skibum wrote:
GoodBlade, sorry if you felt offended. But in all fairness, a couple of the things you said were a bit offensive as well even if you did not intend them to be.
Autism, first of all, is not only a deficit in social skills. That is a big part of Autism but there are so many other issues and challenges that we have that are not about social skills. Secondly, even some of the most severe and nonverbal people can often times be quite eloquent and can communicate extremely well in written form especially when typing. Ezra posted the video on Carly as an example. I know Ezra won't mind me saying this because he posts about his own situation publicly very often, but even he is pretty much nonverbal and has comorbids that cause him to be considered quite low functioning yet he just graduated from high school at the regular age for graduation and I expect and hope that he will pursue a college degree since he is very intelligent and very capable.
We had an adult member here years ago who was completely nonverbal, not potty trained, in a wheelchair, in a home where she received 24 hour care, and she was one of the most informative and intelligent posters on the site. She was very respected and loved by all of us. Even though she was considered very low functioning, and even though she had no ability to connect with people in real life, so she basically had no social skills, her ability to connect with us online in written form was remarkable. She also trained therapy birds.
And many of us who appear high functioning online and even a lot of times in real life can also really struggle with many many different things and can struggle very severely. But it is impossible for people to know that from an online forum. People will only post and write when they are feeling well enough to do it and they won't sit around all day posting about their severe struggles. So it is impossible to tell from a forum what people's lives are really like.
And social skills don't come through on a written forum. You have no way of telling what people's actual social skills are like just from the posts that they write. Some people have no social skills at all yet they are able to navigate in written form quite well. I have the social awareness of a four to six year old but you would never be able to tell that by the posts that I write. And like I said earlier, social skills are not the only thing that Autistic people struggle with. So you simply cannot tell the severity of someone's Autism by posts on a forum. It is not fair or right to make those kinds of assumptions and that is why people were offended.
I'm aware of most of the things you mentioned, and obviously Autism and its related disorders are complicated, and cant be understood through online forums. I didn't mean to present anything as permanent facts or mean to say I can read everybody here through their forum posts, and perhaps, it seems those of you who have decided to insult, or make fun of it, have misunderstood my intentions. Including you, since you still think I made an unfair assumption when I wasn't.
I could have been more clear about what I mean to say, and that was the mistake, in that specific post I have written on this thread. But, I think you could have used more of your common sense as a method of understanding what I meant.
Your misunderstanding, is not something I can control or that I am obligated to pay attention to. I am not a doctor or a therapist, or someone who can take the time to explain every single thing that other people failed to understand, or understand incorrectly.
I suggest you read and think more carefully, before you conclude something that is not true. That's probably the most important thing you might need to learn from all this.
And to make things clear, I haven't registered on these forums, for the purpose of making anybody feel offended, or disrupt any discussions. I really hope you won't reach any further wrong conclusions, about me or a post I wrote.
Thanks, I'm pretty sure you understand now.
04 Jul 2018, 7:03 am
