I can gather the courage to tell you something you don’t notice or don’t feel, if I say that something that it’s simple for you is difficult for me, if I get scared with things that don’t scare you, if I find the courage to ask for a right of mine, don’t say I am complaining, don’t act like I am imagining things.

Don’t laugh of my fears, there is no universal notion of scary, just because something doesn’t scares you it doesn’t mean my fear is silly or funny.

Understand I have too much empathy, I feel too much when I see others distress and pain, so I shut down sometimes.

When I want to confort you I normally don’t know how, believe I am more worried for you than you can think.

I don’t want to bother others because that is the only thing I think I do, I believe I only cause grief, cherish my presence and be happy when I can think I can be treated fairly.

I need to know I have a right to exist, a right to be here, a right to be who I am with Autism and all.

I can’t be forced to act as someone else.

Don’t tell me that everything I do is wrong, that you think every way I act it’s weird, don’t laugh of the things I do, don’t expect that I change everything I need to change for you to think I am worthy of being respected as human.

I need others to recognize the violence of ‘teaching’ me to behave in ways that are strange and painful for me.

I need to be taught self-love, pride, self-respect and self-esteem, not how to look others in the eye.

I need to know there is no normal.

I need you patience when I cannot do things or when I do not understand something.

Just because you don’t see a difficulty it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I want to you to know that I am sorry for everything, I shouldn’t be.

I need to know that it’s a good thing I am the way I am.

I need to know that it’s okay to be Autistic, that I am not doing anything wrong, that I am not wrong, I am not flawed.

I need to learn how to work with what I have, not wait to have more.

I want to know that you don’t think having a ‘normal’ child is better.

I am not a broken version of a normal me. I don’t want to be someone that you want to replace with a ‘normal’ person.

If we disagree I will respect you, do the same because people are different, we think differently, we have different opinions, but respect needs to be for all.

I don’t want to cure my Autism, I want to honour the beauty and joy it brings without denying the struggles.

I consider Autism to be a pervasive part of me, so I wouldn’t remove it and thinking like this changed me for better.

Just because I say something good about Autism it doesn’t mean I don’t have serious problems, just because I say something bad about Autism it doesn’t mean I think it’s all negative or that I don’t accept it.

I wish to be loved not despite Autism, but loved as Autistic, loved just the way I am.

Understand I have a life to be lived, with Autism. Better to embrace it then to fight it.

Accepting Autism, accepting myself as I am is the most satisfying feeling I know.

I know good things and see beauty because of Autism, understand that just because I focus on the bad it doesn’t mean there is no good, it means I want to improve.

My suffering from others attitude is deeper than any frustration that Autism brings.

Autism is part of me and it molds me, if I wish to love myself, I must accept being Autistic, I already have the scars of self-hatred.

I need to know that you would never change the fact I was born.

I need to know that it’s okay, and things will be fine somehow, that I am beautiful this way and I have a beauty in the deep way I see and feel the world.

Alicia Lile blogs from Brazil at Moonlit Lily.

What I need and want appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

I can’t do simple everyday things

Alicia Lile — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:54:03 +0000

I am a little upset.

I have a hard time doing simple things, simple daily life activities for example, I see others going to college, working, but I can’t do those things (not just because of Autism in those particular cases), I can’t even take care of myself or my house, that is why I avoid general groups of people with Asperger (aspies) because I have the feeling I am too not functional for them, they do things I can’t, I don’t know how to ask for help with those kind of things without feeling useless, lazy or incapable.

When someone tells me that I don’t do anything in my life, to help my family or to take care of the house it hurts me deeply. I feel like I am a burden.
I know others that don’t work but they study, when they don’t study they help in the house, everyone I talk to looks like they are doing something even when it’s difficult.
Now, I don’t give others the treatment I give myself, I am more kind, logical and less prejudiced with others, so with someone else I don’t equalize function with worth, if someone can’t do any of those things I don’t see as a bad thing, many have different sets of abilities, even if someone didn’t have any ability that does not change that person importance, but with myself, I internalize the wrong things and my life stops having meaning when someone tells me how useless I am, I have a deep sense of being someone who shouldn’t be here, the feeling I need to prove that I am worthy of being here and the devastating awareness that I have nothing to show as proof.

I learned I am Autistic in my twenties, then I needed to learn and accept that I have disabilities, but I am the only that knows that, I don’t know how to learn how to do things, how to get help to learn or help when I can’t do something, so I don’t do what I could (if I know how to) and I feel terrible about it.

