Ageism and ASD

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While (I believe) ageism affects all older adults, NT, ASD, anyone in the older age group, I am curious as to how or whether older members of WP view ageism as affecting them, specifically - or whether you think that there are no differences in impacts for anyone over say 50.

My own view is that Western culture is intensely ageist, and that ageism is so pervasive, so enculturated, that older people internalise it and hold ageist attitudes and stereotypes towards themselves and their peer group.
The media is saturated with ageism, and in social encounters it operates at sometimes subtle levels - ie telling someone they are attractive "for your age", rather than just telling them that they are attractive.

Ageism affects me as an older ASD person, for example, in that a lot of articles completely ignore the fact that of the existence of autism in the senior population; the authors write as if we don't even exist, and this amounts to exclusion on the basis of age, whether the authors do it from ignorance or whatever other reason.

I think we are quite capable of reverse ageism too - a failing of mine I will own to - for example I stay away from the love and dating forum because I regard a lot of the content as written there as immature, posted by younger people who have not yet had time to develop broader perspectives based on life experience.

I experience ageism and I'm 23. It's harmful.

I do get worried about the lack of knowledge caregivers and nurses seem to have about autism and mental illness in the elderly. I only suspected one of my former clients may have been autistic. She seemed to have severe sensory problems with textiles and her whole bookshelf was dedicated to information on birds and a few books in animal behavior. She had so many items with pictures of birds on them. She also spoke a bit "odd". Because of this, her other caregivers always thought she was "weird" and talked about her.

There does seem to be a need for more elderly autism awareness, especially among medical staff.

I think age discrimination happens a lot, but I don't think that in the US it rises to the level of an "-ism," which to me implies an institutional level of discrimination. That doesn't make it okay, but let's limit the use of that suffix to situations that cause significantly worse outcomes, in a statistical sense.

I'm in my 40s and I've gone back to college to get my undergraduate degree. I haven't felt discriminated against at all, to my surprise.

A students job is to pay money and think and do assignments. If you do those well, I think the college environment can be much more tolerant of differences than most.

I absolutely think there needs to be more acknowledgement that the children who have ASD develop and learn, but do NOT magically grow out of having ASD at 18 or 21 or 25 or even 30. The lack of acknowledgement can be hurtful, can cause harm. So I do think it's an unfortunate prejudice.

It's true that you will find little about ageing and AS. I believe that is something for us-the oldsters- to write about
. I do tend to find myself being 'invisible" sometimes, but that is at least as much a problem in the NT world. I suspect that for some of us with AS that would be considered a positive.

The problems with employment for people over 50 are hard for anyone. Once again, in general, I believe it is emotionally more difficult for NTs 'who suddenly discover they are no longer in demand. That is something that we [those with ASD] do not often experience, simply because we never had that in the first place. The same thing is applicable to the lowering of social status.

Autistic burnout can happen at any age. I think,particularlyso [and often permanently] for a person who has fairly successfully worked for years in NT culture. I know a number of people who worked their butts off until their early fifties, and just could not do it any longer. they have all applied for and received[after a couple of years] SSDI, and are happier than they have been their entire lives. Having a lesser income than they did does not bother them, as status and prestige is generally less important to AS. You will find a number of them in GRASP groups, enjoying friendships for the first time ever.

For many years I grappled with acting, dressing, all around presenting in an age appropriate way. I was never good at it. Now, I get alot out of life that many NT older people no longer do because of their need to give up age inapropriate ideas, clothing, and activities.

I have a husband, kids, and grandkids. I am very blessed in that I don't have to worry about my "old age" [even more so because of health issues that make me aware that every day is a gift] but so many with AS do. We are working on an Autistic community in an already existing community, where AS oldsters [and AS anyones[ will feel comfortable and not alone. This is something that I believe must be addressed on a national level.

I do not know if it is the cancer, the meds AS,or just growing older, but it has been difficult becoming aware how much less 'sharp' my thinking now is. I have accepted this as my reality to a much greater degree than I thought possible only a year ago.

I would be wary of any information on ageing Autistics based on NT research.

when I was a little girl, when I saw an old person smile, the lines around their eyes reminded me of twinkling stars. Now, though I am aware that noone other than myself appreciates it, I love my own "twinkling stars."

I am going to belly dance right now. thank God I am too weird to know better,

LOL Vicky....why must you whet my appetite?

I'm in my 50's. When I was looking for a second job, many people threw away my resumes However, once I got an in-person interview, I got the job the same day, without a 'second interview."

I believe the Internet Age, to a certain extent, has exacerbated the problems of over 50's obtaining jobs. HR's just look at the age of the person, and throw the resume away, without interviewing them. I believe more must be done to enable people to get interviews, rather than have their resumes thrown away because of some demographic data or something.

You´re right, Vicky, about the not giving in to ideas about age appropriate conduct. That is the greatest killer and people fall for it.
I don´t. Never fell for ideas of gender appropriate conduct either, - at least not for long.
I´m 60, but I feel more like a childish fourty year old, and behave accordingly

I pretty much agree with what has been written above with the exception that being considered over the hill effects us emotionally less then NT's

The rest of this post addresses the American situation and might not be relevant for people outside the US.

The 1960's and 70's baby boomer expression"Don't trust anyone over 30" has come back to bite us in the ass. So has the wasteful spending and selfishness of the generation. Obviously for a lot of us we did not have much money to waste nor ever were able to get caught up in the hedonism. But we still get the backlash plus ableism anyhow.

