Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Article on Autism
federica
Seeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
For those who may have a special interest, I found this article on my FB feed today. Perhaps you did too..
But if you didn't, here it is.
1
Comments
Family... Guilty... Newbuddhist goes to Hollywood and Reader's Digest. Of course autism may be caused by parents, because genes have a major role in this "phenomenon", too.
The article is relating how parents were once considered guilty of causing Autism via their behaviour and attitude, not through genetic inheritance.
I don't believe parents have been considered as guilty for autism. That sounds a bit paranoid. First the word "guilty"... It's in our minds. And most of the parents do understand their children are their children with similar qualities, like grey eyes, dark hair, shyness, for instance.
It's not a question of what you believe or consider.
It's a question of what has actually taken place.
And what has actually taken place is that parents were once accused of being responsible for generating Autism in their children, by the way they treated them.
You may need to read the article again, I think you may be missing the point....
No, I'm not missing the point.
Taken place what? I'm autistic and no-one has blamed me for that one of my sons is autistic, too. Maybe it's not the case in your Reader's Digest reality. That article is another internet parental blah, blah, blah.
I have two children who have not borne the weight of psychological issues, and trust me, at times I don't 'know' them, either! So I would imagine having an autistic child is a ride on a pretty rough roller-coaster...
We have parents on this forum who have autistic children. I suggest you moderate your attitude, because I can assure you, sometimes these parents are completely blind-sided and confused by their children's words and actions.
@Polja, you are missing the point. In fact, several points.
First, the article starts off by saying, "Since the condition was first recognised in the 1940s, parents have been and felt blamed for their children’s autism. Today, most people no longer believe this, but a lingering doubt continues to niggle many parents."
Note -- "in the 1940s" and "parents...felt blamed" (admittedly poor initial wording in the article). Note also, "Today, most people no longer believe this."
Second, your experience is not the sum of experiences with autism. As a school principal who sat in many an IEP meeting dealing with autistic children, I have seen parents blame themselves, just as the article indicated. I have seen them blame themselves genetically, or behaviorally, or both. And I have seen many other parents who accept not one iota of responsibility, even when it is clear that their interactions with the child are at best not helping the situation, or at worst making things more tragic. And I have seen many a parent who has made no effort to learn about trends in dealing with autism, including behavioral strategies that would assist their own child and their own family's life.
The article does not claim to be all-encompassing, just as your responses are not. Should we call your brief responses less than reader's digest level?
Indeed, @federica. My son is also autistic. Yes, parents have been blamed especially by their own families, peers, teachers, and others in their lives. The answers are still few and far between and parents doubt themselves enough. When the medical and scientific world doesn't have an answer for why your child is so drastically different it's pretty hard NOT to blame yourself.
My son is high functioning. But he had (and still has but not as severe anymore) many problems. The school often assumed that I just wasn't doing my job at home. That he didn't have help with homework. That he didn't have support. That was before he even had a diagnosis, but it did not improve once he was diagnosed, either. He was born in 1996, and not diagnosed until 2009. It took several years of getting to the point that family and friends and peers understood, even to a small degree. It was a lot of "ugh, he's weird because you don't take him out in public enough." Nevermind that we couldn't take him out because the sounds, lights and people were way too much for him.
It is getting better, thankfully, but that has only been in recent years. I'm glad, Polja, that you were not made to feel that way and that hopefully your child doesn't either. But your experience doesn't line up with what a lot of other parents have experienced. I don't recall where you are from, but understand also that in the US our healthcare is extremely expensive, and autistic kids are often recommended for extensive therapies that insurance here doesn't cover. If the parents cannot pay for it, they cannot receive the services. That leads to conflict, too, and a lot of self blame for being unable to provide what you child needs. Just because your experience is different, doesn't mean the experience of others is invalid. It's a sensitive issue for many.
It's not limited to autism, but it is more common because it seems like it's all behavioral when it obviously is an expression of something much deeper. But it happens to parents with kids who have other disorders, too. My middle son has impulse problems and ADD. My youngest son is a diabetic. Even with something so clearly medical, there have been times of self-blame for even the diabetes. Lots of it for the middle son who I worry struggles because I worked 2 jobs and could not be there as much for him. There's a lot of it. It's best to support people who go through it as well as you can rather than tell them it's not real.
Me and my son are both autistic and I could say in general that - Society as a whole doesn't fully understand autism.
I don't think the experts, or even those who live with (or who themselves are) autistic people fully understand it. It doesn't help that "autism" is such a HUGE umbrella with an amazing array of variables. My son is autistic. But he does well. He goes to typical school, he is in sports, he is graduating and going to college. Our neighbor is also an autistic boy (he's about 15 or so) but will never be able to live on his own. It's pretty hard for even just a couple people to look at 2 boys with the same general diagnosis but vastly differing abilities and challenges and attempt to understand and interact with them. Nevermind all of society.