All this time those things were a flaw in my character, they call it being lazy, spoiled, manipulative or thankless, then I was depressed so it was a symptom, now I don’t look depressed anymore (because I am not and I wasn’t) so I lost the acceptable excuse.
I learned to see this as things that I did wrong, things that I chose to do wrong, my failures, now I need to see that is not the reality, I am trying but then someone tells me that I should do something since I don’t do anything, someone points out that I don’t do the easy things, something reminds me that I am useless.
It’s not the only thing that I notice that I use an expectation and worth for myself differently than from others, I see myself as less, I expect more and I don’t believe to deserve equal rights. I would never judge someone else like I judge myself.

In the meantime I still have problems doing things, things that others see as simple, automatic tasks of everyday life, I’ve talked to others on the Autistic Spectrum that have a harder time with things most think are easy but they also do things I don’t, the few who have my difficulties get help to learn or to do things while I feel stuck in this situation.

One of the reasons I don’t use Asperger is because the so-called aspies are so functioning, I am not and I feel like a failure because if they can, why can’t I?
(There are many other reasons and a personal dislike for the term Asperger/aspie, not the people who have Asperger or use the term, but that is for another post.)
I do read blogs were other Autistic people say they have problems with this too, but that doesn’t appear very common with the trend that Autism and especially Asperger is not a disability, that worries me.

Apparently you can only be really high-functioning or really severely low-functioning, I don’t fit in neither of this useless functioning labels I hate.

I don’t look like the ‘regular’ version of disabled, nobody knows or understands that I have disabilities, so I don’t get the help I need, my problems are not real, I should just try harder. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.
Maybe the problem, besides my obvious lack of support, is the fact that I am still trying to accept being disabled and that I have hidden disabilities that are really hidden from others, that troubles me, the secret brings me shame and less acceptance.

I should treat myself as I treat others as well, most people need to think the opposite but not me.

I should say that I have no problem with people who don’t do the things people say are easy, no problem with those that need staff or help with things, I do not believe the value of people should be measured by what they do or don’t do, I don’t think anyone is a burden, I am just trying to understand why I see myself and only myself as deserving less and being less, I am hoping on finding a solution for my problems with doing things.

Alicia Lile blogs from Brazil at Moonlit Lily.

I can’t do simple everyday things appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

This just in: Being alive linked to autism

Emily Willingham — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:00:15 +0000

This last week or so, every day seemed to bring a new finding about something linked to autism. I blogged one of them — diabetes — but who really would have the wherewithal to follow the growing list of factors linked to autism? I guess I would because below, I give you that very list, including current pop hits and some blasts from the past, with some brief commentary. Without further ado — The ever-changing face of autism — or, as some have wisely suggested we call it — the autisms:

Refrigerator mothers. Sooo coooold.

Parents just making shit up. Because we have nothing better to do with our time.

Vaccines. SHUT. UP.

Mercury. Sigh.

“Environmental” chemicals. Hmmm.

The Interwebz. Someone pointed to them. Then there was autism.

Older fathers. Paging Father Abraham.

Older mothers. We can only be so old, you know.

Depressed or stressed mothers. Wouldn’t everyone have autism, then?

Prematurity

Sib with autism. Autism, family style.

Low birthweight. OK, but what about…

High birthweight. Confusing, isn’t it?

Growing a big head. My son has the biggest head I’ve ever seen…except for my own.

Growing a big baby. My oldest son is huge. He also has an uncle who is 6’6″.

Being a twin. Concordance confuses people.

Smoking during pregnancy. Is there anything smoking during pregnancy can’t fuck up?

Diabetes during pregnancy. Didn’t have it, so don’t know.

Any complication at birth. And I mean…ANY complication.

Being born in summer. Yep. Seasonal autism.

Being a second born. First borns, only borns…sorry.

Being a later born. As if it weren’t hard enough.

Being in a womb. When will we ever have extra utero development!

IVF. But we do have in vitro fertilization.

Being born close together.

Lungs with symmetrical bronchiole bifurcations. For once, someone blames symmetry.

Immune system gone awry.

Genes AND the immune system gone awry–in the mother. I’m sure that’s what made us cold.

Genes. Lots and lots of genes. If I listed them all, this would be an epic post.

Neanderthals (not really; just more genes)

Hyperinuslinemia and diabetes. Hypothesis, not study.

