I didn’t speak until I was 4 years old. Safety issues were handled by teaching me to swim, light campfires and bonfires and fireplace
fires, use power tools, a little firearm safety, and how to interact with horses without getting kicked.
Mom knew I was a special kid, so she pushed me out the door a lot. Like she knew I was extremely different. I distinctly remember her and I sitting at the kitchen table, and her saying that if my face didn’t show emotion spontaneously I was just going to have to fake it to fit in because the world wasn’t going to work if I kept my wooden face.
I had a ridiculous temper. I fought (as in physically fought) my friends often. It always led to cathartic release and an improvement of our bond, which boy fights predictably do.
Sometimes I feel extremely fortunate to have grown up in the 1980s and not today. The way autistic kids are coddled today can be utterly inhumane. It instills in them a self image as a broken person who cannot fit in. That self image is far and away more damaging than autism.
Now, I know some people are unable to vocalize other than incoherent groaning at the age of twenty. I wasn’t that bad.
But among the kids who were enrolled in school, able to form sentences, I had it pretty bad and my little shithole town just treated me as “one of them weird kids”, and it worked out. Our cultures have had autistic people since the dawn of time; the expertise coming out of labs isn’t the only source of wisdom on how to help them lead good lives.
Fyi ABA is considered highly unethical in the autism community.
Fair, take that piece out of the equation. Our docs still advised us on 20+ hours of therapy, all of which is costly.
I’m autistic and I don’t think I need twenty hours of therapy per week.
That sounds excessive to me.
Probably would be - age plays into it as well. My kids are pretty impacted - minimal language, safety issues, etc. I suspect it can vary widely.
I didn’t speak until I was 4 years old. Safety issues were handled by teaching me to swim, light campfires and bonfires and fireplace fires, use power tools, a little firearm safety, and how to interact with horses without getting kicked.
Mom knew I was a special kid, so she pushed me out the door a lot. Like she knew I was extremely different. I distinctly remember her and I sitting at the kitchen table, and her saying that if my face didn’t show emotion spontaneously I was just going to have to fake it to fit in because the world wasn’t going to work if I kept my wooden face.
I had a ridiculous temper. I fought (as in physically fought) my friends often. It always led to cathartic release and an improvement of our bond, which boy fights predictably do.
Sometimes I feel extremely fortunate to have grown up in the 1980s and not today. The way autistic kids are coddled today can be utterly inhumane. It instills in them a self image as a broken person who cannot fit in. That self image is far and away more damaging than autism.
Now, I know some people are unable to vocalize other than incoherent groaning at the age of twenty. I wasn’t that bad.
But among the kids who were enrolled in school, able to form sentences, I had it pretty bad and my little shithole town just treated me as “one of them weird kids”, and it worked out. Our cultures have had autistic people since the dawn of time; the expertise coming out of labs isn’t the only source of wisdom on how to help them lead good lives.