Immersion in aspies therapies, the only hope for aspies?

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Alright a very simple idea. It seems the to me the best chance for aspies to get a fair chance in life is to be immersed in aspies friendly therapies.

I don't want us to just pretend to be 'normal'

To be honest, I've had ups and downs in my life. I've co-owned a recording studio in NYC and worked jobs that were able to get me things like guitars, keyboards and studio equipment.

My downs in life were because of my drug addiction which led to a suicide attempt and homelessness.

I would say that autism played a tiny part in all those trials and tribulations, but just a tiny part.

That completely depends on the severity of symptoms and how they manifest, plus having a vocation that's a good fit for an aspie. When I was in school, aspergers was not recognised as a diagnosis; had it been, I would almost certainly have been diagnosed as mild aspergers. There were no supports or therapies available to me at the time. All I got was being told to stop being bullied, learn bodylanguage, and do my homework.

Mild symptoms and trying to work in a job ill-suited for an aspie ... not so good. I worked for 2 years at a very busy convenience store in a bad neighbourhood. It was LOUD; it was SMELLY; There was a LOT of interacting with strangers; There was nothing that coincided with my interests; There were a lot of drunk, high or otherwise rowdy people. I was assaulted twice at work and once on my way home from work. It was a very bad scene and I spent a lot of time at home in silence. Because I spent so much time recovering it was verry difficult to spend any time on finding a new job.

Mild symptoms & special interests that coincide with a career opportunity = success (possibly after much hard slogging). I now have a job doing one of my special interests, and am doing quite well, relatively.

Hi, I'm more in favor of engagement, both with oneself and others, and not with conformity.

And I liked how Temple Grandin talked about working with these older experienced speech therapists as a child. That is, a person not primarily committed to an ideology.

What I don't like is a couple of demonstrations of ABA I've seen at a local university with power point presentations and videos. In one video, they showed a person working with a child on greeting skills: "Hi, I'm Carol. I'm Michael. Good job! Give me five! Hi, I'm Carol. I'm Michael. Good Job! Give me Five!" Well, for starters, you have this adult looming in your face really trying to emote. If you have certain kind of sensory issues, this is going to be off putting to say the least. And then you have this adult slapping your hand. And then if the child learns to introduce themselves whether he or she draws a blank or is unsure what to do, that is a bad lesson. Introducing oneself twice is much more off putting than simply doing an okay to poor to average job of introducing oneself. In fact, if the child is perfect at introducing himself or herself and then has rocky social skills past that, well, that's going to confuse other children more than anything. Better just tell other children that this classmate is a good classmate but talks a little different. That can be much more easily accepted by children.

AS is a disability... like any other disability, you just need some (usually relatively minor) adjustments to your environment. Like if you couldn't walk you might use a wheelchair; well, if you can't socialize well, you might have people agree to e-mail you when it's really important or to clarify things when you need to have them clarified. It's not as straightforward as a wheelchair, but if you can figure out which parts of your life you need to adjust, or get help with, or do differently, or work around, then you can make those changes and go on with your life. Of course it is easier said than done, because there's still a good deal of prejudice against disability, but once you know what you need, it's a lot easier to get people to let you have it.

"Aspie-friendly" is a term that covers a great deal. I'm not sure what you have in mind.

There is no way that I am ever going to see a therapist again. Therapy doesn't work for me and I never experienced any benefits when it comes to my behaviour and way of thinking because of therapy. On the contrary. I am beginning to accept the way I am more and more and if I want to change myself in some sort of way I am more capable of achieving that change or improvement myself than any therapist I have been seeing. Therapy has always been a disappintment to me so far and there are not that many capable therapists around so sod them! I am not going to waste my time anymore.

That does not mean that other aspies should avoid therapy. If it works for you should definitely do it.

what aspie friendly therapies did you have in mind?

I feel that getting the right sort of work is imporatant.... and a few understanding people around you.

Therapy has helped me but perhaps not as much as I would have thought beforehand.

In a speech early this year, Temple Grandin fielded a question on the topic of parents helping their kids on the Spectrum and basically said this:

Seeing a professional for a couple of hours a week is not going to do enough. What you want to do is watch what the professional is doing and then hire a college student to do the same thing more like 20 hours a week. If you try and do it yourself, too exhausting and different negative dynamics (like one spouse trying to teach another spouse to drive, my example)

http://www.booktv.org/Program/14536/The ... ctrum.aspx

(see 39:03 into the speech)

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A mother asked about her 4-year-old son who, since being diagnosed at age 2, his main issues has been his lack of engagement and attention. And like Carly Fleischmann, his internal and external . . . (audio). The family is doing one hour of speech a week, two hours of OT, and is about to start DRI floor time.

Temple said, little kids need like 20 hours a week of one-on-ones. People are going out and going bankrupt and mortgaging their home. Don’t do that. And if you try and do it yourself, you’ll go crazy. But get some students, get some volunteers. And watch what your speech therapist does, watch what your OT does, and watch what your floor time person does. And then you need to do a whole lot more.

People fight over which method we’re going to use and there’s the Denver Start method [ESDM] that’s a little different than ABA. But I think the thing that’s important is enough hours with an effective teacher who’s kind of gently persuasive to pull it out of the kid. Because one hour of speech a week is not enough.

. . . the thing that has the most evidence-based is doing just the one-on-one therapies . . .

. . . what my speech teacher did, and this may work similar to the Listening Program . . .

. . . Play turn-taking games. Board games are great . . .

. . . Some teachers have the knack and other teachers don’t . . .

I've had therapy when I was a child, and I learned almost nothing from it. It's difficult for me to change the way I behave, and I'm not able to "copy" others.