Autistic adults are being left behind.

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I guess I have one of the most supportive family of origin. Unfortunately, with this comes a relatively high expectation from me, that is sometimes good, sometimes just plain misery to me. My parents expect me to have a spouse and children.Those who know me know that I'm always complaining about not having a family. I call this a real disability. It's not all my fault that I failed to meet their expectations on this front so far. One of the reasons I seek for a diagnosis is getting some professional help, if possible. My second thought is, perhaps having a DX will eventually lead my parents to better understand my condition. I don't make excuses though, I'll do what I can.

I would be glad if there was more help for adult people with ASD in general in the world, not only in the USA. Unfortunately, there's a generally accepted assumption that adult people don't need help any more, all the resources should go to support children. It's partly because of limited funds, better results can be achieved by early intervention than anytime later in life. I see the inhumanity and short-sightedness of such an approach, though.

What will life be like after my parents won't be near me any more? I will have to take full responsibility for my life finally, keep holding down a job or manage to start an own business, take care of my less-abled-than-me sister, all by my own, with perhaps a little help form my friends. That seems a bit unfair to me. You don't know what life imposes on you, until you experience it.

Anyway, I wish all of you to find the support you need to get along with your life.

This is the main reason why I have fantasized about living in an all-autistic community somewhere underground in the desert. It is so difficult to autistic adults to integrate into NT society that I feel like some of us should just dispense with the integrating and try segregating instead.

Exactly.

I never had access to much help as a child...I feel like it was kind of obvious that there was something a little 'off' about me, but my parents never really looked into that.....I think it was moreso my mom who wanted me to be 'normal' so I guess she thought just treating me like a normal child would help(it really just made me confused and frusterated). And as an adult I hear there is help availible but I have yet to find anything adequate. I mean I am pretty intelligent, I know how to cook food, take showers and all that basic stuff(most of the time.) but I do not function well in a lot of job settings...sometimes when my other issues besides AS get bad it interferes with basic things and makes it nearly impossible for me to start on college assignments and such.


So basically I don't need to be supervised/taken care of.....but I imagine in order for me to live on my own I would need some sort of financial assistance because I really have no way to make enough income to live on hence the reason I am livnig at my moms house right now.

That's what always made me mad. They'll gladly support children but they'll shove the adults aside. It's evil.

I think for a lot of adult aspies they just need two things really:

-Help with employment, especially to help them get through interviews. Some sort of employment agency connecting able aspies to employers who are willing to consider an honest hardworking person, despite them "looking weird" would be good. I heard in some countries employers can also pay less to disabled employees based on how much they can do compared to normal employees. I think this is actually fair and helpful, and more incentive for people to hire those with disabilities.

-Help with socializing. I'm not too sure how to go about this. Not hoping for arranged marriage or anything. But maybe give aspie adult some free membership of some clubs or special interest groups, invite them to support groups and information sessions, maybe an occasional free ticket to an event. Help them find a sense of belonging. Many of us are actually perfectly fine to be not married, but a person with absolutely no friend or support is just too vulnerable, and less likely to be happy.

Actually, this is not fair and helpful at all - rather, it values disabled people's labor as worth less than temporarily abled people's labor. It is not better to hire someone for less than minimum wage because minimum wage itself is likely to be well below what anyone needs to live on.

This story puts this kind of practice into a more realistic context:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 729364.php

On the surface it may look like an incentive to hire disabled employees, but in reality it is exploitation of disabled people's labor. It also basically means that there's no assistance toward independence. Working for a pittance often means you're stuck working for that pittance.

I'm pretty sure the country that practiced that gave those people disability pensions. Their work income was in addition to that.

We don't have such things here but they just started a tax deferred savings plan for disabled people. (RDSP) We're looking into that. It does not affect the disability pension eligibility. Honestly a lot of adults' problems are purely finance based. Disability pensions are usually hard to get, very restrictive and hardly ever enough to live on. If they have supplemental income their lives can be greatly improved.

Yes, but that's no reason to underpay disabled people. That's not help, that's exploitative and it can be as bad as slave labor.

Incentives to hire disabled people are fine, but taking the incentive out of disabled employees' pockets is pure BS.

I am a "left behind too." Aspergers just didn't exist back then. Had no support from my family & they weren't even the ones from my origin. Went through life like a cork in the ocean...no real direction, no one cared, so I didn't either. Got married to a jerk who got custody of our kids when I got fed up with being abused (I was DXd as "off" with no actual label). No the court didn't care that there was abuse....they considered me to be the problem. The kids are mostly grown now without a mom...they got the shaft by the family court system. They also got neglected by a dad who didn't care about them...he just didn't want to pay support. Lucky kids.

I still can't get a DX, which means no support. Which means I am expected to be normal, & when I'm not, I get punished. There is little compassion unless you fit in somehow. That's what I've learned.

Here in the States, there seem to be any number of social programs for women, children, or women with children. There are rehab programs for alcoholics and junkies. There are housing programs for convicted felons on parole. There are even special programs to provide mental-health care for homeless schizophrenics (if they will stick to those programs.

(At least there were such programs back when I was homeless.)

But let a reasonably sane and capable working-class man fall on a little hard luck, and watch how he gets treated with indifference (if he's lucky) or scorn and hostility (if he's not lucky).

^^^ in the fiduciary meritocracy that is america, the working class [AKA "trailer trash"] is the commonly accepted "politically correct" scapegoat for all societal ills. god-damn those poor slobs who have no money, how dare they even breathe my air? [translation=irony]

After receiving a Autism Support/Social Group pamphlet in the mail, I was disappointed they only had groups for people under 21, or for NT parents and family members. It's like they think autism doesn't exist over the age of 22. There was nothing for adults with the disorder. It was quite depressing.

Since I'' m lucky enough to recieve disability payments that cover nearly all my expenses, I fortunately don't have the problem of finding a job. I am thankful for that. In terms of help functioning, I do pretty well in most things. But I often need to ask a lot of questions, and ask for reassurance and guidance "just to make sure." I get overwhelmed easily. But I can take care of my basic needs an I'm pretty resourceful, I think. I do feel quite bad for those who can't get the services they need. The NYT had a great article on this very topic this past Sunday.

This is one of my most major qualms with many organziations, especially Autism Speaks. Sure, they're putting a lot of money towards research, but they are not even the least bit concerned about conquering the issues that people on the spetrum experience everyday firsthand.

They look towards modifying future children too much without concentrating on the people who already exist and are in dire need of support *today*. It's an added struggle when it can often take effort, depending on your personal limitations, to even ask for assistance. Your personal efforts end up going to waste, and you and others who have done this deserve better than that.

I completely agree! WP is such an excellent form of support, and for many people, knowing that others go through similar experiences on here makes them more reassured and perhaps better able to deal with issues in their lives. I just wish most, if not all the autistic people I've discovered, used WP or accessed similar resources.

It can get so hard when people's individual deficits do not allow them to access resources and people that can help them though. I introduced one of the girls I am mentoring to WP, thinking it would give her a safe outlet to share her special interests, but she was quickly ostracised here and later banned. I can't help the way she behaves, but I find it a little unjust how it seems that not even the autistic community can fully accept her *because* of the behaviours that have gotten her this label in the first place. It just doesn't seem fair.