{"id":1497,"date":"2005-11-10T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-10T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2005\/11\/autism-self-representation-and-communication\/"},"modified":"2005-11-10T16:53:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-10T16:53:00","slug":"autism-self-representation-and-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/autism-self-representation-and-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Autism, Self-Representation, and Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting thread came up on a favorite blog of mine<\/a>. The question was about how there is a real need for the autism advocates to let the voices of autistics be heard, and not just think that we (parents of autistic children, advocates for the autistic) know it all. This is true, of course. Who better than autistics to represent the views and issues of autistics? <\/a> But I also think that we all have to remember that there is a whole spectrum that falls under the autism umbrella, and that some autistics cannot speak for themselves. Other forms of communication should certainly be developed, that goes without saying!<\/p>\n

The thread went on to blast me for arguing that parents are often the best advocates for autistics, if communication is an issue! The question asked of me was: <\/p>\n

would you want men speaking for women?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How on earth are they the same thing, I wonder? Besides, yes, I believe that there are some men who are wonderfully empathic and capable of speaking for women. A sensitive person is a sensitive person, no matter the gender or the neurological wiring.<\/p>\n

So I responded by saying that parents of autistic children are trying to help their children be heard, and I gave the example of how I drag Nat to speech therapy weekly. But the response to this was that <\/p>\n

“speech” is not the same as communication, and that in fact some of the best autistic communication has come from autistics who don’t\/can’t talk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was stymied by this. I then asked, if speech is not the way to go, then what is there? What am I overlooking? Shouldn’t I, his mother, be trying to give him as many tools of expression as possible? How else do I find out what is on his mind? I can’t read his mind!<\/p>\n

What am I missing here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting thread came up on a favorite blog of mine. The question was about how there is a real need for the autism advocates to let the voices of autistics be heard, and not just think that we (parents of autistic children, advocates for the autistic) know it all. This is true, of course. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-o9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}