I've read a lot of articles and discussions and comment threads on the subject of how to best help autistic spectrum kids and adults lead the best lives possible. Often in these discussions, I see controversy and miscommunication, especially when it comes to what it means to "accept" an autistic person, or to accept autism/disability/difference in a more general sense.
One common misconception, which I think is relevant here, is that "acceptance" means "doing nothing" or "leaving someone to rot", etc. When that isn't the case at all.
I'm considerably less scruffy these days than I was at the age of twelve. I'm glad of this. It definitely feels better from a sensory standpoint, for one thing.
But it didn't happen overnight. I didn't get yelled at by my teacher and suddenly, magically obtain proper grooming skills. It took many months of patient help from my parents, who were able to break what had seemed like a vague mass of arbitrary activities into specific, functional tasks that made sense before I eventually obtained more or less appropriate grooming skills. (I went through a period of hyper-obsessive grooming in eighth grade that entailed carrying a hairbrush around and brushing my hair every ten minutes or so, but over time I backed off on this and by high school I had established a reasonable enough routine.)
So, again, I'm glad things turned out the way they did in that regard. I like being and feeling fresh and neat. But I'm pretty darn sure my "good outcome" in that sense was largely due to the efforts of people like my dad, and my paternal grandmother, and a few other people who in their own various ways managed to see what sort of creature I was and deal with that on its own terms. In other words, regardless of what she thought, it was not due to my sixth grade teacher that I managed to "improve" in certain respects.
I remember after sixth grade at some point, possibly a few years later, I ran into that teacher again, and she made a comment like, "Well, I certainly helped straighten you out, didn't I?" And I remember just being really baffled by that.
While that confrontation with her did "shock" me into a greater level of self-awareness than I'd had previously, it also made me really hate myself for a while. Being told that I was lazy and contrary and self-important and rude (due to not only my poor self-care skills but my classroom performance, behavior, interests, and language patterns) while not having the insight or communication skills to argue -- well, let's just say it was pretty demoralizing.
I am certain the whole thing could have been approached in some other way, a way that didn't entail shaming and yelling. And furthermore, it could have been approached in a way that didn't pathologize practically everything about me. Particularly painful was hearing that my tendency to get really interested in certain subjects (during that period in my life it was Star Wars) was a sign of my being "too lazy to learn about anything else" -- that made me feel guilty for being interested in things.
Sometimes people do have issues that really need to be addressed, which may be related to their disability/difference. I definitely needed help learning appropriate self-care skills growing up, and even as an adult I've needed help with things like remembering to eat enough actual food and drink enough water to avoid dehydration. I don't dispute this, and I don't think that nothing should have been done.
It's just that...as I see it, being accepted as a person means that you have been acknowledged as real, and as actually being the sort of creature you are. It doesn't mean being seen as somehow "special" or "better" than other people, nor does it entail being seen as categorically "less than" other people.
It just means that, when someone looks at you, they aren't constantly comparing you to an abstraction, whether that abstraction happens to be an idealized or demonized ghost-version of you.
When a person can see another person realistically and clearly, they might certainly see areas where she needs help, but they aren't going to treat her like a circle that needs to be made square, or as raw materials to be thrown into a blender and reconstituted into a more convenient shape.
Monday, March 23, 2009
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7 comments:
As someone interested in primary education, I LOVE this post. It isn't just autistic kids that wind up getting yelled at when more gentle coaxing is more appropriate (though they probably tend to get it worse). ADD kids, or any kids, really, with questionable habits SO OFTEN wind up getting screamed at instead of patiently being shown the right thing to do, which is both cruel and totally ineffective. The primary school system often treads a line between "ineffectively authoritarian" and "emotionally abusive" (this is obviously not true of all schools, but it is something I think schools need to make a conscious decision to avoid rather than assuming it'll work itself out).
isabel: Indeed, I don't intend this kind of writing to be specific to autism or anything; it applies to pretty much anyone who doesn't fit into a tidy little convenient box. And I wasn't even diagnosed on the spectrum officially yet in 6th grade -- I was just figured to be a "weird kid with issues".
Acceptance is the opposite of rejection. It's a completely separate issue from whether we need to learn new skills, which, of course, everyone does.
I'm not sure it is even necessary to perceive someone's real characteristics in order to be accepting. A lack of understanding is not the same as a rejection. There are plenty of things about other people that I can't figure out, but I accept that they are equal members of the human species and are not obliged to behave in a way that would be more understandable to me.
Sometimes I think acceptance can simply mean giving another person the benefit of the doubt.
abfh wrote:
I'm not sure it is even necessary to perceive someone's real characteristics in order to be accepting. A lack of understanding is not the same as a rejection. There are plenty of things about other people that I can't figure out, but I accept that they are equal members of the human species and are not obliged to behave in a way that would be more understandable to me.
Sometimes I think acceptance can simply mean giving another person the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, I would agree with this. I do think that having a few people around who do understand you (in addition to understanding yourself to some extent), is useful and very nice, but you're right -- accepting a person is more about the way you choose to treat them rather than about what you know about them.
I do, however, think a lot of non-acceptance stems from a situation where someone thinks they know and understand someone else when in fact they're looking at an illusory, imaginary version of that person (based on their own fears, dreams, prejudices, etc.). So when people do that, they are in effect "not be seeing the real person", which is sort of where I got the notion of "seeing the real person" being integral to acceptance from. However I definitely see your point.
To some extent, whenever we look at another person we're making assumptions and projecting our own prejudices. I agree with you that this causes a lot of non-acceptance, but it is also unavoidable, at least until humans evolve to the point of developing telepathy or something similar.
Acceptance requires enough self-awareness to understand that our impressions of others, as seen through our personal filters, are not entirely accurate.
abfh: "Acceptance requires enough self-awareness to understand that our impressions of others, as seen through our personal filters, are not entirely accurate."
I've long thought that first impressions were dramatically over-rated, which in some interactions has led to me not caring about them in the slightest. And this has helped me to better develop my sense of humor.
Speaking of funny, remember that scene in 'Anger Management', where Jack Nicholson asks Adam Sandler to tell him "who he is?" :P
I think you raise an interesting point about the difference between *telling someone to change* and *showing her how.* Adults often seem to assume that if they tell a kid to clean up, say, she can. But sometimes you have to explicitly say how often to wash, change clothes, etc. I had a master class with a pianist once who believed that there's a reason (posture or motion) for every mistake, and if you understand the mistake you won't make it again. It was a revelatory idea. I spent my childhood being told "don't do that again" (usually clumsiness or losing things) but I had no idea how not to do it again.
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