Managing Autism - A Personal View

For a long time autism has been a dirty and misunderstood word.  Even today, for many people, the mention of the word autism triggers alarm bells and starts them thinking “lost cause”.  It doesn’t help that media and society often portrays negative images, and that most people only know autism as ‘Rainman’, disconnected and uncommunicative children, or out of control youths that destroy property and family relationships with their violence and aggravation.  With around 1 in every 160 children being diagnosed with the disorder, it’s time to remove the stigma attached to autism.

People with autism are not some special breed of people that need to be branded and shoved off in a corner somewhere.  Like anyone else, people with autism are beautiful and amazing beings that we could all learn a lot from. They only become people with autism when we start comparing certain aspects of their processing and functioning with that of a perceived “typical person”.  In fact, maybe we should change the word we use to describe autism from ’disorder’ to ‘difference’.  This puts everyone on a level playing field, as we are all ultimately different and unique in our own way.  We all have talents and we all have strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps it’s time that the gifts people with autism bring to our lives be more widely recognised.  Starting today, try removing the comparisons from all things in life - try seeing things (and autism) for simply as they are.  Think of the flow on effect!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under Reflections on Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.