Is autism becoming infantalised?

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I sense from the order of events in this thread that your passion is much more about the other side of the coin though.

I would question the realism of such ambitious targets and the ethics and validity of that "American dream" ideology. You seem to equate happiness with excessive material wealth.

Many of us have been uncomfortable all our lives, and then you tell us we need pushing out of our comfort zone. If I thought you had the power to try your hand at pushing me around with your presumptions and ideology, I'd feel threatened and angry.

These are two sides of the same coin. You need to do both things, they're mutually reinforcing...help people realize their full potential, while also giving them the support they may need. There is likely neglect happening on both fronts, in our society.

In a nutshell, yes. The issue with autism is that it often makes much smaller comfort zones that are unhealthy to many people long term. My comfort zone years ago was sitting in my bedroom playing games all day....until my parents dragged me out of it kicking and screaming. Back then I did feel threatened, angry and thought of it as a serious slight against me but alas, what would have happened to me if they let my comfort zone back then become my forever norm?

Autism sometimes isn't friendly. It lulls the aspie into thinking their comfort zone is the perfect lifestyle when in reality it often turns into a prison that holds them back if they let it become a deeply entrenched part of their life. Autism also hates any sort of change or break in routine too which further strangles a lot of aspies. There is nothing wrong in my eyes with sticking two fingers up to those traits and thinking "screw it, i'll go to airport and travel to that country where nobody speaks my language" or doing whatever else breaks them out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.

I don't think there is much wrong with the american dream too. Do I want to see multi millionaire aspies driving around in Aston Martins? Hell yes.

I understand that it's completely against the grain to what is being widely encouraged today of making sure there is structure, predictability and a stress free environment for aspies but call me a ruthless and heartless a*****e but I want to see fellow aspies squirm, panic, freak out and get royally butt hurt being forced well out of their comfort zone doing things that have always terrified them. Why? Because if they come out the other side having achieved something that had once terrified them, then their autism starts loosening it's iron tight grip and they will be that little bit more confident with themselves to take on other challenges and I find that awesome.

I don't really know who the judge will be but the judge will be the one deciding what benefit an aspie might gain. The judge could just be society as a whole strongly encouraging aspies to take on new challenges instead of the usual hiding them from stressors at all costs irrespective of what they are that I see is all to common these days. The judge could even be as extreme as the government making it mandatory for everyone to take 20 hours of driving lessons or volunteering in some nursing home or compulsory jobs training.

The judge could be anyone or anything doing all manners of ideas to varying levels.

I'll tell you one thing that helps aspies to do that.

And bear in mind, I was trying to be normal before my breakdown so for me it's more about social anxiety. My normal before my breakdown was always going out and about - all I didn't do the same as NTs is that I didn't find it fun to go out for drinks so I spent my evenings at home unless there was a theatre show or something like that.

Moving house. Moving to a civilised town. Moving to a town that doesn't judge people. Moving to a town with fun opportunities.

For a lot of aspies, that looks like getting a job. For some of us, it doesn't.

And if you're lucky enough to be in that kind of town already, I'd advise anyone who can do it/can afford it and who can't get a job/can't work, to look into volunteering or doing a course.

But that wouldn't have worked in a town where I felt physically vulnerable (like in one place where I ended up being 'coddled' cos the bullies in my school carried knives - all the nice kids were 'coddled' and scared to leave the house, NTs included) and it wouldn't have worked when my esteem was low enough to be a mental illness. So there are times in my life when 'stay inside' was good advice.

Also - move somewhere where buses are a possibility and/or walking to town through a park or pedestrian area is a possibility. Get used to going into town. NT children do that cos they have friends to do it with and NT girls love shopping. Do something like book shopping or visiting the library or a museum.

I don't think autism alone should be a reason not to leave the house regularly. I think mental/physical health can sometimes be a reason not to. And I think physical safety can also be a reason not to.

I severely doubt autistic people care what car they drive unless it's their specialist interest.

