12 posts tagged “asperger's”
"Kristi Saecker said her 12-year-old son, Jacob Saecker, hasn't been
to school since mid-April when district officials told Jacob his dog,
Thor, was not welcome at Thorner School. He's been on independent study
since then. Kristi Saecker said her son has a high-functioning form of
autism, a developmental disorder that makes it difficult for him to
focus, communicate and interact with others."
from the article 'Helper dog banned'
In the article 'Don't Mourn For Us' Jim Sinclair writes:
Autism isn't something a person has, or a "shell" that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person--and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not be the same person you started with.
This is important, so take a moment to consider it: Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism.
Therefore, when parents say,
"I wish my child did not have autism,"
what they're really saying is,
"I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead."
Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.
Autism Every Day is a controversial video from Autism Speaks (a group which has recently merged with Cure Autism Now). At first the video appears to be the usual doom and gloom presentation which we've come to expect from the self proclaimed autism advocate groups. But the video becomes far more disturbing as it progresses. At one point in the video Alison Singer (the vice president of Autism Speaks) describes how she considered putting her autistic child in the car and driving it off the George Washington Bridge. There is also a separate intro video presented by Don Imus (no I'm not making this up).
The following is an excerpt from the article Special Education and the Concept of Neurodiversity
The
use of the term neurodiversity is not an attempt to whitewash the suffering
undergone by neurodiverse people, nor to romanticize what many still
consider terrible afflictions (see Peter Kramer's attack on so-called
romanticizers of depression). [10] Rather, its use
seeks to acknowledge the richness and complexity of human nature, and
specifically, of the human brain. The more we study the brain, the more
we understand that it functions, not like a computer, but more like
a rainforest (see Gerald Edelman's work in this regard). [11]
The "brainforest," in fact, may serve as an excellent metaphor
to use in the neurodiversity field to talk about how the brain responds
to trauma by redirecting neurological pathways, and how genetic "flaws"
may bring with them advantages as well disadvantages. Disorders such
as autism, ADHD, bipolar depression, schizophrenia, and dyslexia have
been in the gene pool for a long time. There must be a reason why they're
still there. The work of evolutionary psychobiologists and evolutionary
psychologists represent a key component in exploring this fascinating
question.
