I was a late talker and I was after admission to university diagnosed with aspergers. The word autism can trigger very inappropriate and ablist attitudes. Even if the kid is bona fide autistic it might make sense to mask as neurotypical. The up and downs can be a coin toss whether it is a good idea.
You wouldn’t try to pray away your kids gayness but unfortunately stuff like applied behaviounal analysis can effectively try to punish a neurodivergence out (howeer raising a gay child in a strict closet also sounds like a recipe for disaster). Like gayness could sound like sickness to some, there is also a direction where neurodivergence is a developmental trait rather than all deficiency. Unfortunatatedly society isn’t really on the ball to sort out effective treatments and humane treatments. As a parent it would be prudent to be aware if your child has needs outside of the distribution. One doesn’t need strict labels in order to address those.
Yeah I haven’t thought about it much, but it does seem like there’s a fine line between “you get this early intervention because Society doesn’t like the way your brain is functioning and wants to change it” (=bad) vs “you get this early intervention because different kids have different needs and you’ll do best with an education tailored to your own needs” (=good). Like, other things equal, we want kids to grow into adults who can live independently, right? So if a kid is on a trajectory towards not being able to live independently as an adult, then in a sense, we do want to change that trajectory, and that might implicitly mean changing the kind of adult they grow up into, at least to some extent. Not that there would be anything wrong with the person if they followed the default trajectory. I dunno. I know nothing about ABA by the way.
As for “society isn’t on the ball”, you can say that again! Like for example, Camarata’s book says over and over, in chapter after chapter, “Do not let anyone strap your kid into a chair unless it’s for orthopedic support.” “Always ask explicitly if they strap kids into Rifton chairs.” “Write into the education plan that they will not strap your child into a Rifton chair under any circumstances”, Over and over. He says it so many times that I really get the idea that people are doing this everywhere! He says there isn’t a shred of evidence that strapping a kid into a chair is helpful for teaching anyone, with or without autism, in any circumstance (and lots of evidence that it isn’t helpful). It’s just awful.
Sometimes it is inconvenient to be different and there are tradeoffs whether environment should adapt to the indiviudal or individual to the environment. If you are blind and want access to text culture it makes sense to learn braille. Learning a visual language would not make sense, even if a for a seeing person that is key to study ability. A sensory sensitivity difference might mean a normal class room might feel like a disco. Does that mean the child should learn how to be in a constant disco (because that is what everybody else has to deal with) or does providing study peace mean ear protection, small group size or a non-group setting.
The example with the chair seems like I should be surprised but sadly I am not. It is the kind of error of providing eye-glasses to a deaf person (because they are both “disabilities”) or chemically tranqualising elderly people so that caretaking for them is eased because they just lie in bed all the time. As a parent making sure procedures are actually in the childs interest and not for example the convenience of the care provider is paramount.
I was a late talker and I was after admission to university diagnosed with aspergers. The word autism can trigger very inappropriate and ablist attitudes. Even if the kid is bona fide autistic it might make sense to mask as neurotypical. The up and downs can be a coin toss whether it is a good idea.
You wouldn’t try to pray away your kids gayness but unfortunately stuff like applied behaviounal analysis can effectively try to punish a neurodivergence out (howeer raising a gay child in a strict closet also sounds like a recipe for disaster). Like gayness could sound like sickness to some, there is also a direction where neurodivergence is a developmental trait rather than all deficiency. Unfortunatatedly society isn’t really on the ball to sort out effective treatments and humane treatments. As a parent it would be prudent to be aware if your child has needs outside of the distribution. One doesn’t need strict labels in order to address those.
Yeah I haven’t thought about it much, but it does seem like there’s a fine line between “you get this early intervention because Society doesn’t like the way your brain is functioning and wants to change it” (=bad) vs “you get this early intervention because different kids have different needs and you’ll do best with an education tailored to your own needs” (=good). Like, other things equal, we want kids to grow into adults who can live independently, right? So if a kid is on a trajectory towards not being able to live independently as an adult, then in a sense, we do want to change that trajectory, and that might implicitly mean changing the kind of adult they grow up into, at least to some extent. Not that there would be anything wrong with the person if they followed the default trajectory. I dunno. I know nothing about ABA by the way.
As for “society isn’t on the ball”, you can say that again! Like for example, Camarata’s book says over and over, in chapter after chapter, “Do not let anyone strap your kid into a chair unless it’s for orthopedic support.” “Always ask explicitly if they strap kids into Rifton chairs.” “Write into the education plan that they will not strap your child into a Rifton chair under any circumstances”, Over and over. He says it so many times that I really get the idea that people are doing this everywhere! He says there isn’t a shred of evidence that strapping a kid into a chair is helpful for teaching anyone, with or without autism, in any circumstance (and lots of evidence that it isn’t helpful). It’s just awful.
Sometimes it is inconvenient to be different and there are tradeoffs whether environment should adapt to the indiviudal or individual to the environment. If you are blind and want access to text culture it makes sense to learn braille. Learning a visual language would not make sense, even if a for a seeing person that is key to study ability. A sensory sensitivity difference might mean a normal class room might feel like a disco. Does that mean the child should learn how to be in a constant disco (because that is what everybody else has to deal with) or does providing study peace mean ear protection, small group size or a non-group setting.
The example with the chair seems like I should be surprised but sadly I am not. It is the kind of error of providing eye-glasses to a deaf person (because they are both “disabilities”) or chemically tranqualising elderly people so that caretaking for them is eased because they just lie in bed all the time. As a parent making sure procedures are actually in the childs interest and not for example the convenience of the care provider is paramount.