Autism CARES Act signed into law

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That sounds like a contradiction in terms, special education is solely reserved for those cognitively impaired in some way.

I watched a movie once of a school for super intelligent gifted children maybe in Switzerland i think, whether these really exist i don't know.

I`m not referring to private schools that are for wealthy parents

Not in the US it's not. Special education is exactly what it sounds like, special education, as in customization and accommodations to meet the needs of those for whom the normal education isn't going to lead to the education for which all children have a right. And, there are a bunch of students that have both learning disorders/intellectual disabilities that also have need of materials that are harder than what the standard curriculum has to offer in one or more subjects.

In a lot of ways the US kind of sucks, but this is one of the things where we've got it figured out, at least on paper. There are so many issues in terms of making sure that everybody who is in need actually gets what they're supposed to get, but it's easier to expand access than to start from scratch. Around here, it's mostly done on a subject by subject basis with as many students in mainstream classrooms as possible, only being provided with full on separate schooling when that is the least restrictive option. When possible, the education is done in the same room as other students.

Uhh, yes it does.

Giftedness has it's own implications and dilemmas related to their developmental trajectories.
Itself is just as another form of developmental imbalance, as much as the media glorifies it.

Can you imagine? Being a 10 year old in classroom full of 16 year olds? How do you socialize there?
Can that kid keep up with the rest of their developmental milestones except their cognition or whatever made them skip grades?

It doesn't help that sometimes parents and everyone around this kid can be so demanding of them that they forgot that's the kid is also 10.


Or how about keep said gifted kids in their age appropriate peers?

Oh, sure, they'll standout in a good way and had it easy -- but they'll lose a lot of long term habits associated with studying and working hard, maybe even develop masking and dumb things down.
Or, conversely, sometimes end up with a swelling ego that they might as well peak at elementary.


Nevermind that accommodating giftedness itself is actually more expensive and trickier sometimes for them to actually thrive -- thus being commonly placed on private schools and prestigious institutions.

And how often it's neglected because the common assumption is that they'll figure it out because they're smarter.


I bet you never met an ex-gifted kid who burnt out at their 20s, or ended up with a mental health issue and jobless despite having PhD at that same age because they had it easier until that point on their lives.
Or a person who would rather be NT than have an IQ of 140, whether they're a kid, a teenager or even as an adult because they're just as lonely.
Or that giftedness itself masks particular learning disabilities. Even masks ADHD, autism, etc.

Too much on the "cognitively impaired" side of the advocacy, and assumed the 'other side' is 'better'.
You need more research related to twice exceptional and intellectual giftedness itself before assuming that's the case.

Can someone explain to me why so many people seem to be against early intervention?

I benefited from speech therapy as well as extra assistance in school. If I didn't receive a diagnosis early on, I wouldn't have received either of those things.

I don't think it's really about early intervention in a developmental sense, and more about making said kid into indistinguishable from their NT peers agenda.

Because that early stage of life is very, very vulnerable.
Like, "I can indoctrinate you into hating being autistic and support eugenics against autism, then love the idea of being and striving into neurotypical" vulnerable.

And some speaks from traumatic experiences around early intervention.

Sure, they get skills that can be age appropriate in terms of self help, in exchange for later in life mental health issues.
Like the commonly story of exchanging the autism diagnosis for a lifetime of generalized anxiety disorder.


Neuroplasticity can be an opportunity for two things; a hope for better change or a huge, huge joke into chronic maladaptation -- turns out both have happen.


Essentially, overall autistics' lack of trust. Even greater mistrust with the stats reports.

Anything else, if it's families and parents complaining, usually it's just stigma and unrealistic expectations.

The only potential downsides to it are fears that it would allow for epieugenetics and that it doesn't actually address the needs of any child that's capable of masking long enough to be missed during those early screenings.

As far as speech therapy, I got that as well, and a bit of extra help in other areas, but that can usually be done on the basis of just seeing a few things that aren't at the same level without the more intensive sort of evaluation that it would take to catch the autism cases that aren't already being caught.

I suspect that on some level the opposition is the same thing that drives folks to not want people to self-identify or to have any sort of treatment or diagnosis for higher masking folks, namely the view that the resources are scarce and we don't think you deserve any help or the right to know what's going on internally to fix it yourself.

