There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum, and from the comments on this otherwise excellent article ("I resemble that remark!") there are people that see any interventions or attempts to treat these children as abusive.
My six year daughter is asperger (or would be if that were still distinct) and frankly her behavior is not just disruptive but absolutely horrible - she tantrums, bites and hurts anyone around her when she can't properly communicate her current "need" - and that need may be something completely unreasonable like ordering that the Santa at the mall be immediately removed from her vacinity.
Not all behaviors of autistic children - or adults - is ok and to be be cherished as a "difference". There are some behaviors that are fine - obsessions about dinosaurs, say, but there are many more that must be addressed before the child enters society. Smearing yourself with poo is NOT one of those differences that should be embraced.
Sorry, ranty after an afternoon having the shit kicked out of me because I wouldn't forward the Harry Potter audiobook to the correct precise instant she wants.
One other completely unrelated thought on this matter is that I really think that 1000 years ago, children that exhibited the type of developmental problems I've described would likely have been left in the fields to perish.
The Germanic myths around "elves" stealing children and replacing them with "changelings" often referred to as "oafs" seems to correlate with the behavior changes commonly seen around 3 years old in autistic children.
The myths that I've researched commonly described parents leaving their "changeling children" outside in the hopes that the elves would return their original children - but three year olds are not best known for their survival skills even when they're not autistic...
Take a look at David Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood; he describes in extensive, verging on exhaustive, detail precisely what you're saying. I just read it and wrote much more about the book here: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/05/thoughts-on-the-anthropolo....
I'd think they would get beaten first before being left out in the fields.
To quote wikipedia[0] on the matter:
> Until quite recently, children had very few rights in regard to protection from abuse by their parents, and still continue to do so in many parts of the world. Historically, fathers had virtually unlimited rights in regard to their children and how they chose to discipline them.
> There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum,
I would be interested to see comments made by people who use the diagnosis to excuse poor behaviour. (Edit: I reworded this to be less confrontational and less angry. Sorry for original wording.)
I am aware of people struggling to get more acceptance of neuro diversity. That's because they're fed-up of being mocked (if lucky) or murdered (less lucky) by police
> DAYTON, Ohio (CN) - Dayton police "mistook" a mentally handicapped teenager's speech impediment for "disrespect," so they Tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat him and called for backup from "upward of 20 police officers" after the boy rode his bicycle home to ask his mother for help, the boy's mom says.
It's not really surprising that neuro-atypical people are getting militant when they're faced with widespread discrimination that causes shorter, less good, lives.
My wife would probably be better able to respond to specific websites and discussion as she's been far more involved in the online communities surrounding our daughters disorder. I've asked for some links from her, but there were several comments in the linked article that seem to suggest accepting neuro-diversity warts and all.
Believe me that I'm tickled by my daughters extreme interests - but we DO want to cure her of her disruptive and dangerous behaviors.
We have called the sheriffs office during one of our daughters most extreme tantrums - they couldn't have been nicer or more understanding and helped us out considerably during their visit. I suspect our county sheriff (Santa Cruz, ca) has had extra training in that regard.
On the other hand, we have also had to deal with child protective services, called because of bruises noticed by the school. We got the third degree, but since we've also had to do a lot of video recording of her tantrums, it was pretty easy to establish that - aside from our having to restrain her, her bruises were self inflicted.
On her good days, she's a joy and a wonder. On her bad days, she's a beast from the nether pits of hell. But we will stick by her.
> On her good days, she's a joy and a wonder. On her bad days, she's a beast from the nether pits of hell. But we will stick by her.
I don't understand this. Shouldn't the behavior be constant?
Have you been able to coax good days out of her by changing the environment, food, your behavior, etc? Can you predict the bad days? Is there a pattern?
> I don't understand this. Shouldn't the behavior be constant?
Spoken like a programmer. Adults aren't even consistent. Ever seen a woman going completely apeshit at a male for some reason (sometime justified, sometimes not)?
Biological organisms have significant variations. Sometimes you get an angel; sometimes you get a devil; sometimes both.
In the past, resources were sufficiently scarce that children (and adults) who weren't capable of fitting into society were killed or allowed to die.
I've never seen a woman do this so I suspect this is just your stereotype-based expectations biasing your interpretations. Peoples' memory of events are notoriously unreliable and extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion, like the suggestion that women are more prone to emotional outbursts, which is an age-old trope. http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2012/mar...
