Are modern environment getting more and more hostile to ASDs

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Are modern environment getting more and more hostile to ASDs?

Quotes from a friend of mine with autism

''Dr Temple Grandin and Prof. Vernon Smith lived in an era where they may not have an acute understanding of autism as much as us, and they do not feel baggaged by others who know about their conditions so much that they are 'framed' in their parents and mentors' minds to do some certain things. Hence there had been the right environment to nurture their careers in the past - the relative absence of the knowledge of their 'autism', eccentricities which help in their discoveries and careers. Ironically, we are now more aware of such eccentricities, and yet less encouraging and even, may I say this, intolerant of such creative behavior. I feel clipped in the wings for not having to do what I like, just because I have autism.''

One thing is that nowadays the environment is getting more hostile or unsuitable for Aspies to get to know their goal or know their gifts.
Too many distractions these days. computer games, internet.etc If you see the Temple Grandin video in the Mind institute. We cannot let Aspies get obsessed with the wrong things.

Probably it's become more hostile to those who are higher functioning or can fit in better in an NT world. Before, they could fit in relatively well; after, if their autism is known about, it might be disadvantageous to them at the hands of stereotypist people.

If lower functioning or more in need of support, at least that means the chance of such support and understanding of the way they behave if their condition is known about.

That's a good point but I wonder if there were people in their lives who might have not believed in them but they persisted and accomplished anyway? The environment is very important. A supportive, positive environment is very important to someone with an ASD.

I think modern environments are more hostile to people with ASD, but maybe not quite in the way you mean? In my crackpot theory (and I'm not pretending it's anything more than that) the rise in the incidence of autism is the result of two things: a slight genetic shift due to an increasing societal preference for highly specialized brains in both genders, and changes in the environment that children with a genetic tendency toward autism are raised in.

Society has become increasing over-stimulating and increasingly fragmentary. It's not just things are louder and shinier and flashier and open later-- although all those things are true. We live in a world now where you are always entering the middle of a story. Abrupt starts and stops are what modern life is all about, and modern children aren't shielded from them at all.

Those things are all very bad for children with autism, and I think the fact that they are more and more ubiquitous may have a great deal to do with why more people with a tendency toward autism are developing in dysfunctional ways. I like TV much better than I like people. In some ways, that makes me wonder if I would have less autism if I had been born before there was TV. I'm very pro-technology, but I'm also in favor of making sure that all infants live in a world that is not overstimulating.

I was disturbed that with the recent study linking autism to children born to families living with 1000 feet of highways because everyone seems so quick to hone in on air pollution as the cause. What about noise? What about light pollution at night? What about vibrations that go unnoticed? I think any of these things is as likely as air pollution to take a genetic tendency toward autism and turn it into a problem. (I also think, in this particular study, the increased tendency toward autism was likely caused by the difference between people who live near highways in California and people who don't.)

There is no way to ever go back to the kinds of days like those of Temple Grandin's childhood. Back then, challenged children either learned to become functional members of society or they were sent into asylums ... and there were no such things as "special ed" or disability accommodations or the idea of any "village" raising children. Some parents had large families because they needed the additional help on the farm, and children typically worked hard because they knew even their very own lives depended upon their doing so.

Overall, society has now grown weary of accommodating disability ... and that means it is now time for the remainder of us to again understand what is truly required to actually survive and thrive on this planet.

Spot on OP. People tend to give legos to my son since they assume he has autism (he doesn't like legos at all). I have also heard a well-intended opinion of a friend who offered me a story about someone who she knew that has asperger and despite being good student and everything can not live alone as a probable outcome for my son. The worst prejudice that I hear a lot is that whatever he learned is pure memorization and that he can not learn to solve problems and has no critical thinking. I mean how can you fight that especially from a teacher?
And school is constantly trying to label him so they can have a nice excuse for whatever happens.
The whole AS awareness system probably works well for an average AS person, however for specific cases it can only be damaging because people put you in a box and treat you like that. I mean one do not assume that they know everything about NT when they just look at them. AS is not the only part of person's life however the trend of therapies teaches kids to concentrate on their AS or ASD instead of living the life.

In some ways it is more hostile in that there are too many distractions. Our way of communicating is fragmented (as in text messages) and we tend to be less social as a species. In other ways it is far better IMHO. Special therapies and education are provided at much earlier ages, interacting with machines is more normal than not and the world of high-tech has created an entire new planet for aspies to make their home.

