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.
1. Teachers.
2. Training courses for teachers. They are all probably aware of the more extreme cases. E.g That kid definitely has autism (I don't know if this is rude to right, sorry if it is) or adhd. but I think you need to raise awareness in teachers that autism comes in different forms and it's not just the extremes. If that makes sense. Also training courses for doctors so they are actually aware about neurodiversity and a bunch of other issues. I am pretty sure medicine all comes from a white male neurotypical perspective so if you don't meet those criteria then you are going to have problems.
The problem is this is already adding more pressure onto teachers who have already got to worry about parents emailling them about kids and so on, and not being paid enough which is honestly extremely silly. The whole purpose of teachers is to raise the next generation, the future technology creators, the future artists and the government doesn't really care about them. If the government doesn't care about them that must mean they don't really care about our country. I am not entirely sure how the government works but I am pretty sure the education secretary is a joke position that politicians go into just to make a few minor changes to say they have done something.
The problem with that interpretation is that teachers are effectively playing a Numbers game. If you have 29 NT kids in your class and you can raise each of their grades 1 mark with the time it would take to raise the autistic kids grades 10 marks you are incentivised to ignore the autistic kid for those 29 collective marks.
large class sizes and poorly chosen target metrics naturally leads to a one size fits all approach