Autistic Union

30/04/2021

𝙒𝙏𝙁 𝙎𝙊𝘾𝙆𝙋𝙍𝙊𝘽𝙇𝙀𝙈𝙎❗

CALLING AUTISTICS AND ALLIES!

SOCK THE SOCKPROBLEM COMPANY

Serious wrongdoing on the part of that company.

Autistics are not the problem - that company is part of the problem.

We demand

AUTISTICS AND ALLIES
Can you help by acting on one or more of these?
Can you share the opportunity to help with others?
Thank you.

To "sock it" to :

FACEBOOK
Click Send Message www.facebook.com/SockProblems/
Click Reviews to leave a review
Click … to Report Page

WEBMAIL
Click www.sockproblems.com/pages/contact-us/

INSTAGRAM
Report User at www.instagram.com/sockproblems

TWITTER
Tweet to

FOUNDER
Leave a message for www.facebook.com/ryancberman

~ ʎllɐǝɹƃ uɥoɾ
www.facebook.com/groups/autisminclusivity

28/04/2021

The British actor has beaten stiff competition from Chadwick Boseman and Riz Ahmed to win his second best actor Academy Award for his role in Florian Zeller’s film about a man with dementia

26/04/2021

We ask the New Zealand government to investigate the consequences of all forms of conversion therapy, including conversion therapies that target autistic children, which are often branded as Applie…

04/03/2021

𝕂𝕟𝕠𝕔𝕜, 𝕂𝕟𝕠𝕔𝕜

Dear Mum and Dad,

I actually deeply, authentically, and completely LOVE you Mum and Dad. Really.

Knock, knock?
Who's there?
ME!
There really IS someone home here Mum and Dad.

And I’ll let you into my world - slowly - gently - quietly... but you just gotta remember that bit about “when in Rome...”

Occasionally I see that water trickle from your eyes, that sigh-breath thing you do, the slumped head-in-hands bit - that's you suspecting that because of my rather scarce emotional displays you're having doubts about my love. Don't doubt. You see, I don’t do that sort of emotional display easily. Hugs often hurt. Kisses - yuck. Love is a decision, not mushy stuff for me... and I've long decided for YOU. Both of you. Guess what? You're my world too.

Still, sometimes I detect that you know I love you, but even then don't expect me to say it out loud, that would be a 'horribly inefficient duplication' of feelings... and a painful intense emotional interrupt to my functioning. An interruption to my need to manage internal temperatures, my anxieties, the coursing of powerful and even overwhelming feelings. Saying it out loud is a disabling brain activity. IQ-lowering stuff.

Yet, who do I talk to, stand with, go to, trust, show things to, think aloud to, sit with, cry in front of? No more misinterpretations, please: I am constantly saying "I love you, I love you, I love YOU" - that's all!

I know I seldom seem to listen in the moment. I know, but I do listen very very carefully, even then. That's why I know so much. (Sometimes too much). Draw me a picture - I will photograph it and etch it deeply in white brain cells. Make me a book - I will chant it inside till known off-by-heart. I drink deeply from the well of who you are. I am after all a Repository of Information and Abider of Rules. Especially yours... and I really hear you in a way that, perhaps, no other can.

Don't be fooled by the merchants of glibness, money-makers, snake-oil merchants... for some are nothing short of purveyors of death... you see, I am NOT my behaviour. Never have been. That's just the stained and ripped book cover (someone else did it - not me). You see I have this long story inside me and it sort of encompasses my feelings and thoughts. All that has ever happened to me, all of the indescribable parts of me no one can see merely by "observing my behaviour", how and why I soar and plummet wildly, my thirst for justice and a sense of well-being, the euphoria I feel observing tiny rain drops on velour furred roses - and equally - spotting three ghastly matching weeds stood at attention in a neat row...everything, yes, everything. I do not want "how it all comes out" to define our relationship. I am much much more than that. You AND me both, eh!

I am not an alien, but you can help me to avoid being alienated. First by acknowledging you are weird to me too. Weird as. Except maybe Dad sometimes? Or maybe it’s Mum whose strange at times? My genetic composition didn’t come from outta nowhere y’know. You are even different from others of your own kind! Can we celebrate every single one of those differences together? Let's get out the crystal glasses and decanter kept in the special cupboard (the one I used to be fascinated with)... and drink merrily to that today!

