"The Omen, AS, Teachers/School and Child Lib"!

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It's the title of a book by Jim Hightower.

Well, I like contract law, but if I read the same article it brushed aside many of the concerns people had about processing abilities and things like that too quickly and without enough evidence.

I tend to disagree. It is a rights based argument and I don't agree so much with rights. Really, I could be more amenable to the idea of younger people having these abilities if there was a mechanism to separate the deserving from the undeserving, but I am not very willing to consider a lower age-based rule in most of these circumstances.


I don't see much evidence for this though.


Then remove some voting rights so they don't feel so bad. Change the voting system so it no longer seems like an egalitarian rights process and more like a process to find merit.


Ah, I really don't care so much about rights. In a more perfect world, rights would correspond to the ability to use them though.


Yes, the tyranny of the majority. The tyranny inherent in democracy. I really don't see equality as inherently that important, especially equality for temporarily existing parties.

I think that i need to restate my argument, because my original point has been rather lost in exploring issues arising from my having used some terms that turn out to be inexact or inappropriate, and generally unhelpful.

I think that it is possible that the phenomenon of massively increasing numbers of diagnosis of AS disorders and ADHD etc in the rich industrialised countries in the last 20 years is directly linked to the fact that millions of people are excluded on the basis of age from many significant activities and freedoms in society ( voting, working for money, owning property, driving, sex, freedom to choose where live within means at disposal, freedom to dispose of time as see fit etc), which the majority, called adults, take for granted. ( and if don't get it, sex for example, or a job, often seem to think they are being unjustly treated!!) ( or re-experience childhood feelings of exclusion and low self-worth, for not having these things ...... )

I remembered that Shulamith Firestone said that womens liberation would not be complete until children were liberated too.
In the same way that unmarried men used to talk gloatingly of their personal freedom, from the burden of a wife, when women still could not vote, or go out alone or work unless working class or a prostitute, now childless people talk gloatingly of the freedom they have. Because while under-18s ( in the rich industrialised west anyway) are excluded from remunerative activity, unable to drive in a world increasingly dependent on the car, schooled in dependency, etc, a parent is acting out every day the dynamic of a white colonial with black workers in black africa, trying to be nice and supportive to someone considered an inferior by the law.
"It is such a responsibility, you can't imagine!" "They really don't know how to do the simplest things". "You have no idea how difficult it is". Complaints of colonials faced with what seemed to them the ineradicable childlikeness of black people. Their "inability to plan ahead", their "naivety",etc.

This is the conflictual/frustrating "framework" dealt with everyday by parents, and which is unnecessary because is the result of discrimination.Under-18s also require increasing accompaniment ( because of their reduced mobility; forbidden to drive) and surveillance.

This is not only tiring, but tends to a kind of secondary exclusion, of the most active parent, from many "adult" activities.

I firmly believe that a huge part of the increase in diagnosis of AS disorders is the result of both the efforts , unconscious i imagine, on the part of adults to control the under-18s who won't behave the way a child is supposed to, and the, also unconscious, reactions of protest/distress on childrens part to their exclusion. Also some of the "abnormal/aberrant" behaviour may ironically be adaptation, compliance, to the demands made on under-18s by society, to be less than human, incapable, irresponsible, not part of society.

Last edited by ouinon on 21 Dec 2007, 3:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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I have just changed the title of this thread because i have suddenly worked out what it is that i am going on about.

I think that the main problem with the categories "child" and "adult", ( maintained by laws relating to freedoms before and after certain ages, 16/18/21 depending on the country and the activity,) is that they are a dichotomy,( like sex and gender, which have been shown to be social constructs that cause unnecessary psychological damage).

After understanding that their mother is "not me", that there is "myself" and there is "other",( tho not everybody does this at the same time ) and discovering the amusing game of "yes and no", I think many people also realise very early on that there is "adult" and "child".

A bit like realising that there is man and woman. But much worse. After all women and blacks were compared to children in order to argue that they should not have the vote. What kind of identity is "child"?
And what "child" is capable of saying "oh, it's alright, it's only for the next 18 years"? And WHY should they?

And what if a person simply does NOT fit the current profile of a "child", and there is no reason why anyone should, it is artificial, "adult-man and woman-made, a social construct, what if they are "too" in some things, and "not enough" in others, based on what is considered "normal" for a "child" to be like at each stage of development? What if refuse to fit in? What if can't?

Lots of women and gay men have been through this one. Imagine what it is like for all the people who probably haven't even got a sense of time yet, faced with "being" a "child" when they can see what being an "adult" is like.



