Autistic/Aspergian Pride

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Hello, all! I'm not posting this in the parenting section because I want to hear from people on the spectrum themselves. I hope that's okay!

My son who has autism/Asperger's and Tourette's has always been proud of his differences. Suddenly in 4th Grade he tells me he wishes there were a cure for autism or Tourette's; that he hates having autism. That kids will bully him if they know (he has never been bullied for any reason in his school). He sees photos of himself caught in mid-tic and says: 'I hate that photo. I look like an autistic kid.'

I want him to be proud of who he is like he always was before. I've given him articles on the benefits of autism. I have shown him the Wrong Planet TV show. I am probably pushing too much.

I am physically disabled, myself, and I know that a sense of pride in who I am and a sense of engagement in the disability community really matters as far as my self esteem and happiness is concerned. I want him to have that same sense of pride, ownership, and belonging in the autism community that I have in the disabled community.

Any suggestions from adult autistics out there? Thank you so much; this is really tearing me apart.

My immediate reaction is to have him be part of an autistic community.

This is a great idea; he refuses to play with the other autistic kids in his school, though, and he's only nine. I have many adult friends on the spectrum he knows and interacts with, but they are adults and therefore not terribly interesting to him. Do you have any suggestions I might have missed? Thanks so much for responding.

You said you've been letting him watch the videos here. Has he been reading any of the forums? I'm wondering, if he's not being bullied himself, where he suddenly got the idea he will be if people find out. There is a lot of talk about bullying here. A lot of us have been, and are still, being bullied.

If he didn't get the idea from here, maybe somewhere else? Have you asked him? The way you tell the story, it sounds like there must have been something that happened or some recent change that's triggered this thinking.

That's the first thing I would try to do. Find out what's brought this on.

Oh, I'm sorry. I left out part of the story. This summer at day camp he saw some NT kids making fun of some autistic kids. He was frightened by this and said he was afraid the kids would find out _he_ was autistic.

I tried to talk with him about it; he cannot recognize faces so he couldn't tell me who the kids were. His therapist tried to talk with him, too. He won't listen to us and I have no idea how else to tackle the subject.

Thank you!

Oh -- also, he hasn't been reading any of the forums; he has not been interested in that, he tells me.

Aspie and damn proud. If they came up with a "cure", I would throw it in their faces (whoever they are). I have gone through times in life were I hated myself, but not for one second because AS.

That's really complicated, and it's not difficult to understand him. No one wants to be bullied or to be mocked. He wasn't himself, but it was enough to him the simple consideration that it could happen.

Probably I'm not the right person to tell you what you could do, since my knowledge about autism/Aspergers is still very limited. Most of what I know is an intuition from what I myself feel, and some comes from the talks with the psychologist, who's helping me first to understand myself a little better.

But I think you could try some things. Does he like comics or something like that?

He loves comics! Do you have some to recommend? I was thinking of trying to find some that emphasized the strength outsiders have when we band together, like maybe the X-Men? But I don't know much about comics myself. Thanks!

Yes! That's the point. The X-Men plot is perfect. You know, they're mutants, therefore they're different from the "normal" people. So some of them had to face really bad things for being 'mutants', like being bullied, excluded and even considered "aberrations".

I think you could try using this to talk to him. Maybe he will understand it better. Although the mutants face those difficulties for being different, they have special powers and abilities which can even help other people. That makes them unique and special.

Thank you SO MUCH. I'm going to get home some of these. I really appreciate it!

The other thing you could do is see if there are ways to teach him how to deal with bullies as part of his social training. He's not wrong in thinking that he might be bullied because of his autism, you know. Bullies target those who are different. The school should have an antibullying program in place but not all schools do.

Thanks. Yeah, that helps to know. You know what though, I got bullied a lot in school, and those kids didn't know anything at all about my Autism. I didn't either. That's because I'm 51 years old, and nobody knew squat about high functioning Autism back then. The point is though, the kids picked on me, and some even beat me regularly, based only on the fact that I was "different." Funny thing is, I wasn't different enough for any adults to pick up on the fact that it was more than that. I wasn't different enough for them to believe I should be having any trouble with academics. But I did have a lot of trouble with the work and grades. I got picked on for that too.

