What are YOU doing for our 'silent' brothers and sisters?

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I would like working at volunteer job like that. There are some orgs that take care and give special education classes to autistic kids. I would enjoy working at a place like that! However I don´t know whether I am qualified to do any work there! I like kids and everyone says I´m good dealing with kids.

I'm not really sure about this. I tend to think about people such as myself, who live their whole lives on the fringe of suicide knowing there is something wrong but not knowing what it is, and how many of them slip through the cracks and how many of them I represent when I post here with my 'have aspergers-undiagnosed' designation... it is never far from my mind the many many undiagnosed people who are six feet under because they never found what exactly it was that was wrong. Were I ever in a position to help someone, it would be those people that I would focus on, I think.

Yeah. If I hadn't been diagnosed with autism, or even rather if my diagnosis had stayed unrecognized (I was first diagnosed with autism and then yanked away to another place where they said I was severely schizophrenic and had been psychotic since infancy), I can easily see what would have happened. As I lost more speech and motor skills it would not have been recognized as physical (which only happened after I froze up at an autism conference). My diagnosis would have eventually solidified to catatonic schizophrenia. Nobody would have remembered that when I couldn't speak I could type, and as I lost speech and motor control it would have been assumed that there was nothing going on in there. Since I have severe deadly allergies to several neuroleptics, one of those would have probably eventually killed me, if the various life-threatening medical conditions I have had (or suicide) didn't get to me first.

And that sort of thing does still happen. Including to autistic people regarded as low functioning. I've seen it. Lack of diagnosis and misdiagnosis may be rarer but it's not gone yet.

Personally I don't favor any particular kind of autistic person in what I do. Part of that is because I just don't recognize the categories as meaningful. It's not even just autistic people I advocate for, it's much broader than that.

I have been teaching Digital Cinematography and Editing to young people with AS.
My wife is going to do a half marathon in aid of AS.

if there's one thing I've learned in life it's that the best way to help someone else is to help yourself.

If you need proof, watch the movie Field of Dreams.

When you pursue your own dreams, you by natural effect help someone else pursue their dreams; it isn't intentional, it just seems to be the law of the universe.

Not sure how a fictional movie constitutes proof of anything.

I was thinking about this thread, because my son is sick and told me his throat hurt. He is highly intelligent and very functional, but there was a time when he wouldn't have been able to do that. When he had appendicitis a few years, we didn't know anything was seriously wrong until after it had already burst, because he didn't yet have the skills to describe what he felt, even though he was quite verbal. Something to think about.

try watching it, and you'll find out

"If you build it, they will come."

I do understand. When you pursue your dream (assuming your dream is legal and moral), there is a positive ripple effect because what helps you probably helps at least one other person too. Maybe many people. What brings you joy is likely shared by others too. Whether it's baseball or toys (I gather from other posts you are a toy vendor), your dreams intersect with the dreams of at least some other people and improve their lives.

I don't feel it's my place to speak for someone who is more severe. We're all individuals, not all a clump of clay that are exactly the same. I find it insulting when others try to speak for me don't you?

There are other forms of communicating for oneself if you cannot do it verbally.

You can't speak for them, but you can demand they get the same rights and respect as any human being.

Besides, you can't speak for another Aspie, either. "Speaking for" people has never been the point of disability advocacy. It's actually the exact opposite of the main purpose, which is to get people to listen when disabled folks speak for themselves--whether or not they happen to be using language when they do it.

Liberty and Justice for all

But, there is such a concept as "representative democracy" where officials such as senators and representatives are elected and speak for the constituents they represent. In this situation, one Aspie can speak for others. One Aspie can represent thousands if not millions of people and tell others what they want, thus, speaking for them.

Nothing. Just how it should be (we all speak for ourselves, and not all speech is verbally communicated or written).

True. But there is a difference between political representation and putting words in people's mouths.

You can represent another human being to the extent that you are actually doing what that person wants you to do--once you start doing things he never asked, you stop being a true representative.

Goes back to human rights: Demanding human rights--especially self-determination--for another human being makes sense; and to that extent you may "speak for" someone else. But the more you speak for someone else, the more it is likely that you will start to reduce his freedom rather than increase it. The point where you start reducing someone else's freedom is the point at which you must stop attempting to represent them.

Helping those to help themselves topic

The above is my credo, but it is not done in the patronizing manor as Austims Speaks.

I am surprised to find this opinion here, for as far back as I can remember and long before i knew about AS or HFA, I identified with people who have LFA. Even with the messed up way that I communicate with the world, the idea of not being able to at all invokes a certain mix of sympathy and fear in me. AS gave me pause because I worried that it belittles what they have to go through.

I would freely give up some of my favourite possessions, from geometric puzzles to pieces of metal that reflect light in a interesting way, to any person with LFA who showed interest in them. In the hope that staring at, or playing with these things could brighten their day in the way that they have mine.

I have not supported autistic charities financially, yet should. I need to better understand how the different charities view the spectrum and treat people on it however.