How would you respond to this?

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My husband and I are spending a few days with his mom, step-dad, and grandma. My husband is a behavioral therapist and works with autistic children and some adults. He was telling his parents and grandma about his work. His grandma says, "Well let's all be thankful we're not autistic!" Had to bite my tongue there =/ I'm not "out" to them so I couldn't say anything. How would you respond to that?

Do they know you have it?

I don't think so, unless my husband told them but I doubt it.

Well in that case, I'd be speechless.

If it comes up again, you might try asking whether she has ever met any autistic people on the high-functioning end of the spectrum ... then see whether you or your husband might be able to tell her a little about AS/HFA ... then see where to go from there. In other words, first try to address a general lack of knowledge and give her a little time to ponder a bit and to hopefully ask questions.

Yea that sucks, but do you really think grandma has any perspective on what autism actually entails? She probably doesn't differentiate it much if at all from mental retardation. I'd do just what you did, bite your tongue, and I wouldn't take any offense and try not to think too hard about it.

revenge is a dish best served cold

I can't believe someone would say that! I'd smack them for just saying something that stupid!

I wouldn't be so quick to judge her like that. For one, we've got groups out there *cough*Autism Speaks*cough* who are leading people, who don't know anything about autism, to believe certain stereotypes and things about us. This in turn leads people to think we are terrible, broken, ret*d people. Second, I'm assuming "grandma" is an older woman. Let's not forget that Autism was very unheard of back in her day.

Honestly if I were in the OP's position, I would just let this one slide. Maybe if she says anything in the future about it, then something should be said to her.

I agree.. My mom said that at some point she wondered if I might be autistic, but since I wasn't mentally ret*d, she figured that couldn't be it. So on and on the roller-coaster went, everybody wondering what was wrong with me, figuring it must be my fault, because nobody knew that autism wasn't the same as mental retardation.

Doctors thought I was autistic when I was two and my parents wouldn't believe it. I wasn't showing the classic signs of it (eg. stimming none stop, hand flapping, rocking back and forth all day, totally locked in their own world, zero connection to people) and I had hearing loss so they had a good reason to think the doctors were wrong. But ironically they knew I had something but didn't know what it was but yet they pushed away the autism label and said it was BS.

Maybe their idea of autism was the things I listed above for classic signs. That's just the severe case of it and maybe they didn't know there was a form of it and there was the whole spectrum. AS wasn't known then even though it was coined. I call it a coincidence because they happened to be right about autism because I had AS and that was what they were seeing.

It sounds like she was just bored with the topic and was trying to shut it down.

I still can't understand why people that get disrespected about their own mental issues continue to throw people with mental retardation under the bus.

People that would never call someone rude names for racial designations, or physical issues use the term 'ret*d' as a derogatory word. I guess they feel it doesn't matter if someone can't fight back.

Yes, same here.

Yes, and in fairness I've tried warning people about these groups and instead referring them here. Most of those folks just insist on following the popular "flavor of the month".

Trust me...it's no real desire to actually offer support for Autistic people, it's just following the latest trend.

Sadly enough, two of those people happened to be

1. a former classmate...though on this front I don't care, cause I wasn't really friends with him back then either.

2. my friend's mom...who's grandson has Autism

It would upset me - purely because she is working with autistic people and such a negative attitude makes me wonder how good she is for these people.