BBC1 six part drama "The A Word" airs later this month

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Boy, 6, plays autistic child in new BBC drama alongside Christopher Eccleston

The A Word?. So the BBC or the writer has appearently decided that Autism is the new n****r is considered to have such an negative connotation they have to use a euphemism.

If he said "it was important Joe was a light skinned black person for the sake of the drama "l felt that if you had a child pretending to be a dark skinned black person it would be both unwatchable and exploitive" " imagine the reaction.

I've noticed people speak about Autism in hushed tones, or intentionally try to avoid saying the word. I get the impression that this program is addressing that in order to deal with it, grow past it, not that they are embracing it.

Learning your child is autistic is kind of like learning they are gay, for many parents, so there is going to naturally be a hesitancy to talk about it openly, hence referencing it as "the A word".

I just saw the first episode, they made a real effort to make it entertaining and relatable, but it was too much about the adults and their dramas rather than the autistic boy. When he was diagnosed (far too quickly to be realistic) the specialist described autism as "a set of behaviours" and refused to use the word 'autistic' as if it was a dirty word. I was really disappointed by that. Then the adults acting as if it was the worst thing in the world annoyed me and I found it hard to enjoy the rest of it.

It is up to each and every one of us to speak truth to power (or, at least, to the public) that we are the face(s) of autism. LGBT+ individuals went from being seen as shadow-lurking sex criminals awaiting arrest ... until some of the braver among them stood up in 1969 New York when, once again, their lives were threatened with public humiliation and misrepresentation.

We must do the same. Want to correct misrepresentation? Offer up your own reality to others; family members, friends, employers, classmates, church members, neighbors and, most importantly, cultural leaders in Hollywood and Washington. Complain, cajole, criticize constructively, and condemn publicly those who denigrate us for the sake of getting more cash in their pockets. Buycott, boycott and speak out.

In other words, do what Temple Grandin, Jim Sinclair and John Elder Robison have told us to do.

Ohhh my god. They just said they didn't want to go "full r-----."



Incidentally, Robert Downey Jr. was in blackface for the entirety of Tropic Thunder and no one batted an eye.

Since I'm in the UK, I saw trailers for this on TV, I tried watching a bit, hoping it'd be an interesting watch.
The acting's pretty good in it, and even though I'm nothing like Joe, I like the way his autism was presented. But parts felt unrealistic (like the diagnosis scene, for example).

The parents got on my nerves as well, especially the mum. I knew they would be surprised learning that their son has autism, but she was just so stubborn and ashamed. The second episode, where she was blackmailing the whole family into getting him homeschooled, had a moment where she said that if Joe went to special school "he'd come out more autistic than ever" (actual quotes). Made my blood boil. Maybe it's just because I went special school myself and it changed my life completely, but she was so...ugh.

I heard someone say this in real life! A retired special ed teacher told me that she thought autistic children shouldn't be mentored by autistic adults because it would make them more autistic! I was like "what???"

I've watched the first three episodes of 'The A Word' now and I am not impressed. The child at the centre of it is treated more as an object to fight over, rather than a person in his own right. Despite the branding, it is only minimally a drama about autism, and more about an extremely dysfunctional family. The mother in particular is a horrible, selfish woman, refusing to do what is right for her son. I'm not particularly interested in watching more.

I just watched the first episode. It's full of a lot of melodrama, which I found boring. The autistic kid was a prop, just there for the parents to be upset about. So far, it is mostly about the parents coping. It's definitely not promoting neurodiversity. Maybe there will be more focus on the actual autistic person later on, but I doubt it. I really preferred the tv show With the Light. While also focused on the parents, it was a much more positive portrayal.

I've been watching it, and I probably won't watch anymore.

I don't think it's really aimed at us, rather it's target audience are those who have not had direct contact with Autism and it's wonderful spectrum. It raises awareness and for that I'm thankful, as for the details, I'll let them slide.
I had a fun interaction on twitter with one of the actors, they seem like good folks.

I found the "fever effect" part quite annoying - though the brief "improvement" in skills didn't bother me as I've seen that sort of thing happen in RL. (My guess if this situation actually happened would be that mum spent all day with him (more time than usual) combined with her not pressuring him so much. We see that he interacts with his sister and babysitter much better than his high pressure mother. Hell, even the speech therapist was able to interact with him.

Overall, I actually quite like the series. I enjoy seeing Joe. I also think it's w good example of why it's wrong to think ASD = dysfunction and NT = the right way. Joe actually communicates quite well if you look closely whereas his parents continually miss each other.

I also think it showed quite well how stressy attempts to "cure" a child are much worse than interacting with the child at their level.

I'm quite looking forward to episode 5.

Did anyone watch all 6 parts? I did, and I rather enjoyed it.

I watched it all the way through, and I did enjoy it overall.

{Spoilers, possibly?}

I found a lot of it very powerful. It was a hard programme to watch, but it was that way because the acting was so good. I genuinely felt some kind of hatred for Joe's mum, and it got progressively worse episode on episode. I felt a lot of frustration for Joe's sister, and so much sympathy for his dad. All of the parts were played brilliantly, and the boy that played Joe was a great little actor as well! The other family roles were all done very well, also.

Parts of it made me feel truly angry, but at the end there was a good sense of hope. It didn't take away all of the anger I'd felt watching Joe's mum through each episode but did make me think that, eventually, she could start to make things right for her family again.

Honestly, the bit that I struggled with was the amount of focus on sexual relationships. I've often seen people complaining about too much 'unnecessary sex' in a TV show and have never noticed it before, but in this I did think that was the case. I know that all of the sex scenes and discussions were supposed to represent the states of relationships and dysfunction, but to me there was just too much of it to the point where it felt like a 'distraction' from what was a very interesting storyline. In fact, by the third episode I was wondering if I really liked it that much because of all of the focus on sexual relationships, but I did see it through because I thought the actors were brilliant, and I'm glad I did.

I enjoyed the series. For me, Joe and his sister were the only 'normal' ones, and the rest of their family were the ones with the 'problems'. I liked the Christopher Eccleston character, and was thinking he displayed a few autistic characteristics like being very direct, not having much empathy and needing to be on his own running in the hills to get away from people a bit. Hopefully there might be a second season.

My Mum's been watching the show, and she cried during the first episode when the parents were told he had Autism. That's because she's been through this twice, for me and my brother. I haven't seen the show properly so I don't have much of an opinion on it, but I think that as well as Autistic children being represented, we also need more Autistic teenagers and adults on TV. I've seen people say that Autism and Aspergers don't go away when you grow up, and that's true, you're stuck with it for your whole life, meaning that when you get older, life only gets harder, because it's easy to get away with being weird as a child, but as an adult, it's something that is not as socially acceptable.