AS / HFA Confusion!

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Of course the autism diagnosis isn't just age of development, it's also type of development: If a person learns to speak "on time" but has a number of peculiar language characteristics, they're still diagnosed with autism.

However, I question whether this would be the only way to divide up autism. There are other traits just as important as speech acquisition, that can be different between groups of autistic people. Why is it so important that we have two separate categories based on speech acquisition, but not, for instance, on the difference between people who seem to gain skills and then lose them again? Maybe everyone who seems to steadily gain outward skills should be in one category regardless of how rapidly or slowly they gain them, and everyone who gains them then loses them should be in another.

Or maybe it should be based on social attachment. People who display a typical social attachment to their family (but not necessarily to outsiders) could be in one category. People who do not could be in another. People who display typical social attachment to everyone but not typical social skills could get their own category.

Maybe it could be based on body language. People who are able to show a normal range of facial expressions could be in one category, people who are delayed in developing those facial expressions or never develop them at all could be in another. Or people who use gesture could be in one and people who do not could be in another.

Or we could go by who seems to be agile and who seems to be clumsy.

Or who seems to be able to point and type unaided and who can't.

And so on and so forth. These are all divisions that either are real or seem from the outside to be real, so why is language the one that everyone defends? Why is it that the division that other people have defined as important is the one that people always seem to want to talk about and assume that it is the most important? (I believe in divisions between autistic people, but there's far more than two and if you start dividing in more than two ways you start getting an overlapping system rather than two discrete groups of people.)

Yes. Many of them are daily living skills. But if that was not important, then why do ASDs that lack them severly live in respite type homes or with parents or something similar. You may not need them all to get by effeciently, but I suspect you would need a number of them to be able to do so. And yes, NTs or whatever and maybe some ASD members in the field of Autism seem to consider these things important. I had to fill out a sheet that listed mine, and apparently I lack quite a few, in the process of getting additonal help to resolve my lack of independence.



Good for you. And yes, I agree, that satisfying life is preferable. However I did say that I did not list them all. Besides, some level of lack of satisfaction could actually be interpreted as including all humans NT and ASD, since there are many humans of all mental capacities/wiring that are not satisified with their lives. If this were not so, then there would be no divorces, fewer robberies and murders, no jobs would be quit, no one would be fired, no one would commit suicide (something i do not believe is exclusive to ASDs, though maybe more likely), no one would be depressed and far fewer psychiatrists/psychologists would be around, no one would do drugs, no one would constitently get drunk, no one would go through midlife crisis, no one ever display any problem reflective of a dissatisfied life. So your arguement while valid, would not include ASD people only. However, it maybe more accurate to say, a greater likelihood of being dissatisified often, but not always coupled with lacking enough daily living skills to aquire and maintain independence.

I lack most of them, but as long as someone does something about them I am fairly happy. (I can become quite unhappy if, say, starving or in pain, but even so I'm not any less happy than a non-disabled person would be in similar circumstances.) I did not say these things were unimportant though, merely that they are not in any way tied to quality of life. The reason many autistic people live in institutional settings or with their parents is because our society is set up to meet the needs of a very specific group of people's lack of independence, and to totally ignore others' unless putting us in various mostly-segregated types of environments.

Here is what I wrote to another board on this topic recently, when someone claimed autistic people needed help from society and gay people didn't:

Actually, that's not really a big difference at all. Everyone needs and uses help from society. What kinds of help are considered burdensome (which is what determines who is seen as needing the kind of help you're talking about) are determined by the values of that particular society.

The amount of help received from society, by the sort of person who is regarded as not needing help from society, is enormous. It is so enormous that the difference between the amount of help this "average" person gets, and the amount of help a person regarded as "severely disabled" gets, is not all that large. The difference is that society makes it easier for people to get approved kinds of help (the kinds that aren't regarded as unusual or excessive or even help at all), and very difficult for people to get non-approved kinds of help (the kinds that are regarded as unusual, burdensome, "help" (in comparison to the previous help), etc). It also often stacks barriers in front of people and then regards the removal of said barriers as requiring that second (non-approved) kind of "help".

So the fact that the kind of help a person needs is of the non-approved variety rather than the approved variety, is not the same as the non-approved variety being "help from society" and the approved variety being "not needing help from society". Nor is it really fair to make judgements about what needs to be "done about" certain kinds of people based on whether the kind of help they require (or seem, because of other factors, to require, even if they don't) falls into the category of approved or non-approved.

Some examples of approved help in mainstream American society (which I'm most familiar with):

* Road maintenance
* Growing of plants for food and other products
* Growing of animals for food and other products
* Harvesting of said plants
* Milking, shearing, slaughtering, butchering, skinning, etc of said animals
* Automobile repair
* Teaching of concepts such as reading and writing in a particular standardized way (the concepts and the methods of teaching them all having been refined over generations and even centuries or millenia)
* House-building
* Electricity

...I could go on, in fact entire volumes of books could be filled with the help most people receive. Pretty much nobody in America does all or even most of the things that they need done, by themselves. Most of it is taken care of by society. Very little of what a person does, do they do for themselves.

In addition, society is set up very specifically to enable that kind of person. Tons of energy (and money) is spent on lighting people's houses and other visual accommodations required by sighted people. Tons of space (and money) is taken up by chairs and assorted other seating arrangements for ambulatory people, who require a new place to sit in each new location.

Little to none of this is seen as help, let alone the very expensive help that it is. But when a person comes along who fits that mold little enough that they need things modified from the form that helps most people to the form that helps them, *THAT* is seen as help, and often burdensome, expensive help that they need to prove all kinds of things and essentially beg for. I would find it very interesting if people needed to pass an eye test before someone
would fit their home with lightbulb sockets, or prove that they could not walk a certain distance before being provided with a car (or car repair, or gasoline) or public transportation, or submit a lengthy medical report on the necessity of their sitting before a building would put a chair in for them.

Moreover, at that point, if things were like they are for most autistic people, they would then be *told* which version of lightbulbs they must buy, which kind of transportation they are and are not allowed to take, and what kind of chair they need, regardless of the reality of the situation or their preferences. They would then be told that they, unlike (insert other group of people), needed help from society.

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But as I was saying, quality of life is about happiness in life, which may be affected by how much and what kind of assistance someone is allowed to get, but is not affected (again, multiple studies showing this, because non-disabled people have trouble believing that their prejudice in this area is wrong) by even what's considered quite severe disability including total incapability of doing "ADLs" without physical assistance. Most of how happy a person is seems to stem from temperament and environment (abuse or neglect can make people pretty unhappy), not ability or lack thereof in a specific area.

Just gotta say, Epi, the idea of independance isn't that big a deal. You're always gonna be dependent on someone else. Interdependance is the only way forward. That's the whole point of the Live8 concerts, which I believe is a good idea, even if only a naive dream. Money is way too big a lure for people to give up, even if for the benefit of mankind.