WHAT DO WE WANT AUTISTIC KIDS TO BE?

Peter Wynn
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

Eight years ago, I caught up with my second cousin, who told me how he is left-handed and how the principal of his primary school told his teacher to cane him to make him use his right-hand. His teacher refused to do so. This was in the 1940s, and sadly, that was an all too common experience for that era.

Only yesterday, I wrote a piece about why ABA will never work and received an angry response from a member of a group in which I posted it that he wanted to send his kids to ABA to get them off the spectrum. My response was, you won't get your kids off the spectrum. Yes, you may be able to lessen anger issues to teaching them how to use a letterboard if they are non-verbal, or, by resolving sensory triggers, make them more placid, but that's working around autism, not making a person less autistic.

I was just saying to my father, how, when I was a kid, and we went to visit my maternal grandparents, I used to line folding chairs up and make out they were bus seats. I also can remember, if I had toy cars, spinning the wheels on my hands or lining them up in a set manner. Another favourite toy I had involved a set of plastic pegs of different colours and I used to line them up in colour. My brother, however, preferred a different way of playing, and used to become frustrated with me.

I can remember, when I was sixteen, and had to prepare for high school work experience, I needed to wear slacks and a casual shirt and leather shoes. At this point, my interest in other cultures had reached a higher level, and I wanted slacks from China, which I got, and I can remember, also in that year, I was happy when winter came, as when I went to school, I had my locally made uniform, but my jumper was made in China, so I felt happy having an item from another country I was interested in on me. For weekend life, I didn't go out much, but I liked having a Chinese garment and a local garment, which I did most of the time.

An autistic child will no more become a neuro-typical adult than a male child will turn into a doorknob. Their interests may or may not change, as they get older, but they will grow into an autistic adult. What all parents of autistic kids should aim to have them develop into is not second rate neuro-typical people, NOR, as some parents of kids who are gay want them to be, unhappily going through the motions of heteronormality, but adults who are confident in their identity. Above all else, neuro-typical parents of autistic kids must NEVER, and I mean NEVER, tell their kids to do is grow up. We are all maturing at different rates and maturity will not come until it's ready. It matters not whether you child is crawling at five months (my brother was crawling before he was six months old) or ten months (I didn't crawl until this age, and could only stand in my cot at that age, and didn't walk until I was fourteen and a half months old, my brother walked at nine months).

Peter Wynn

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Diagnosed with autism at 35. Explained a lifetime of difference.