Non-verbal non-speech intelligence!

Post Reply New Topic

As a 21 year old woman with low functioning autism, I've been steadily and greatly developing my typed communication ability and now via a keyboard voice synthesizer and at other times a regular computer keyboard, I'm able to very effectively communicate to others at, or actually much higher, than the level of most normal people. This has stunned most people who never knew I had thought.

I'm becoming more and more involved in the autism rights movement. In doing so, however, I'm been criticized for not being autism! As if! My doctor was told by my parents that I used to be fully verbal, which is true, but I'm now autistic period, can't anyone understand this! I lost my speech more and more over the years, and have developed more extreme autistic symptoms. I guess my doctor can't handle it, not my parents and family, who just laugh at me, saying I'm "acting this way."

Anyway I have a lot to teach to the autisms community about what I and others just like me are TRULY CAPABLE OF!

Welcome to WP. There's a gulf of understanding between Us and Them and denying that we're autistic is a common response to us achieving anything...

I'm confused about when you say you are autistic now. Weren't you autistic when you could talk? I was autistic when I could talk better than I can now. Speech skills are one thing affected by autism, and are often one of the first things to cut out under stress for autistic people, and I do know a number of people (including me) who've experienced a long-term speech shutdown after previously having some (usually we were people who also had trouble with speaking early in life, but not always). But they aren't the definition of whether a person is autistic or not (most autistic people, in fact, have speech at some point in their lives), and in order to be autistic now you'd have to have been autistic before as well. Maybe I'm just confused by wording though.

I keep telling my Shrink I've been having trouble talking recently. It doesn't seem to be an issue for her. It's an issue for me. Think next time I see her, I'll take a couple of semophore flags and beat her over the head with them...

Welcome nonverbalAnie!:)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to this point I thought non-verbal only meant without any capacity for speech. Wouldn't the ability to speak through typing make you verbal though mute? As in the ability to think in words?

Hi nonverbalAnie, and you are welcome here! No worries about non-verbal - be proud of your difference; there are other ways to communicate. I am one.