While we're on that point about you being extra weird Dad, Mum, can one of you or both consider getting a diagnosis and publishing it in the newspaper for all to see? Esteem isn’t built on back-patting and soothing affirmations alone. Sometimes we just gotta nail our colours to a very public mast. Sometimes we all gotta.

And if you don't get a diagnosis Dad or Mum, OK, but please leave me to "know" Autism. Do not claim to "know" it like I know it. Your job is to help me. To feel with me and all that stuff, but not to replace me - heh, not even on the local branch of my own autism organization!

You sometimes seriously underestimate the challenges I face most minutes of the day. Challenges created by my associated co-occurring conditions and many other impacts. Sometimes you are blinded by my abilities and forget my conditions’ inherent complexities and all the apparent contradictions and paradoxes in Autism and Asperger's. You sometimes overlook my skill at surmounting these ‘wicked’ challenges, because of my resilience, my strategising and my ability to focus. Keep the balance guys. Please don't trip.

I learnt to spell words to show I am not re****ed. Big words like "incontestable proof" and "paradoxical contradiction" and little words like "shove it" too. I know so much more than is seen in ‘regular’ communication. Communication I find so difficult to use. Communication that never seems enough to portray the ‘meanings’ I want to express - the exactnesses, the sensory connections, the whole of what I feel so outrageously inside.

Sometimes I need a rest from Autism and Autistic. Know what I mean? When I turn 18 and drink a little too much, I'm also gonna wanna be mainly legless for a while. OK? I want the dignity that comes from making similar mistakes to others. So, ah, let go appropriately. But don't let me stay in denial or always hide behind the non-appearance of my condition to satisfy some peer manipulation or any fears - I have some nailing up of colours to do also... eventually.

If you are going to help me do something, please make damned sure that your intention is that I’m gonna do it all my self later on. I embrace autonomy and agency and access... about as much as you let me... once my inertia is overcome. Sink or swim as an adult... it's up to you. Just like it is for every other child in the world too I guess.

Do not pay too much attention to any 'Triad of Impairments' - they are as valuable as zookeeper observations about monkeys at a tea party, well, to me anyway. Being Autistic is much more about perspectives, preferences, porous timekeeping, profound focus, party foods, and being practically beaten up everyday by bullies. Really.

Autistic is about processing information in different parts of the brain than a majority of people and the intensity of every sensory sensation. It’s about ‘seeing’ the beauty found in all the details my brain doesn’t get to filter out. The experts say I’m ‘in my own world’ but without all the brain filters removing so called ‘unnecessary information’, I’m actually left more in the world. It’s the so-called ‘normal’ social-based world construction that I find difficult to be in.

This Autistic spectrum is so much bigger than it looks from the outside. As are autistics. I experience so many things which the ‘experts’ can’t define and don’t quite have words for...yet. It’s a realm of diversity caused by a mind and body wired in a profoundly different way. In ways that dictate my behaviour and leave me suffering at the hands of others not prepared to understand - other people unprepared to get to know who I am on the inside and who hurt me. Really.

Hullo. Mum, Dad, what are you doing to stop Autistics from remaining one of the least recognised, least accepted, least funded disabilities of the modern era? A disability facing a shocking response of multiplied-ignorance, quackery, scams, abandonment, non-listening, filicide... Mum, Dad, could you help the world to know this, please? I want a world to be a full part of. I want my community. I want my culture. I want us all to thrive. I want equality, agency, access, and acceptance for myself and those of my kind.

If I am like a goldfish on the telephone table, flapping and gasping, do not treat my gasps as tardive dyskinesia - with medication. Do not anaesthetize or paralyse my tail, eh... put me back in my goldfish bowl - I was never meant to be a fish out of water! There is an ecology and environment for me, and acceptance is it's beginning.

I am here the way I am here because there is a specialist need, for all sorts, my sort too. Now what's that, eh? Let's find out together. A voyage of discovery, of exploration, further than space. This is gonna be fun.

Don’t grieve for me anymore. Or for yourself and all you’re gonna miss out on because of how I am. If ya gotta grieve, cry for a world that doesn’t understand me. Grieve for everything other people will miss out on by not getting to know me. Better still, join me in this adventure free of grief...it will be fun.

