Autism Is Not An Excuse To Do Nothing

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I wonder if the blog post would be more well-received if it said Autism Is Not An Eggscuse To Do Nothinks.

How precisely does one do "nothing" ??

Shouldn't it be "accomplish very little"? Even then, we ASpies do accomplish things, like the bloke who memorized the National Anthems of every country in Africa. That's something. Not to most people, but I admire his obsessiveness.

Sometimes, on the parents forum, I have read posts by parents about their autistic adult children who they describe as doing little and being isolated at home, sometimes for years. Basically, the child has one activity that they would do each day, and each day is the same, perhaps the child spends most of their time in their room. The parents had tried to get their child to something other than what they are doing each day, but the child wasn't receptive to their ideas. I wonder what the person in this kind of situation is feeling each day, like are they happy doing what they do and that's why they stick to it, or are they just doing one comfortable activity and not wanting to try other things, or any of many other possibilities?

Is it eating an apple here?

My DVRS experience was similar. Since I had a job already, I was ineligible for help finding something that I'm better suited for. Their hours didn't work for me, anyway. And, yes, its hard to get an evaluation, or really anything medical-wise without insurance here in 'murrica. Especially autism related.

I'm saddened, too, to hear that NZ is on the same path that 'murrica is. The politicians are less parasitic now, and have become predatory. Its a disturbing trend.

I agree with this.

My whole life, iv'e felt like because i'm autistic, I can't do anything. I'm never going to live independently, hold down a job, or be in a relationship. You can thank the media for that. They make it seem like once you're an adult, you're pretty much screwed. I wish I never knew I was autistic.

My main problem is that I am not very motivated to do things. I like to play games on the computer, I would probably do that all day if I had the chance. And my parents have done everything for me so I have never learned to fend for myself. I have a very hard time being a self-starter so that's not good either. Honestly, my life would be better if I didn't have autism. I feel like since I am autistic, I am "wasted potential" and I am destined to fail.

There are pros and cons of both very early and very late diagnosis. You can never really know the "road not travelled", how your life would have turned out under different circumstances. For myself, - an example of very very late diagnosis - I can only guess, though I think that if I had been early diagnosed, I would have internalised and felt diminished by the judgments of others on my supposed disability and more particularly their assumptions of my supposed inability; the people I grew up with would have used it as yet another "fault" in me to be pointed out at regular intervals. And this would possibly have led to a situation of "self-fulfulling prophecy" - if no-one else had expected much of me, I may not have expected much of myself, and believed that I was incapable of achieving much at all.

But I didn't know. No-one knew. I lived in a house that wasn't a home and external achievement became my escape, my validation, my way of gaining self-worth, my reason to go on living, and a source of gaining approval from other authority figures who mattered to me (eg teachers and people in the surrounding community).

Had there been a diagnosis, my dominant, insensitive and controlling foster mother would have marched into the school with a smirk on her face and told them how useless I was, happily have consigned me to an institution, and that would have been (I am guessing) a disaster for me. As it was, the teachers largely supported my abilities and confirmed them to me. School was my haven, despite the ostracism from other children (except one special and dear friend who died last month). Some of the teachers went out of their way to be friendly to me in a nice way too, to make up for the loneliness they must have seen in me. The only label they probably put on me was "gifted". If I had been diagnosed, it might have been (in those years) "freak" or "hopeless misfit" or "intellectually handicapped".

So although I floundered in terms of my personal "place in the world" - as children without their own families do - I didn't flounder in terms of what I attempted to achieve (and achieved) because that was my beacon, my anchor, my map of life someday getting better. Would this have happened with early diagnosis? Not in those years, it wouldn't have.

The downside was being baffled by the way people did ostracize me at times for no reason that I could define to myself.
However that made me even more focused on achievement.

I am interested to hear of people diagnosed early as to how they think it might have been if they were diagnosed late - their "road not travelled". There are, I am supposing, always both positives and negatives, either way, even if it only seems a negative (as is often the case on WP). I think to suppose that the alternative would have been all good is unrealistic in most cases.

Read as much of the article as I could take. Sounds like her definition of "do nothing" is "stuff I don't like."

In the spirit of "what we did done yesterday": I lifted weights, swam 40 laps (20 of which were butterfly), taught music, and went to an orchestral rehearsal, all DESPITE being exhausted.

Today I have the day off. I am attempting to see if it is possible to find happiness through Candy Crush Saga.