Impaired brain connections. Ya think?

Impaired sugar metabolism. This goes on the assumption that GI problems in autistic people differ from those in non-autistic people.

Biomarkers. Lots and lots of biomarkers. This one’s the Jackson Pollock of studies.

Clomid. Mom’s fault for wanting you.

Terbutaline. This is related to prematurity.

Glycine, something about glycine. You know the modern art that you stare at, trying to figure out why it’s supposed to be art? This is the science version of that.

Mitochondrial disorders.

Regulation above the gene (epigenetics). Because no gene is an island or an unsullied, perfectly used code.

Living near a freeway. There goes the nation.

Specific facial features. Elves.

Specific finger features. My fingers tell me I’m male or a lesbian. I am neither.

Specific physical features.

Special brain differences. Ya think?

Too little oxytocin. Oh, oxytocin. You weird little hormone, you.

Too much androgen. Viva la…el…hormone!

Too much androgen…or too little estrogen? OK, so this one’s my own contribution. A gal’s gotta contribute.

Too much money. We wish.

Lyme disease. Tick, tock, not.

Antidepressants. See “stress, depression” above. If you’re an autism parent and this list didn’t do you in, congratulations on how well those anti-depressants are working.

Emily Willingham is author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology. She blogs at The Biology Files and A life less ordinary? and contributes to The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.

This just in: Being alive linked to autism appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons and author's original post]

Navigating Competing Worlds: The Elusive Ideal of Normalcy

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:00:24 +0000

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been very busy with my job and with getting acclimated to the routine of my graduate program. I’ve formed a great connection with the little guy I care for, and in my graduate program, I’m generating lots of ideas and questions as I go along.

For one of my classes, I recently read an excellent article called Orchestrating Voices: Autism, Identity, and the Power of Discourse by Nancy Bagatell, an assistant professor of Occupational Science at Quinnipiac University. The paper is the result of the author’s nine-month process of interviewing and observing Ben, a 21-year-old college student with autism, as he engages in the iterative task of constructing his identity in the face of social stigma and the demands of normalcy. Because it illuminated some of my own struggles and gave me insight into some of the issues that we face as disabled people, I thought I’d share my observations.

In Bagatell’s study, Ben’s struggle for identity goes through three phases:

1. Pretending to be normal
2. Finding the autistic community
3. Navigating competing worlds

Sound familiar, anyone?

Pretending to be normal

Summary: As a child, Ben knows he is different, has little interest in the things his peers are interested in, and is “teased mercilessly.” He initially resists attempts by his parents and teachers to “fit in” and “act normal.” As Ben gets older and wants friends and a girlfriend, he attempts to act in the ways that his parents and teachers suggest, but he has difficulty navigating social situations. The more “normal” he tries to act, the more he feels that something is “wrong” with him, and the more isolated and depressed he becomes. (416)

When Ben goes to college, his anxiety and depression worsen. He sees a psychiatrist who prescribes medication and sends him to a social skills group and psychotherapy in order to help him “fit in.” He begins self-medicating with marijuana, alcohol, and prescription drugs in order to try to navigate social situations. In this phase of his life, Ben relentlessly attempts to control his behavior by pretending to be normal and longs for a cure for his autism. (417)

Ultimately, he finds that pretending to be normal is enormously stressful. He experiences increased anxiety and panic attacks, and he engages in self-injurious behavior. This phase finds its climax when he climbs to the top of a building, intending to commit suicide. The result is a three-day stay in a psychiatric hospital. (417-418)

My thoughts: One of the things that struck me about Ben’s story is the Catch-22 in which he finds himself: the more he tries to “act normal,” the more “wrong” he feels. That is, attempting to attain an ideal of normalcy only results in a pervasive sense of failure.

As a child, I avoided that sense of being all wrong — partly because I was a good student, and partly because I was an athlete. On both counts, success built upon success, and my self-esteem was pretty solid. The trouble started in adolescence, when social situations became more complex, and it was clear that I was not engaging them as other people were. Each year of high school, I chose a different friend to emulate, just so that I could feel that I was getting it “right.” But, like Ben, the whole time, I felt a deep and pervasive sense that something was wrong with me, and that sense only deepened as I got older.

I am very fortunate in that I didn’t end up suicidal. Oddly enough, the abuse I had experienced at home created in me a powerful desire to live. I was determined that I was not going to let the abuse destroy me.