I don't know what the culture is where you are. I'm in NH, and it's slightly different here than where I grew up, only a couple of hundred miles from here. It's also a different era. Things change over time, and are different from place to place. I've heard "people are people everywhere," but I submit there are differences from place to place, even within relatively short distances. So he doesn't get bullied at school, but he saw it happening at the camp, and that triggered him wishing he weren't Autistic, when previously he was proud of it.

Okay. I hope this doesn't come across as too obvious or dismissive. That's not so unusual. It's easy to be proud about your differences when they are accepted unconditionally by everyone you know and associate with. Not so easy when you suddenly realize the whole world isn't as accepting as you thought.

His paradigm has been upset. It's been turned on its head, inide out and crushed. The world isn't the way he thought it was, and that's a very hard thing for any Autistic to learn. We are, compared to non-Autistics, entrenched in our paradigms. But it can go even deeper than that. Ever hear of the common Native American philosophy that relates the land you live on, and from, to who you actually are? It's why so many tribes had such a problem with the concept of buying and selling land, and with being forced to leave their lands. To them, it stripped them of a huge part of their identity. By losing their land or selling it, they were no longer who they were before.

Paradigms, for Autistics who haven't learned yet to separate themselves from them, are part of who we are. When you find out the world as you know it isn't what or how you thought it was, you must not be what you thought you were. They're linked. So it may be a bit deeper than just, "Oh my god, Autistics get bullied in this world, so I don't want to be Autistic anymore." It may be "Oh no. I'm not who I thought I was. I'm not the different, proud Autistic I always thought I was. If I were, those kids would never be bullied, because they are like me."

I'm just guessing, but that's kind of what I think is going on. Maybe different, but something like that. He probably isn't old enough to understand that yet, but he may get it several years from now, or sooner. Each of us grows at our own rates.

The only thing I can think of to do at this point, is to acknowledge that what he saw was traumatic. Let him talk about it. Even to the point of letting him express any anger he has about it. Even if that means hearing him say he'd like to do bad things to those kids. Let him get out whatever seeing those things put into him. There's a toxin that's been planted by seeing that. I think it wasn't a bad thing in the long run for him to see it, because that IS a reality in this world, and he should learn to deal with it.

I think he'll get past it. He's just going to need some time. I'm actually thinking seeing this incident may have actually cause some PTSD. I would talk to his therapist about that possibility. I have a son (fifteen now), who had something VERY bad happen directly to him. Police were involved, it was that bad. He went through PTSD therapy for about two to three years (we didn't find out about the incident until nearly a year after it happened), and he did very well at getting over the anger, fear, and everything else it caused. His therapist was VERY good.

That's where I'd go with it next.

That's ok, haddayr! Just remember to talk to him when possible, maybe comparing the 'powers' to the autistic characteristics, such as the intelligence and all that. I think it's a way to approach the subject with something he likes (the comics).
And I agree with Sylvia. That will not change the fact that he can be bullied (unfortunately) - just like the X-Men are still "hated" by some people even after they save the world. It's important for him to be "prepared" in case this happens.

Yeah. I only wondered because a lot of talk about bullying does go on here. If he ever does become interested in reading anything here well...

I would just be careful. It won't take you long to figure out why by perusing around here yourself a bit, if you haven't already figured it out.

No; not at all! And to me, it wasn't obvious. I cannot thank you enough for these insights. I've already gone home and talked with him about the incident, and he told me that the boys make him feel like a 'lesser being,' which fits exactly with what you've told me, here.

You are right; he needs to know that the world is not all going to be open and accepting of autistic people. His school has been, his social circle has been -- but he was sheltered, before. It's good that it happened young enough, I guess, to figure out how to address it, and young enough for him to figure out different ways of thinking about it.

I can't thank you enough for this helpful and compassionate response.