Is this true for all of us?

Post Reply New Topic

This felt uncomfortably like these were actors trying to portray stereotypes. Perhaps they weren't, but that's how it seemed to me.

I don't know many people with AS, simply because I don't know many people full stop. These people seemed to have a kind of bewildered quality, which I don't see in my son. Then again, he's only one person with AS. He also has a "gifted" IQ, and far-below average executive function.

I don't intend this in an insulting way at all, but these people seemed more mentally ret*d than AS. I realize the two aren't mutually exclusive, though.

As an aside, I find it bizarre that they would have a meeting like that where everyone faces forward. Why not put the chairs in a circle, so no one has to address the back of anyone's head, and so everyone can see each other?

I have a gifted IQ, and I have a bewildered quality. Not all the time - my family doesn't see it, when I visit them, because I'm not bewildered in situations I'm familiar with. But it's when I'm alone, functioning as an independent adult, trying to get done all the many little things that are necessary to function (earn a living, pay one's bills, do the many chores that are necessary simply for maintenance of one's life, and deal with any extra things that go wrong, in addition to trying to have leisure time and not get burnt out) that I'm often bewildered. It's because of executive dysfunction, and getting overwhelmed with too many things to do and not knowing where to start. I tend to look bewildered in unfamiliar places too, as I have no sense of direction. It's nothing to do with IQ, and everything to do with executive function.

Regarding leaving one person to go talk to another, then, returning to the first person when finished, where I live, that is common social behavior.

continued...

It can leave one with a feeling of confusion, to just be abandoned so someone can talk to someone else. After the first ten or twelve times it happens, you get used to it and when it happens, you know what it is instead of standing there in a befuddled state thinking what just happened here?.
It's just one of those things that can either make your blood boil for a moment or leave you dazed and confused. It's a part of adept social navigation. Whatever happens, don't let people see you sweat. That seems to be the golden rule of socializing.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 24 Jan 2011, 7:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What makes you think they're actors portraying stereotypes?

They didn't seem "ret*d" at all. Demeanor is not necessarily indicative of intelligence. An Asperger's diagnosis is only supposed to be possible with an IQ of 70 or higher - that is, no cognitive delays. Which means that, yes, cognitive disabilities and Asperger's are exclusive. I'm not saying this because I have any issues with sharing (or potentially sharing) a diagnosis with people who have cognitive delays. Rather, I want to point out that if all of the people in that room are diagnosed with AS, they are of average or above average intelligence, and how unusual behavior or demeanor is used to judge people. Since "autistic" behaviors are so strongly (and inaccurately) linked to cognitive delays, then it's not surprising that people might perceive autistic people as having cognitive delays, or that the idea of cognitive delays would overwhelm everything else.

It seems like a common topic here (three or four times in the past week alone) is how autistic people appear to NTs. kfisherx, earlier in the thread, described how her psychiatrist outright told her that she would give NTs the same reaction that she has to cognitively delayed people, which you're confirming now:

I guess my primary point is that your post seems to be about reacting to stereotypes.

Agreed. With no disrespect to elderwanda, I think it's easy for parents to see their own child as the 'normal' one, somehow better than the rest, and not want to associate them with those other 'weirdos'. I see this pattern in my dad. He's met some of the people in my Asperger group, and has a real difficulty as seeing me as one of those 'weirdos' (as he so eloquently puts it!). He's told me they are different from me, that I'm more intelligent, and he was convinced there was one guy who was clearly ret*d as well as having AS. Ironically, this guy actually has the highest IQ out of all of us - right up there in genius range!

I challenged my dad about this - he said he could tell there was something 'wrong' with these people, and that I don't come across like that, so I asked him whether, if he wasn't my dad, and didn't know me, he would think the same about me. At first he very strongly said no, but then he did think honestly about it and said I would probably seem a little odd! So I think parents do have a bit of a bias sometimes!

Maybe a lot were uncomfortable with having to stare or being stared at eachother.

I find this post really rude however even if you didn't intend for it to be. AS is not associated with gifted IQ's. Just because your son has a gifted IQ and may be able to compensate for somethings, it doesn't mean we all do or can. It doesn't make us feel any better about ourselves when people see us as mentally ret*d simply because of our mannerisms.

Yes, that was EXACTLY his point from how I understood it.



