Families of autistics sue over therapy

[chaoticidealism]

Families of autistic kids sue over therapy's elimination

I just read this article this morning. Apparently, some parents have been denied funding for Floortime for their kids. Budget cuts are hitting everyone hard, and autistic kids are no exception.

Their reasoning? Floortime hasn't yet been subjected to a large-scale controlled study.

Hello, Autism

Comments

[mihalis_aya]

[chaoticidealism]

From what I can recall, there were a few early studies that showed ABA worked; but they tended to use autism rating scales to assess the children, and that, in my opinion, gives ABA an advantage because it is designed to target specific things of just the sort that would be found on an autism rating scale. The ABA method has its uses, I think, in areas where things can be broken down into small sub-units and learned by rote; but it is not nearly flexible enough, nor does it lend itself to teaching the most useful skills, for it to be sensible to go applying ABA universally to the education of autistic children.

[druidsbird]

Hi there. I'm not familiar with Floortime, or much else yet as I'm 28 and only got diagnosed AS last year. But in the short time I've been reading up on my Asperger's Syndrome, I've only heard bad things about Autism Speaks. They sound like a bunch of neurotypical eugenecists using mafia techniques to eradicate all of us "poor, wretched autistics." And why? How does our existence hurt the world? What kind of monster would ever abort a fetus just because it's autistic? Who are these effed up psychos? Seriously, what the F*%K?? I'm so very upset by this.

[chaoticidealism]

They're anti-disability bigots plain and simple. And I'm upset, too. Lots of us are. At first it looks like, hey, maybe we can get some research to help us/our kids learn better... and then you realize--wow, they don't actually want to help living autistics. They just want to get rid of autism, and don't seem to care who gets hurt along the way.

It's not that I think genetic research and that sort of thing is useless; the more we know about autism, the better we'll be equipped to diagnose it. It's the overwhelming focus on this sort of research that annoys me, because it leaves real, living autistic people completely out of the picture, with the question of how we learn best and the configuration of the optimum environment for learning still mostly unsolved problems.