{"id":3834,"date":"2014-07-31T18:24:24","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T22:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=3834"},"modified":"2014-07-31T18:36:22","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T22:36:22","slug":"is-de-auticizing-the-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/is-de-auticizing-the-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"Is De-Auticizing the Goal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This New York Times piece<\/a> came my way, and frankly I’m pretty disappointed. “Kids Who ‘Beat’ Autism” is the title, so right away you can see the bias. The author, Ruth Padawer, obviously thinks she is onto something new (decades-old Applied Behavioral Analysis, ABA, of all things) by showing that sometimes such treatments “work” and the kids lose all their autism symptoms. But what she is not seeing is the harm such a viewpoint can unintentionally cause.<\/p>\n

The thrust of the article is to draw our sympathy for the families whose kids do not de-auticize, no matter how hard they tried; I don’t even know where to start with this. I understand how hard having autism can be — not firsthand, because I don’t have it — because I have witnessed my own autistic son struggle with it. But to be more precise, he struggles with communication and processing issues that have gotten in the way of his understanding mainstream behavior and interaction. In fact, typical interaction is so puzzling for him that he is often silent. When you do talk to him, it takes long moments for him to find the words. Sometimes it seems like he doesn’t even want you to talk to him, and I have to assume that is because of the effort it takes him.<\/p>\n

I do feel for Nat, and I do feel for my family’s and other families’ struggles with disability. Disability can often mean hardship of one kind or another. Blame it on the disability or blame it on an overly complicated intolerant mainstream human race — any way you slice it, having autism is something a person does<\/em> struggle with at some point or maybe all of his life. It is hard to be a square peg in a round hole.<\/p>\n

But the author of this article reminds me of the person who comes to an Internet joke that went around years ago, and passes it along to everyone she knows as the most clever thing ever. Wow, cats with captions! Who knew? In this case, imagine, behavioral modification and positive reinforcement can be effective in squelching certain ways of acting! And oh how tragic it is — why it is downright a puzzle piece — that the other kid just smiles and makes noises. What the heck is wrong with him?\u00a0 (fist shake at the world that did me wrong.)<\/p>\n

And yet!\u00a0 I empathize with that mother because I do<\/em> want Nat to be able to talk, I think it would help him lead an easier life and be more independent and that is a value of mine. But he just might not be able to do more than he does, ever, and that is that.\u00a0 And I’ll never be a UN interpreter or a ballerina. I will never be able to run regularly because of my knees. I will always struggle with depression, no matter how hard I try. And how about you? Does your lack of autism make you happy? Or is there something that makes you less than perfect, and struggle?<\/p>\n

Should you feel sorry for me because Nat is fairly severely autistic after all this time? Should you pity him? No! If you read this blog regularly, you love him! You’re proud of him. And your own kid.<\/p>\n

We must be able to move on to, “Well, I will try to help him lead the best life he can, and most of all, I want him to be safe and happy.”<\/p>\n

What’s more, to tell you the truth I sympathized a little also with the kid who is now “no longer autistic.” He had so many aspects of his behavior taken over by others, so that he could learn how not to monopolize a conversation or be one-tracked. Sure, he can now be in mainstream society. But there are so many messages he may have learned about himself along the way, that the way he does things naturally is not acceptable. His mom was “ecstatic,”when the doctor said he could find no more autistic symptoms in her son, and to be honest, I would be too. Because maybe doors would open more for Nat. But he also has so many doors open for him, from his own growth and sweet personality. You can’t say that about a lot of so-called verbal people.<\/p>\n

The author of the article writes the piece as if there is unquestionably no other way to feel about autism except that those that “beat” it are the kids you feel happy about, and the others are kids you feel sorry for. What kind of a message, then, is she conveying about lifelong disability? When are we ever going to get passed this quest for perfection?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This New York Times piece came my way, and frankly I’m pretty disappointed. “Kids Who ‘Beat’ Autism” is the title, so right away you can see the bias. The author, Ruth Padawer, obviously thinks she is onto something new (decades-old Applied Behavioral Analysis, ABA, of all things) by showing that sometimes such treatments “work” and […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3834","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-ZQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834","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=3834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3837,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834\/revisions\/3837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}