You don't understand given the little piece out of context of the whole session. The POINT of that sentence is that I understand why people treat me poorly sometimes when I haven't done anything wrong. It isn't about me needing to change but about how people perceive me as an ASD person with my odd behavoir. He stressed that while I may look "ret*d" (or how I perceieve "ret*d") to the "normal" people or NT people that I am NOT ret*d and have much to offer the world despite my ASD deficiencies. During this session he wanted me to be aware of my "giftedness" label which I was having trouble accepting at that very moment given the fact that I am so socially stupid and how people treated me. (Again you have to understand the whole)

Ditto^.

This stuff here is nice in the vid., a label with an explanation, as this is a difficult condition to contend with, to say the least.

I'm sure everyone here as undiagnosed, or later diagnosed as an adult, has had at least a difficult time with maintaining a measure of sanity at one time or another.

It gets easier but still 'ain't' easy by any means.

Thanks for the clarity.

I've been going through some bewildering things now; novel in nature. I was thinking today to my self as why to the uneasiness and the "bewilderment?" Why is it intermittent in nature? Of course.

i got about 7 seconds in and couldnt watch anymore, i really hope thats not how i come across.

To the parent who said they all seemed like actors: No. I've seen lots of people diagnosed with AS in person. Probably hundreds. A lot do look exactly like that. One thing to understand also. I am reading a book about autism by LornaWing, the woman who came up with AS as a diagnosis. I'm reading it to remind myself how the famous expert types see us. One thing she pointed out is that most autistic people of any type get weirder and weirder looking as we get older. This is because the gap between us and our nonautistic agemates widens every year.

As a child I looked somewhat strange and was considered gifted. By early adolescence, I could not go on walks by myself without people calling the police to report someone wandering. (I also lost my gifted IQ as early in life it was heavily influenced by hyperlexia. As I got older I did not keep accelerating at the same rate as my nonautistic agemates in the skills tested on IQ tests.) By early adulthood people who didnt know me well tended to respond to me as if I had severe/profound mental retardation (and my IQ dropped to the borderline range by age 22. I've not had it tested since to see what it's done since then. I've only ever been tested when professionals required it.) A few years ago a medical professional working in a hospital referred to me in my presence as having the cognitive function of an infant based on my appearance.

Now... I'm an extreme example and part of it's related to my variant of autism (I have an autism-related condition also first thoroughly researched by Lorna Wing, it makes my movement issues and seemingly some cognitive issues amplify over time). But the general idea is extremely common among all variants of autistic people including many diagnosed with Asperger's. Some of us learn better to pass as we age but many of us stand out further and further from nonautistic people because we change slower than them. Most people in that video looked much more normal than I often do.

To various others:

Wow... seems amazing to me that shrink assumed that you'd respond how he responds to people with MR. I don't know what the typical response is supposed to be but my response is familiarity. Since I was nearly 15 I've been in a lot of programs including people with MR and I've spent my whole adult life in developmental disability services. I'm 30 now. So my perception is more like comfortable familiarity and usually freedom from pressure to look like other people. I bet he'd never have been able to make that same point with me. I'd be like "...so?" Plus I've had people harshly and directly telling me "you look ret*d" most of my life. It did take me awhile to make the connection as to how exactly people perceived me (because among other things I lacked typical responses to people who looked like me) but... yeah.

I'd also add that people with MR have as much to offer the world as anyone else. They're just as varied and different from each other as nondisabled people are and most would rather just be treated like people instead of as the worst of the worst disability-based insults that exist (and all the mentality that makes the name of their difference an insult). I probably spend time around more of them than I do autistic people and I just can't find the horror, disgust, otherness, that most people place on them. The way simply a picture of them on the Internet is a punchline in itself... I just, around them I sometimes call up in my head how other people see them and compare it to what I observe and there is no comparison. I just see people. Other people see something terrible. I can't understand or explain it.

I was so angry recently when I suggested a video project centered around people with all DDs (autism, CP, MR, some kinds of epilepsy and brain injury, etc.) and the guy I proposed it to said better to just focus on autistic people because the public is interested in autism but wouldn't be interested in any of these other people. I was just fuming and I couldn't explain it. Collectively we are among the most dehumanized of disabled people and to only focus on the ones most people found "interesting"... misses the point so far it just can't be described. People find autistic people interesting because we are considered mysterious and because some of us certain patterns of talent they inexplicably find fascinating. (Well so do other people with DDs but they don't know or care.) But to them people with MR are dull and boring somehow -- all deficit, no personhood. Or else they're stereotyped as "special" and loving little children who never grow up, so very far from the truth. I can't reconcile any of it to the complex and interesting adults I know (and people who do the eternal child thing should have seen the keynote I saw at a DD/sexuality conference with the woman with an intellectual disability slyly alluding to "friends with benefits"... yeah).