I am age-queer. Neither adult or child. I have been a mixture from birth. It might be useful to throw the terms away, and all the legislation which enforces them, because i think there's a lot of us.

Last edited by ouinon on 21 Dec 2007, 10:33 am, edited 14 times in total.

I am age-queer. ( neither adult nor child)

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Should we let you vote?

Good question!

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2007, 10:51 am, edited 12 times in total.

Umm sorry but I was sort of thinking Odin could be Liu Bei 'cause he came in late.

Ahhh but my dear friend, hijacking threads is an age old Aspie tradition that dates back several years!

Two classic symptoms of Aspergers/HFAS are "adult" behaviours, though in very specific situations, when relating to children, or other subordinates.

1)Data dumping, something "adults" do constantly with "children".

2)Lack of empathy with peoples feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
In people with Aspergers/HFAS ( ) it is perhaps an approach unconsciously copied off, and apparently "legitimised" by, most "adults" in their day to day behaviour towards "children", showing little or no empathy with the "childrens" feelings/thoughts etc.

After all "adults" can't afford to empathise with "children", seeing the power adults have over the artificially created group "children"; empathy with them would begin to dissolve the justifications for the barrier between them, and the freedoms withheld from one group by the other!

Perhaps the most sensitive, the most gifted, the most frustrated by the system and the miniscule role they are assigned to in it, copy this behaviour with the goal of becoming a "Real Adult", but unfortunately it is not appropriate/successful behaviour with peers.

By the way are there any figures to show whether a higher proportion of first borns are being diagnosed with Aspergers/HFAS ? Just wondering whether having older siblings might help break up the gap/abyss between child and adult, and consequently partly "deconstruct" the dichotomy, thus protecting from the worst of the oppression, which is believing the dichotomy.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2007, 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Edited by MM]

The neurological findings relating to Aspergers/HFAS/ADHD etc are what you find in especially gifted and/or highly sensitive and/or introverted people. The ones most likely to suffer from institutionalised and approved discrimination and oppression, ( and allergies! ).
To whom the noisy crowded etc environments of school, pre-school, and toddler-groups are intolerable.

To most people "child" and "adult" seem like real things. they do not realise that they are social constructions. The neurologically gifted may suss this out, even if it is so painful that they suppress consciousness of it afterwards, or if never have words for it exactly, and they will suffer. Either in attempting to obey, or in failing to, or in rebelling against the injunctions in the constructs, or in apparently perfect successful obedience.

Brain wiring is still under development in the first 5, even 7, years of life. If shut down empathy function cos wish to emulate/become adult and see that institutionalised absence of empathy is crucial aspect of successful adulthood, then by age 7 the neurological capacity for empathy may have dwindled to 0.

Nice people in playschools etc may treat them very well, like particularly fascinating puppies. ( but that is not empathy, just good animal welfare care)

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2007, 10:56 am, edited 5 times in total.

But is there any real evidence to support this other than your supposed explanatory theory? We could postulate that global warming is caused by a lack of pirates, but that does not mean that the variables are actually connected. Honestly, the idea you put forward is sort of ridiculous as our societal structures have not changed significantly in recent times towards the illiberal but the psychological outbreaks have. Therefore the correlation does not appear to exist.


Actually, I think that sex and gender are not bad social constructs but rather healthy and that have a real basis in biology based upon gender psychology and physiology. The notion of a complete tabula rasa is ridiculous, as is the notion that human society is going to be so fundamentally different from any other animal species that we are not going to have distinctions. I have no idea where these concepts even pop up.


Well, when they are 0 years old, they don't know about voting. And it is very easy to say, "ok, only for X years". They already do that and should do that to learn patience. At the very least they are not indentured servants like some of their ancestors who had to live as adults and work at the whims of a master. They should not have these freedoms because they are not independents and they will do nothing to the voting pool.


Who says that fitting in is what they need to be doing? If they won't or can't then efforts should be made to support their psychology in other ways and efforts can be made to do so, based upon available resources. If smarter then allow them to learn more and try to allow them some ability to be around intelligent people and other compensations can be made for other differences. Really, the limits for kids are mostly up to the parents more so than the state.


No, we should keep them. Your age queerness is knowable from your posting style though, a lot of rhetoric, not a lot of solid reason. Sort of like how a child would attempt to reason.


I would think not.

Wow. Just wow.

Just really wow. I guess common sense and critical thought are rare critter.

Just. Wow.

I'm jumping off the cliff now.

One reason why would in fact expect more and more people to be developing "little professor" style behaviours is that fewer and fewer children see adults relating to other adults, except at weekends and perhaps for moments in the evenings. What children see of adults most of the time from birth until late teens, in the last 50 years in the West, is adults relating to children. That is the adult behaviour that increasing numbers of children are now most familiar with.

