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The Empathy Question: Theory of Mind, Culture, and Understanding

Nicole Nicholsen womanwithaspergers.wordpress.com Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s Autism and Empathy website started me thinking about the whole empathy question in regards to autistic people — again. In my first post about autistics and empathy, I mentioned Theory of Mind issues as one of the possible reasons why there is a perception that autistic people lack empathy. With what I had read about Theory of Mind at the time, I’m now reexamining the concept and wondering if I had gotten it slightly wrong, especially in light of the recent challenges that other autistic writers have made to the prevailing ideas about autistics and Theory of Mind. The Sally-Anne Test The prevailing idea about autistics and Theory of Mind goes something like this: having good Theory of Mind means that a person is able to determine the contents of both one’s own mind and the minds of others; conversely, autistic people are unable to…

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“Is Your Son Really That Difficult?”

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com Photo © Merrick Brown at Flickr “Is Your Son Really That Difficult?” That’s what the well-meaning blinds salesperson who just left my house asked me, after I told her I was leery of installing vertical blinds in our family room — mostly because I was worried Leo would love them to pieces, quite literally. I launched into kind-but-firm on-the-spot advocacy and acceptance mode. I didn’t cry (something I might have done in the past) or get strident (something I am still working on). Instead, I smiled to show how much I love my son, and let her know that she was misunderstanding my concerns. I told her that I wouldn’t call my son difficult, but that his autism means he sometimes has difficulty reining in his impulses. So even if we asked him to please not wrap himself up in or set in motion a…

On the Sad End to the Search for Mikaela Lynch

Kerima Çevik theautismwars.blogspot.com Last week the body of Mikaela Lynch, age 9, Autistic, was found in a nearby lake where she apparently drowned. I am sorry to say that when I saw the red flags of a nonspeaking missing child, a nearby body of water, and unfenced backyard leading to woods, I feared the worst while praying for the best. I’m not going to comment on the article on Mikaela’s death in Cafe Mom’s The Stir because I don’t wish to increase hits on the Examiner article, which vilified the parents without a clear grasp of what happened that day. We weren’t there. We don’t know what happened. We only know what is reported to us. I will wait for the police to finish their autopsy and investigation, and pass on my sincere condolences to Mikaela’s family. We have been engaged in teaching our son water survival rather than swimming since…

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Puberty Resources: The Girls’ Guide to Growing Up

We get frequent requests for puberty and sexuality resources and information. While in general, good frank resources are good frank resources — witness the UU Our Whole Lives Lifespan Sexuality Education Curricula — specific guides can be helpful too, such as The Girls’ Guide to Growing Up. This book takes girls through all the aspects of puberty: changing bodies, privacy, menstruation, masturbation, etc. It is also written with even more frankness than most puberty guides; I’ve never seen a photographic guide to understanding when it might be time to change a sanitary pad, for instance. And it reassures girls that while some people have crushes, others don’t (since many autistic people are asexual, this casual reassurance during such a foundational time is important). It also tends to use “person” instead of “boy” when discussing sexual feelings, which reflects reality. The tone overall is very friendly and comforting. It is written…

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Parenting in the Park

arbitrary I took both of my children to the park the other day. It shouldn’t be some sort of big announcement that a mom takes her kids to the park, but I was by myself with my two children, who have very different, needs, wants, and abilities, and I am a chicken. There. I said it. I am a scaredy-cat when it comes to taking my kids out into open, uncontrolled situations by myself, unless Jack is buckled into his wheelchair. He has escaped my grasp so many times, wrenching my shoulder as he goes; there are dangerous situations around every corner, and he is fast. And as mature and amazing Katie is at 5, she really is still a small child who deserves to be looked after on a busy street, or a park… but it is summer, and my children are convincing, so I took them. Katie providing…

Imagine

David M. Davison fightingforhope.wordpress.com Imagine needing order in a disorderly world. Imagine creating order, and being laughed at for doing so. Imagine needing precision in an imprecise world. Imagine being precise, and being told it is often unnecessary. Imagine needing structure in an unstructured world. Imagine creating structure, only for people to tear it apart. Imagine needing words to have their literal meaning. Imagine taking words literally, only for people to consider you stupid. —- Imagine order is innate, and you have to work out when order is not required. Imagine precision is innate, and you have to work out when precision is not required. Imagine structure is innate, and you have to work out when structure is not required. Imagine taking words literally is innate, and you have to work out when the meaning is not literal. —- Imagine becoming anxious when you see the ‘Random’ button on your…

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Alternative Autism Science: Don’t Believe the Hype!

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com My son has had a challenging few months. We have been scrambling, hard, to figure out the best ways to support him, help him feel comfortable and settled. Medical treatments have helped, as has a forensic approach to figuring out stressors in his environment, as has looking back through his daily record for patterns in sleep, illness, exercise, and routine. But when he’s still unhappy or dysregulated despite all our best efforts plus the efforts of his extended team of doctors, educators, and therapists, I feel like I’d do anything to help him. An autism parent at such a loss is in a potentially dangerous spot. Their autistic child more so. Because if mainstream medicine and legitimate therapies and approaches can’t provide answers, that’s when parents tend to look elsewhere. That’s when they risk exposing their child to therapies that can cause physical harm (e.g.,…

Autism Is Not Just An American Thing

Emily Willingham emilywillinghamphd.com You’ve heard of autism, right? Thanks to ubiquitous blue puzzle pieces, TV shows and movies, and daily headlines in English-language news media, a lot of people in the United States have some awareness about autism, even if it’s a caricatured version presented to gain donations, viewers, or readers. In fact, in the US, many autistic people and their allies have sought to move on from awareness and talk more about acceptance. In non-USian parts of the world, though, autism doesn’t necessarily get this level of attention, much less acceptance, despite the fact that autistic people are everywhere. One of the largest epidemiological studies of autism identified it in 2.64%% of South Korean schoolchildren, and anecdotal assertions to the contrary, autism does exist in countries like Cambodia. Autistic people also live in Yemen, where a lack of awareness can seriously affect outcomes. As Yemeni mother Fam Um Ahmed said in…

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Rethinking Unhappiness

Ariane Zurcher emmashopebook.com I was alerted to an article written by Dr. Michael Oberschneider entitled Ask Dr. Mike: Expecting and Anxious About Autism. In the piece he writes, “Some of the happiest parents I know (both personally and professionally) have children on the Autistic Spectrum.” In the comments section people weighed in with their thoughts. Many parents wrote of their outrage (and a few of their disbelief) that Dr. Mike suggest “happy” parents of Autistic children even exist. They seemed to equate happiness with a lack of concern. A number of parents suggested that Dr. Mike was simply wrong and refused to believe that he could actually know such parents. One person went so far as to suggest he was trying to trump up more clients, which is an interesting idea, but the logic of that argument eludes me. Before I go any further, I have to say this — there was…

The End of April Doesn’t Mean the End of Autism Acceptance

Karen Bower railman.blog.co.uk I’d always had niggling feelings about Harry, but I remember with absolute clarity the day I knew. We’d moved to the other side of town and, driving home, it made sense to use a different route. Harry lost the plot every time. For hours, he would rage at me. I didn’t understand. Was it the move? The house? His new bedroom? One day, to avoid the otherwise inevitable meltdown, I took the ‘old’ route. Harry was perfectly pleased with this. It had taken me weeks to understand that he had no issue with the move or house (Though, two years on, he still calls it New House). It was taking a different route. Ironically, since then, he’s never had a problem with it. Whatever the problem, he’d worked it out. I knew, right then, I had to work it out too. The time until we got a…