IT'S OFFICIAL: No More Aspergers

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I'm really worried about the new terminology. Asperger's doesn't exactly have the same stigma as autism.

This is a good thing. Just wait and see. Is Dr. Asperger rolling over in his grave!? I guess we aren't "special" anymore ... *chuckle*

Well, getting rid of Asperger, just made it that much easier to shunt all the ASD kids into self contain classes/schools.

One way of getting rid of those pesky IEPs, in general education population, is under the guise of "having all the services your child needs in one place."

Yeah. Bring on the 1930s, fast and fierce.

A school district by me is already doing this.

And I'm sure more are weaseling to see if they can get away with it.

Look, there's another problem people aren't addressing with this.

In order to understand Asperger's and Autism better, it's actually in people's interest to make it more specific. There are a lot of characteristics that vary amongst people, but by having Asperger's on it's own (or at least under the umbrella of ASD), then you can work down the common traits within it. By putting the whole mess under one huge umbrella and not making it into more specific subsections, all that understanding gets lost. There are MANY, MANY, MANY traits common ONLY to those with Aspeger's that are not present in Autistics. And, there are traits common to everyone.

But, to erase the condition, takes a step back, in terms of progress. If anything I've seen in this forum is the amazing progress in people identifying common traits amongst Aspies that are NOT in medical books. People, knowing they have Asperger's, discuss their traits and notice the patterns. Now, let's go ahead and step into the future. All people are only "Autistic" or not. Well, you're not going to get as much "patterns" matching up, when you have people that are more further away from Asperger's comparing each other's conditions, than if you both knew you had Asperger's, being a subset of ASD. You'd just left in a huge, messy bucket, trying to sift through things that were previously (at least begun to be) sorted.

That's what bothers me the most. The "puzzle" thing never applied to Aspies since WE were starting to get patterns in everything and figure it out. In the overall autism spectrum, there's just so much else beyond what we have in common amongst ourselves, that they've got a lot of work to do. But, now all this order we've made is just tossed in the bucket and lost, for good. I really don't get how any reputable scientist could even accept this as a good thing.

Eh, I can now tell people I have autism and they will won't scratch their heads unlike if I say I have Asperger's.

It's now a sliding scale. That means that (hypothetically speaking) if a girl who is a high school cheerleader has it, it would be somewhat safe to assume that's she's extremely high functioning. As much as I'm going to miss the DSM-IV definition, the sliding scale will be an interesting aspect of things.

[quote:"Tawaki"]Well, getting rid of Asperger, just made it that much easier to shunt all the ASD kids into self contain classes/schools.

One way of getting rid of those pesky IEPs, in general education population, is under the guise of "having all the services your child needs in one place."

Yeah. Bring on the 1930s, fast and fierce.

A school district by me is already doing this.

And I'm sure more are weaseling to see if they can get away with it.[/quote]

I'm now advocating for going back to the one room schoolhouse. Centralizing the s**t out of American public education has failed. It's interesting how once school districts merged across the nation, the quality of American education suffered and in fact has become more expensive.

Can you believe that over here the media actually had this headline (sort of)
"Asperger's replaced by new term 'DMDD'"

Idiots. And that came from a MAJOR newspaper.

I'm not sure if I like being defined as high functioning. It seems to make light of those things I find difficult.