Comments on: Kaka

By: Chaos Is Come Again, And Goes

Chaos Is Come Again, And Goes — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:46:46 +0000

[...] your child and things happen and you feel your can try your everything-est, and still something kaka—that’s ancient Greek for “bad [...]

By: Let the Healing Start

Let the Healing Start — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:50:07 +0000

[...] many. To emphasize the daily horrors of life with autism, some often list the stereotypical “kaka” (”bad things in ancient Greek) of life with a child who self-injures or who is my [...]

By: athina

athina — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:11:06 +0000

Kristina,
Thank you for paying such a great attribute to the Greek language. As a Greek I can’t help but feeling proud about it. As a mother of an autistic boy, I find myself many times wondering what life would be like if my child wasn’t autistic. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to catch his eyes or to get him dressed. Maybe it wouldn’t take so much effort to feed him (his only food for six whole months was yogurt). Maybe my husband and I wouldn’t be so tensed all the time by his misbehavior and tantrums. Maybe we would be able to go to other kids’ birthday parties without worrying about our son withdrawing from other children or, worse, getting bit up by other children. Maybe we would have known him better. We would have got rid of all the ‘kaka’ of autism and have our baby back. And then I come back to reality as it is, awful and frustrating.
I also spend a lot of time thinking of the word ‘autism’ and wondering why they named this condition like that. As you have already noted, the word autism comes from the Greek word ‘auto’ which means ‘it’. Why ‘it’? Does my child consider himself as ‘it’? So, maybe that’s why he doesn’t use the word ‘I’ when he talks about himself (he started using the word ‘I’ recently but I’m not sure if he understands the meaning or he just complies to his speech therapist’s directions).
I don’t know the cause of autism and I don’t know if there is any cure. All I know is that it’s the one thing I have never though that would cross my path in life and yet it did. And I resent it!

By: Upstairs, Downstairs

Upstairs, Downstairs — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:27:28 +0000

[...] Actually, quite efficient. (Or maybe after years of motherhood, this sort of things is nothing bad, just what needs to be done; seeing that my child is cozily settled in his bed, I go back to work [...]

By: Autism Vox » I Had to Learn to See Who He Is: An autism mother’s continuing education

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:19:42 +0000

[...] few years as the story of Autismland; in that story is mention of nearly every horrible or “kaka” moment that one might experience in raising an autisitc child: Thanks to all the good [...]

By: Autism Vox » Play Date with a Friend; or, What We Need

Autism Vox » Play Date with a Friend; or, What We Need — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:51:23 +0000

[...] A fate worse than death? (No, it is not, as if that needed to be said.) A tragedy? “Kaka” (the ancient Greek word for “bad [...]

By: Autism Vox » Aversive Stimulation, Improper Behavior, and the JRC

Autism Vox » Aversive Stimulation, Improper Behavior, and the JRC — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:07:47 +0000

[...] This story, which began by showing the awfulness of autism—the kaka of such a “devastating” disorder—can then introduce the JRC as providing a solution, and a solution that works, when none could be found. After noting that “[t]he Dohertys said they were willing to try aversive stimulation to save their son from self-destruction,” the ABC News story describes the electric shock device used by the JRC, the Graduated Electronic Decelerator. A student wears a backpack containing the transmitter that administers the sock via electrodes attached to the student’s arms, legs and torso. The ABC News story continues: Though many people object to this type of punishment, Dr. Matthew Israel, the founder and director of the J.R.C., said “the device is simply a device that administers a two-second shock to the surface of the skin that has absolutely no side effects, [and] is extremely effective as a corrective procedure to encourage children not to show violent behavior, not to show self-abusive behavior.” [...]

By: Autism Vox » J-Mac is Back

Autism Vox » J-Mac is Back — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:02:34 +0000

[...] It has been exactly a year since Jason McElwain scored his 20 points in the final four minutes of a Greece Athena High School basketball game. J-Mac’s four minutes of fame were seen over and over by many on the Internet and—after an initial “wow“—his achievement has become a touch point for some in the autism community: It was great, some say, that J-Mac made those baskets, but this is not autism every day. This is not what autism really looks like; this is something very specific to one high-functioning—able to attend high school with his peers—autistic teenager. The true face of autism is not J-Mac shooting the ball, but the screaming, tantrumming, still-in-diapers-at-6-years-old lives of so many “severely autistic” children who, along with their parents, endure one kaka moment after the next. [...]

By: Autism Vox » The Cause of the Autism Mother

Autism Vox » The Cause of the Autism Mother — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:49:04 +0000

[...] Stagliano implicitly contrasts these autistic men whose abilities have been trumpeted in the media with her own three daughters, whose crapisodes she has previously recounted. It is all very nice to see an “autistic boy” shooting some baskets” or to see a “soft spoken, quirky man” carefully weighing out his 45 grams of oatmeal for breakfast everyday. But the real autism reality show—what it is really like to live with autism every day; to be the materfamilias of a family of autistic children—is rather a continuous narrative of kaka upon kaka, of bad moments upon tough moments to the point that said materfamilias has “a lot of late (and sleepless) nights,” in the face of such stupidity. [...]

By: Autism Vox » What if there is no autism epidemic?

Autism Vox » What if there is no autism epidemic? — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:53:03 +0000

[...] There is No Autism Epidemic was the title of a post in the Huffington Post last week in which Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic – A Medical Controversy author, journalist David Kirby, proclaimed with heavy irony that there is indeed “no autism epidemic” and then went on to suggest that the many children now called “autistic” with various severe symptoms do not have autism, but some other disorder caused by environmental toxins. The deeply sarcastic tone of his article was underscored by his closing sentence in which he refuted the thesis of his his own book, “Columbus was not in the Indies, mercury doesn’t cause autism, and there is no autism epidemic.” [...]