{"id":4342,"date":"2016-03-04T11:07:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T16:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=4342"},"modified":"2016-03-04T11:07:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T16:07:22","slug":"book-excerpt-people-first-or-autism-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/book-excerpt-people-first-or-autism-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Excerpt: People First Or Autism Pride?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>People First or Autism Pride?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You will find in reading this book that I interchange the terms \u201cpeople with autism,\u201d with \u201cautistic people.\u201d I am well aware of and respect the People First movement\u2014the widespread effort to avoid defining someone by their disability (as in the latter example). A few of the people I interviewed specified that they preferred People First language, and I made sure I wrote their section with that in mind. However, I also know of many people on the autism spectrum who <em>prefer <\/em>being referred to as \u201cautistic.\u201d This group feels that they are indeed defined by their autism, that their personality is wrapped inextricably in autism, and, fur\u00adthermore, that this is a point of pride. Hence, my solution is to use both terms interchangeably, because I see the value in both philosophies.<\/p>\n<p>No doubt people will also note that I do not use the term \u201cautism spectrum\u201d too often, nor do I specifically distinguish between descriptions like high functioning, low functioning, Aspie, Aspergian, Aspergerian, pervasive developmental dis\u00adordered, ASD (autism spectrum disorder), and just plain old autism. This is because the current DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Volume Five) has eliminated many such divi\u00adsions on the autism spectrum, focusing instead on descriptive designations, and on determining possible <em>features <\/em>of autism (e.g., social, communicative, behavioral, sensory, or intellectual deficits) rather than labeling kinds of autism. Though there has been much discord among the medical, psychological, and autism communities about these changes in the DSM; many agree that terms such \u201chigh-functioning\u201d or \u201clow-functioning\u201d autism are definitely outmoded, as they sprung from verbal competence or lack thereof. We now know that a person can be without verbal speech and still have the ability to express himself successfully. Likewise, someone with verbal speech and a very high IQ might be completely debilitated by depression or social, sensory, or behavioral challenges. So I, too, will stick to descriptions of skills and challenges to give you the full <em>human <\/em>picture of my subjects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Speaking of the full human picture . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In my narrative, I try to avoid describing an autistic person\u2019s unusual actions as \u201cbehaviors,\u201d \u201cstims,\u201d or \u201cstereotypies.\u201d To me, these terms are used negatively to signal the need to control or eliminate the behavior or activity, and I believe for the most part that autistic people <em>need <\/em>to act the way they act. This includes talking to oneself, flapping, pacing, thumb-sucking\u2014all the things my Nat does with autistic exuberance. I\u2019ve learned from Nat and from more communicative adults with autism that it\u2019s \u201cbetter flappy than unhappy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People First or Autism Pride? You will find in reading this book that I interchange the terms \u201cpeople with autism,\u201d with \u201cautistic people.\u201d I am well aware of and respect the People First movement\u2014the widespread effort to avoid defining someone by their disability (as in the latter example). A few of the people I interviewed [&hellip;]<\/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-4342","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-182","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342","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=4342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4343,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions\/4343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}