Five Ways to Damage Autistic Children

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Fortunately, undiagnosed in childhood (and for much longer than that), I never experienced these kinds of diminishing behaviours. I feel deeply for those who were less fortunate. I hope that there is some kind of validation here for those who were subjected to any of the ways that damage the well being - emotional, psychological, physical or spiritual - of autistic children. If you were one of them, may your healing process unfold gently in your life and gain strength as the years pass.

http://autisticnotweird.com/five-ways-to-damage/

This is a great list, wish everyone could see it.

I also wish everybody could read the list. Thank you for sharing it with us.

I wish all parents would read it at an early stage. What struck me, while reading it, is how early the dehumanisation process starts, and how pervasive it probably is. That it starts in the home, where all children should feel safe and valued, is sad. I had another thought too: we have a member here called Tough Diamond. It's one of my favourite user names, because under the surface of autism many people here are diamond selves, and to survive as a dehumanised minority group in a world so ignorant of the feelings, reality, worth and needs of AS people, takes an inner toughness that so few give themselves and/or others here credit for. Some do, and may your numbers increase..

http://autisticnotweird.com/wp-content/ ... verbal.png

Good list!

I became aware of my "less than" status around the time I started kindergarten. It was the first step on the way down, a process that didn't begin reversing itself until around four years ago. I don't know how I managed to accomplish anything in life. I know I will probably never accomplish everything a normal person can, but I am steadily making improvements.

Very necessary list, everyone should have note of

Very good list. I remember dealing with number 1.
Not from my parents, but from some of those who were evaluating me talking to my parents.
He will never be able to do this or that type stuff, which I actually took as a challenge thank goodness, and proved them wrong in some cases. But still they should have been aware that I was listening and understanding what they were saying, even if it didn't appear that way.

I will say I got 1-5 all my life (even without a diagnosis) and it sucks. There are times where I will talk about a student with co workers but 9 times out of 10 it's out of the room. The one percent is when we're discussing how to handle a particular behavior that the child is exhibiting. If the student has the cognitive abilities, they get included in this and we turn it into a lesson on why it's not okay and proper behavior.

If not, it's "okay when student does X, ignore it. They're attention seeking & we need to let them know it's not okay/ we have 15 other kids we need to help" ( I.e. Student trying to spit at me / others in the room or grabbing other students items after being told no)

You got the gist of it there
My first username on the Web was actually RoughDiamond, which according to the dictionary link below means "a person who has talent or other good qualities but who is not polite, educated, socially skilled, etc."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... %20diamond
I didn't know about autism in those days. I just liked the idea that the "best" people may have a deceptively crusty exterior and that it can be a bad mistake to judge a person without looking more carefully than most folks seem to do, so I guess it was a protest against having been misjudged a lot. I had to change it to ToughDiamond because the original form was often already taken for email accounts etc., so the toughness was more of an accident, though I do think it's true that ASDers tend to be resilient, because we have to be.

As for the "5 ways" link, I was undiagnosed too, so I didn't have to suffer 2, 4, or 5. If I was ever subjected to 1 then I didn't notice. My mother would call me all kinds of things to my face, but was generally less vitreolic about me when somebody else was listening. As for 3, I had that, but in those days the child's perspective wasn't a thing most adults in my life knew or cared about. And to be fair, my expressed views were frequently arrogant and plain wrong, so it's probably not surprising that I got typecast as having an irritatingly skewed perspective on things. Though I don't think autism was behind that, I just took after my mother.

Make the child go through 25-40 hours a week of ABA

Focus on what the child can not do instead of what the child can do.

Assume the child meltdowns are the child being defiant.

Give the child cures or treatments popular on the internet at the moment.

Assume because the child is severely autistic he or she will never speak, never have a job, a never be in a relationship.

Give him or her diminishing nicknames "for fun".

Torture him/her with "miracle cures" like bleach.

Why would you assume that, it's not like they're politicians.

The problem with labels is that humans have far, far, too many contents to list on a label.
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I like the top one better....

The kid doesn't seemed "doomed".......

The top one is better, but not perfect. He struggles a little with his schoolwork, but it's okay, should be amended to "he struggles, but let him find a passion, so he can excel," would be better. For me, it wasn't okay to struggle when I could have done better.

You could damage anybody with the perception that someone, for any reason, will never do something or amount to anything. If Denis Istomin's mom had believed the prognosis of doctors that he would never play tennis again after a serious car accident, he would probably be dead today and I never would have heard of him.