Published on 12, July, 2020
Diuscssion on a Facebook group:
According to someone, if you're high functioning, you're mild and the terms high functioning (which according a friend who is a GP, means you have speech and the low functioning person doesn't) and low functioning are offensive. She then said she uses mild Autism to describe those of us who are high functioning.
I do find the term "mild Autism" inaccurate and offensive. I may be high functioning, but am certainly not mild. Then there's the low functioning person who in some situations, may be able to cope better than the high functioning person and vice versa.
I have a feeling the same person who said this, also once said that Autism is just a personality difference. I beg to differ.
I was always lead to believe that if you're classed as mild, (any medical condition) you have very few problems / it doesn't require any medical intervention.
I have (according to my consultant) mild asthma. I still use a brown inhaler twice a day and a blue one when I need it, but compared to people who end up hospitalised with it, yes it is mild.
Using that analogy there must surely be people whose ASD could be classified as mild. My son has AS. It does affect him certainly, but as long as we give him the space he needs and do not put extra pressure on him, he copes remarkably well. (This was not always the case I might add). So someone looking at him now would probably say his AS was mild (especially when compared with what he was like during his early teenage years).
That does not mean he doesn't have it, or that he is 'cured' but that he, and we, have learnt to deal with it much better.