If you read the book "Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" (Grandin and Barron) the thing that most sticks out isn't the "simplicity" of their livestyle due to the world's environment but rather the consistency of the parents who raised them. ASD kids with good parents and good support systems in that regard today have just the same chance or better IMHO.

Everyone in general are being perscuted in an increasingly ignorant world of violence, and ignorance. As wars rage, crime rises...
And insensitivity prevails. Humanity is being poisoned by its own gluttonous implosion. However there IS hope, with the increase of dumbassed humans and their degredation into animalism. Reformers do exist. But volunteerism is a dying art. Less and less are giving as much as they once did with time. And what little reparations they make in the world is quicky overshadowed.

Take the drug war in mexcio...

But things could be like that for kids before AS awareness. My first-grade teacher told my mother that I couldn't possibly be affected by my brother's death because I didn't understand it. I started reading at age two and was frequently told by teachers and other adults that it was so cute how I memorized things so it looked like I was really reading.

I was blamed for the bullying I recieved. People put me in a box and made assumptions about me and then wouldn't let me do things they let the other kids do. Or Someone was telling a story and stopped to specifically address me and explain things about it (that were obvious), embarassing me in front of the other children. Even though everyone knew I had a high I.Q. I was frequently treated differently from the other children as if I were somehow incapable of understanding things (that I did understand.) But then when I didn't understand something (like a social expectation) I was yelled at and told that I really knew and was playing coy to get attention.

I think the main difference between how I was treated in the seventies and eighties and how I might have been treated if I'd been properly diagnosed and people knew I had Asperger's is that I might have gotten a little extra help. Instead of just being yelled at for my dysgraphia, there would be a name for it and a therapist to help me work on it and people would expect a little less of me in an area where it was valid (as opposed to all the times they expected less of me when I could give much, much more) and not punish me for something I couldn't do.

But I don't necessarily think the AS label makes much difference because teachers still label a child behind his and his parents' backs and still treat a child in accordance with the label the teacher decided to put on the child. My first grade teacher decided on her own to label me as mentally ret*d and she treated me accordingly. If there is something "different" about a child, they will get labelled and treated differently, whether they have an official label or not.

Describing modern society as hostile is oversimplified and ignores how technology and the internet helps many autistic people communicate.

http://corinabecker.wordpress.com/2010/ ... -speaking/

As far as the human element goes, yes. Which would I rather have - a computer and the net locked in a cubicle, or a small settlement of people who think I am a bit strange but it is just Cousin Joe?

Evidence fronm previous generations in our family suggests that the bigger the year # the more wildeyed and stressed out.

I think if I was born farther back I think I could of been institutionalized. Those places were hell. I think you guys are really looking at thing simple and neglecting how the mental and other wise challenged were treated if anyone knew about it and there were dunce hats. My dad had to wear one of them. I met someone else who got institutionalized because he was depressed and had ADHD0, in the 60s. So they electric shocked him and put him in a padded room.

There was once a time when people generally understood and at least circumstantially accepted their common need for community, but now the delusion of independence (or at least the desire for self-sufficiency and -sustainment) precludes that.

spparowrose: yes, I agree with your point, people tend to put people in the boxes because they are off however the thing that bothers me is that the criteria for being off are lowering. before autistic child was the nonverbal "rain man" type, now lack of eye contact and inability to engage in peer relations are enough for children to be labeled for life and assume that they can not make it in life. i know for sure that in my homecountry where labeling AS spectrum is lagging compared to US, my son is observed as a quirky one but not disabled.

I think I would have been treated a little bit better if I'd been seen as disabled instead of quirky and oppositional. I mean, do you let the children throw rocks at the disabled kid? No. Theoretically, you don't let the children throw rocks at anyone, but it's so easy to turn a blind eye when they throw rocks at the "annoying" kid.

I was not labeled as a child and yet this lack of a label does not seem to have made it easier for me. If anything, it's made it more difficult as I had no idea what was going on or that other people didn't have to cope with the same things. I certainly appear to be "high functioning*" and yet somehow I've completely failed to be independent or productive over the span of my adult life.

Could it be that having a label means things like IEPs and accommodations in education? Having the support people need to achieve their goals?

Also, what Sparrowrose said.

Perhaps you are trivializing things a bit?

* I hate HFA/LFA terminology