Very true, @mockeymind, and the reason is because they don't want to. It's easier to just turn away.
That's so true @karasti! It doesn't help that every individual case is different too which makes it difficult.
I was in denial for about the first year after my daughter's diagnosis but I only need to spend time with similar aged children to see how different she is.
It's hard when it's the first child that is diagnosed, you don't have anything 'Normal' to compare with and I think that makes denial more likely and more pronounced. When it's all you know, it's harder to accept that there is something wrong. I knew something was wrong because Caleb didn't talk until he was 3 years old. He went to speech therapy and all, but I knew inside me that something else was the cause but I didn't want to know. I didn't push for other evaluations because I wanted to believe that it was just the speech that was the problem. Nevermind that he wore the same pair of purple flannel pants for 18 months because they were the only thing that didn't irritate him. Or that we could only grocery shop in the middle of the night because the lights at the store were more than he could handle. Add in crowds and it was not possible.
That same child (who is now 18) is going with us to Disney World tomorrow, lol. Prepping him for what to expect and how to deal with it has been a significant portion of our planning. Thankfully, with his age and having a cell phone he has the ability to take the shuttle back to our hotel when he has had enough. I'm grateful that he's been so accepting of his limitations and willing to learn about them and work within them and recognize when he needs out of a situation. He has been doing very well learning how to advocate for himself and figure out what he needs and how/who to ask for it.
It's funny, because once he was diagnosed, it was a relief. I wasn't excited about it, but I was glad for an answer, and something I could start to learn how to deal with. I was grateful he was still a child, while his father was diagnosed when he was 32 years old. So for all my resistance at not wanting a label for him, the label is what allowed us to start working out what we needed to do. The label was similar to the raft we always talk about. It had a purpose. We used it and needed it. But now that we've learned our way, we've mostly let go of the label. We just focus on what each person needs in our family and helping them recognize their needs and take care of them. We treat our AS son the same without labeling his behaviors. They just are who he is (in part) and that's ok. Now, at least. I don't blame myself anymore. Ironically, sometimes in the past I have blamed my son's grandmother for not recognizing that her own son needed help. But he was born in 72, it's not like asperger's diagnoses were common then. When I couldn't blame myself anymore, I blamed her. How nuts is that?
You don't understand autism at all, so please don't send this f*cking shallow guilty shit anymore. I have never felt guilty being like I am. And I really don't believe the parents of autistic children don't realise their children are their children. I accept myself and I my son's autism perfectly. My son is concentrated to his own reality, and it's totally normal. As it's normal for me to live the same way.
Watch your language, and be polite.
Your view is not the only view, your experience is not the only experience.
Others here who have autism, or who have autistic children have given their experiences.
You're very angry about something, but you don't need to take it out on us.
Frankly, I don't really care how you feel about your situation, you should perhaps show a little compassion and understanding for others who have had bad experiences, rather than insisting you haven't.
Mind your manners.
I don't really tolerate such poor language, so avoid it please.
We are all happy that you are secure in your situation.
We wish that all autistic children and their families were as secure.
I wish, for example, that the mother and father we had at our school, who handled their autistic son so poorly that most times they interacted with him he would begin banging his head into the wall, had the same positive environment that you have.,
I wish, for example, that the parents who -- perhaps subconsciously -- seemed to punish their son for being autistic had a better understanding of the condition and strategies for dealing with it.
I wish, for example, that the father who abandoned his family because of an autistic son had, instead, the positive type of relationship you have with your son, and that he had stayed with the family and provided emotional and financial support.
And, I wish that all parents and families of autistic children had the decent family situation that most of our families of autistic children had.
Polja, I think you misunderstand the posts that have been made.
@polja I think you are completely misunderstanding what is being said. No one said you should feel guilty. Others are simply saying that due to circumstances in their families, cities, states and countries, they have sometimes felt guilty over what is going on with their child. NO ONE has ever said you should feel guilty or that something is wrong with you. And no, I don't understand what it is like to be autistic. Just like you do not understand what it's like to be something you are not. But I do understand what it is to be a parent of an autistic child, and I do know what it feels like to have others telling you that maybe your child behaves differently because of something you did.
I'm not even sure what your post is supposed to mean, so I think you are way far off the mark from what is actually being said here. What do you mean when you say " I really don't believe the parents of autistic children don't realise their children are their children." No one ever said anything like that.
Also, it might be completely normal for you and your son to be in your own worlds. That is a small part of how autism manifests in many people. But it is not how other people live, so it leads to a disconnect in communication and understanding, obviously.