WHY THE ARTICLE SHARED THIS WEEK ABOUT REDUCED DIAGNOSES OF AUTISM IS WRONG AND MUST BE REJECTED.
Moments after his bloodcurdling, reverberating scream, and remarking that the Bolsheviks would hang the US military people entrusted with snuffing out the lives of the top eleven Nazi war criminals (Goering cheated the hangman by committing suicide with a potassium of cyanide pill), Julius Streicher undertook a standard drop by an inexperienced executioner but went down kicking, thus dislodging the knot and could be heard groaning minutes later. The executioner dismounted the thirteen steps leading to the scaffold and did something that caused the groaning to stop. Had Albert Pierrepoint been entrusted with this task, he would have ensured he knew Streicher’s weight and had a look at him to make any adjustments to the length of the drop to accommodate Streicher’s lack of height, and, if it had been left to him, would have probably said, “The heaviest man will hang first, the lightest man last.”
Fast forward nearly 55 years, and to my horror and disgust, a Brisbane radio station was inviting listeners to call in with their views on whether or not Timothy McVeigh should be executed. I wanted to call in and say, “I don’t believe he should, but what I believe is more barbaric is televising the execution.” After all, I was disgusted that a prison photographer took photos of Streicher, Frank, Keitel, Seyss-Inquart, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Sauckel, Frick, von Ribbentrop and Rosenberg after their executions.
Any attempt to cure autism or reduce autistic traits in an autistic person (such as the obnoxious kid saying to me, “Imagine if you had a bump on the head and you changed.”) or through ABA, differs only in the method. A cannula in the arm with anaesthetic, followed by a drug to stop respiration followed by a heart stopping medication may be more humane than even a long drop hanging (think of ABA as being a lethal injection and a bump on the head as a short drop hanging. A short drop hanging causes a strangulation drop, while a long-drop hanging relies upon knowing the weight of the condemned and using it to calculate the length of the rope required to ensure a neck-breaking drop, provided the knot is correctly placed (under the left jaw).
Latest news about reducing autism diagnoses by two thirds following a preposterous study published in the JAMA proves one thing — researchers still have a hatred of autistic people.
I know, and have known of LGBTIQA people whose parents have been disapproving of LGBTIQA people and they have had to suppress their true selves. I even remember talking a gay man who said that he’d been married to a woman for over 30 years (the standard advice from psychiatrists was to find a good woman and have a good sex life and homosexuality would disappear. The serious problem with this is that what they were really being told to do was mask!) and now has a male partner. I remember watching a documentary about transgender women and one transwoman was told, after her parents took her to a psychiatrist, by the psychiatrist, “Right, this thinking you’re a girl has got to stop!”
What parents of autistic kids need to be told is this. When it comes to finding a partner, you don’t choose your partner as in, there’s a line up of people and you’re asked to select one. You are attracted to someone, who, in turn is attracted to you, and common values, common opinions, and common traits bring you together. When you have a child, you cannot create a clone of yourself. So, you have to meet your autistic child on their level. So, if you are an affective person but your child is not, you can’t force your child to be affectionate. Your child still loves you, but they don’t show love the same way.
One thing I will caution you with is this. I knew a woman, many years ago, whose husband wanted a Mitsubishi Pajero (to my Spanish readers, it’s a name in Australia for what, in the UK, is referred to as a Mitsubishi Shogun, and is pronounced Paj-aero, not Pee-Air-Oh) but, because my father had bought a Ford Maverick (a rebadged Nissan Patrol) she decided her husband had to have one, too. He would always be, “Pucker up,” to her. I remember, one Christmas, she bought him a Nikon camera and a pair of Yashica binoculars. There’s a world of difference between showing love by buying someone something they want or need and buying things as a form of manipulation.
Autism is not a behavioural thing that if you teach kids not to do it they won’t do it. Autism is a neurobiological condition.
If I had gone to school and pretended to be a football loving, skateboard riding kid, I would have been exhausted and overwhelmed by the time I got home and have been able to do nothing more than have a shower and go straight to bed. Had I had some of my time again, I would have wanted to be able to say to my mother, “Okay, you let me come home from school, decompress by having a jump on the trampoline, and then, at say, 3:30pm, I can have a snack and do my homework. Then, I have my shower, and have my tea and I can settle in for the night.”
I remember, after the school swimming carnival, in Year Nine, I was overwhelmed, and mainly by stupid people. This was how my day went.
8:30am: Leave for school.
8:40am: Arrive at school.
8:50am: Prepare to board bus. I had to stand in a bus that was built to accommodate around 80 people and the teacher in charge kept saying, “Okay, we can take one more.” So we were jammed in like sardines.
9:30am: We arrived at the Valley Baths. The stands were packed, and I had two IDIOTS in front of me who kept pushing each other over and one kept falling back onto me. Then, I had an idiot throw things at me, and others deliberately bump into me. Then, I had an idiot ask if I saw who threw a banana skin out a window that landed on the roof of a small red van parked down below.
2:15pm: The carnival drew to a close and I was fortunate to get a seat on the bus back home. Genesis (the musical variety) emanated from a car at the traffic lights. That was partly calming. I arrived back at school at 2:45pm.
I was overwhelmed and when I arrived home, I just wanted to have a shower and change into some casual clothes and listen to the radio.
One thing that hadn’t helped me at school, a few weeks earlier, was they had some try outs at a nearby public pool and only those who wanted to go attended. A kid who’d gone to my old primary school came up to me, elsewhere, and asked me if I went and I said no. He demanded to know why not. (This kid’s parents were quite well to do and they owned two butcher’s shops. While they sold nice meat, they weren’t nice people). I told him that I didn’t have any real talent for swimming and he sneered at me.
If people want to appease autistic traits, they can do one of two things. Either they can accommodate autistic people’s needs or let them accommodate for themselves. Okay, my Year Eight math teacher, if you’d wanted to bring a cushion to place on your chair would have delighted in telling you to put it away because he could. What is needed there is for a supportive school principal to say, “Okay, either you allow this student to do this, or, I will ensure you never teach another autistic student, again. Teaching is not about having authority.”
So no, NO early intervention program to reduce autistic traits for kids, and, what we need to remember is, if a kid is diagnosed as autistic, that’s when they can get their supports. And a way to reduce the supports is to reduce the problems. In my case, it was once the bullies left school (in some cases, they changed schools, in others, they decided they’d had all the school education they wanted and went to TAFE or out into the workforce) that I could finally be happy and comfortable at school.
And early intervention should be aimed at finding autistic kids’ strengths and helping with their weaknesses, not making them appear less autistic.