Autism does not take a day off

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What I noticed most strongly when I watched the video was one autistic kid being very loving and making every effort to communicate, the mother pulling away and ignoring her, but then the mother getting her to obediently repeat "I love you" and then saying "I'll take that." Imagine if the daughter had actually been portrayed as a loving child who was working hard to communicate. Of course, her mother also said in public that she had no actual skills, which is shocking given how many she displayed on the video.

Autism Speaks can just go to hell.

anbuend, I agree with you. I worry that depictions like those in the video will prejudice all sorts of people against my daughters. I don't want parents learning about my girl's autism, and then harkening back to that video, and assuming the worst, instructing their kids to avoid mine, start making waves at the school to have my girls segregated because, as the video suggests, autistic kids are a never-ending burden and little Jimmy can't possibly be getting any attention from his teacher because, of course, the teacher MUST be constantly wrangling with those damned autistic girls!

I also don't like the thought that other parents will pity me and avoid my family due to fear.

That said, I see the point that some parents need respite and access to services because, well, some autism is harder to deal with some others. My girls, for example, aren't so hard. They toilet trained at an appropriate age, they communicate adequately, they have no serious behavioral issues. Sure, they're a little harder to parent than your average four year old, and there are TWO of them, but it really isn't so horrible.

So, it's hard for me to criticize parents who are dealing with non-verbal, violent, diaper wearing teenagers, as sometimes is the reality of autism. Those parents DO need help and respite and services.

However, the majority of autistic kids that I see are more like my girls and not like the negative stereotypes, and for all the kids like my girls, this kind of slanted portrayel is very unhelpful.

Also, some of the kids in that vide didn't really seem all that affected. The one little boy, maybe about three years old - unlees I'm missing something, he was doing things that seemed quite age appropriate and I can't say that I comprehend his mothers level of stress and hopelessness and despair.

It's very easy for me to criticize parents of certain kinds of autistic people (or non-parents, or autistic people themselves) if they portray them as neverending burdens and a whole host of other negative stereotypes. The negativity is not the fact that certain kinds of people exist and never has been. The negativity is not that certain services need to exist and never has been. Those are not "negative", those are just facts. What is negative is how they talk about certain kinds of people. Including regarding relatives of said kinds of people as above criticism no matter what they say about said kinds of people.

Although I do have a problem with characterizing autistic people (any autistic people whatsoever) as "violent" as a character trait, because it makes it sound like violence is just an innate part of that person that comes out of nowhere, and that is almost never the case. (I was a "violent" autistic teenager, and there were reasons. I was treated, however, as if it just originated from some mysterious part of my brain, and as if it made me that much more subhuman. I also seriously don't get the obsession with toileting skills and communication methods as a measure of how much negativity can be legitimately thrown at a person.

I definitely see your point. I'm not justifying it, but I'm unwilling to make judgements, simply because I've never been through that sort of thing.

The thing that bothers me the most is that people talk openly about killing autistic children. Remember Katy McCarron? She was THREE YEARS OLD! Her mother needed to end her pain. SHe was THREE! How bad could it have been, really? Accoding to the testimony from her grandpa, she wasn't even all that affected. I was touched by that case because of my daughters, and how some of the things the grandfather wrote about the little girls reminded me of my own girls. How could she have killed them and then tried to make it sound like euthanasia?

Her mother, IIRC, or her mother's defense, used exerpts from that video in an attempt to justify the murder.

Sometimes, I think that these sorts of videos have an unintended consequence of generate dangerous levels of desperation in parents of young children - children who might not even be so affected, in the long run.

BTW - anuend - is that you A.B.?

Yeah it is.

They don't even speak for all NT parents. A lot of NT parents (even of children similar to those in the video) totally disagree with them.

The parents board that I frequent (almost 100% NT parents) is kind of split down the middle. About half of the parents would agree with AS and their strategy of raising "awareness", while the other half isn't comfortable with it. Not all NT parents are wrapped up in self pity or hysteria for their children. Most want the best for them, though. Sometimes, it's hard to know what to do and who to believe, as there are many hidden agendas, and large differences of opinion (even amonst well intentioned advisors and).

As I've mentioned, I cannot question the reality of some parents who have it a lot harder than I have - like the one single mom on the parent's board who's constantly being assaulted by her adult son. She has to have a burly respite worker come over to change his soiled clothes because he'll hurt her if she tries to do it herself. I can't relate to that.

Some people do need help and support, I just AS would back off with trying to portray all autism and all autistic people in such a negative light. I also wish that some HF autistic people would back off "NT" (said with a sneer) parents who are truly living in desperate situations. There're two sides.