Children, neurotypical or not, have very inconsistent behaviors. You may be able to generalize in some broad cases, but a child presented with a stimulus may react one way any given day, and completely the opposite the next day. They're as unpredictable as can be.
I think @salgernon was expressing his perception, practically in the form of a question, seeking constructive dialog on the topic. I think a call for citation followed by random anecdote is not a great response to an invitation for a thoughtful dialog with someone with unique experience in the field.
I'm not sure if you're talking about a completely different issue, or the flip side of the same coin. Awareness and sensitivity to others' abilities I guess could be on the same spectrum as making excuses for violent behavior, but I think it's different forces at play.
We definitely need more empathy in this world (and lets not even get into police assault here). But at the same time, there can be a good reason why a child is misbehaving or even acting violently, but that behavior is still unacceptable. I've never personally experienced the parent who feels like their child is entitled to their kid's violent outburst in public space ____, but certainly we hear the stories. More often, I just feel awful for parents who are dealing with a meltdown in the moment, because, been there, done that.
As a parent in that situation, it's usually just, "ok, lets get the heck out of here." As a parent watching those situations, I always want to help somehow, but it seems like there's a huge taboo to even acknowledge the situation, let alone try to intervene. Personally I'd be too afraid to even open my mouth because the other parent would assume I was going to chastise them rather than try to help somehow.
Actually, (as another person on the spectrum), I believe you've just been tone-policed by a privileged person. Note that the confrontational tone, random anecdotes and judgement of people involved in the community were all present in your post's parent - so the only difference seems to be that the original post is a neurotypical parent.
This is a common strawmanning of communities, so it's no wonder some of us get irate - I do, for example. Sure, there are neglectful parent who try to hide their neglect (or inability to handle an overwhelming situation) behind claims that it's all "working as intended" - but positing them as representative of people who ask for more acceptance is unfair.
Ultimately, confrontation and aggression isn't all that great, but you need two sides to keep things civil. I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent, which isn't surprising for someone who's conscious of their tone issues - and that its perception comes from a bigger dissonance between expected and perceived aggression.
This wasn't tone-policing, it was tone-neighborhood watch at worst. You can't dismiss an argument because of tone, but you certainly can call someone's attention to how their argument may be interpreted by their tone.
There's no straw-manning going on here. He interpreted (quite sensibly in my opinion) it as a challenge to the father. Regardless if that was intended or not, it was the first-read impression I had as well. Now that the OP has clarified his position, now I know that it was not the intended position. If it were not for the response, none of this would have been clarified.
Nice name for a tone-lynch-mob, but are you sure that's any better than tone-police?
> as a challenge to the father
Seriously? The OP starts with "There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum". If that's not the challenge, then I don't know what is. It's not possible to slap someone with an iron gauntlet over the Internet though. That's as fair as "there seems to be a movement to enslave all men/whites/extremely rich rocket company owners" - I'm even sure you're going to find a few people who do have those beliefs, but representing them as anything but fringe is unfair and challenging.
While I gently agree with some of what you say it's probably important to note that I say in my profile that I struggle with tone and that I welcome email or downvotes to guide me to do better. And I sometimes talk about the increased hostility on HN.
So I invited this tone policing. (And of course I continue to do so)
> I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent,
I'll be honest: I thought so too. It's interesting to me that other people read the posts so differently.
Still, the change I made stopped downvotes so tone matters.
I don't have any numbers, but it is not entirely unfeasible that they would be. Police tend to react strongly if someone acts confrontationally with them, and this is something that autistic people might do more often. They don't mean harm, but how would the police know they don't?
Police can be trained to recognize various disorders and understand how to deal with them non-violently, but in the end, it may be difficult to see quickly that you should act differently if a non-compliant and threatening-looking person is autistic, compared to other non-compliant and threatening-looking persons.
> There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum, and from the comments on this otherwise excellent article ("I resemble that remark!") there are people that see any interventions or attempts to treat these children as abusive.
Maybe. But there's another trend that's beneficial, and can sometimes be mistaken for "everything is acceptable/justifiable/let it be" -- and that is the movement to understand any and all behaviours.
The latter is very important in diagnosing and helping children.
In order to know what is abnormal, we must first find out what is normal. And a helpful, meaningful definition of "normal" certainly isn't as simple as "what I/we used to do as children". It is rather unfortunate when children services, psychologists and teachers are sometimes so wrong/ignorant that such a simple definition of normality is actually better than what the "professionals" live by.
