NTs can be so skewed and uninformed about Autism!

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I just need to complain a little bit.

In my last class, we watched the Temple Grandin movie for Autism Awareness purposes and my god, people are so horrific about their ideas about Autism. One person said they thought Autism was the same as mental retardation, another said that they are similar to schizophrenics, and i just find their "understanding" horrific! It's weird and awful, and I don't understand it.

You're right: autism awareness campaigns have just made people aware that autism exists. They haven't done anything to explain how it impacts on the lives of those with the condition, or their families and friends, or to address what autism actually is.

Autism awareness has outlived its usefulness.

In the UK, the National Autistic Society has just launched a 3 year campaign to improve public understanding of autism. Better late than never. I'm involved with this, and think it will help quite a lot - although it will take longer than three years.

There are similarities between schizophrenia and autism though and mental retardation because of overlaps. Like people with MR have difficulty with self help skills as do people on the autism spectrum and they also have routines as do autistic people and also get upset when they change. In high school my school had a school assembly that day so they changed our school schedule a little that day so instead of going to our class for 20 minutes, we went straight to second period but this girl with Down's syndrome was trying to go next door for her 20 minute class and the teacher kept telling her it wasn't advisory, it was second period and advisory is the next bell. But she kept on trying to go next door so the teacher let her be next door because she didn't understand there was a change in the schedule. She would have gotten upset if the teacher just forced her to stay in the room so the teacher picked her battle. But yet she didn't mind going to that class again when it was actually time for that class.

There are so many conditions out there that mimic symptoms of autism so I do see similarities a lot. People even compare autism to ADHD because of so many symptoms they have in common some even wonder if it should be on the autism spectrum too but if they did that, then ADHD people would be considered autistic and there would be even more autistic people in the world because they had decided to add it to the spectrum and the autism rates would sky rocket. I also read people with ADHD also do routines even though it's not in the criteria because it helps them. I think it's more about helping them keep organized so it might not really be a symptom.

But I know what you mean.

When I was still a kid I was not only unaware that I'm on the spectrum but knew next to nothing about autism in general. One time I found a paper in the back of someone's car that showed an autistic boy (a boy, naturally), and it said he had severe tantrums, spent hours rocking and was confused and frightened. On the back was a list of "symptoms" of autism like inappropriate laughing/giggling and spinning objects. When I was teenager I read something at school about an autistic person who wrote how hypersensitive they were to clothing and things and thinking to myself "I sure am glad I'm not autistic".

But it's not my fault I was raised in such ignorance. The public knew practically nothing about Asperger's until 1994 and even then they were very ignorant about it, especially when it came to the non-male variety of aspies.

It's interesting that your classmates immediately compared autism with other conditions. Do they think that they understand those other conditions better than they understood autism? In most cases they don't, so they don't really have any basis for making a comparison. They'll never overcome stereotypes about autism by comparing what they have just learned with another, different set of stereotypes about something else!

I think that's very true, and why I'm very cynical about the whole idea of "awareness campaigns". At the end of the day, I'm not sure that it matters how much information you present to people, or how accurate it is, because you can't force people to actually "care". They can also give people the feeling that they've already "done their bit" by getting their little ribbon to wear, and so have discharged their "responsibilities" and need do no more.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that there will be autistic kids who get more abuse in the playground over the coming weeks because of the current autism awareness drive - and non-autistic kids who will be hearing "autistic" as a term of abuse whenever they don't fit into the "playground politics".

The folks who push these campaigns should be very careful what they wish for, in my opinion. On it's own, "awareness" without understanding or compassion has the potential to be counter-productive by giving belligerent people a label to which they can attach stigma and bullying.

Personally, I think, as someone above basically said, that these "awareness" campaigns would be much better as "acceptance" campaigns.

On the topic of "awareness", I think that a lot of people are "aware" of it, but a good majority are not "accepting" of it as any more than another mental illness.

I'm not saying that neurodiversity is superior to neurotypicality, but I feel many fail to understand that it isn't any inferior, though I am saying it is as human as any other individual quality.

Just my two cents (I believe the expression is).

Unfortunately far too many are underinformed or ill-informed about matters of autism

I remember stuff like this was common when I was still in school. Because I was more outgoing than my peers at the autism unit, I was kind of an unofficial ambassador for it so sometimes I was asked questions about autism. Often they were really dumb questions.