But suicidal ideation is not uncommon for autistic people, and the beginning of Ben’s story is something of a parable about the very significant dangers of the medical model of disability. In emphasizing impairment, it rejects that idea that a disabled person is whole, and thus supports the notion that one must be typically able-bodied in order to be a complete human being with a full and meaningful life. The medical model is a self-perpetuating one: if it is taken as axiomatic that one must be “normal” to have a good life, then most of society’s resources and energy go to attempting to get disabled people cured, assimilated, or out of sight. Very few resources and very little energy go into making the society more respectful and inclusive of diversity, when doing so is the only way to actually enable disabled people to have full and meaningful lives. Ben’s attempted suicide speaks to his instinctive perception that the medical model holds no promise for him. It simply leaves him feeling that he is wrong and cannot be made right, no matter how hard he tries. Under these conditions, he feels that his life is not worth living.

Bagatell notes that Ben’s attempt to construct an identity have led him to consider suicide because he knows that he cannot be “normal” in a society that privileges the normative, and so ends up in a state of self-hatred: “Within the discourse of ‘normalcy’ Ben was a failure… Like many others with disabilities, Ben became ‘tangled up in various forms of self oppression’ (Swain and Cameron, 1999, p. 75). Ben’s attempts at self-punishment climaxed on that April day as he literally teetered on the edge.” (418)

Finding the autistic community

Summary: After he leaves the hospital, Ben attends an autism conference and learns that his behaviors and perceptions are neurologically based, rather than a question of moral will or deviance. He begins to see them as “a normal part of my experience.” Ben meets other people with Asperger’s who have stopped pretending to be normal. He rejects the need for a cure, seeing Asperger’s as integral to who he is as a person, not something that can be “separated out.” He begins to accept and assert himself as he is and to reject attempts to render him “normal.” In so doing, he makes a very good distinction between acting normal and being normal:

“There really is basically no way to teach yourself to be more normal. You can teach yourself to appear normal but you can never really be more normal. And trying to do it is just stressful. I think that’s everybody’s experience.” (419)

Ben sees himself as part of the autistic community, where he can be who he is without attempting to conform to conventional social expectations. He enters and becomes engaged in the shared experience of a world in which he is not marginalized. He listens to the voices of other autistic people who reject the need for conformity in a quest to live an authentic life. He chooses to “come out” as a person with autism and to adopt it as a “valid, positive social identity.” (419-422)

My thoughts: Ben’s experience almost precisely mirrors how I felt when I found the online autistic community. Suddenly, there were other people like me. And for the first time, I felt “normal” in a group of people. It was very empowering and very comforting.

The problem, as I soon found, was how to navigate between the larger world and the autistic community. As grateful as I am to have found this community, and as empowered as I feel by all that I’ve learned, the dissonance between my own emerging truths and the social attitudes toward disability that I’ve encountered in others have been very painful to me. It was one thing to attempt to navigate the world with an interesting neurology I didn’t have a name for; it’s quite another to have become conscious of the issues in play and find that the world is still seriously behind the game in understanding them. This is part of the quandary in which Ben ultimately finds himself.

Navigating competing worlds

Summary: After a time, Ben experiences the tension between the “authoritative voices” of the neurotypical world (in which he is perpetually reminded of the importance of fitting in and, thus, of his perpetual position on the margins) and the alternative voices of the autistic community, which welcome him and let him know that he is fine as he is. He realizes that he cannot just choose between these voices in constructing his identity, but needs to figure out how to perceive himself in both worlds.

Bagatell suggests that we form multiple identities in which to navigate multiple social and cultural worlds, and that the trick for Ben is to figure out how to have a positive identity in each one. (422-423)

For Ben, by the end of the study, the process is not going well. He experiences more agitation, anxiety, depression, and sensory overload. He tends to see both the autistic and neurotypical worlds in negative terms. He does not see autism as a positive, nor does he see many possibilities for love and marriage, even within the autistic community. On the other hand, he is more and more upset that the medical community doesn’t seem to understand autism and that his psychiatrist is constantly “experimenting” with his medications. (423) Ultimately, he seems to see that his problem is social, not medical, asserting that he doesn’t need social skills classes, but true inclusion in society: “’I am sick of social skills groups … . Why can’t someone go to the bar with me or to chess club? That’s what I need.’” (425)

My thoughts: The reality of constructing multiple identities really rings true for me. Earlier in my life, I experienced this process in forming a Jewish identity within the Jewish community, and then attempting to figure out how to navigate the larger society without losing my sense of my own culture. Within Jewish culture, I could use certain words and have my meaning be understood, because we all shared the same basic paradigm; in the larger culture, those same words could be taken to mean something quite different, and I had to choose carefully how to present myself and my ideas. (For example, the word “salvation” means something quite different in Judaism than it does in Christianity. In Judaism, it refers to being saved from suffering and injustice in this life, while in Christianity, it has to do with being saved from hell after death.)

