low functioning vs high functioning

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I think the way these labels are used results in people who need more help being treated worse, and people who need less being ignored.
Also, these one use of these labels is by whether they can speak clearly or not. I've lived with one non-speaking person who has more of a skill set and was less aggressive than some speaking individuals who lived in the same house.
The non-speaking lady could basically maintain a house, and yet got treated with less dignity than someone who had few functional skills, but could verbally speak.

A question for all. What criteria should be used to access functioning levels , and the help arising from that that's needed? IQ based criteria alone seems to me to be less than ideal.

Humans divide things. And they tend to divide things into threes. Autism is no exception. You can really expect them to avoid dividing folks on the spectrum into low, middle, and high functioning. High functioning being those who blend in and basically look normal.

But obviously those are just shorthand labels, and need to be taken with a grain of salt.

The following story illustrates:

Social scientists have long debated over which is more important:nature, or nurture.

But this actual case finnally settled the question.

A middle class American family took a trip to Yellowstone Park in the Eighties. And their little son disappeared into the woods never to be seen again. Or it so it seemed after an exhaustive search.

Ten years year later they found the boy, naked, dirty, running around on all fours, and running with the pack of wild dogs than had adopted and raised him as one of their own for ten years.

Social workers took him in. Washed him. And took care of him. After intensive therapy he was able to reintegrate into human society (bare with me -this is relevant). He completed highschool, went to college, went on to complete medical school. And today he is married, with children, and is living in Beverly Hills as one of Hollywood's most successful plastic surgeons to the stars!

And this case proves that nature is more important than nurture. Because this boy who had been raised by a pack of wild dogs was still able to grow up to become a pillar of a human community.

Which by the way, makes it all the more tragic when only a couple of years - he was killed chasing a car.
++++++

Of course the above didn't really happen. That was just a joke told by Lenny Bruce.

But the tale still makes a point about how hard it is to separate nature from nurture.

You could substitute nature and nuture dichotomy with the "high functioning autistic and low functioning autistic" dichotomy and you could tell the same tale. Person A might be more "high functioning" than person B, and appear to fit it and be more successful in society. But they may lack some vital survival instinct that NTs have that person B also has, and that could be fatal for person A at some moment. Like the ability resist thinking of cars as deer, and trying to bring them down by biting their tires! I have trouble resisting that all of the time!

I think the idea of low vs high functioning is dated. It mostly has to do with verbal ability. If you can talk reasonably well, people will say you have Asperger's. If you can't, they will slap you with the "low-functioning" label.

I think in some ways Aspies and HFA people are treated worse though, because people assume we have trouble understanding others because we are too lazy or selfish, whereas if someone is nonverbal people get it. Not saying I envy nonverbal autistic people though, I would hate being treated like I was a child.

Both low and high functioning(mild to severe) Autistic people are socially excluded from mainstream society. The social exclusion and the resulting social isolation lead to depression, anxiety and stress in an Autistic person's life.

I think verbal ability can be deceptive. I'm not sure it dovetails neatly with communicating with others . My verbal ability is very much better than my non-verbal ability, and yet with the ADOS2 I scored 3(autism level) for social communication.

Social isn't the only thing, that sucks and messes up things for anyone on the spectrum.

The executive functioning, emotional regulation, are really big problems in daily life. Same with sensory stuff.

(Each problem will feed the other problems throughout your life,
which is really horrible. Then, too, other people and the way the world is set up, increase it even more.

A lot of it could be mitigated --not cured, but not INCREASED--

with non-evil people and honesty, and non-judgemental people, and greater awareness amongst non ASD people and adjustments in education approach, etc.).