Every so often the website that I get my local and statewide news from, www.mlive.com, has what they call "live chats". Yesterday's topic was autism. The chat was supposed to go live at noon and last for only an hour. But when I tried to log on, there were so many people already commenting that it was blowing up my high-speed internet work computer! This has never happened before. It was not until well into the middle of the afternoon that I was able to get access to the site. By that time the discussion was over. Even then, people were still commenting.
The discussion was led by two women. One, predictably, is the parent of an autistic child. The other has autism herself. Due to the number and volume of the comments I was unable to follow the entire discussion, but as I scrolled down I saw comment after comment from people who described themselves as autistic. I'd have to say they greatly outnumbered the parents and caregivers!
And what did they have to say? They spoke of what it is like to endure ABA therapies, to not be treated as a person of worth, to not be taken seriously, to not have the right to say no, to have their privacy invaded by parents and others. They said, when you blog about your children, especially when you make negative comments about them, you are not only invading their privacy, you are creating a record about them that will follow them the rest of their lives. That will come back and haunt them when they go to get jobs. They said, many ABA therapies are designed for the convenience of the parents and other authority figures in a child's life, without taking into account that there are people out there who will use your child's training against him or her in order to manipulate them. And they spoke of the tendency to excuse parents who kill or attempt to kill their autistic child, when no such sympathy is shown to parents who do the same to normal children.
It was moving. It was wonderful to see so many of us speaking up. I think that the mlive moderator was not prepared for the magnitude of response, especially from autistic people. Hopefully there will be many who, after reading these comments, will go and look at us in a different way.
The discussion was led by two women. One, predictably, is the parent of an autistic child. The other has autism herself. Due to the number and volume of the comments I was unable to follow the entire discussion, but as I scrolled down I saw comment after comment from people who described themselves as autistic. I'd have to say they greatly outnumbered the parents and caregivers!
And what did they have to say? They spoke of what it is like to endure ABA therapies, to not be treated as a person of worth, to not be taken seriously, to not have the right to say no, to have their privacy invaded by parents and others. They said, when you blog about your children, especially when you make negative comments about them, you are not only invading their privacy, you are creating a record about them that will follow them the rest of their lives. That will come back and haunt them when they go to get jobs. They said, many ABA therapies are designed for the convenience of the parents and other authority figures in a child's life, without taking into account that there are people out there who will use your child's training against him or her in order to manipulate them. And they spoke of the tendency to excuse parents who kill or attempt to kill their autistic child, when no such sympathy is shown to parents who do the same to normal children.
It was moving. It was wonderful to see so many of us speaking up. I think that the mlive moderator was not prepared for the magnitude of response, especially from autistic people. Hopefully there will be many who, after reading these comments, will go and look at us in a different way.
