Published on 12, July, 2020
Discussing elsewhere the “spectrum” word in ASD. Wondering how others feel about the word before the D word (disorder).
Sorry but I don’t identify as being part of some ego mad Drs interesting “spectrum concept” in a position on a range to be plotted on the chart and fawned over. There she sits right about there I am autistic, it’s who I am imagine being on the black spectrum or the gay or depressed spectrum on the Bi Polar spectrum or the Lesbian Spectrum No
The word spectrum in my view helps the average people grasp that not all Autistic people are exactly the same. Why is that so hard to grasp that we need a fancy word. Are all black people the same shade of black? Are they a spectrum of black I guess they are (my kids are black and this is not a racially motivated comment). Yet we do not highlight this range of skin colour - black people are just referred to as black.
it just seems ridiculous that Autism being a range needs a special word because it’s so difficult to comprehend.
what do people think?
Don’t even get me started on the third part the “disorder”
I think it's useful as a way of explaining to other people that there are wide variations and that all autistic people are different. I don't think of it as a rainbow but more like a huge circle of colours, concentrically arranged.
Someone really helped me with the spectrum idea yesterday on an autistic mums group. I was taking the meaning in the Oxford dictionary and applying that far too literally.
She sent me a link to a comic strip explaining it. Which helped.
Though it helped it also made it very clear that Autism itself is not a spectrum - rather it is an umbrella term for lots of common elements or spectrums inside that umbrella so for example sensory processing, language, executive function etc. These individual elements can all be placed on a spectrum in the true sense. The combined points on the spectrum that we each are in this area though, cannot be reliably placed on a stand alone Autistic Spectrum because each will be at odds with each other and well frankly in the case of myself I'd be all over that spectrum like a spider on acid looooooooool x
Autism is a collection of spectrums! - just not a single spectrum, rather an umbrella term for a collection of commonly associated "difficulties" which each are spectrums in their own right - I have concluded ! As a result, none of us can be plotted reliably on a stand alone autistic spectrum.
So for me, I shall refer to it as a term for a cluster of spectrums and I think that might help other people understand it a bit more. Maybe or maybe it will make them understand it even less looool x