Thankfully that is also something that can be and is being improved with education (and research).
As with any child, one can address behavior issues without shaming or hating who the child is. In an adult relationship, it's the difference between "You make me feel bad when you do xyz" and "Why do you always have to be such an a-hole" - these are two very different ways to raise an issue.
That's what many (including me) are saying about autism. The point is not to cherish harmful behaviors. The point is to cherish the children who are different. Their differences make it harder for them to learn some behaviors, but they do have a positive side much of the time.
My son is awesome and I would change nothing. Personally I find him much easier to get along with than "typical" kids.
In addition to this, bearing in mind that people with autism process emotion differently, it is very likely that shaming is an ineffective way to promote learning.
You're reading too much into the article than is there. The father in the article mentioned speech therapy, therapists and lots of doctors. It's clear that he is doing what he can to help his daughter, this particular article just wasn't about that part.
This article was about self-acceptance, about accepting something about yourself and your family that you didn't choose. That doesn't mean that he ignores it, or doesn't work to change his daughter's behavior. Acceptance doesn't require you do nothing. Acceptance can help see all the ways the disorder is impacting things more clearly, and that can lead to more effective interventions.
(Side note- I do absolutely agree with you on the current trend of explaining away mental disorders as gifts, 'differences' to be tolerated, or evolutionary trends that don't make sense anymore. No, autism\ADHD\ect are not a gift. Serious disorders that affect all aspects of your life are not something to celebrate or ignore.)
I see where you are coming from and I felt urges to leave a comment on that page for reasons similar and others as well. It's almost as if the diagnosis permits the parents to allow their children to misbehave. The diagnosis explains away the need to punish them, it's just the way "I made my kid". That sounds worse if you ask me!
Before my son was diagnosed with any issues and before we had guidance, my son was is a constant state of being punished for behaviors that any parent would punish for. He hit the age where children become defiant and push boundaries and, having already had another older kid, we thought we knew what we were doing.
It turns out that really my son was suffering and punishing him for his behavior wasn't helping him. He was miserable, we were miserable, and nothing was improving. Only once we understood what we dealing with and changed away from thinking of his behavior as misbehaving did we start to make progress. And now he's a wonderful well behaved kid.
I think it's really important for kids with actual issues to be diagnosed. For every kid were diagnosis might possibly permit parents to make excuses for their children, I suspect there are 10 more with frustrated parents doing all the wrong things.
> It's almost as if the diagnosis permits the parents to allow their children to misbehave.
It may seem that way on the outside, but that's only because you haven't lived on the inside.
It's about understanding where these behaviors come from so that you and your child are better equipped to deal with them.
Sad to hear about your situation. A very close friend of mine is in a similar one, and I see how his life is. It's hard. I always tell him he's lucky to have a lot of faith, otherwise I don't know how he would have coped with it (I wouldn't have been able to, in his shoes).
When initially diagnosed, the doctor refused to write a diagnosis become the new DSM was about to be published, and she wanted us to come back In two months once it was published so she could write the disgnosis as autism spectrum disorder.
Aspergers is now considered part of the autistic spectrum rather than a distinct diagnosis - and this is particularly only really important when considering what services are made available. For instance, having the autism disgnosis allows the public school she attends to pay for an individual aid for her in a mainstream first grade class, while a year ago, Aspergers as a diagnosis would have fallen through the cracks sand she might have been sent to a special education classroom because of her disruptive behavior.
Specifically it was folded into ASD in the DSM-5, the 2013 edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The change was rather controversial, and in any case the DSM is only considered gospel in the USA.
(As a person with autism/Asperger's, I'm not sure I have a strong opinion. Asperger's is clearly at least related to autism, and the autistic spectrum is a pretty broad umbrella anyway.)
My six year daughter is asperger (or would be if that were still distinct) and frankly her behavior is not just disruptive but absolutely horrible - she tantrums, bites and hurts anyone around her when she can't properly communicate her current "need" - and that need may be something completely unreasonable like ordering that the Santa at the mall be immediately removed from her vacinity.
Not all behaviors of autistic children - or adults - is ok and to be be cherished as a "difference". There are some behaviors that are fine - obsessions about dinosaurs, say, but there are many more that must be addressed before the child enters society. Smearing yourself with poo is NOT one of those differences that should be embraced.
Sorry, ranty after an afternoon having the shit kicked out of me because I wouldn't forward the Harry Potter audiobook to the correct precise instant she wants.