Forming multiple identities is the challenge for people of all minorities who must live within the larger culture. How does one live within different worlds — especially when one world takes a pejorative view of the other? It’s a very complex process. For disabled people, it’s particularly fraught, because the larger society defines us in terms of what we lack, and we tend to form identity in the face of it. Along these lines, Bagatell quotes Swain and Cameron (1999):

“From the viewpoint of disabled people, then, their personal and social identities have traditionally been formed within a framework from which they have been excluded. In defining the parameters that state emphatically what disabled people are not (i.e. ‘normal’), the dominant cultural discourses determine that disabled people’s self-reference is measured against this. (p. 75, emphasis in original)” (418)

The question is, how do we disabled people define ourselves in a context that embraces the deficit model and sees us mainly for who we are not? It seems to me that we always have a choice to make: Do we take in those voices of impairment, lack, deficit, and disease, and see ourselves as people who are “less than”? Or do we define ourselves as whole, as human, as essentially fine, just as we are? And in making this choice, how do we root out the deficit model from our thinking about disability so that we can see ourselves as different, not wrong?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

—

Sources

Bagatell, Nancy. “Orchestrating Voices: Autism, Identity, and the Power of Discourse.” Disability and Society 22, no. 4 (June 2007): 413-426. doi: 10.1080/09687590701337967.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg blogs at Journeys with Autism, and presides at Autism and Empathy.

Navigating Competing Worlds: The Elusive Ideal of Normalcy appears here by permission.

The most recent installment in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s published memoirs is Blazing My Trail.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Quiet Hands

Julia Bascom — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:00:08 +0000

When I was a little girl, they held my hands down in tacky glue while I cried.

I’m a lot bigger than them now. Walking down a hall to a meeting, my hand flies out to feel the texture on the wall as I pass by.

“Quiet hands,” I whisper.

My hand falls to my side.

When I was six years old, people who were much bigger than me with loud echoing voices held my hands down in textures that hurt worse than my broken wrist while I cried and begged and pleaded and screamed.

_________________

Explaining my reaction to this:

means I need to explain my history with this:

__________________

In a classroom of language-impaired kids, the most common phrase is a metaphor.

“Quiet hands!”

A student pushes at a piece of paper, flaps their hands, stacks their fingers against their palm, pokes at a pencil, rubs their palms through their hair. It’s silent, until:

“Quiet hands!”

I’ve yet to meet a student who didn’t instinctively know to pull back and put their hands in their lap at this order. Thanks to applied behavioral analysis, each student learned this phrase in preschool at the latest, hands slapped down and held to a table or at their sides for a count of three until they learned to restrain themselves at the words.

The literal meaning of the words is irrelevant when you’re being abused.

When I was a little girl, I was autistic. And when you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy.

Hands are by definition quiet, they can’t talk, and neither can half of these students…

(Behavior is communication.)

(Not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say.)

Things, slowly, start to make a lot more sense.

Roger needs a modified chair to help him sit. It came to the classroom fully equipped with straps to tie his hands down.

We threw the straps away. His old school district used them.

He was seven.

Terra can read my flapping better than my face. “You’ve got one for everything,” she says, and I wish everyone could look at my hands and see I need you to slow down or this is the best thing ever or can I please touch or I am so hungry I think my brain is trying to eat itself.

But if they see my hands, I’m not safe.

“They watch your hands,” my sister says, “and you might as well be flipping them off when all you’re saying is this menu feels nice.”

When we were in high school, my occasional, accidental flap gave my other autistic friend panic attacks.

10.

I’ve been told I have a manual fixation. My hands are one of the few places on my body that I usually recognize as my own, can feel, and can occasionally control. I am fascinated by them. I could study them for hours. They’re beautiful in a way that makes me understand what beautiful means.

My hands know things the rest of me doesn’t. They type words, sentences, stories, worlds that I didn’t know I thought. They remember passwords and sequences I don’t even remember needing. They tell me what I think, what I know, what I remember. They don’t even always need a keyboard for that.

