Understanding autistic people.

jll

I think everyone needs to watch this.
Did this video help you understand autistic people more?

federica

I have two autistic members of my family.
Providing people let them be, and keep them safe, there's little to understand. There's a whole raft of stuff to 'accept' though.

vinlyn

First, I'm not clear why "everyone needs to watch this", although it was quite interesting.

Second, I disagree with the father that when you look into her daughter's eyes "you can see an innate intelligence".

Make no mistake, I give these parents a great deal of credit. They didn't give up in frustration, and I can only imagine the countless hours and days and weeks and years of sorrow they felt.

This reminds me a bit of a case I had during my first year of teaching, in the 7th grade. I had a pair of fraternal twins -- a boy and a girl. One day I remarked to the mother that her children were probably the best students I had out of a total of 150 kids. She replied that the daughter had spent the first few years of her life in a residential treatment program for the severely mentally retarded. And then, one particular doctor, noticed some anomalies in testing, and found out that she was not retarded, but actually gifted. By the time she made it to 7th grade, she was a straight A student in gifted classes.

Jeffrey

That's an amazing story, vinlyn. When I was in first grade I would just do whatever I wanted on the workbooks without following the directions of the exercise. They knew that I wasn't retarded because I had already learned the organs of the human body and other things like that. But they didn't know what was wrong with me. After testing my hearing they considered that I was just not listening to anything the teacher said.

vinlyn

I know the feeling...from the other side of the desk!