How adults behave with their peers ( other adults) is almost unknown to them, except for what they see of their parents behaviour, and even that has become increasingly orientated towards the children, as many parents don't feel it possible to carry on with their normal adult lives when their children are around. They engage in typically pedagogic, or typically patronising, or typically anxious behaviour towards their offspring whenever they are present. It is not surprising that more and more parents and children flee each others company.

The most sensitive and gifted children will copy this behaviour that they see as adult more skilfully than the less able because they may actually have data/info to impart in this style!! Or they may on the other hand put a lot of energy into gaining such large amounts of knowledge as adults seem to have when downloading to children.

I can imagine that the desire to be an "adult" may well be that much more desperate and all consuming in an introvert child, for whom school, pre-school and toddler-group are nightmares of noise and superfluous/unwanted company, and who see that adults are free to dispose of their time as see fit, free to live alone, free to do things away from others.

The level of lack of empathy towards children ( most particularly the introverts) in society is deafening, horrifying. In children the same lack of empathy is seen as aberrant.

If a child talks about adults with the degree of incomprehension and lack of empathy that so many adults do about children they are seen as lacking theory of mind, whereas in fact they may simply be reflecting the blanket incomprehension/lack of empathy they experience on a daily basis from adults, particularly if they are introvert, because most teachers/educators/"child"care workers are extravert.

Before school , and pre-school, and creches/nursery groups became the normal framework for the vast majority of childrens lives, their experience of adults was of adults reacting to other adults. Children were on the periphery. Their natural/instinctive copying of adults produced behaviour appropriate for their peers, at any age. Now the behaviour that they copy , ( and the the brightest, and most motivated, do it first and most accurately ) is behaviour appropriate for dealing with "inferiors", which is not a behaviour likely to endear them to anyone, and doesn't.

Been thinking about the "classic" Aspergers symptom, avoidance of eye contact, and realise it is actually often something someone does when talking to people subordinate to them, especially if is uneasy about their own "superior" position and wishes to maintain distance between themselves and the notionally "inferior".

Therefore it is an "adult" behaviour, in interactions with children/"inferiors" anyway.

No wonder people who avoid eye contact when obviously not at all submissive,( holding forth on a subject they know all about for instance), are experienced as off putting.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2007, 10:57 am, edited 4 times in total.

I was thinking how in the past the children most isolated from adults, apart from those occupied specifically with the care and education of the child, were from the middle and upper classes.
Sent to school from very young, the introvert child became a "good" "superior"/member of the ruling classes in fact , with an appropriate ( ! !) style for dealing with black people, Indians and other colonially oppressed races, women, the working class, and other subordinates.

But since the 30s/40s most children, from all classes, have been going to school from very young, and since the 70s/80s many to pre-school, aged 3. Many introvert, sensitive, gifted children, desperately motivated to escape childhood, have been copying adults who are relating to children rather than other adults.

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In fact i suddenly realised what the list of criteria for a diagnosis of Aspergers or HFAS describes perfectly.
Teachers. ( or at least their behaviour in the classroom)

Impairment of social skills, inability to know when to shut up, or when listeners are bored, intolerance of interruptions, starting all over again at the beginning after being interrupted, not paying attention to other's contributions to "conversation" unless on-topic, ( disinterest in/dismissal of anything not on the "syllabus"!) data-dumping, "obsessive" interests, always talking about the same subject, impaired use of body language to regulate communication ( who else usually needs people to stick their hands up before listening to them ?! ), staring into space/over people's heads, little or no eye contact, frequent repetition of ends of phrases or key-words, talking over people, correcting peoples mistakes, placing great importance on precise but often time-consuming rituals and routines, etc etc etc.

No wonder the most sensitive and gifted children are developing impaired social skills; they are copying teachers, for them the summit of human achievement and power, at least for those children whose parents "respect" schooling etc. Those children from families that don't are more likely to "protest" at the teachers "poor social skills" by behaviours increasingly labelled ADHD.

Hans Asperger described the first "cases" he found as "little professors". This was so accurate a description that it has been ignored!!

It's quite funny, if it weren't so sad, to think that when people list the criteria for a diagnosis of Aspergers/HFAS they are describing teachers. Teachers as they behave in the classroom, and who provide the primary template/model of correctly functioning adulthood for most children, after their parents.

School is largely responsible for the incidence of Aspergers/HFAS. School whose structure and functioning depends on, and is part of, the oppression of children by adults.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2007, 12:09 pm, edited 9 times in total.