What do you think about this article on Autism?

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 161045.htm

According to Dr. Laurent Mottron at the University of Montreal's Centre for Excellence in Pervasive Development Disorders, scientists focus too much on the negative aspects of Autism, and ignore the fact that we can have useful strengths. Personally, I agree with most of it. I think that society could do a better job of working for people that think in many different ways. The only thing about the article that I didn't agree with was that it seems to make Autistics out to be 'superior' in a way. What do you think about the article?

I found it pretty decent actually.

Actually I felt it was more of a case of pointing out that at least in some things, some of us have strengths that are superior, which has been demonstrated to be true by many studies, as the article also pointed out, not that Autistics as a whole are superior, . That appeared to me to be the whole point of the article. Not that we're necessarily superior as a group in all ways, but that in certain specific ways, we often are. It's those strengths that he'd like to see focused on by getting Autistics into fields that utilize those strengths, instead of focusing solely on avoiding jobs that may exacerbate our deficits.

I'm in total agreement with that. I've felt for a very long time now that if we're able to utilize not only our strengths, but also our interests, we'd be more likely to overcome many of our deficits in order to continue doing and improving what we're really good at and love doing to begin with. My feeling is that if we can do what we're good at and love, and no special attempts are made to minimize influences around us that we're much more likely to put more effort into improving what we're good at, AND what we're not so good at.

If the focus remains only on what we suck at, and avoiding all those things, and no focus at all is put on what we excel at, what the article states is absolutely right. That we'll end up in menial, repetitive jobs that bore the hell out of us, and never learn to overcome our deficits, because our deficits are never challenged.

I only have one complaint about the article itself, but this is something Mottron may address elsewhere. It's just not there in the article. I'd like to see schools forced to take this approach. I'm sick and tired of seeing one of my sons getting F's in school just because he hates repetitive homework. He excels at ALL testing, so he proves over and over that he knows the material, but he won't do the homework because it bores the hell out of him, so he gets F's that do not accurately reflect his true abilities, and that also are causing the school to refuse to put him in higher level classes which he's proven he time and again by doing his own independent studying, and even bringing it into school to show them, that he could handle if they didn't have such a ridiculous level of importance put on the homework factor.

It is extremely idiotic.