Is Aspergers an excuse for bad behavior?

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Should AS be an excuse for bad behavior?
Yes 10%  10%  [ 27 ]
Yes 11%  11%  [ 29 ]
no 36%  36%  [ 98 ]
no 44%  44%  [ 120 ]
Total votes : 274

hardyboyz1999
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05 May 2012, 9:37 pm

Autism should be an excuse unless it causes someone to commit an act of violence or stealing. I have Aspergers and I would not want someone to physically attack me or steal something from me. I was told that I can be arrested for harassment if I ask people personal questions or favors, but these people I ask act like they're cool with it. If someone asked me something I don't like, I would be direct and tell them "I would not be comfortable with that," but I would not call the police, unless they kept asking me. As the WWE wrestler Triple H said just before the Survivor Series in November 2000 "you are all fools, you are all living a lie," and "Even now, you think you know the truth, the truth is you still don't know," I would say the same thing about the neurotypical crowd. I know the truth (even if the neurotypical crowd doesn't) and the truth will set me free. Yet I still have to obey their stupid rules.



edgewaters
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05 May 2012, 10:41 pm

hardyboyz1999 wrote:
Autism should be an excuse unless it causes someone to commit an act of violence or stealing.


No. You've got to live up to the capabilities that you DO have, and try to develop them, just like anybody.

It's like any disability. Losing your legs isn't an excuse for not trying your best. It means your capabilities will be less and people should be understanding of that, but you shouldn't be treated any different otherwise.



scubasteve
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05 May 2012, 11:02 pm

I don't think a student should ever be punished for an incident in which they truly could not control their behavior. However, I believe everyone must take responsibility for their behavior and work to improve their self-control. If they are not willing to make the effort to do so, and these incidents continue, at some point they will have to be disciplined for it.



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05 May 2012, 11:29 pm

Well first off we'd have to define bad behavior, and then I'd say only if this bad behavior is intentional and not a result of misunderstanding a situation due to the AS for instance.


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sMeow
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06 May 2012, 4:48 am

Saying Aspergers is not an excuse at all is pretty stupid (there are social problems because of that, so let's be logical :>), as saying Aspergers excuse everything is stupid.

Like everything. You won't ask someone with motor disabilities to run or whatever, it doesn't mean he can't do anythinh, same thing here for Aspergers, except the fact most people doesn't understand when an Aspergers say something which upset them, it's not what he wanted to do and he won't understand why what e said upset the other, for example.

So yes, there are social disabilities, so there are an excuse when the Aspergers doesn't understand. The real question is ; does the kid know it's bad ?



Sweetleaf
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06 May 2012, 9:11 am

edgewaters wrote:
hardyboyz1999 wrote:
Autism should be an excuse unless it causes someone to commit an act of violence or stealing.


No. You've got to live up to the capabilities that you DO have, and try to develop them, just like anybody.

It's like any disability. Losing your legs isn't an excuse for not trying your best. It means your capabilities will be less and people should be understanding of that, but you shouldn't be treated any different otherwise.


However it might be an excuse for not trying their best to walk. Hence if someones disability prevents them from a certain thing, they probably would be better off not pushing themself too hard to accomplish it as that only leads to more pain and frustration.

Its not an excuse to not try your best at what you can do, though I can understand when people are faced with difficulties like that they might be frusterated and depressed about it and have a hard time 'trying their best' 24/7 I feel like others should try and understand it is possible to get to overwhelmed and feel like giving up and all. I just don't see it as something to look down on someone for.


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Rovski
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05 Jul 2013, 8:17 am

Asperger should definitelity NOT be an excuse for bad behaviour. But many people with asperger, (Including myself), did sometime have a very bad behaviour. I behave that way when i want to, because i want to. But when you have that feeling, you sometimes even behave badly with full purpose (Which i do sometime), it must be because something is wrong. So asperger is a serious mental disorder, and not just an excuse to behave beadly, even thougt it really could seems like that, sometimes!



The_Walrus
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05 Jul 2013, 10:34 am

Asperger's can be an excuse for bad behaviour. For example, autistic people often don't realise that they are being rude. Autism isn't a free pass to be as rude as you like, but if you are unintentionally rude, you can be excused somewhat.