My hands are an automatic feedback loop, touching and feeling simultaneously. I think I understand the whole world when I rub my fingertips together.

When I’m brought to a new place, my fingers tap out the walls and tables and chairs and counters. They skim over the paper and make me laugh, they press against each other and remind me that I am real, they drum and produce sound to remind me of cause-and-effect. My fingers map out a world and then they make it real.

My hands are more me than I am.

11.

But I’m to have quiet hands.

12.

I know. I know.

Someone who doesn’t talk doesn’t need to be listened to.

I know.

Behavior isn’t communication. It’s something to be controlled.

I know.

Flapping your hands doesn’t do anything for you, so it does nothing for me.

I know.

I can control it.

I know.

If I could just suppress it, you wouldn’t have to do this.

I know.

They actually teach, in applied behavioral analysis, in special education teacher training, that the most important, the most basic, the most foundational thing is behavioral control. A kid’s education can’t begin until they’re “table ready.”

I know.

I need to silence my most reliable way of gathering, processing, and expressing information, I need to put more effort into controlling and deadening and reducing and removing myself second-by-second than you could ever even conceive, I need to have quiet hands, because until I move 97% of the way in your direction you can’t even see that’s there’s a 3% for you to move towards me.

I know.

I need to have quiet hands.

I know. I know.

13.

There’s a boy in the supermarket, rocking back on his heels and flapping excitedly at a display. His mom hisses “quiet hands!” and looks around, embarrassed.

I catch his eye, and I can’t do it for myself, but my hands flutter at my sides when he’s looking.

(Flapping is the new terrorist-fist-bump.)

14.

Let me be extremely fucking clear: if you grab my hands, if you grab the hands of a developmentally disabled person, if you teach quiet hands, if you work on eliminating “autistic symptoms” and “self-stimulatory behaviors,” if you take away our voice, if you…

if you…

15.

Then I…

I…

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Quiet Hands appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Mind conversation with myself

Alicia Lile — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:00:14 +0000

Mind conversation with myself.

How to speak about the differences in perceiving the world before you learn that your view of the world is not the typical way? How would you know the difference between you and others if people don’t normally talk about things in such fundamental level?

You think you perceive things like everybody else, and everybody else thinks you are just like them.

In a world made to please a certain type of a relation to reality and ignore all others, those that are different will suffer in many levels by the inadequacy of their way of being.

It’s hard to function in a world that assumes you work in a certain way when that’s not how you function, this only increases the difficulty as soon as others notice the differences and you are now aware of who you are not, you are not normal, and what you are, you are flawed, broken, you need to be fixed.

You may accept this or reject it, you may accept and reject at the same time, but this will be how you are saw by others, and in the end how you see yourself.

It’s not the reality, but how would you know that? Nobody accept that people can be different in a way that is not wrong. You need to accept that maybe different was all there was, not flawed or broken, just different.

Label after label was placed upon this person, negatively proclaiming failures, failing at being a typical person, the person that was supposed to be.

You do not understand why things turn out to be like this, after trying so much, struggling so much, why keep failing at everything?

Never imagining that there are many realities and people sometimes work differently. Nobody talks about that. If they do, they may be accused of imagining all of that in their head, just another problem.

When people notice, normally very soon, that you are not like they are, you become a target, be it exclusion, cruelty or any form of violence, and you suffer because in your head it’s your fault, you have problems, you don’t know what problems or where they came from, but they are here, everyone knows that.

You suffer until you stop feeling. You stop feeling until you break apart.

After being such a weird thing, a weird not-person, after so many labels, you are destroyed, the solution?

More labels, more ways of telling you are broken, not why you are broken, just the reality they see, you are depressed according to good people, you are lazy and spoiled according to bad people.

Why?

You want to know, you really do. Nobody guesses why, people are just different, but nobody says that.

You lived like a ghost, you broke apart, and you climbed up again to being a living ghost. Life moves on, guilt of not doing what you were supposed to do overwhelm you.

Life overwhelms you.

Then someday you hear something, something about people who are not like everybody else, but you think not me, still you want to know more, you always do, so you ask, what people tell you is almost like if those people were like robots, they are not creative, they don’t feel empathy, etc, weird things that are not like you, so you forget this for awhile, but you like knowing things, so you read something about it, and some more, because you understand it that what people told was not the truth, there is more about it, and you get what is being said in a way you never get before.