One example was a girl in my class asked me about one of the boys in the unit (by the way, this girl was a casual acquaintance of mine). He was very quiet and often had a very focussed look on his face. He also had a lot of problems with OCD and social anxiety which made school very difficult for him. I think he appeared to be quite 'disturbed' to others when he was just tense because of his anxiety issues. The conversation with the girl went something like this:

Girl: Hey, you go to the unit with [the boy], don't you?
Me: Yeah?
Girl: Yeah, he's really quiet and doesn't really like to talk much
Me: Yeah? So?
Girl: Do you know, like, what's wrong with him?
Me:....what?
Girl: I mean, like, what does he have wrong with him?
Me: Um, he doesn't have anything wrong with him. He's just shy.
Girl: Yeah, but what's, y'know, WRONG with him?
Me: *Knowing it's not really my place to tell people his diagnosis* Well, I don't know. You would have to ask him.

Yeah, she was well meaning but that was a surreal experience.

I wasn't even diagnosed with asperger's until i was 13, so my school life was arguably worse than most due to my behavior during meltdowns seeminly having no apparrent explanation. And i myself largely knew nothing about it until i was 17, and started preparing for the day i turned 18. Another large problem is that neurotypicals usually don't try to minimize that knowledge gap either, so it just gets worse over time.

I was diagnosed at age 6 but I still didn't know much about it until around the beginning of this year. I used to hate being called autistic even though I knew that Asperger's is a form of autism because it made me think of the stereotype.

I was not shocked at how unaware most NTs were about the Autism spectrum. What did shock me was how most people on the spectrum didn't know much better either. So many people think being on the spectrum leads to social impairment and "high IQ". It is not only that. It is also the sensory issues present and brain differences. These include but are not limited to:

>>Amygdala functioning as it has less tolerance for social mishaps thus generating more cortisol
>>Generated cortisol may be distributed in "odd places" thus leading to odd body shape
>>More developed frontal cortex leading to better decision making strategies earlier in development for aspies
>>Aspies have faster neuronal processing, leading to "sensory overload" because sensory data is being processed faster
>>On the other hand, some aspies are too numb to some sensory data while others are too sensitive
>>Due to amygdala differences, the amygdala is in charge of "fight or flight" responses to fear, the aspie's amygdala makes them oblivious to potential redflags when determining a person's safety. This is why a lot of aspies end up as target from abusers or have ended up abused/endangered. This is why we and others on the spectrum trust too much.

All this being said, it is unfortunate about the misconception and warped information out there. I have not told may people irl I have aspergers because those I have told, I was less than pleased with their treatment of me.

It's not just NT's. A lot of people before they were diagnosed didn't know anything about autism or HFA. A person usually isn't interested in that stuff unless it pertains to them - even then, you have a problem with people learning about it. It's not something simple to learn either. Learning about Aspergers is like learning a different language and it's an ongoing process that most people don't want to undertake. However, I see the same thing with Aspies not wanting to understand why NT's are the way they are. Learning has to take place from both sides in order for there to be good communication.

I've found that a lot of NT "autism parents" are actually woefully misinformed about autism!! I had to listen to a conversation where a mother talked about how people with autism have personalities and interests! Like, WOW! Did you know??? Autistic people are PEOPLE!! !!

I actually heard one of my friends say "the Asperger's spectrum" the other day! It's so hard to not immediately start educating people, but I've come to realize that most of them would not be receptive to me trying to teach them something.

I've also had people tell me that I couldn't possibly be autistic because I'm "not that bad" at social situations. Like they don't know most of what I say is scripted and I can barely interact on most days! Eye contact is ridiculously hard, but I force myself to do it and be uncomfortable. I guess having a mother who spent all of my childhood teaching me to be NT-passing really paid off.....

I just had a little fantasy about Luke Skywalker being autistic and it totally fit.

Back to the topic- I try to mentally catalog the conversations I have with other neurotypicals about the autism spectrum. It's sometimes pretty useful in figuring out where I'm having trouble getting things pushed forward with my research.

One of the worst things I ever heard was from a former special ed teacher. I asked her what she thought of the idea of having autistic young adults (college students) mentor autistic teenagers. She said she wouldn't think that parents would like that, because they would want their kids to "get better", not have more autisticness rub off on them.

Hearing that someone who worked as a special ed teacher said that, makes me want to hit the person right in the face. She should already know there is no cure, and therefore is no "getting better" only learning to manage the difficulties better when they arise, and i say who better to help with that than someone who deals with similar problems on a regular basis?