Thank you for asking CS. I do not know anymore if I am OK. It does make me feel more human that somebody in this great list of words decided to ask. Last week a kid killed himself online while others just watched. Nobody cared until it was too late. We all need to be kinder to each other.

My use of the warrior term is to generate a sense of urgency. My son is 15,001 on a waiting list to get help and services. Basically right now people have to die to move up. There are no plans for expansion of services and personnel. This is a tragedy of epic proportions. It deserves to have some flag waving fanatics moving the agenda forward. I am up for the job.

“Our autism organizations do need to focus more on pushing for adult services and supports; the one sense in which it’s not counterproductive alarmism to declare that “time is running out”, is the transition to adulthood. Because there’s been so much focus on childhood issues and on causes and “cures”, not enough has been done to build up the infrastructure of adult services and supports that are needed.”

Since I now live in Israel (my wife, my son Ben and I moved here over 12 years ago from Boston, Massachusetts), I am focusing my efforts within my own small country, which I describe as “Planning for a good life for persons with disabilities.” Although many of my contacts are with adults with autism, here in Israel “to build up the infrastructure of adult services and supports that are needed” requires a broader effort for all disabilities. Fortunately, good ideas are universal and I am trying to network around the world. Again, my thanks to Phil Schwarz.

Arthur Golden

A: supported by anything she has written, as per Phil’s explanation.
B: realistic. A lawyer of all people should know that you can constrain and direct thinking and attitudes by your use of one word over another. E.g. “alledgedly mentally ill muscleman with multiple court appearances” sounds much more negative than “ex-football hero and veteran actor”, yet both describe the same person.

Discussions that bandy about words like ‘toxins’, ‘damage’ and ‘tragedy’ trigger off our schema associated with those words. ‘Toxins’ triggers off ‘cure’, ‘damage’ triggers off ‘treatment’ and ‘tradegy’ triggers off ‘pity’. Any discussion that front loads its’ own end result is anything but ‘free’.

@HLD…

Yes. And you’re and arse: all you come out with is shit and wind.

At every opportunity, you come up with one logical fallacy or another, after having failed to read properly what someone has written. You need corking.

What Kristina correctly calls dangerous, are the overstatements of autism-as-tragedy rampant in the media (because they boost ratings and hence advertising revenue), and the false sense of urgency to find and apply the latest interventions at any cost (that only feeds the burgeoning quack-cure industry).

Parents who don’t have the means to engage in such goose-chases are led to believe that they are failing their children, that time is running out, that there’s no hope. And that’s why some of them crack and turn homicidal.

Now, if our autism organizations were more responsible, they would instead use their authority and leverage with the media to make sure that the messages broadcast about autism were (a.) that although autism can involve severe handicaps, significant progress in mitigating those handicaps can be made if one is willing to engage in a long-range, step-by-step response that involves first establishing reliable, trusted, and respected means of expressive communication, and then step-by-step educational interventions focused on skill development rather than “looking normal”; and (b.) that time is not “running out”, at least not in the childhood years: it is never too late to start doing the things that will produce progress and improved quality of life.

Our autism organizations do need to focus more on pushing for adult services and supports; the one sense in which it’s not counterproductive alarmism to declare that “time is running out”, is the transition to adulthood. Because there’s been so much focus on childhood issues and on causes and “cures”, not enough has been done to build up the infrastructure of adult services and supports that are needed.

But these murderers of their own children, with rare exception, are not killing adult children, they’re killing young children. It isn’t transition to an adulthood lacking in services and support that’s causing these parents to become homicidal. It’s the messages of hopelessness that the media continue to spew, aided and abetted by the big autism organizations’ penchant for playing the pity card.

Why can’t the fundraising message of the big autism organizations be instead, “it’s a big challenge and a long road, but your help will make that long road lead to successes, one day at a time”?

That’s the real story of Autism, Every Day.