This video is just disgraceful to the autistic community.

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Well, I tried to answer it the best I could with the answer that made most sense to me. I must have misjudged. Maybe others just don't function with compassion or kindness? Could have fooled me. lol

Any who, I should probably be going to bed, it's late.

Thank you for your opinions on this post, it means a lot to me that others took the time out to read it and comment. I'm also sorry if I have offended you in any way - It was not my intention at all. Usually when i'm in a debate I try to just put everything on the table.

What's in the past is in the past, much like this video. lol

I'm on this site to make friends, not enimies.

Good night to you.

First of all, I'd rather be the parent of a disabled child than an aborted child. I have no problem with the idea of having a disabled child. What I have a problem with are the perfectionists in that video who call themselves parents. If a parent isn't willing to accept any child that they could end up bringing into this world, they should stay on Birth Control. Now everybody presumes that everybody on the spectrum are exactly like those kids in that video and they see autism as a life sentence. Autism isn't a life sentence. It's just a different way of being. There's ABA. Instead of bitching about their children, those parents should be working with them and believing that they have potential. There is someone who wouldn't mind having a disabled child, and that person is me, because I feel that every life is precious and everybody who's conceived should have a Birthday. Life is the first basic human right and without it, we wouldn't be here.

Looks like I'm the only one who thinks so ... but I really didn't see anything that terrible. All I saw was some parents of low functioning autistic children being honest about how challenging life can be. I can't believe so many of you are demonising them for that.
It frustrates me that so many higher functioning people think that because they lie somewhere on the autism spectrum it's their God-given right to speak on behalf of low functioning individuals. Who are you to tell these parents they shouldn't wish their kids had a better quality of life? Nobody is trying to "cure" you. If you have no problems with your level of autism, that's great. Heck, I don't deny that in some cases it can make you a better person. But what about those kids who will never speak? Who will never live independently? Who will spend the rest of their lives being passed from home to home?

Don't worry. This will come back to bite the women horribly when their children are teens, feeling rebellious/alienated/angry anyway (with the autism amplifying it even more), and see the videos. Assuming, of course, the kids don't have instant flashbacks and remember their mothers saying it right in front of them.

I don't think the mothers realized that the fact that their kids might not TALK doesn't mean they don't UNDERSTAND and won't REMEMBER it (possibly in a distorted context) years from now.

There are lots of things I remember, and routinely freak out my parents by bringing up things they (and others) said and did when I was 3-5 years old. My parents couldn't believe, for example, that I have any memory of the basement floor at our old house being red instead of green, because they painted it the summer when I was 3 (however, they DO apparently remember the epic tantrums I threw afterward, because I liked red better). Or that I remember the old furnace that got replaced the winter after I'd just turned 3 (the old furnace made noises and scared me. I don't remember much about the actual replacement itself, but I remember feeling like a monster that used to live in the basement had just been slain, and for the first time in my life could go down to the basement without fear).

This video was specifically made to make autistic people look bad, too. See here:

I have some thoughts about this video:

1)The thoughts these women have don't make them bad people, or even bad mothers. These thoughts come from emotional exhaustion and possibly depression, not from badness.

2)The appropriate place to express these thoughts is in a therapist's office. Therapists understand that venting these thoughts and working through them in an appropriate therapeutic venue can help restore the emotional strength of these mothers. They should not keep these thoughts bottled up inside, but they should also let them out just in the appropriate venue of the therapist's office and/or in private conversations with their husbands, mothers or other non-judgemntal confidants. For me, the social goal should be preventing these women from mentally and emotionally unraveling to the point that they actually commit violence or even murder. This requires both a private venue for venting and more community support with the caretaking duties.

3)These thoughts should not have been expressed in front of their children and certainly not on camera. Unfortunately we are living in a "tell-all" culture that puts a premium on people being candid and outspoken about their darkest feelings and experiences (there are countless memoirs that describe family members in a cruel light) and also a reality TV culture that does not see children as off-limits. Shows like "Supernanny" and "Eight Is Enough" paved the way for this. Those and other reality shows normalized putting children on TV in the throes of behavioral challenges while parents vented about it. Once that happened, it was a very short jump to this video. It is perpetuated on Youtube where parents of NT and AS kids alike post thousands and thousands of videos of their kids in the throes of behavioral challenges. They post videos of the good times too, but there are many Youtube videos I don't personally think should have been posted.

It is by design that I leave out identifying details about my own life and tell non-unique anecdotes about my daughter. It should be possible for anybody who knows her or eventually even her to read my posts without realizing they are about her. I am deliberately vague, and the few times I am specific it is to describe things that apply to many, many autistic children. This would be the same if she were NT.

4)Many posters feel that they would be better able to rise to the challenge of raising autistic children (or children with a related disability) than these mothers are. That's quite possibly so. Many autistic parents on WP use their own neurology and childhood experiences to get an accurate understanding of their childrens' behavior (which baffles NT parents) and know what to do (or not do). I am probably BAP and my daughter is medium functioning ( a non-identifying detail ) which means the neurology gap between us is nowhere near as large as it is between the mothers and children in the video. It's less emotionally difficult to raise somebody that you "get" (or at least "get" partly) than somebody who baffles you at every turn.

This is why APerfectStorm brought up ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder). If indeed it is neurological, a parent, including an autistic parent, might find themselves with such a child. The gigantic neurology gap would make that a true challenge. What would you do if you found out your child with ASPD was the school bully? You can't give in to traumatic childhood memories of bullying (except in a therapist's office or in private conversations with adult confidants) and reject them as "evil kids". You have to figure out a way to turn that behaviour around. I have no idea how I would do it. But parents of ASPD kids have to figure out a way. It's one thing to envision rising to a challenge similar to your own. It's quite another to rise to a challenge you don't understand and even find disturbing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twkh0YiInPM[/youtube]

I actually found this more sad than offensive. It was made clear in the video, that the actual problem is that there's not enough support for children with autism/asperger's (and their families). The message the mothers seemed to send was that they were exhausted, not because their children had autism ,but because they didn't have enough support.