I am 25 and just learning to drive. When I was 16, I took driver's ed twice and failed it twice. Some of the professionals who are supposed to be helping me seemed to think that this meant I might never learn to drive, because I had had a try at it, and didn't learn. But a few months ago, I took an assessment and was judged to be capable of ( Read more... )

Even if autism had no positive aspects, it wouldn't be right to try to cure it, if you define "cure" as "make an autistic person indistinguishable from a neurotypical person ( Read more... )

People, including autistic people, change as time goes on, and are influenced by their environments. New neural connections are made and strengthened when they are used.

Treatment can create an environment which causes the autistic brain to express itself and fulfill its needs in a different way--often in a way that makes the child look less ( Read more... )

I have heard people accusing the Autistic Pride movement of saying that autistic children should not be treated. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Saying "My child is special. I love him the way he is," does not mean that you would not help him to be more comfortable and teach him what he needs to live a better life. Intervention must simply ( Read more... )

If you don't teach a child why he's doing something--other than to get a treat--then he won't understand the purpose of that behavior. Those treats are only external motivation; and if external motivation isn't eventually replaced by internal motivation--such as a child's own sense of accomplishment--then the behavior gets extinguished as soon as ( Read more... )

CBT is designed for people who have the ability to understand themselves, how they think, and how those thoughts affect their actions. The basic premise is that the therapist helps you to understand those things, and then you can use that understanding to change your thoughts, and then ultimately to change your actions. It's pretty good for anxiety ( Read more... )

These are the diary entries I made while I was in the mental health ward of a local hospital for nine days, in the next to last year of my thirteen-year self-injury habit. I was admitted after a self-inflicted injury required stitches in the emergency room. What follows is mostly unedited, except spelling and grammar corrections and names, which ( Read more... )

Obviously there are autistic people more affected than me; and I can't know what it's like to be an autistic person who does not use language. All I can say is that I can understand it just a little better than NTs.

But my existence as an autistic person without langauge delay does not mean that autistics who don't use language are automatically ( Read more... )