Because the millennials are not rioting in the streets the mainstream media has largely missed how pissed off at the older generation they are. They blame the selfishness for making them the first American Generation since the 1930's that will do a lot worse then their parents. They are not pleased that they have to pay for a social security program they do not believe will be there for them. They distrust "individualism". To them it is not associated with innovation, but greed. This is not good for you if you are older or different. Another words it is a disaster for us.

Of all the isms I think it is the most tolerated and taken for granted. Although we have employment law here, so that in theory, employers can't discriminate on the basis of age (or ethnicity etc), in practice it means nothing, and older applicants are fobbed off with excuses "we had more qualified applicants" etc. Robust studies have been done that show this to be patently false. But I don't know of even a single prosecution. Nor do I think there will be one any time soon.

Socially, I have been vastly surprised - since joining a group for the socially anxious - to find no ageism there; but this has raised my awareness about how ageist other groups are, how much older people are marginalised simply for being older.

Some older people do create some of this themselves. I went to a function recently where the oldest person kept boring everyone else with "in my day" and "the way things used to be" - the past was his exclusive topic of conversation, it was as though he had mentally died 40 years ago - and even though I was probably nearer his age than anyone else, I gave him a wide berth pretty soon too, because he was boring and completely disinterested in anything related to the present.

I returned to university (years ago) as an older student (in my 30s) and it was very age tolerant - in fact the older students (then) were respected by the teaching staff, because they were known to really apply themselves and get top grades; and younger students often went to them for some help with assignments, so we were included and accepted. It may be different now.

Medicine is another arena where I think ageist attitudes are rampant - older patients who report symptoms are more likely to be responded to as if their pain/etc is simply a function of age. You have to be more assertive to have your medical issues taken seriously. Older people find their complaints often tend to be trivialised, pigeonholed and dismissed with "It's just your age" (I have personally experienced this) and this would put many older ASD people at a double disadvantage, as many lack good verbal skills and competence in advocating for themselves to get past that prejudice and obtain proper evalutions.

Ageism has really gotten to me by my black peers, mostly by the women. My mom likes to think I am some kind of a kid sometimes, and my girlfriend thinks I either dress like a teenager or that some of the things I do are too teen-like. Mind you, I am 25 and the things I do or want to do are what twentysomethings do, also..

"Ageism affects me as an older ASD person, for example, in that a lot of articles completely ignore the fact that of the existence of autism in the senior population; the authors write as if we don't even exist, and this amounts to exclusion on the basis of age, whether the authors do it from ignorance or whatever other reason. "

- a couple of ideas crossed my mind -

Could this be because when we were younger, autism was either only considered as an 'institutional' condition or one that required permanent caring. Certainly younger adults and school age children are now familiar with 'special needs', so that attitude may change.

A lot of people assume it's something you 'grow out of', where in fact you learn to cope with or avoid situations/ people.

AS in particular, hasn't officially existed until fairly recently. Hence the older adult diagnosis boom.

Possibly there is less tolerance/ more stereotyping of unusual behaviour generally nowadays, perhaps eccentricity was more acceptable in the past - less of a homogenous society, til the advent of of mass media social manipulation.

Although looking at the Victorians, if you were well off you were eccentric - if poor, you were considered mad!

John Robison discussed this topic at IMFAR earlier this year
http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2014 ... ights.html
"And about changing society -- this goes back to my father the philosopher and his ancestors -- My father and I [are descended] from another philosopher and minister who founded the Anglican church in Bruton Parish, Virginia in 1678. One reason I?m at The College of William and Mary today is that his son was one of William and Mary?s first faculty, in 1699. And I believe those ancestors, of mine, were autistic. I look back at history (William and Mary is kind of the seat of the study of colonial history in America), and I see that autistic people at most levels were not disabled in colonial America.

It?s easy to see how somebody like me, who grows up to be able to talk and work, would not be considered disabled by many today. But it?s also interesting to see that there are many narratives that describe other people today as intellectually disabled, and non-verbal autistic, or ?severely? autistic. We have all of these modern, technical words for those people. But in colonial America, they called those same people sheepherders, and they called them blacksmith?s assistants, they called them a lot of things, and all those names related to their jobs.

Most of those people weren?t disabled in the context of their time. They are disabled today not entirely because of autism, they are disabled because they are different from the rest of the population, and society has changed in ways that exclude us. And that to me is a real tragedy. "

Robison was talking about colonial America but I have seen the negative change in my lifetime. Be it much more multitasking, networking, SOCIAL media, or batteries of personality tests as part of the hiring process.

You are in for a rude shock in sometime in the next five years.

I believe it's routine to throw away the resumes of people who are older chronologically.

The trick is to land an interview. I would persist if I'm not getting interviews, call HR.

Once you land an interview, an older person, especially when he/she looks healthy, just might come across as someone more useful to a company than a young upstart.

I tend to agree.

So, I have worked in high technology for ~ 28 years. During that time, I have had 15 different jobs plus 4 stints of unemployment (each of which lasted ~ 6 months).

It definitely gets harder to find jobs, as you get older. I first starting noticing this when I was ~ 35. I imagine this (degree of ageism) differs by industry. In high technology, there is no reason to hire someone who is > 40 unless that employer is desperate. Sad. But true.

When you are under 40, colleagues and clients assume that you have cutting edge skills, a sharp mind and general competence. When you pass 45, they are somewhat surprised to find that you have cutting edge skills, a sharp mind and general competence. When you are over fifty, they start wondering if it's time to push you out with an early exit package. You have to prove that you are a major asset in order to avoid the triennial cull. The policy is that all staff are encouraged to voluntarily take early retirement at 60. There is a cost of healthcare statistical analysis behind this practice.

My understanding is that this is pretty common practice in the financial sector and professional office work in general.