Not a cure, just appropriate support

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I will never want a cure for my son, my daughter or myself. I even want more children even though..... Gasp horror they will most likely be either Aspie or Autistic.

My son's Autism does great things for him and he has so many strengths because of it, I would never dream of taking it away.

I don't think NT's (not trying to be mean) can understand why things are different with us and overall what makes us tick. I am supposedly hopeless at communication and interpersonal skills yet i there is a member on here that i can tell her mood just by the nuances in her written style on a daily basis. I have managed to encourage my son into language by fostering his own interests and sensations better then going to ABA daily. We have our own special family, that differs from that of NT's but we wouldn't change it.

A cure is counter productive. It would be used on children, who have yet to discover their voice to make them like the general populous. What is wrong with a bit of Neourdiversity in the world. Einstein didn't talk until he was past 4 and had huge problems with interpersonal skill's. where would science be today, if he was "cured"?

I understand that your situation is different than mine, as my son is (profusely) verbal... so I won't judge your feelings. I would say that, based on the reading and discussions I have had with parents of profoundly autistic children, the fact that you cannot find a single positive aspect about your son in relation to his autism, is troubling.

Much of how we experience autism as parents, is up to us. It is hard for me to write this without sounding condescending or saccharin, so I hope you will read it with the tone I intend which is mother-to-mother. You need to see your son. He is not "in there" - he is right there. You need to see him, you need to see his autism, you need to see them both unified in one beautiful human being. Embrace them both.

Has his autism taught you nothing? Enriched your life in not a single way? If you can honestly say no to both of those, then I genuinely believe you need to reframe your perspective on it. Because I know there are many parents of profoundly autistic children who love them as they are, for who they are, and who recognize magnificent ways their child has enriched their life and the lives of others.

Helen Keller had multiple disorders that made it almost impossible for her to communicate. Would you say there was nothing positive about them? About humanity gaining this legendary story of triumph over profound difficulties, of the struggle to connect and communicate, of the love that human beings are capable of when life puts roadblocks in our way? Would you go back in time and make sure she was born with sight, and hearing, and rob all future generations of deaf and blind children of this inspirational story that speaks directly to their experience? Or would you eliminate deafness and blindness altogether - and if so, imagine what the world begins to look like when we are all exactly the same and none of us struggles to overcome or spread compassion and awareness about our disorders.

This world is hard. Life is full of challenges and some we could certainly do without. But I will take this world replete with autism, over a world devoid of differences and life enriching challenges, any day.

Last edited by Caitlin on 25 Apr 2011, 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

It strikes me that "curing" your neurotypicality would be just as effective as "curing" his autism for fixing the communications difficulties. Why do you insist on his being the one to be "cured", rather than you?

I don't think curing people of who they are is the right solution.

I think the best response to this common discussion is to post a link to someone who has written about this much more eloquently then I can:

http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/ ... g%20autism

I encourage you to read the posts. They are quite enlightening.

If there was a magic pill I could take that could help me learn a way to educate my son in a way that makes sense to him, I'd take it in a heartbeat. It breaks my heart to hear him call himself "stupid" because he can't comprehend math with the system they teach him. I KNOW he CAN learn it, I (and apparently his teachers) just don't know how to teach it right. If I could find some way to help him deal with conflict (real and perceived) in an appropriate way, so that he doesn't suffer from the alienation that it causes him, I'd do it damn near whatever I needed to.

I think parents just want their children to be happy, carefree children... and in a lot of ways or cases, autism puts a block to that. If my son was unaware, that would be totally different.

Some days, my son just seems like a typical carefree, hyper, somewhat-too-loud kid having fun with his buddies. On a bad day, he seems like a totally out-of-control, unreasonable, slightly psychotic brat... It breaks my heart that people get that perception of him and don't know the sweet, excited, loving, funny kid that shares the same body. If I could take away that struggle for him, I would.

Have you thought of getting a math's tutor that has Asperger's to help your son with his Mathematics? It might be just what he needs.

But that's not what the question was... it's one thing to take a pill that helps you 'learn to teach your son better' - it's quite another to take a pill and have it radically alter your neurology and effectively change your way of seeing and being in the world. Would you be so willing to take THAT pill? I think most who are honest would say no, they would be quite hesitant to do that to themselves.



This is where I think most of us NT parents go wrong. We think most of our child's struggles are from autism. But if you really dig below the surface of your daily life, it's not the autism causing most of the challenges. It's the autism trying to fit into a world that hasn't been designed to accommodate, understand, or respect it. Which brings us full circle back to the comments about how money (billions of dollars) currently being directed at a cure, would be so much better spent making this world autism-friendly.

Do you ever wonder what are your kids going to do when they grow up solvejg? I wonder if my boy will ever work, have a partner or get married or any of that stuff.
I can't see it from here.

