Tonight on CNN: Autism is a World

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I am going to watch it tonight. It comes on 8 Est. time on CNN tonight!! !

I'm going to watch it as well...

Should be great...

I've just finished watching it an hour and a half ago. Sue has a lot of spunk and she has a great sense of humour. I don't think that she really felt sorry for herself, though. I think that she was being honest about her feelings about what she encounters in her day to day life. I went through a 11 month spell from last June until last Friday, trying to get rid of the things that made me an Aspie, trying to act and sound like everybody else, because that's what I thought that my Family wanted. Big mistake. Now, I embrace all of my differences. That's what Sue does with her Autism. I feel that Society puts a lot of pressure on everybody to fit the Social Norm. I admire Sue Rubin. She's one of my Heros.

I watched another show so I'm staying up late to watch the second showing of it.

I didn't get to see it (we only receive one channel here). But I have a question for those of you who did: at any time, including this show, have you seen a T.V. piece on autism that depicted us as independent, self sustaining adults who are coping reasonably well?

absolutely not..i liked last night's piece on cnn, but i wish they'd also portray someone who's on the spectrum, but not severly, and can live their life on their own, being only dependent only on a few things..

Yes, I watched/recorded it last night. I was thinking she had some physical defects as well.

I agree. I wish they would show documentaries of high-functioning autties, too. It is clearly biasing the public to believe those are the only autties out there.

It was a good documentary though. I am going to be transfering it over to DVD and cutting out the commercials. Wish that CNN ticker bar hadn't been going the entire documentary though.

Two unpleasant side effects of that are:

When a parent gets an AS or autism spectrum diagnosis for their child, they automatically seem to think that this is devastating, like cancer!! ! boo-hoo-hoo, poor them, poor child, will never be normal, needs lots of therapy up the yin-yang, etc etc. And any chance that the kid had of developing their own skills pretty much goes out the window with their self esteem....Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration!

And, if you *are* very high functioning and pass for an odd sort of normal, just very weird and bizarre (like I do) you could shove the diagnosis in their face: they won't believe you. You can walk, talk, have a job, are not incapacitated, etc etc. I find this extremely frustrating, for people to continually think I am some sick kind of a hypochondriac!! !

They need to show the FULL spectrum, it is not fair and gives no hope to show only low functioning or high functioing with many barriers.....

Why do they consistently paint this negative picture of us, yet show Down's children, for example, in a consistently positive light? We have more independence potential overall, no more congenital deformities than the average child, and a longer projected lifespan.

OK, I need to stop. I am beginning to rant....

I don't know why. I think in part, with people working on getting Autism more recognized, they are more likely to show the severe cases because these elicit more sympathy.

Even the entire week NBC did on Autism, they "misquoted" the statistics of 1/166 kids have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Instead, they merely said "Autism," and for MANY lay people that term equates Autistic Disorder and not the entire Spectrum. So doubtlessly many people were left believing Autistic Disorder's occurance is SOARING through the roof. I was very disappointed to see NBC doing this and barely showing ANY high-functioning individuals, especially adults on the multiple segments. They also showed VERY few "success stories".