Do you feel penalized for being "high-functioning"

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“You’re so smart though..”

I get that all the time.

I'm aspie and would love to work with LF autie kids but it's not very likely because I'm penalized for being HF. In all actuality though I'm being penalized for being aspie/autie and not NT...HF or LF are both penalized. The parents cling to false hope that their kid will be cured and magically turn NT before adulthood. They can't bare to think about the possibility/probability there isn't any cure and the kid will eventually become an adult autie. Just the thought of it terrifies them. They feel their kid has the most chance of becoming NT if they keep adult aspies/auties away from them.

I'm glad I'm not LF because every do-gooder in town would be trying to force a cure on me. That's far worse than not qualifying for services.

Frankly, alba, I'd sooner die than live on a restricted diet, get dragged off to magic chelation therapies - which are very dangerous for a child, even an adult in the hands of quacks, get spoken to like an infant, be spoken for by someone who wants a replacement, and be aubject to innumerable trials and therapies on top not recieving the help and resources I'd need because money-hungry quacks and the do-gooders you mentioned convinced anyone with authority over me the people who can help are the bad guys!

I can't imagine what it must be like for those kids... Not to mention being told by your parents you aren't their real child - in loving tones, of course- and having everyone think you can't think or feel for yourself because you cannot communicate.
Add to that; the now trendy demand for "rights" to "euthanize" LFA's, or abort autistic fetuses.

My brother's beatbeat girlfriend dumped her kids on us without notice and whenever I had meltdowns about the drastic change of routine and screaming kids she told me that I was too high functning to do those and should know better. When I did not want to go to certian events because they were too crowded my mother told me I was too high functining to act that way and if I didn't stop it she woudl start calling me Rainman.

Your MOTHER said WHAT?!

I have noticed the same thing when I try to talk with parents of lower functioning children. Those of us who don't face what they do, apparently, simply cannot understand.

In part, that is valid. In part, however, it is because they as a group do not want to hear what we have to say.

I think AS and HFA provide a lot of insight into what is really going on in the minds of LFA.

But the AS/HFA community has basically come out against the goals and beliefs of parents with LFA children. Face it, no one likes to be told they are going about it all wrong. No one likes to be told that after hours and hours of research and thought, they have come to the wrong conclusion. Especially when they feel a lot of conviction for those conclusions, and have anecdotal evidence to support them.

So I think the walls are up before a word is even spoken.

And that wall is braced by the idea that we "cannot possibly understand."

And, yet, I think you all do. Me, a parent, maybe not really. But you, having a similar life experience to their child, albeit to a far lesser degree, actually do. Making it a real shame that those walls of essentially political thought exist at all.

There seems to be a lot of resentment, even among autistic people themselves, about varying levels of functioning. I'm relatively high-functioning but despite that I still find plenty of things extremely difficult. It's not easy at times being anywhere on the spectrum and people questioning your diagnosis because you appear "normal" is annoying and potentially stressful.