I'm in direct care, and there was a staff meeting today on client behaviors. I work in a home where there are three clients. Besides autism, the three clients also have MR and some other disorders.
One of the behaviors addressed in the meeting was stealing. Well, the concern was raised that the clients steal because of their autism. The claim was that autism made them unable to comprehend the social implications of their actions. I made an objection to this, saying that I have autism and know that stealing is wrong (other staff are aware already that I'm on the spectrum, so I wasn't risking anything by this disclosure). I also added that I've worked in direct care with other clients who had stealing problems, and those clients didn't have autism, so I posed the logical question: why isn't their inability to comprehend their behavior being traced instead to their MR, rather than autism? (The clients I had previously had MR, not autism, and some of them had theft problems as well -- it makes much more sense that the problem theft would be related to cognitive disability and reduced ability to use cause/effect reasoning, not autism specifically.)
After some discussion, the leader of the meeting came to the conclusion that it was indeed important to take other factors into consideration as to why the clients were stealing, such as the clients' unstable upbringing. I also explained that situations like this are why I oppose the DSM blending all forms of autism together in a broad "spectrum" instead of differentiating functionality, like they used to with Asperger Syndrome, who have normal IQs. Clearly these newer, over-broad, and imprecise labels create some horrible assumptions and misunderstandings, such as assuming someone with a 65 IQ is stealing because of "autism," instead of coming to the much more rational conclusion that these clients are stealing because they cannot use cause/effect reasoning due to reduced IQ.
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36 yr old female; dx age 29. Level 2 Aspie.
29 Mar 2019, 1:57 pm
