This is probably a stupid question but, has your staff or those that worked with you when you were in an institution ever been told the things that you mention here? If so, did they listen to you, or arrogantly dismiss your testimony as if you didn’t know what you were talking about?

Any one reading this post, and this whole blog for that matter, should be able to understand autism better and definately stop trying to “normalize” autistics, but rather appreciate them for who they are and how they do fit in, just like everybody else.

Thanks for this article. Thanks for this blog. As the father of an autistic daughter, this really helps me to understand more about how she might be experiencing things. I say might, because when you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person.

I had a history teacher once who said the funniest things. I would collapse into laughter, and she would get cross.

But I have changed it so the most obvious factual errors are gone.

The reason for a preference for a lack of an article, is among other things that I have never told my entire life story online, and don’t really want to start now. Anyone doing research is likely to misinterpret parts of what I have said (in part because there are things I intentionally, for privacy reasons, don’t talk about in public), and Wikipedia is not the place for original research anyway.

I really would rather it not be there though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Baggs

Please do check it and add anything interesting to it. Or get your friends and supporters to.

Also more info about the Autistics.org Voices campaign

Unfortunately, all too often I find myself trying to make him “do what he is supposed to” and not do what he “shouldn’t”. Many times I catch and stop myself, sometimes I don’t. We all bring to bear our own perspective on things, and as a parent this is especially true. (I have the same challenges with my non-autistic teen. And he faces the same pressures, though obviously not in the same context.)

One of my first posts on this blog addressed the value of differences, see The unreasonable man.

Which all leads to an impression on my part that I’m not writing very well. But I’m not sure — when the writing is still grammatical and vaguely connected to what I mean, at least — how much of that is subjective on my part, as in “writing is much more difficult today” rather than “the quality of the writing is significantly decreased”. (I do think there’s a difference in the quality, but I’m not sure how much it shows up to a reader who doesn’t know what I was thinking to begin with.)