Something that ND advocates say that makes little moral sense.

These things are disadvantages in life like lack of eye contact, communication and socialisation.

Humans that lack these things will normally be poorer in multiple ways, more frustrated and have more mental health issues.

Whether the therapy work or not is another thing but encouraging these things is no different than learning to eat with a knife and fork or saying please thank you.

It’s hard to get far in life if you can’t communicate your needs or if everyone else misunderstands and thinks your dumb there to be exploited or a rude AH not worth dealing with.

I'm not sure I could have said that better myself. I've got an IQ in the low 140x and part of why I wasn't diagnosed was that there really isn't a large enough group of us to know what normal is. Socially, I was either way behind or way ahead depending on situation. Intellectually, I was ahead of a good chunk of the adults in some areas by the time I was 8, but the thinking at the time was that you had to test gifted in first or second grade to get into the highest level of classes, but there's no scientific basis for assuming that giftedness reliably shows up that early. That's mostly a bunch of working memory. In general, when you're having to factor in months when grading the tests, that's not a good sign that the results are going to be reliable later on.

I did eventually wind up in college a couple years early, and I think the only reasons I had any issues with the classes at all was that I didn't have any diagnoses to cover the challenges that I had been using raw brain power to side step. As in the dyslexia, ADHD and various ND related social issues. I didn't get any socializing at college the first couple years, not that I got much socializing in high school.

I think the thing that folks don't really understand is, that I was perfectly capable of keeping up with the conceptual bits of high school physics on my own at age 8, but at age 44, I am still completely baffled as to how anybody knows when they're thirsty or how to set up a set of tasks and actually do them.

As it stands now. It used to be extremely common for women to die in childbirth and to have to have a dozen children in order to have the 5 or 6 that you needed to support you in old age due to a lack of pension funds and social benefits programs as well. What is normal now, is not necessarily going to be normal in the future.

I'm not personally so sure that this will remain the case for much longer, we have work from home jobs where nobody ever actually sees if you're making eye contact and as long as you can get accommodations through the interview or just get it figured out for that bit of time, you're largely set in a job where nobody will ever know.

A bunch of this stuff really shouldn't have ever been in the diagnosis as it was also seen in other populations and has it's own set of treatments available and has a more universally negative impact. It's really problematic to blame autism for all these issues when not everybody has that particular issue, even if we restrict it to the population that has a proper, formal diagnosis.

All autism is is a pervasive developmental disorder. I know that PDD is kind of a scary term, but so is autism and haven't advocates going around spreading all these lies about it isn't really helpful in either direction. People act like it's AIDS or cancer where there really isn't any upside to having it, and nothing short of a cure is an appropriate place to stop. And that's really not very helpful.The assistive technology out there has gotten a lot better, more affordable and more easily tailored to the individual. I just bought a bunch of NFC tags and now I don't have to remember were a bunch of stuff goes that I don't usually use I can spend a couple minutes entering it into my phone, and a few seconds looking it up later. And, my washing machine is going to be getting a smart outlet that I can set up to alert me when the wash has been done if I don't move it to the dryer. I'm able to set it up, but a lot of this stuff doesn't take much to actually use, and if you're in that situation, then really, nothing shy of pretty extensive support is going to do any good. Now, that likely will change for a lot of this stuff in the future.

What your saying is true in part that tech may make future life easier.

I was thinking the other day traditional autism tends to be a disability of functioning with many who have classic autism unable to function in society alone, i.e buy a loaf of bread, live on their own, run a budget, hold down a job etc

High functioning Asperger's tends to be a disability of mental illness, what i mean by that isn't that Asperger's is a mental illness but its a magnet for it.

Many of us Aspies tend to have a variety of mental health problems most of the time, anxiety and depression most common along with OCD and other stuff running alongside the core social deficits.

Psychiatry decided to put the two together which wasn't particularly wise given mental disability and mental illness are very different problems with mental disability the most obvious noticeable problem needing an obvious cure.

Having said that even Asperger's even if future tech makes life a bit easier for things like employment, it still leaves the magnet for the crippling mental illness that rarely stops being a problem, not withstanding other frustrations like inability to form romantic relationships etc...