I have thought about that... I just don't have the money for one and the school won't help me get one (I've asked)... We have an IEP meeting this week, and I think they're going to recommend special ed math, which I'm hoping will help him. If not, I'm going to request the school give me next year's curriculum and allow me to teach him on his own. I think I've pinpointed a lot of the problems he has with their system. They move too fast, jump from addition, to multiplication, division, back to addition, then fractions, and don't show how one thing relates to the other. I think they also teach too many methods to do one thing. He needs a logically streamlined curriculum.. I just don't know if the school will allow me to take over his math 100%.

I think my son will grow up and have a job yes. Hopefully he will meet either a nice man or woman who will care for him. Or if he chooses to be single and play the field, i am fine with that too. If you looked at my son from the outside, you would think he is stupid. He is highly intelligent just not in the way NT's are. The other day he drew up a picture of lines on a piece of paper at childcare. he was asked to draw something that makes him happy. The other children drew bunnies, cats, family ect. His lines were actually the electrical cables in our walls when we had them fixed a few months ago. Is he stupid for not being on the same wave length? or hyper intelligent?

OMG that post was number 777. I need some cake. I wan't cake. LOL

psychohist asked if I'd be willing to cure myself. If I could cure myself in away that would make my son feel better about himself and not call himself stupid... I would.
I have certain people trying to convince me that I'm not as NT as I thought I was... Am I? I have no freaking idea at this point... and I don't think it matters. Life sucked as a kid, but I've adapted (not saying I don't still have my issues), regardless of where my problems came from.

I don't think I'd want my son "cured".... I want him happy. I want him to be well-adapted, and yes, an autism-friendly world would help him immensely. However, my son can communicate. My son is able to interact with me. I don't blame a person whose child isn't, for wishing they could give them those things.

I like the whole statement on Hellen Keller....she was so incredible. I worry that I will end up like her someday because I am already hearing impaired and very far sighted to the point that I have to have special glasses and your supposed to lose hearing and sight to some degree as we age...so where does that leave me in the end of my life. but this thread is not about that sorry I am random. Anyway I really think that you would benefit from sign language. I learned sign language when I was about 12 because I was in a hearing impaired class. Before learning sign langauge, I never understood what people were talking about not because I was that deaf but because their words held no meaning to me. It was all like listening to random words untill I learned sign lanuage and then words began to make sence to me even when people did not speak in sign langauge. I will never forget the time I was watching historic reruns of mcgeyver and I actually understood what was going on in the show for the first time. I was so excited. The journey to becoming higher functioning was a tough one. it was not like what is seen on old oral roberts shows where one his instantly healded and walked accross the stage to sit in his lap. After a total breakdown when I was 14, mom had me takenm to cumberland in virginia for a complete neuropsych and they said that I had the mind of someone who woke up out of a coma after a very long time. I went from scoring moderately ret*d on the peabody picture test to going to college and living semi independantly.
I think sign language had a big part in that because it gave me a visual way to learn words and I am such a visual learner that it is insane.
I am still autistic...I am not cured by any means but coping skills and finding other ways to teach me have made me more functional.

jojobean... Great suggestion!!... My son was late developing language and when he did finally start talking he only said the first syllable of words. He would get so mad when I didn't understand him! I didn't know much sign language, but the few things I was able to teach him, he learned super fast and it eased his frustrations a ton!

Also! I was a HUGE MacGuyver fan... it's a miracle I never blew up our garage trying out his nifty gadgets! LOL!! !!

For me sign lanuage caused such a change in my brain processes that it was a shock when I started understanding that world around me. I would try to have conversations with people but for some reason could only have them in the washing area of the bathroom....of all places. So I made "friends" with people that I would only talk to in the bathroom. I am sure that was confusing to them. I later learned how to talk with people in other settings by trial and error. However I did find the world to be a cruel place and wanted to crawl in my little shell again but like a puppy trying to crawl back into her mother...it was exit only.
I did not know anything about unspoken social rules untill I broke them and was trampled upon. "Waking up" was a very frightening and confusing process and the worst part was I had the sore luck to wake up in jr high where I was bullied alot for trying to understand the world around me. Someone asked me if I was a virgin....I shouted back NO I AM NOT. because I thought virgin was a bad word. I was quickly called names and told I was a wh*re among other things. I did not know what that meant at all but I could tell people were laughing at me.

I wish my parrents homeschooled me during this time....but they did not know what was going on...I did not have the words to tell them.

btw...does his gadgets actuallyt work???

LOL! Rumor is that they always left one ingredient or step out. I never found them... There was one episode where he made a bomb out of couch stuffing, gun powder, and rolled it in news paper.. Being that my dad and I used to reload our bullets, I had an ample supply of gun powder AND as I became a latch-key kid around second grade, I had plenty of time to try to get that damn thing to work...... I never did. I still have all of my fingers and toes and never torched the garage.

My mom only learned about this like 2 years ago... and she cried. She was watching a Mythbusters where they tried all sorts of MacGuyver tricks and it got her thinking... then she called me up. "Tell me the truth right now!" LOL

Probably a good thing I never got it to work. And thank god I was smart enough not to try the things that I knew WOULD work.... like mixing bleach and ammonia.