Autism misrepresented in the media

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On the news this morning was a report into how the (UK) school system is not dealing properly with autistic children. Something I agree with, but that's on another thread.

The thing that angered me most was that in this report, and on the BBC website, autism is described in the most negative way possible. For example

(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medic ... 259961.stm)

That is complete B.S. The worst bit is, this is on the national news and on the BBC website, so people with no personal experience of AS/ASD will think this is true.

My eldest son, who has ASD, goes to a mainstream school. He is popular and has more friends than I ever did. They invite him over to play after school, but their parents always make excuses. 'Oh, maybe next week....'. I invite his friends over, but again the parents make excuses. The other mothers chat together, ignore me and try to prevent their children from playing with my son, and why? I think it's because he's autistic. (It's supposed to be confidential, but he has speech problems and a helper, so it's a bit obvious.) I also think that articles like this are responsible for creating such a negative attitude towards ASD people in the NT population.

What you describe about your son's friends' parents is terrible! How unfair! I can't imagine why people would behave like this - but then there's a lot I can't understand about 'normal' people.....

'sons friends parents' yes, because they can't handle anything other than sitting them in fron of a tv with a packet of crisps and a 'cheese' string! still, their loss, the parents wouldn't be able to cope with the one way talking!

Hi Bish.
Actually it's my son's loss – he wants friends over. His friends want him over, but the parents discourage or prevent it.
Once, one of his friends came over to our house and had a great time (didn't want to leave!). But my son got a bit over-excited by it and started hitting himself just as this boys mother came to collect him. Needless to say that was the last we saw of him.

This is very sad, but I also find it to be true in our area. I had one parent actually tell me she thought my son was kind of immature to play with her son. If she would, just once, actually have a talk with my son, she would find him more mature than she is herself in many ways. It's almost like they don't want to get any 'autism germs' on themselves and end up 'catching autism'.

We go to play parks regularly and quite often a parent will approach their children to get them away from both my children. Even in a free for all environment like that, these people have some kind of "That Kid's Not Right" radar and meanwhile our sons and daughters are still not getting the contact they desire.

This behavior in others has impacted my son (my daughter is bullet proof) in some ways, but I can't be sure how much. When he was being diagnosed, one of the questions the psych asked, was to get a sense of his understanding of the procedures and find out how willing to work with them he was. She asked if he knew why he had to answer so many questions. He said, "It's to find out why the other kids won't play with me". That was from his own mind and completely a surprise to us. He was 3 at the time. I cried.

I think the media is way off most of the time, too, when it comes to their portrayal of ASD.

Trouble with imagination? What a load of bull. I've probably scripted more unproduced TV shows than most NTs older than me have in my whole life...

Trouble with verbal imagination, sure I had terrible verbal imagination. I have even trouble thinking of what to say on a simple greeting card, but my visual imagination was better than most NTs