Highlight of the Day: 10/5/2011

At my full-time job, it seemed even crazier than usual, but there aren't really any interesting stories to share.  At my part-time job tutoring job however,I had a moment with a student that I would like to share.

I was working with a young girl in middle school, and she was telling me that in a book she is reading, a physically disabled boy was labeled by a doctor as an "idiot", and then hospitalized.  She said, "That is what they called them back in the old days.  Isn't that sad?" 

I agreed with her that is sad, but fortunately, we as a society have gotten a lot better with the way disabled individuals are treated.  She talked about her disabled cousin who is "slow" (I took that to mean he had an intellectual disability), and wondered if he would have been labeled an "idiot" back then (he probably would have).  She then said she wondered if he was autistic. 

With that statement, the conversation took a sudden turn into a new direction.  I was not upset with her as it is quite common for individuals who do not work with the disabled to make that mistake. I explained that an individual with autism doesn't mean that they have an intellectual disability, and that often times, their intelligence is as good as or better than everyone else. 

I didn't spend too long explaining the difference between autism and intellectual disabilities (regretfully, I used the term "mentally challenged with her, which I will try and not do again).  Also, I didn't go into other areas of conversation, such as the fact that many people with autism who do test "mentally retarded" on a normal IQ test may not be so because such tests are not generally suited for the communication issues that go along with autism.  For one, she is in middle school.  And also, we had to get back to the math work we were doing.

Since I am on the topic, here is a great little article by a woman named Sue Robin.  Sue is severely autistic, and back in 2003 (when she was in college), she wrote a short essay about autism myths, including the one that most individual with autism are intellectually disabled.  Here is an exert:

As a really autistic person I am definitely qualified to address the topic of myths about autism and mental retardation.  The first myth I would like to attack is that 75% to 80% of all people with autism are mentally retarded.  Some professionals have reduced that number to 50% because so many of the young children now being diagnosed have Asperger’s Syndrome or High Functioning Autism.  Seventy-five, eighty, or fifty – they are all wrong.  Those of us who don’t speak, or speak echolalically, are counted as retarded.  We also score in the retarded range of I.Q. tests, so it is reasonable that we are assumed to be retarded.  What we have found through use of Facilitated Communication is that these low functioning people have at least normal intelligence with lots of movement problems masking their intellect. 

I am a great example.  Without facilitation I still test as a retarded person because I can’t manipulate objects to pass a non-verbal intelligence test.  When allowed to type, which I can do independently, I can answer the same questions.  For example, when asked to put similar cards together, I couldn’t do it.  But when the cards were labeled A, B, C, D, etc., I was able to type which cards belonged together.  Clearly I understood the task and could answer correctly, but not in the standard way.