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talk about spectrum

longman

I went to a lecture last night by a paediatric neurologist about new directions in autism. There were some interesting ideas that have given me something to think about, I thought I might share the points that struck me.

On the autistic spectrum a division was made between about 1.5% who qualified for an official diagnosis and up to 30% who had significvant social interaction difficulties on that account, but were outside official diagnosis. That at least is comforting with regards to people saying everyone is on the spectrum. Why more of the 30% aren't diagnosed seems to lie with politics and maintaining statistics about health, as well as the cost factor.

I had formed my own theory that my difficulty socialising caused me to overly analyse and worry about why I couldn't socialise properly, and why things went wrong. And that led to low self esteem and anxiety.

The perspective I heard last night was that NTs don't develop an understanding of social cognition processes because it happens instinctively so they don't have to analyse it and don't think about how it comes about (so presumably don't even remember social gaffs). Whereas people on the spectrum by necessity analyse social interchanges and become expert at it (but at the cost of increased stress and worry).

Main message was the need to increase self esteem and self confidence, and give children on the spectrum space to explore and expand their knowledge. A lot of harm done by trying to get children on the autistic spectrum to be like their parents, or fit parental ideas of success. The evidence seems to be that given the opportunity to develop special interests and skills, many children on the spectrum do better.

Which brings me back to an underlying concern of mine, voiced in the lecture, that early diagnosis may be imposing unnecessary restriction by trying to change things, and doing more harm than good.

I confess I'm not sure where my preconceived ideas merge with the talk in this synopsis, so if anyone has heard similar talks, but not sure I've got the facts right,  its a personal impression here. Likewise apologies to anyone giving such talks if I've got things askew.

Parents

  • My own concern about this is whether in fact the degree of childhood intervention is making adult life harder.

    If I go back to the lecture I attended, the speaker's strong message to parents was to create an environment for confidence, self esteem and encouragement of special interests towards productive applications. He was saying parents have to disregard their hopes to correct and modify their children to fit into neurotypical society.

    Given much of the talk hinted at current thinking, that is a terrifying indictment of the last twenty plus years of autism support for children and teenagers. The speaker was saying that people on the spectrum have a higher need to explore and learn, and need to be allowed to do that.

    Therefore all this forcing to fit in with the NT world might actually be damaging. Asking people to do what they clearly cannot do, on the grounds in order to survive as adults they need to be NT competent, is demoralising and restricting. Trying to make children on the spectrum fit their parents' models for life may be fundamentally wrong.

    He also referred to the number of technology breakthroughs achieved by people identified as being on the spectrum, and that nearly everything around us owes something to autism.

    He didn't make connections I would have liked, but at another pioint he talked about role models. People on the spectrum are looking for people to emulate. They are being told to survive they have to emulate NTs, but is that actually correct?

    Yet all those inventors, writers, composers and other great thinkers that people try to paint with an autism/asperger lifestyle in retrospect - we are now being told that achievers like that wouldn't have had real autism/aspergers; they'd have been much further down the spectrum.

    But these could provide role models.

    Is it sensible to force NT models on people on the spectrum and deny that things can be achieved by them, given the right supportive environment, by removing the potential role models?

Reply

  • My own concern about this is whether in fact the degree of childhood intervention is making adult life harder.

    If I go back to the lecture I attended, the speaker's strong message to parents was to create an environment for confidence, self esteem and encouragement of special interests towards productive applications. He was saying parents have to disregard their hopes to correct and modify their children to fit into neurotypical society.

    Given much of the talk hinted at current thinking, that is a terrifying indictment of the last twenty plus years of autism support for children and teenagers. The speaker was saying that people on the spectrum have a higher need to explore and learn, and need to be allowed to do that.

    Therefore all this forcing to fit in with the NT world might actually be damaging. Asking people to do what they clearly cannot do, on the grounds in order to survive as adults they need to be NT competent, is demoralising and restricting. Trying to make children on the spectrum fit their parents' models for life may be fundamentally wrong.

    He also referred to the number of technology breakthroughs achieved by people identified as being on the spectrum, and that nearly everything around us owes something to autism.

    He didn't make connections I would have liked, but at another pioint he talked about role models. People on the spectrum are looking for people to emulate. They are being told to survive they have to emulate NTs, but is that actually correct?

    Yet all those inventors, writers, composers and other great thinkers that people try to paint with an autism/asperger lifestyle in retrospect - we are now being told that achievers like that wouldn't have had real autism/aspergers; they'd have been much further down the spectrum.

    But these could provide role models.

    Is it sensible to force NT models on people on the spectrum and deny that things can be achieved by them, given the right supportive environment, by removing the potential role models?

Children
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