Wandering_Stranger
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05 Jul 2013, 10:39 am

My cousins use AS as an excuse to act like a jerk, apparently. I have used it to explain my behaviour. But I have never used it to excuse my behaviour.



Callista
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05 Jul 2013, 1:22 pm

Doesn't it depend on whether they had a choice about the matter?

Think of the difference between these scenarios.

1. Mark is in class. He is tired and overloaded because it's hot and he is wearing a shirt that's made of polyester. A child behind him is fidgeting, tapping two pencils against his desk in a drumbeat, until he grows bored and begins tapping the pencils against Mark's back. This is the last straw for Mark, and he stands up, throws his own pencil at his classmate, and yells, "Stop it!" repetitively, finally collapsing in tears and having to be removed from the classroom by his aide.

2. Mark is older now, and he's in high school. Through therapy, he has been taught how to recognize the signs of overload and how to manage stress. He has permission to leave the classroom if he needs to in order to calm himself. However, Mark has decided that he shouldn't have to bother with all of that, and this morning he put on a polyester shirt even though he knows it's going to bug him all day, especially since it's a long-sleeved shirt and the classroom will be a little too warm. When his bored classmate starts tapping on the desk, Mark can feel that his stress level is rising and he's starting to have trouble understanding the teacher's chemistry lecture, but he doesn't use his hall pass to leave the situation and calm down. Instead, he stays in the classroom until, when his classmate starts tapping on his back, he explodes, throws his pencil, and has to be removed from the room.

3. It's an average day for Mark, and he's feeling fine. This morning he put on comfortable clothing, and the classroom is pleasantly cool. Mark is enjoying an interesting lecture about the periodic table when his classmate grows bored and starts tapping his pencil. Mark doesn't like his classmate; the other boy doesn't share Mark's love of learning and looks down on Mark for being "a nerd", and Mark gets some satisfaction from his knowledge that his grades in chemistry are a lot better than his classmate's. As time goes on, Mark gets angrier at his classmate, and when his classmate starts tapping the pencil against Mark's back, Mark forgets his social skills, turns around, throws his pencil at his classmate, and yells, "Hey! Just because you're an idiot who doesn't want to learn, doesn't mean the rest of us don't want to listen!" This time, Mark isn't out of control, so a stern word from the teacher causes him and his classmate to sit down and go back to the lecture, though the feud between him and his classmate has just intensified.

In the first situation, the child had little control over what happened to him and didn't have much knowledge of what was going on, what might happen and how to prevent it. Therefore he wasn't responsible for what happened; the class disruption wasn't his fault. In the second situation, the teenager knowingly did not deal with his AS traits, and it caused a disturbance. He is responsible for being negligent in dealing with his sensory overload, in a similar way to how a person might be responsible for having an asthma attack if they knowingly exposed themselves to an allergen without using medication.

The third scenario is an example of someone with AS making a voluntary choice that ends in the disruption of the chemistry lesson, and in terms of discipline, Mark deserves his teacher's reprimand just as much as his pencil-tapping classmate does. If he had been NT, he might have given his classmate a dirty look and communicated that way, but since he has AS, it was easier for him to forget himself and shout instead. However, in this case Mark was not overwhelmed and was able to consider his actions; he could have chosen to use his permission to leave the room, turned around and asked his classmate to stop tapping the pencil, or asked the teacher for help.

One caveat, though: In all three scenarios, Mark's classmate also deserves some of the blame. It's not much blame, since Mark wasn't being hurt and the classmate was unaware of how annoyed he might become. However, disturbing a classmate who is trying to listen to a lesson is not polite, and just because it's the Aspie who has the louder reaction, doesn't mean that the classmate doesn't also deserve a reprimand.


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grahamguitarman
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05 Jul 2013, 3:41 pm

Well the simplistic answer would be no, its not ok to use Autism as an excuse, just as its not ok to use drink or drug abuse as an excuse for bad behaviour.

I would never allow my seven year old son to use his autism as an excuse for bad behaviour. Nor will I tolerate his school letting him get away with it.