With me difficulties were first spotted by my 1st school in Bangkok(my father was serving as a junior diplomat there). That was c1962. When I was 5. Tests were done for what we now call cerebral palsy. The result was negative . No other possibilities were explored. There wasn't anything like the knowledge base there is now.

There were signs of something being amiss but back then no one to join the dots together. I went to prep school at 8 and was subjected to mild teasing. At 13 I went to public school. I made the mistake of saying I knew nothing about sex while the other boys bragged about what they knew. That marked me out as a weirdo and lead to over 4 years rather severe verbal bullying. On account of that I developed what we now call social anxiety. Depression followed when I was 15. The 1st overdose at the end of my penultimate term at Felsted. The first hospitalisation a week into what should have been the term I took A levels.

All was fine until I was told I was going to make dolls' houses as therapy. I had absolutely no aptitude for it and went into a state of panic. I was dragged from the path of a hospital bus . A compassionate and intelligent pdoc would have wondered what was going on and asked questions. Instead I got one who told me I was an awkward and troublesome teenager. That marked me out as someone as sure as hell wasn't going to get help and support beyond being medicated, and them hoping I wouldn't be too much of a nuisance.

Here in Wiltshire was the first time I've been treated with decency and respect by a pdoc who listened and asked questions. It helped a lot also that I had my stepdaughter to support me. It took 7 months after that appointment to get the Asperger's diagnosis I should have had 20 or more years before ; if my previous mental health team had been halfway competent .

I did that a few years ago. After spending most of my life as a complete stick-at-home, I flew to the USA for a large (non-material) reward. Never been on a plane before that. I've travelled about once a year that way ever since. But the journey sucks, and it always will. And when I get to the other side of the pond I'm just as much of a stick-at-home as I was in the UK. There was no feeling of sticking two fingers up to anything, it was mostly stressful, a necessary evil. It's always been the same. I got a job that gradually burned me out, simply because I had no choice. It wasn't without interesting features but overall I'd really rather have just bummed about.

I think what's going on here is that you're projecting your own experiences onto the world and imagining that everybody's got the problem you had and that the solution is the same. You might learn to accurately detect people who fit your mould (though I don't see how you could ever be sure you'd found a match), and to let the rest of us be.

As for the American dream, it might work fine in an expanding economy with tons of land and resources up for grabs. But I think it's out of date in the modern world. Everything's running out, and if we're going to survive then we'll need to adapt and get a new paradigm. I think it would be a fine start to forsake consumerism, to stop wasting our time making frivolous junk such as sports cars, and focus our energies more on necessities.

To be honest I think it's a generation gap thing.

I think each generation and area will have different experiences of:
1 level of safety in a town - gang violence etc
2 ease of finding autistic friendly employment or just jobs in general
3 whether everyone goes to uni or not - if they don't then it's easy to get a job cos you can just show your degree off
4 the education system in general and what it focuses on. Grammar schools were good for quiet, studious type kids. Focus on team work isn't going to help such kids excel in their best strengths.
5 what help is given to kids. Technology, TAs etc.
6 whether teachers believe in autism (high functioning autism/girls with autism, as well)
7 whether kids are punished for things which are a result of autism or co-morbids. And HOW they are punished. Difference between me having to write out my work again cos of handwriting & my mum being caned as a kid cos she couldn't spell (she's dyslexic)

So many variables that someone would really only know the experience in their own time and place.