Finally you understand why things were like that, because you are different, not bad or good different, simply different functioning, different perceiving, and different being.

Now you start the fight of accepting that this is real, you are not imagining, this it’s not wishful thinking, the fight of removing wrong labels for a new one, one that does not put limits on you, but explains and start to validates your experiences.

A fight of trying to accept yourself, learning finally how you function so you can start to live, all the things you tried to ignore, the not-real things, the suppressed behaviors, the necessary but forgotten things that needs to be understood.

You are happy because of this.

But you are alone, so few care and nobody will believe, you have no one to talk about (or write, talking is only the hard way), people never heard about that.

(Deep down, you are afraid of what they will think of this nonsense. You are always afraid of something. Nobody will believe it, you have no proof. You are sure, but you are not, because how can you be? Maybe it’s because it’s about you.)

You have been left behind so many times, you need sharing sometimes, but nowhere to turn to.

You are severely traumatized by the past, the few times you talk about it people say they had the same or worst experiences, they diminish what you feel.

Nightmares, terror, permanent fear, destroyed hopes, those things are the result of cruelty, but people only say that it wasn’t that bad, they say something happened in their past that was bad and today they hardly care, they say they know what it’s like. If that’s true why am I the only terrified and stopped in time.

You can’t exactly remember the past.
You can’t forget the fear and pain, the despair.

You hide, you don’t tell, you are scared and alone but finally you can accept and see some hope.

It wasn’t the label itself but the process the new label brought with it.

It wasn’t just a label, but an explanation.

Those that criticize that you are limiting yourself with a label were the first that before would put you under lazy, depressed, spoiled, shy, weird, or any other category. But this label you understand, this fits and explains, it’s not a limitation.

There are other non-permanent labels that are needed for now, but those are consequences, not the entire process of perceiving and functioning.

Maybe there is hope.

Alicia Lile blogs from Brazil at Moonlit Lily.

Mind conversation with myself appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Book Review: “Blazing My Trail: Living and Thriving with Autism” by Rachel B. Cohen-Rottenberg

Guest — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 04:59:36 +0000

“Blazing My Trail: Living and Thriving with Autism” by Rachel B. Cohen-Rottenberg is a “sequel” to “The Uncharted Path” which I reviewed here and followed up here.

When we last left Rachel’s story, she had fully accepted her place on the autism spectrum and was making plans to take control of parts of her life. The plans weren’t big plans but every long journey begins with small steps.

At times, it feels like an entirely different person has written this book. This Rachel is capable, confident, assertive (without being nearly so argumentive) and full of promise.

Yes, it is a sequel and indeed in the first chapter or two, it feels like you need to have read the first book – but then it all changes and from then on, whenever it references past events, it provides a handy recap.

I feel that the titles of the books were very well chosen, with “The Uncharted Path” being about taking uncertain steps into unknown territory and Blazing My Trail being about running with full confidence along that path and leaving a trail for others to follow.

I get the feeling that Rachel’s experience with medications had a lot to do with this positive turn of events and she spends a bit of time talking about their effect. Unlike many people, I’m not a “hater” of medications. I’ve seen them doing good under the right conditions. Rachel’s medications however are a good reminder that regardless of how many second opinions you get, not all drugs are suitable and all must be strictly monitored with specific measurable goals in place. Some types of drugs shouldn’t be taken except in the most crucial of situations.

The book provides a lot of practical and ready-to-use advice and insight for adults on the spectrum (and parents of children on the spectrum). In particular, Rachel talks about ways to overcome the sound and spatial sensitivities which are obviously the issues which give her the most trouble. Rachel also covers everyday events such as standing up for your rights as an individual – something that I, and many shy(?) aspies have a great deal of trouble with.

The second half of the book is more of a discussion of “bug bears”. Rachel’s feelings about the social constructs around the autism community and their perception by the wider community in general.

A lot has changed. The “old” Rachel would have written this aggressively like a lone revolutionary out on a crusade but this “new” Rachel is quietly persuasive, tolerant and altogether more worldly. She is not afraid to change her opinions or to challenge the deep seated beliefs of the wider autism community. The result is some pretty engrossing reading.

I also noticed that Rachel uses the word Aspergers more often than Autism in this book. This was strange because it felt like the word “Aspergers” had been purged from her last volume in favor of Autism. I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind the turnaround but sadly it’s not covered in the book, though there seem to be some tantalizing hints.

