Vancouver A$ Walk protesters confronted by "autism dad"

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This article reflects what I feel about it.

The kid is happy--he's high-fiving people. He's happy in his own little world. Why deny him that happiness?

People aren't going to like me saying this and I hate saying it myself, but the fact is, while it's great that he's happy, he's still likely high maintenance, and while society can afford to maintenance, it can't support everyone without them giving something back. When push comes to shove, he needs to be making other people happy, not just being happy in his own little world. Yes, a parent should love their children for what they are, but we can't just shut them out and call them demons when they talk about the very real financial costs of services.

If you're talking about intellectual disability, then I suppose they would be correct, that's not the same as Autism. Those things just aren't one and the same.

Ok, why do you think that's nonsense.

*This ended up being quite a bit longer than I intended, sorry. I guess I’m just so passionate about it. Ha.

Yes, I absolutely agree that autism and intellectual disability are not the same thing. What I am questioning is the idea that severe autism is just “regular autism” (whatever that is) plus intellectual disability. I think it is possible for one to be “severely autistic” and not be intellectually disabled. Intellectual disability is likely a “co-morbid” condition- meaning that some individuals with ASD are intellectually disabled, but it’s not a requirement for the diagnosis.

It depends on what we are considering intellectual disability to be, however. I know that the definition includes an IQ below 70. The problem is that in order to determine the IQ of the person, an IQ test has to be done. That means we have to be confident that the IQ test can accurately measure the IQ of a severely autistic individual, and I for one, do not believe it can. Here’s why: we already know that the person has difficulty understanding and/or expressing language. We give them a test, which will rely on language no matter what (even if it’s a non-verbal test- there will be instructions given verbally, etc.), and we wonder why they do poorly. As far as I can tell, that’s the equivalent of giving test in Hebrew to someone who only speaks English. It’s not a valid test, because the test is actually testing something entirely different (their ability to understand the language, which is NOT the same as knowing what the specific questions’ answers are).

There are some severely autistic people who have learned to communicate. For example, Carly Fleishmann. From these people, the general theme seems to be that they have things to say, and are smarter than they appeared to be, but were unable to express this for some reason. I think that these people are evidence that IQ tests for severely autistic people are flawed.

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Here’s a profile of my son: He missed all of the social milestones as a baby. He didn’t smile, he didn’t coo, he hated being picked up or touched, wasn’t interested in other babies, didn’t appear to recognise people, etc. He met physical milestones early though; he walked at 8 months, etc. He appeared to be intelligent. He was very resourceful. One example: when he was around 9 months old, he was behind a baby gate and wanted a toy from the other side. The normal/social response would be to cry (for the adult to come get it), but what he did was take a toy on his side, one of those ball-popper walkers (link) and slid the thin end under the gate to hook the toy within the handle and pull it over to him. That’s resourceful for 9 months. It shows a lack of social skills (typical for ASD) but it does not show a lack of intelligence.

His paediatrician believed that he was hard-of-hearing. He would react negatively to loud sounds only, so he said that his hearing must be very poor, and that’s why he is disturbed when he does hear stuff. I had been reading up at this time, and asked about autism, and he said no way because he’s “too smart” (which I know will make you cringe, but my point isn’t that ASD = low intelligence because some doctor said so, but rather that my son appeared to be smart).

When he was finally diagnosed (after his hearing was found to be fine), the doctor who diagnosed him (different guy) told me that he is severely autistic, and thus he is severely mentally ret*d. The mentally ret*d part was just a given, because he was severely autistic. What I’m confused about is how you can take the exact same kid, except at one time he is presumed to be deaf, and the other time he is presumed to be autistic, and go from intelligent to unintelligent, just by changing the diagnosis. That doesn’t make sense to me.

My son shows lots of signs that do NOT indicate I.D. I’ve taken a list of the most common signs, here:
http://www.webmd.com/children/intellectual-disability-mental-retardation


With regards to this list, the only ones that I can definitely say “yes” to is the late talking and explosive tantrums (which in my opinion, is directly related to late talking and sensory issues). As I said before, he met physical milestones early. He was easy to toilet train, dressed himself early (soon after he had the gross motor skills to do so, which was early), has no trouble remembering as far as we can tell. He is good at problem-solving (I described an example at 9 months, but he is better at it now). As for inability to connect actions with consequences, this one is “yes” for social situations but “no” for non-social situations. That to me would not indicate an overall low IQ, but rather a low social IQ, which fits with ASD, not intellectual disability.
He was building complex towers out of blocks and magnetic building toys by age 2. This is one of the reasons people would remark on how smart he seemed. He could do puzzles, and organise alphabet / number blocks in the correct order by age 2, and other academic tasks also. He has not regressed, but people working with him have a more difficult time motivating him. He never used to do these things when commanded to- he did them on his own. This feeds back into my theory about IQ tests being invalid. He has the ability, but doesn’t respond when you tell him to do it (sometimes it’s non-compliance and sometimes it’s not).

Veeeerrrrrrrrry long story short, I do not believe my son is intellectually disabled. I believe he is severely affected by autism, but not intellectually disabled. I believe that he has the ability to do age-appropriate tasks, but requires a different kind of teaching. I believe that he has specific deficits, primarily related to social skills and sensory issues- which have both impacted his language development, but I do not believe that his intelligence is overall low. This is why it is “nonsense”.

WelcomeToHolland, I know what you're saying. You're saying just because it is A why does it always have to be {B,C,D} as well? Am I right?

Indeed, association fallacy seems to be very prevalent whenever people talk about the Spectrum.

You're quite right, there's no accurate way to determine that for non-verbal. It's very easy for people to make an assumption that explains it all, like no empathy, or no understanding. It's hard to see why non-verbal would be the same as intellectual disability and vice versa, or even why they're connected somehow.




Apparently it's hard to tell the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum, which is pretty unfortunate. One way to tell that I know of, would be that tantrums have an "end game" or a goal, and if you give them the goal, the tantrum stops, but meltdowns don't work like that.

You have found out the hard way that most psychologists don't have a idea besides stereotypes of what Autism is about. It is quite common for non-verbal autistics to be misdiagnosed as deaf, for parents to be incorrectly told their child has no chance to have success as an adult. You are very correct, IQ tests can be very misleading for autistic people. If possible you need to find someone who is an specialist that are not stuck in the past. Unfortunately these specialists are often unaffordable or are prohibitively far away.