I'll just interject something, I guess to offer perspective...to be fair...cars are fairly expensive, period. You can fuss over whether it's a sports car or not...obviously some cars are luxury items, and are really expensive, and you need to have a lot of extra money, but the simple fact is that cars aren't cheap anyway. I've owned a lot of different ones. One I got for free and it only lasted a couple months before breaking down (not surprisingly). The least I paid was $1200 for a 1991 VW Passat my brother gave me a deal on, when I was a freshman in college, and that car did give me quite a bit of trouble, and ultimately I gave it away after a few years because I couldn't afford to repair it. Next cheapest was a 2001 Honda Civic I bought about 4 years ago, for $1650 as a deal through a friend, and it also gave me a lot of trouble (and cost like 1-2 thousand per year in repairs to keep running for a few years, and of course when it'd break down, I'd be out of luck), I've now decided it isn't worth keeping. I've had friends who spent like $10,000 or so on a used car they thought would be great, and then have had nothing but issues with over the years. Probably your best bet for a reliable car for the long term, is to go for a brand new car, with a repair and maintenance package added by the dealership (some car manufacturers like Hyundai offer this), and go with one of their less expensive models, and that ends up being expensive too. But honestly, people in the working class can have a hard time making enough money to even keep their cars running. I was working my previous job 40 hrs per week, making $15-17/hr which is just above minimum wage for my state, and no, it wasn't enough to pay rent and keep the car running. One of the first things I had to do was borrow money from my Dad just to keep the car running so I could do my job, and this was a job where they wanted me driving all around town regularly. So you can see why some people are saying, just go for the full deal, aim high...try to make as much money as you can, so you can do more than just break even, have a decent car, insurance, house, future, etc., because you can easily end up struggling with less than that...

We've had Tory governments with a working majority and a free hand to achieve their dream of starving the disabled into crappy jobs, but it hasn't worked, it just stressed them out and they never even managed to cut the benefits bill, which was all they wanted to do. The problem is that most of those disabilities turned out to be real. The gov sounded like you with its rhetoric about empowering people and helping them back to work. The core assumption is that the disabled are not disabled. It's a cloak for ableism.

Even if they could somehow force people to pass driving tests, who's going to pay for the cars they're supposed to drive, and do we really need more cars on the road? There's not enough room for them to park now, that's why they park them on the pavements.

I assume you are referring to when they were deciding disabled people were fit to work and many of them died. They were even saying those were fit to work who were in a come or who couldn't even literally move.

This all looked like genocide to me as if they wanted to kill off the disabled so they would have less burden in life to provide for and save on tax money. This to me was Nazism but it was veiled for getting rid of moochers and those abusing the system. Veiled ableism and veiled genocide and Nazism.

Here is one of the articles I found:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... wp-figures

I remember an article here posted that some autistic man was found dead in his apartment after being found fit to work and he had OCD too. He basically starved to death if I remember correctly and he was too embarrassed to ask his family for help and rely on them for support.

Yes that's the kind of thing I meant. The tabloid press supported it. They pretended they were just simplifying the benefits system by rolling all the different benefits into one, which superficially seems like a good idea, but they reassessed everybody, and suddenly people were being thrown out in droves and there were all those deaths. There was scandal after scandal but they just carried on.

Wow, where did I say anything forcing people disabled into work and removing their benefits? I'm on about compulsory jobs training and driving lessons. That could just be tagged on the end of the final year of school for example. A lot of mid teens will chomp your arm off for 20 hours of free driving lessons including a lot of aspies. I'm not on about making it horrible, possibly stressful for some aspies but not horrible and long term could be beneficial to them even though they don't like it at the time.

It's just hours too, not giving them free cars.

Unless you live in a village, it's a pretty outdated wish anyway. And bad for the environment.

Most young NTs nowadays don't bother learning to drive. That's only a problem if there's no bus route.

It would be better to encourage aspie kids to take the bus and give them lessons in this. I suggest with a TA and not a school bus. School buses are horrible and would have put me off buses if that was all I knew of buses. Thankfully, my mother raised me taking the bus almost everywhere and I knew it was only school buses which were horrible.

Most NT kids can take a bus.

At least with my generation (millennial), the desire to drive isn't there in the majority and I think that's a good thing.

I'd have liked the help and support that would've allowed me to fulfil any potential I have. It's only in the last 3 years, from the age of 60, that I'm getting good recognition of the problems I have.

Disabled people need support to achieve their potential. What they don't need are crass people advocating harsh measures to make them 'respectable' citizens.