low functioning video

Post Reply New Topic

I don't know exactly what he is feeling or saying, but I do know he is feeling and saying something.

I haven't criticized the mother for how she's taking care of her son. She has limited resources and little education on the subject. Her son needs far more support than he gets.

you want to know how 3 males diagnosed with aspergers might have insight into how a male further down the spectrum might feel?

IMHO this is one of the problems with treatment in autism. there are too many women who don't have insight into the male mind trying to help men. its not about devotion of the parents; that is obvious. its just like working smarter not harder.

get some male aspies in there and i bet they can help a lot. the further down the spectrum the better. interestingly in one of her videos the mother said she had gotten some very useful feedback from aspies on some of her youtube videos. so she likely agrees with us.

1. Tying his arms. That is only suppressing an urge, which will then make him want to hit himself harder and more frequently when she unties him.

2. Keeping him in open spaces and following him with a camera and talking. He would probably feel safer and more secure in a small and confined area' it is comforting and reduces stress. He may also do better without the lights, voices, and activity.

3. Keeping him on multiple and/or changing medications. If he is doing well on one anti-convulsant, then keep him on that, of course, to reduce seizures. He could be hypersensitive to anything else, Many, perhaps most, people on spectrum need half of the doses that non-autistics are prescribed. We tend to be slow-metabolizers. I was prescribed a starter dose of an antidepressants many years ago and it almost killed me.

4. If I am completely wrong on even one of these, then we should keep in mind that Jamie has two or more disabilities and, given that, the already nutty rules of autism may not apply, but they should at least be heard.

I am very sorry but she demonstrated time and again that when she unties his arms, he hits himself. He was allowed to hit himself to the point that he had to get medical treatment for injury when he was in a group home. Try again with number 1.

For number 2, do you really think that having a camera in his face for the small amount of time is one of Jamey's root cause issues. Not a flipp'n chance my friend. He does this behavoir LONG before she started to film him.

Number 3. How do you know his medication history or how frequently she changes or what method she uses to detemine what works and what doesn't work? I saw and heard nothing in her notes that gave me enough evidence to make judgement.

Number 4. So then you are saying that perhaps we cannot help him? Hmmmm....??? Perhaps the point I am trying to make as well...

I thought the point that you were trying to make was that you wanted a question answered and I answered it. You did not mention that you wanted to initiate a long debate; if so, I would have declined. So, let me merely try to respond with equal smugness:

1. He hits himself when she unties his arms (naturally)... So allow him to use his arms, but do not allow him to hurt himself. I should not have to go into how this is done... but tying them down will make it worse, unless she wants to make bondage his natural state.

2. Don't tell me what a flippin' chance is when you clearly pointed out that I do not know his medical history. If you can invalidate my suggestion due to lack of personal knowledge, may I do the same? Please tell me how you know what is annoying and even painful to him without firsthand knowledge? I was only making a suggestion that reducing stimuli may help.

3. She certainly did mention medication additions or changes. I will agree that I do not have specifics, but again, I am trying to be helpful by making a suggestion. It is worth looking into.

4. And saying he is helpless is a better way of looking at it? I think that's were she is right now, so anything is an improvement.

I didn't see him communicating any consent to having a video put on youtube. So, number one thing they are doing wrong is putting a video of him on youtube. Number 2, youtube is the wrong place to ask for advice about anything, particularly if it's about someone else. There are plenty of forums where they could (anonymously) ask for advice with a boy hitting his head, like, y' know forums with autistic people on them.

I would interpret that behaviour as self-harm, and I guess there is a possibility that anti-depressants would work if sensory issues had been ruled out.

You could rule out sensory issues by going somewhere silent and re-introducing sounds to see if it helps. Of course, these are just guesses and the right approach would be to put forward a number of hypotheses as to the cause and then try to eliminate each one and see if there is any improvement. It just involves being focused, disciplined and systematic.

I agree with that. I think it is a bad idea to put his videos on Youtube. She is so furious with Aspies in general that the WP parenting forum would not be the right place for her. But there are lots of forums that are more private than Youtube where parents give each othger advice and sometimes autistic people drop in. There are a lot of Youtube videos put up by parents of their children that I think are a bad idea, so unfortunately she's not alone there. Putting up videos (mostly of NT kids) in order to get advice about parenting has become its' own misbegotten subgenre.

I am 10000% positive they have done the "simple" steps of trying sensory issue rule out experiments and also trying anti-depresents. (watch the videos if you want verification) They are doing nothing more wrong than thousands of other parents (even those with NTs) who post videos of their kid on Youtube without that child's consent. So we cannot single them out for that. Who thinks they know what Jamey is saying in this video? Who here is better than these parents to know what should be done? Just wondering because there is a heck of a lot of critisism here with no answers. At least not that I can see... Just trying to understand why this Mother gets called out so hard when it really looks to me like she is trying really hard to get help.

the parents don't know what needs to be done and they're trying desparately. i respect them for that.

its very very useful because it gives those interested in the problem raw data to work with. maybe there is no solution today but maybe the extra insight they are providing will give an answer in a few years. for me it has been tremendously helpful, i watched more than 1.5 hours of her videos culmulatively.

i'm not sure why people would be concerned about "consent" for a low functioning autistic kid. aside from the fact that legally his parents are his guardians and decide for him, he's not the guy who will be too concerned about his public image given he has little to no theory of mind.