But I do expect the school to give him a reasonable environment to work in. And that's where simplistic answers end.

At his last school his teacher had no control whatsoever. Sometimes I'd go to pick him up and she would complain about his behaviour and how she had been chasing him around the classroom. My immediate thought was always Well how did you let it get to the point of having to chase him round the classroom in the first place? We didn't know he was autistic at the time.

During that year, a hospital consultant said that our son was autistic and needed a professional diagnosis. The teacher (who was also the assistant school manager) refused to believe that our son was Autistic and accused us of producing a badly behaved son through bad parenting. We ended up changing schools as a result of her attitude and lack of control over our son.

At his present school they saw straight away that he was autistic, and assigned him an LSA who specialises in autism. They also insisted on firm but fair rules for him (taking into account his autism of course). At one point the headmistress even called some children to account for deliberately winding him up, pointing out that he couldn't help being autistic but they could help playing on that. In two years he has never needed to be chased around the classroom by a teacher, and his behaviour has improved 100%. My son has huge respect for his teachers and does his best to be well behaved for them.

The point I'm trying to get to, is that the environment an autistic child finds himself in can be a big factor in how much the child is to blame. Place a child in a situation that treats him with respect, then that child being bad is inexcusable (Excepting involuntary meltdowns of course ). But place a child in a poor situation where the teacher simply cannot control the Child, and refuses to even recognise the problem for what it is, then who is more to blame?

Switching a different viewpoint on this. Like many on here I grew up in an age where Autism and Aspergers were unheard of. We often knew that we were different, but couldn't really say why (and in most cases probably kept quiet so as not to be labeled) But we still behaved ourselves to the best of our ability. We didn't have Aspergers as an excuse to fall back on, so if we did wrong we had to take responsibility for our own actions. I didn't get diagnosed till a few months back at the age of 50, so had to spend my entire life coping with my problems without a condition to blame it on.

And to this day, I still believe that no matter what is wrong with you, if you are Aspergers, an alcoholic, ADHD whatever, you should still take responsibility for your actions to the best of your ability. If you have a meltdown through no fault of your own (ie you were incapable of escaping the situation) then you are probably not to blame. But if you could have diffused the situation by removing yourself from it, then I have to ask again, who is really to blame?

People need to be educated about us, and the difficulties we face in a Neurotypical world, but we in turn need to manage our condition to the best of our ability to ensure we don't harm others.


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grahamguitarman
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05 Jul 2013, 3:53 pm

BTW I didn't vote because the questions were far too black and white for my liking.


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chlov
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05 Jul 2013, 5:31 pm

If you do something socially unacceptable or bad but you didn't know it was (like, offending someone not on purpose) it is not being an excuse but an explanation.
If you do something like, playing a bad joke on someone, and you know that will hurt the person very much, and then you say "I have AS" to get out of troubles, that is being an excuse.



daydreamer84
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05 Jul 2013, 6:20 pm

chlov wrote:
If you do something socially unacceptable or bad but you didn't know it was (like, offending someone not on purpose) it is not being an excuse but an explanation.
If you do something like, playing a bad joke on someone, and you know that will hurt the person very much, and then you say "I have AS" to get out of troubles, that is being an excuse.


Actually an explanation for something that caused offense in order to reduce fault is an excuse. Your explanation for saying something rude (completely by mistake, not realizing it) is that you have limited social understanding because you have autism. That's an excuse but it's a good excuse. If someone's upset because you're late for an important meeting with them and you explain to them truthfully that it's because you were in a car accident that wasn't your fault and you're in the hospital with two broken legs and a concussion that's still an excuse, it's just a really good one. If you kill someone and say it's because they disagreed with you over whether yellow is a nice colour that's a bad excuse. Autism is a good excuse for certain things, in certain situations, at certain times ecty. and a bad excuse for other things, in other situations, at other times. LINKDEFINITION



slushy9
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05 Jul 2013, 6:25 pm

no but if its something like cutting class b/c of sensory issues then yes



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05 Jul 2013, 6:26 pm

Yes, if they can't help it. If it's not an "excuse" for anything and they are expected to and able to be perfectly normal then they don't have it or it's extremely mild.