9 Aug
People ask me all the time how they can be involved with the autism awareness movement. My answer is not simple.
A lot of people know that there are more people with autism each year and, right now, most of them are children (due to the recent spike in autism diagnosis’), but very soon, those children will be adults. Personally, I would like to see people with autism in college, owning businesses, in prominent positions in the workforce, in politics, and everywhere else.
How will we reach out and help incorporate these up-and-coming people with autism into the communal mess we are proud to call society? So many people with autism have a perspective that is refreshing, interesting, and worthwhile. Unfortunately, we are missing out on all this refreshing-ness because most of us do not know enough about autism to accept people with autism, their personal values, and cultural perspective. Instead, understandably, we persist in several neurotypical habits that are detrimental to the future incorporation of autsim into the workplace.
Silence makes us neurotypicals uncomfortable, and we are quick to chatter away about nothing when confronted with it, and we take it as rude or cold when others do not play along with our small talk game.
Right now, we love being PC, but it is essentially an extra-difficult, ever-changing set of very-nuanced social rules that is difficult for many neurotypcial people, let alone people on the autism spectrum. All in favor of a little more direct speaking, say aye!
Example: we let ourselves feel uncomfortable around the rocking and flapping that are characteristic movements of people with autism, but we accept pencil tapping and leg jiggling, which are just currently acceptable methods of tweaking out for a second.
So, what can we do to support the autism awareness movement? Before we dive headlong into championing the autism cause, I think we can all do some internal work to recognize our own social/cultural values, and accept the idea that not everyone shares those values. I think, as a society (homes, schools, workplaces, courtrooms…), that we can use our purported ‘mental flexibility’ to change a few of our habits. Before we even meet anyone with autism, we can carve out space for them in our expectations. We can make room. And we should! Otherwise, not only will we continue to pay our tax dollars to support people with a ‘disability’ that doesn’t always have to be debilitating, but we will miss out on an entire interesting, useful, refreshing culture-within-a-culture.
4 Responses for "How can I help?"
OMG – I love your thoughts! 8^)
Neurotypical: Great word — I talk about people “not yet disabled” in working with individuals, families, and service providers living with the effects of brain injury. And about the “brain injury continuum” – we’re all there.
But even more, I love that you are seeing autism as part of the diversity of the way people just are, rather than as a “disease” to automatically be “fixed”. I try to talk to people about the importance of the skills of people with “ADD”, recent research suggests some adaptive elements of depression, what else is out there?
How often do we create disability by insisting on restricting our diversity? By not seeing that we all have something to contribute in different ways to make a Whole — there is no one Right Way to be?
Thanks for this – good luck!
DrKaren,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. Your reaction is exactly what I hoping to get out of these posts, and I really appreciate that you were willing to write down your reaction for me!
Idealism…Great when it makes sense; naive when it’s impossible. When was the last time you were in the company of a 230 lb 19 year old who hurled a coffee table at you, attacked a nurse and pulled out her hair, sent a sitter to the hospital with severe bite marks on her face and neck? Think twice before assuming that all people with autism can be incorporated into our society and accepted as “diverse”.
I’ve been thinking a lot about your comment. I have certainly had furniture thrown at me, and been bitten, scratched, etc by children and adults with and without autism. I agree with you that my optimistic approach may not apply to a percentage of people with an autism label. Certainly, aggression-as-a-communication-method cannot be incorporated as simply a ‘diverse’ approach. However, I haven’t met anyone that hasn’t been able to improve their situation to some degree. Clearly, the autism label is too broad, and as we understand more about it, we will see more specific labels for the different forms it takes.
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