I just want to point out that:

You don't actually know what his theory of mind is like, although I do not know what you mean by "theory of mind" in this instance.

None of the reasons you gave are particularly good reasons to record someone and post the videos on youtube.

Anyway, I'm not really in a position to offer any help to Jamie or his family. As far as I can tell, to his mother someone like me isn't even autistic. It seems to me that this is one of the many consequences of the paucity of services available to adult autistic people, which I have criticized in the past.

I find some of the comments rude here. The mother has probably been through hell over her son having severe autism if she gets lack of support. Think of all the heckling and mean behavior she must get from other people and her own family members. Think she gets enough "Well you must be doing something wrong!" Yeah she probably does.

I applaud her for doing what she can for her son. Why does it seem that people with aspergers feel downgraded or their own problems minimized when someone who is low functioning is shown and then parents of those with low functioning autism get this idea that you don't have any form of autism unless you are low functioning?

Last edited by TheygoMew on 28 Jun 2011, 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Watched the other video put up. Now I find her just like alot of other parents that are bitter and misdirecting their issues onto aspies. I can't stand how narrow minded it came across and her comment where she put:

"A truly autistic person does not morph into Aspergers. Aspergers is aspergers. Autism is autism. They both have a spectrum, so Temple is in my opinion a very high functioing Autistic person, and one who is RARE. WIth Aspergers you can have low, moderate to high functioning as well but the fundamental difference is Aspegers don't have the severe sensory andn communication issues seen with autism. They will have challenges, but not as severe. "

I was moderate in autism as a child and adolescent. I was diagnosed with aspergers as an adult because now and yes I emphasize NOW, I can actually speak, getting better with it. I still have sensory issues with certain sounds that makes me angry when hearing them. The difference between me then is I used to get out of control. I learned how to cope.

Yes it does happen. I've had people try to undiagnose me that barely know me.

Oh look you can drive a car! Not autism!

Yes oh look, I can drive a car! But I cannot drive on highways! It took me till after 21 to get my license and I failed my test the first time.
I still have problems parking and parallel parking. Get scared in new places and sometimes feel lost and feel panicked.

Well, you're talking to me! Not autism!

Yes and it took me a REALLY long time to get to this point. People aren't happy for me at all. Instead now I'm a liar. GREAT. Unless barely talking up to tenth grade and having a speech delay till the age of 4 is normal...


Then when someone really gets to know me....I'm picked on for the autistic traits I have like stimming, ear plugs, getting upset and jumping over certain sounds, getting upset when interrupted etc...

I hate people sometimes.

Just watched this video. She is doing the best she can for her son. I wish however she would stop pretending as though somehow it's aspies fault that there isn't enough support. She does have a tough battle but she's taking her anger out on the wrong people and belittling those of us who came a long way only to be put down some more..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_WOSoduYGI[/youtube]

I seriously do not understand how she thinks that aspies and HFAs are being a hindrance to her son's treatment. I mean, it's clear as rain that he's a low functioning autistic with major needs. You put her son next to a person with Asperger's syndrome, and I guarantee it will be obvious that her son is low functioning (especially with the severe self injury issue) and will be assisted more. I would say this to her on her video but I think she will only b***h me out for it.

Also I am really starting to question her whole issue with the doctors. She keeps saying that the doctors aren't helping yet I wonder if she has even gone to the right doctors to begin with. Is she just relying on local doctors and psychologists for advice? Has she ever tried consulting doctors with actual expertise in autism and self injury and seizures? And for all we know, 1 or 2 of those doctors might have given her actually helpful advice that she flat-out refused to follow. So many unanswered questions here.

I mean clearly this is a unique and rare case of autism and additional symptoms that is too big for a local autism organization to handle. That much is obvious. I just don't see why she needs to hate and blame on everyone for that when she really needs someone on a more advance level (of handling multiple condition patients) to help her, not just a typical doctor.

But before sending her son to an expert, she needs to get him off the drugs or otherwise it's gonna be much harder to sort him out.

Well this lady doesn't realize that whining is part of the package of having Asperger's. Meltdowns ahoy if you even try to debate with this woman.

Doesn't she realize that the overdiagnosing of Autism also hurts those who do have high functioning Autism just as much as cases like her son? Cynicism hurts the people who aren't B.S.ing this. And really why would anyone fake asperger's or would even want it? If she had things her way, I would've never gotten my diagnosis and I probably would've killed myself 1000 times by now from not understanding why I wasn't making a single friend and had a tendency to walk around in circles with no eye contact all the time. And even the moderate functioning would be dismissed as normal. Oy vey!

All parents who put their child's behaviour on youtube without their consent are doing wrong but this happens to be the first I've seen and it is exacerbated by the fact that it seems he can't even communicate whether or not he wants to be filmed.

Just because I don't have the answer, doesn't mean it's acceptable to put stuff up on youtube. In fact, it's all the more reason why putting it up served no useful purpose. I am now one more person in the world their son has been humiliated in front of with no positive outcome.

Also, I doubt they have tried it thoroughly and over an extended period. Total silence is hard to do for a long period of time, especially since you have to also control other variables such as diet, exercise, his general mood, what happened recently etc. What I was suggesting was actually quite difficult to put into practice because things can work in tandem or one thing could be enough to set him off and you'd have to find all the things. It could take years to do properly and then what affects him might change.

I've seen practically all of the videos his mother has posted on the two channels of hers that I know of.