I don't know...
Something even more inhumane and even more immoral about perpetuating the current norms thus far in the last hundred years.

Then call it a progress. Then call it 'for the good of everyone'.


The magnets for mental illness -- autism isn't special. Really. They're are countless of them. And are too hard baked to practically almost all humans thus far.
This view just so happened to aligned with the ND movement thus far.

Because it's about surviving to the good enough to reproduce, not really the fittest.

But if one advocates to eradicate all genes that are mental illness magnets, they're the ones perpetuating something more sinister than whatever makes ND advocacy is doing to 'prevent autistics from curing loneliness and being able to contribute to society' because they look at genes and the people 'at fault', and not the current world and those people's worlds.
Really, what is the point of improving genes if the world is just going to abuse them and justify the nastiness going on?

But if they're just being very particular in autism and not this bigger picture, that's just being personal.
I say, gotta get over the grief if one wanna get further in advocating cures and solutions than just being aggressive over something so small...





Regardless, I've seen digital draft (and few likely outdated) versions of this foreign law.

Parents here (the ones in the know, which is basically not all of them) are more or less using it as some sort of template. So yes, I can confirm that parents communicate globally.

But this country already has a autism cares law of it's own versions of signed up just last few terms ago but...

Like anything else, everything has the lack of implementions.
It's likely doable at the States, but not here. And with countless other of drafts to lobby and revised.

Thus I'll just assume that it's a good news abroad.

I think the thing that folks don't really understand is, that I was perfectly capable of keeping up with the conceptual bits of high school physics on my own at age 8, but at age 44, I am still completely baffled as to how anybody knows when they're thirsty or how to set up a set of tasks and actually do them.[/quote]

I can relate to this comment. When I was younger and my only responsibility was going to school and basic hygiene, I was considered fairly bright by the adults around me. I used to be able to learn and retain information so much faster.

Now that I'm older and have to take care of myself, my problems with executive function that had mostly lied dormant as a child have reared its ugly head.

I find that when I don't have to worry about meals and organizing tasks, I am much less stressed and more productive overall. I noticed this when I was working for a family member doing manual labour on her rural property, in exchange for room and board. I was able to work six or seven days straight without taking a break. Sure, I was tired but nowhere near as tired as I would have been if I had to take care of myself at the same time.

I don't entirely disagree here but the line between developmental disorder and mental illness is a really fuzzy one, and I'm not entirely sure that it makes much of a difference in terms of accommodation beyond the fact that many mental illnesses have medications that seem to work for them.

I definitely agree that it was dumb to lump AS in with ASD, I'm less aware of the degree to which the other disorders that were included fit, but there's a definite gap between ASD and the schizophrenia spectrum as a result that probably shouldn't be there. I'm not really sure that categorizing AS as being more of a mental illness really makes much sense because, while there are aspects of it that are, there's also a bunch of other stuff that doesn't seem reasonable to chalk up to being mental-illness-like.

I can't say that I know what the actual answer should be as even the "low support needs" folks may have a couple areas of extreme deficit that they're able to work around. I know that if I hadn't gotten the extra neuroplasticity from the schizophrenia spectrum, that I'd be a lot higher in terms of support needs as I tap that stuff like all the time to get on with life..

That's certainly what I've found. I have in recent weeks started to concentrate more on making specific accommodations for myself, like using NFC tags in various places to make it easier to keep track of stuff like the laundry. A single NFC tag on the washer sets a timer to remind me to move the wash from the washer into the dryer if I didn't hear the one on the unit go off. And, it's a lot more persistent than the built in one. And, I'm probably going to do something similar with my coffee maker so that I return to it while the coffee is hot if I wander off, so I can avoid putting it into the microwave to reheat.

Those are small things, but they do add up, and I definitely get that compared with other issues others and myself, have, they're not that big of a deal, but each item like this that gets addressed, is one less thing that I need to have in my head while I worry about things like paying attention to my body.

I also think, that while things like that may not be as useful directly for higher support needs individuals, that it can still be useful for caregivers to take something off their plate so they don't burn out so quickly, or often.