Puttin' on the 'rents
Tryin' mighty hard to look like Gary Cooper.
Super duper.
One of the saddest things one sees in stories in the news media or even on YouTube or Google video or in blogs is parents displaying an obviously autism spectrum child doing the equivalent of a buck and wing, like the child is a trophy or something, and calling the child "nearly recovered" or "cured." Usually, this is done to make a claim for the effectiveness of some particular treatment. Sometimes these "recovered child" videos are available on the websites of quack doctors who pitch their snake oil treatments to parents using these supposedly stunning before and after videos.
Autism Diva watched a supposedly straight researcher from the MIND Institute use a video borrowed from a quack in a conference presentation (the borrowed video is on the quack's website) to show the improvements made by a little girl over the period of a little more than a year. She went from being a two-year old throwing tantrums --- NO! Really? A two year old throwing a temper tantrum? Shocking! --- maturing into a four year old interacting nicely with some adults. All of this is attributed to the wonders of the quack therapy, of course. Autism Diva is not saying that this little girl was not autistic, but the little girl looks pretty close to normal, even as a temper tantrum throwing 2 year old. Like they don't know that normal kids make huge strides in cooperating with adults from age 2 to 4.
All of this comes about because the parents are so anxious to declare a victory in their seige on "the child's autism" and because they have wobbly definitions of what "recovered" is. These prounoncements of recovery are sometimes backed up by school administrators who are more than happy to agree that a child getting special ed services no longer needs them. Also, it doesn't take that much editing to make an autistic kid look normalish for a few seconds at a time on a video, just as selective editing can make an autistic child look like a total monster.
As diagnoses are pushed to younger ages it will be easier for a non-autistic child to be misdiagnosed at age 11 months, for example, and then have a miraculous turn around and look non-autistic a year later. The "cure" will be attributed to whatever was done to the child in that time. One never hears about a "miracle cure" that works for a kid who is obviously autistic at age 8 and then not at age 9. Snake oil peddlers whose treatments fail on these older kids wring their hands and say, "Oh, if only you had brought him to us sooner!"
None of this is to say that parents shouldn't show off their children's talents, it's just that the audience should feel like they are applauding a child's own skill and effort, and not applauding not some injections or a quack's brilliance at finding a cure for the dreaded moster autism.
Autistic adults describe in detail the way they have learned to "pass for normal" in order to take the stress off in certain situations. Passing for normal, smiling when you don't want to smile, suppressing a desire to flap or perseverate on trains. It helps in some situations to get along with normal people, but it shifts the stress to elsewhere in the psyche because one isn't allowed to be one's self. The person working so hard to act normal can end up resenting the people he or she is trying to please. Like a (not autistic) UC Davis student Autism Diva knows, the student's mother expects her to be a pharmacist. The student switched out of the pre-pharmacy program at UCD a year ago and into an engineering program. Now the engineering student has to make up a pretend schedule of pre-pharmacy classes each quarter to tell her mother about. That's a lot of stress, but less stress than dealing with an angry disappointed mother, apparently.
More lessons in psychobiology and child psychology from Young Frankenstein:
Everyone's greatest fear, an Abby Normal brain.
Click here for one more. Gene Wilder starts out demonstrating Son Rise techniques (Do NOT open this door!) and moves on to Bettelheim's specialty (the child just needs to be loved,) and then on to almost acceptance therapy:
"People hate you, but WHY do they hate you? Because THEY are JEALOUS!"
"Listen to me. You are NOT Evil, YOU ARE -- GOOD!"
"This is a NICE BOY. ... This is a mother's angel!"
"We LOVE him!"
PG rated.
Autism Diva
time steps
Super duper.
One of the saddest things one sees in stories in the news media or even on YouTube or Google video or in blogs is parents displaying an obviously autism spectrum child doing the equivalent of a buck and wing, like the child is a trophy or something, and calling the child "nearly recovered" or "cured." Usually, this is done to make a claim for the effectiveness of some particular treatment. Sometimes these "recovered child" videos are available on the websites of quack doctors who pitch their snake oil treatments to parents using these supposedly stunning before and after videos.
Autism Diva watched a supposedly straight researcher from the MIND Institute use a video borrowed from a quack in a conference presentation (the borrowed video is on the quack's website) to show the improvements made by a little girl over the period of a little more than a year. She went from being a two-year old throwing tantrums --- NO! Really? A two year old throwing a temper tantrum? Shocking! --- maturing into a four year old interacting nicely with some adults. All of this is attributed to the wonders of the quack therapy, of course. Autism Diva is not saying that this little girl was not autistic, but the little girl looks pretty close to normal, even as a temper tantrum throwing 2 year old. Like they don't know that normal kids make huge strides in cooperating with adults from age 2 to 4.
All of this comes about because the parents are so anxious to declare a victory in their seige on "the child's autism" and because they have wobbly definitions of what "recovered" is. These prounoncements of recovery are sometimes backed up by school administrators who are more than happy to agree that a child getting special ed services no longer needs them. Also, it doesn't take that much editing to make an autistic kid look normalish for a few seconds at a time on a video, just as selective editing can make an autistic child look like a total monster.
As diagnoses are pushed to younger ages it will be easier for a non-autistic child to be misdiagnosed at age 11 months, for example, and then have a miraculous turn around and look non-autistic a year later. The "cure" will be attributed to whatever was done to the child in that time. One never hears about a "miracle cure" that works for a kid who is obviously autistic at age 8 and then not at age 9. Snake oil peddlers whose treatments fail on these older kids wring their hands and say, "Oh, if only you had brought him to us sooner!"
None of this is to say that parents shouldn't show off their children's talents, it's just that the audience should feel like they are applauding a child's own skill and effort, and not applauding not some injections or a quack's brilliance at finding a cure for the dreaded moster autism.
Autistic adults describe in detail the way they have learned to "pass for normal" in order to take the stress off in certain situations. Passing for normal, smiling when you don't want to smile, suppressing a desire to flap or perseverate on trains. It helps in some situations to get along with normal people, but it shifts the stress to elsewhere in the psyche because one isn't allowed to be one's self. The person working so hard to act normal can end up resenting the people he or she is trying to please. Like a (not autistic) UC Davis student Autism Diva knows, the student's mother expects her to be a pharmacist. The student switched out of the pre-pharmacy program at UCD a year ago and into an engineering program. Now the engineering student has to make up a pretend schedule of pre-pharmacy classes each quarter to tell her mother about. That's a lot of stress, but less stress than dealing with an angry disappointed mother, apparently.
More lessons in psychobiology and child psychology from Young Frankenstein:
Everyone's greatest fear, an Abby Normal brain.
Click here for one more. Gene Wilder starts out demonstrating Son Rise techniques (Do NOT open this door!) and moves on to Bettelheim's specialty (the child just needs to be loved,) and then on to almost acceptance therapy:
"People hate you, but WHY do they hate you? Because THEY are JEALOUS!"
"Listen to me. You are NOT Evil, YOU ARE -- GOOD!"
"This is a NICE BOY. ... This is a mother's angel!"
"We LOVE him!"
PG rated.
Autism Diva
time steps