Rachel raises some absolutely brilliant concepts and covers various subjects including abelism. the puzzle piece metaphor, the theory of mind, the perception of “autism as a sickness” and label-grief.

I enjoyed this book even more than the Uncharted Path, mainly I think because of the positive outlook. This is a brilliant book by one of the most individual writers in the autism community which will have you pondering the issues it raises long after you’ve put it down.

Blazing My Trail is available on Amazon.

Honesty Clause: I was provided with a copy of this book at no charge for review purposes.

Gavin Bollard blogs at Life with Aspergers.

Book Review: “Blazing My Trail: Living and Thriving with Autism” by Rachel B. Cohen-Rottenberg appears here by permission.

Cats, Dogs, and Asperger’s Syndrome

Guest — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:57:58 +0000

Imagine for a moment a person who has grown up in a family where they only ever had pet dogs. Their friends and neighbours had pet dogs – all different breeds, colours and temperaments, but still, fundamentally, dogs. They all went to the dog park together every afternoon and always had a raucously good time. They had never, ever, ever seen a cat. Not once.

Then one day they stumble upon an adorable looking creature that is cute, furry, has a black wet nose, four paws and whiskers and for all intents and purposes, looks exactly like the type of friendly, willing to please dog they had known and loved all their lives. Its tail is waving to and fro in what is perceived to be a welcoming gesture so they go over, ruffle up its soft fur and attempt to roll it over to scratch its belly, anticipating their affectionate gesture will be delightfully received. Only it’s not a dog, it’s a cat, and their interaction is interpreted very differently. Lets just say, fur will fly and it will fly furiously.

Welcome to the world of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome. A solitary cat, surviving in a room full of boisterous dogs. Its every move being analysed, interpreted and modified based on the framework of rules, behavioural patterns and ingrained habits of the canine species. And as a result, being disastrously misunderstood.

Dogs wag their tails as a sign of happiness and anticipation of social interaction. Cats swish their tails as a warning to back off and give them much needed space. Dogs always welcome affection in whatever way it is offered to them. Cats will also offer heartfelt affection but it needs to on their terms, at a time that suits them. Sometimes they just need to be left alone. Dogs depend on your approval for their emotional wellbeing. Cats depend on certain things being in place in a routine that they can depend on, and will then reward your reliability with their unwavering friendship.

Dogs are inherently social. They are pack animals with deeply entrenched hierarchical rules of canine society and as a result are desperately eager to please, and occasionally challenge, the pack leader. As puppies, they will romp and play delightedly with their littermates until they fall into an exhausted, but happy heap on top of each other at the end of the day. They rarely turn down an offer of affection and will warmly greet their family with furry hugs and sloppy kisses when they get home.

On the surface, cats may seem more aloof, but cat lovers around the world will be quick to tell you they are always keenly observing every detail and will reward those who take the time to understand them with warmth, affection, loyalty and love. Dogs are less discriminating in whom they shower with their boundless love, and this is part of their universal appeal, but it is a trait that cats simply don’t understand or tolerate. Their love needs to be earned.

Dogs enthusiastically learn new tricks and are keen to show them off to gain further approval. Cats have extraordinary agility and mysterious extra-sensory skills, but will only display them when the circumstances dictate they are necessary. They need to be coaxed out and encouraged or will remain hidden forever.

Cats may not always look you in the eye, but they can see straight into your soul and will quietly commune with you while you process the problems of your world. Dogs will sense your unhappiness but may not fully understand it, so will entice you to capture some of their perpetual joy by grabbing their lead and making you take them for a walk to cheer you up. Their destination may be the same, but their journey could not be more different.

If you whistle for a cat to come to you, try to wrangle a leash onto its collar, drag it outside for a walk and hope it will thank you for letting it romp around the dog park then you are both doomed to crumple in a heap of confused despair. Simply said, cats are wired differently to dogs. They are not better or worse. Just different.

So if you want to understand my child with Asperger’s Syndrome, try to think of her as a cat in a room full of dogs, and you will be a lot closer to coaxing out her unique gifts, helping her understand social behavior that she may otherwise find bewildering, and maybe in time her gorgeous, eager to please peers will gain a greater appreciation of the grace, beauty and uniqueness that bestows her, just like her feline doppelgänger.

Cats, Dogs, and Asperger’s Syndrome was an anonymous, explicitly shareable contribution to the blog of Gina Gallagher and Patricia Konjoian, authors of Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid! It surfaced recently in the autism section of social news site Reddit.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]