I have decided for you,
and that is all my love,
(till I meet my other half perhaps,
by such time my heart will have grown,
and there never need be any loss felt by anyone,..on the contrary),

Your son,

ʎuuɥoɾ

( Reference Parent+Autistics Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/autisminclusivity )

27/02/2021

In June 2020, following the death of George Floyd, we felt it was important to say something in support of the Black Lives Matters movement. We created a script…

29/01/2020

Autism: Questions to ask your child’s Therapist

Author: Katie Hines

----- TRIGGER WARNING: ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) -----

We get a lot of parents who have their autistic children in some form of behavior therapy. Some are certain it isn't ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) and others are unsure if it is. ABA can masquerade under completely different names. Sometimes even an OT or CBT can use ABA.

I put together a list of questions to ask your child's therapist to find out if the therapy they are in is ABA or styled after ABA. If you find that your child's therapist is answering yes to a lot of these, avoiding giving a full answer, or trying to "explain it away" then you need to do some serious re-evaluation.

If you feel uncomfortable asking these questions that is a red flag. If you are uncomfortable with their answers that is a red flag. Ask your child if some of these things are done to them at therapy. Listen to your child. Validate their thoughts and feelings. Take them seriously.

If after asking these questions you discover that your child is in ABA, remove them from the program immediately and then begin working on recovery with your child. When we know better we do better. If you need more information on why ABA is harmful to autistic children search the term 'ABA' in this group and you will find hundreds of posts with information from studies to personal stories of autistic adults who experienced ABA as children.

Questions to ask your child’s Therapist

1. Do you do any kind of negative reinforcement?

2. Do you use planned ignoring? If so, when and for how long? What stops the planned ignoring?

3. What do you consider attention-seeking behavior?

4. What do you do when a child has a "meltdown"?

5. Do you withhold attention or affection for any reason?

6. Do you do any desensitizing? If so, please explain.

7. Do you use food as a reward or reinforcer?

8. Do you respect bodily autonomy?

9. Do you teach forced eye-contact?

10. What do you consider non-compliance?

11. Do you do Discrete Trial Training?

12. How do you handle hand stimming? Vocal stimming?

13. Do you teach "quiet hands" or "table ready hands"?

14. Is it a goal to extinguish stimming?

15. If not, do you make the child earn the right to stim?

16. Are there any inappropriate stims? If so, which ones and why?

17. Do you follow or incorporate the teachings of the Lovaas Approach?

18. Is a goal to make my autistic child indistinguishable from peers?

19. Is autism something to recover from?

20. Do you teach appropriate play skills? What does that mean?

21. Do you incorporate my child's interests into play?

22. Do you allow a child to say no? If they say no, what happens?

23. Is compliance ever physically enforced?

24. Do you use hand-over-hand? When and how often during the session is this used?

25. How do you handle if a parent wants to stop working on a certain behavior?

26. Do you use anything, like a chair, that doesn't allow a child to get up or get out of?

27. Do you use any other forms of physical restraint?

28. Do you force a child to hug? Are they punished for refusing to hug? Are they rewarded for hugging someone?

29. Do you withhold preferred activities, toys, personal items, etc. until compliance is achieved?

30. Are any loud noises, sudden noises or loud voices used during a session? If so, what is the purpose?

31. Do you tell a child to put on a happy face?

32. How do you handle when a child is sad?

33. Do you use 'time out'? If so, in what way is this used? For how long?

34. Do you use any sensory and/or food aversives?

35. How do you determine or recognize the difference between unwillingness and inability of a child to complete a task or do what is asked of them?

36. How much time is given for a child to process and comply with an instruction?

37. What do you consider scripting? How do you tell the difference between scripting and a legitimate answer/response?

38. Do you reward children by physically touching them? What do you do if they don’t want to be touched?

39. What is the time commitment per day and week? Why do you recommend this time commitment?

40. Do autistic children have any deficits?

41. Do you teach children to imitate behaviors?

(Reprinted with permission. Appeared first on 30 January 2020 in https://www.facebook.com/groups/autisminclusivity)

28/11/2019

The Senate has established a select committee looking into services, support and life outcomes for people w...

21/10/2018

The real page for Autistic Union is located at
https://www.facebook.com/AutisticUnion.
Ensuring it has more than 3,500 "Likes" is your way to know it is genuine :-) Thank you autistics and allies.

Welcome home to Âutistic ûnion. Everyone is welcome here as family, whether on the spectrum or tho