Published on 12, July, 2020
We often get posts on the form asking for advice with autistic children. And I can't help but notice the requests overwhelmingly relate to low functioning autistic children. As someone who is quite high functioning and had a very disrupted and turbulent childhood I can guarantee you it's not because high functioning autistic children don't have just as many issues. Nore is it that high functioning autistic children are particularly rare. We recently had a discussion on this point in another thread and figures I dug up indicated around 40%+ of autistic children being diagnosed these days are of average or above average intelligence.
So the question I'm asking is this. Why don't those parents come looking for help? Is it because the main stream schooling and support systems are so much better at supporting high functioning children? I doubt it. Is it because they tend to think of their child’s behaviour as 'naughty' not 'autistic?' Is it maybe they don't accept or agree with their child’s diagnosis? What do you think it is?
More to the point:
Edit ps: For the simplification of this entire discussion and to avoid a long drawnout arguments over semantics. Instead of high functioning we shall say high IQ meaning an IQ of 85+ and instead of low functioning we will say low IQ meaning an IQ less than 85. As measured on a standard clinically approved IQ test.
There is no such thing as ‘low functioning’, please do not use functioning labels when speaking about fellow members of our autistic community, especially our younger neurokin. It’s dehumanising and inaccurate.
People harmfully and wrongly misconstrue some autistic people as ‘low functioning’ if they have co-occurring needs such as apraxia, learning disability or epilepsy etc. No human deserves to be defined and identified using functioning labels, our worth is not defined by how much we can contribute to society.
Please use the term ‘support needs’ instead and list what specific needs the autistic person you are talking about has.
Please read about the harm that ensues from using functioning labels to describe our autistic community:
https://www.autisticality.co.uk/functioning-labels
Ausomely Autistic said:There is no such thing as ‘low functioning’, please do not use functioning labels when speaking about fellow members of our autistic community, especially our younger neurokin. It’s dehumanising and inaccurate.
I don't agree with this and also don't think it's OK to tell people what medical terms it's OK to use.
It's debatable and controversial.
I feel that functioning labels are fitting for me, because I have led an 'independent' life and therefore see myself as higher functioning than someone who is unable to be independent and, for example, can't speak or read or even dress themself.
This doesn't underestimate the amount of struggle and pain I've been through to get where I am now, but it does however indicate that I can function to a degree in the NT world.
I understand that as your individual experience and you are in control of what language you use to describe yourself, but I don’t think it is right to automatically assume that a group of autistic children are ‘low functioning’.
They have absolutely have no control or consent to how people describe their autistic experiences and we as the older autistic community should be supporting and advocating for our younger neurokin to be understood and perceived at least with neutral terms and neuro affirming language.
No human should be defined by functioning labels it is incredibly harmful.