That was a long tangent not really in reply to any single post. I guess it disturbs me that many autistic people and our parents have the same responses to people with intellectual disabilities that most people do. To me... I guess it's largely being in a system with them where I know that they and I are... one sort of people in a collective sense. Not separated into our component diagnoses, but people who all are in the DD service system together, share the same hopes, dreams, and desires, and the same form of discrimination by that system as well. We know we are in the same boat and that's what ends up mattering more than anything. At least that's how it seems when we get together socially (even though they generally run rings around me there). Not a utopian situation where we all get along, but aside from the usual social dynamics in any such community (like the ones who think they're better than everyone else, and the one's who identify and side with staff) we tend to have an instinctive understanding we are classed together, whether we love each other or hate each other.

Wow that was a long tangent. Just wanted to give anyone (not thinking of particular people, just comments throughout the thread) who thinks certain ways about people an idea that they are people, not just symbols of being outcast and disgraced and despised. We're not better than them, and in many cases (such as the DD system as a whole) we're not even separated into "us" over here and "them" over there. (I feel the same about the psych system though my experiences of it are more limited -- diagnosis sometimes just keeps apart people from banding together to solve problems common to all of us).

Oh also I know some people use cognitive disability to mean intellectual disability but I consider it to mean anyone who is disabled in a way related to cognition so that includes all autistic people including people with AS. You can even have cognitive delays in some areas and be considered gifted in others (like hyperlexia which usually combines receptive language delays with advanced reading skills, or at least decoding skills -- which is exactly how I could both be classified as gifted at a certain age where most kids can barely read, yet also at that age literally lack the receptive language skills to know the meaning of the word "test" (or the cognitive skills generally to understand the concept even without the word), true story).

Oh and also the reason I look confused (the polite word for totally oblivious) to some people appears to be three main factors. One is I am very distant from my body in some respects so it often sits there looking inert. Another is that when I do move it's often in unusual ways. (And I've found that the bulk of so-called "looking ret*d" is a combination of failure to move when movement is expected, and moving when movement is not expected). Also, I perceive the world visually as just shapes and colors and have trouble reconciling it into objects without effort. Which also led to a lot of direct comments of "quit looking blind" just like "quit looking ret*d".

Edited to add I have a bunch of subtle so called "dysmorphic" features on my face and body and that seems to add something subconscious to the effect according to friends. Like people wouldn't know quite what they were seeing, just their impressions.

Now that I use a powerchair though a lot of people put all those observations into the category of "must be a physical condition". I'm one of the few people I know who gets less crap in a wheelchair than outside of it.

I don't see something terrible, I was trying to respond to the parent who felt that these people on the video couldn't possibly be genuine because they looked intellectually disabled to her eyes (thank you for the correction). I was trying not to make it sound like there's anything wrong with people with MR, and that while I did not find her comparison insulting, it was simply not possible for it to even be factually correct - her prejudices about autistic people and people with MR got directly in the way of an honest viewing of the video, and she used MR as an insulting comparison to, I assume, distance her son from the people on the video.

Sometimes I get hung up on one part of a thing and fail to address every part of a thing. This was probably one of those occasions.

Oh I was responding to stuff I saw throughout this discussion. I think the only time I responded to you (looking back over posts anyway) was when I said I use cognitive disability more broadly.

Oh, right.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. I was having trouble finding the word "intellectual" in my brain. Cognitive was the closest fit.

I didn't get the impression anyone was undermining people with MR (except maybe the mother who was indignant that these 'ret*d' people were being put in the same category as her son). I think the point people seemed to be making - and certainly the point that I was making - is that you can't tell someone's IQ from their physical demeanour, and that people on the autistic spectrum are often wrongly assumed to have a low IQ. It is something I observe a lot as a person with Aspergers - people assume from the way I hold myself and interact that I am unintelligent in ways that I am not, and then express surprise when I say something which indicates this is not the case.

On the other hand, many people I know with MR (we don't call it that in the UK, but I'll call it that because you are calling it that) are a lot more socially at ease than I am, and have skills that I don't have - but these are generally not categorised as 'IQ' or even 'intelligence' in the minds of people who make such assumptions and categories.