16 ms·

Autism and Asperger's Syndrome: The ‘Little Professors’ (2008)

70 points by zeristor 8y ago

zeristor 8y ago
It’s been a while since I’ve read something this good
- nkurz 8y ago
  Yes, it's a surprisingly good article. Dredging through the "conversations" at the bottom, I was surprised to find that the author disclaimed that it was all based on personal experience. I also found mention of the original title: "The Little Professors: A vibrant hue in the Autistic rainbow". Not that it should be changed to this (apparently it was very shortlived) but it's a nice image.
richardhod 8y ago
[2006]
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Do you dismiss the General Theory of Relativity because [1915]? edit: my apologies, I read this as a dismissal but it looks to be an HNism - carry on good sir!
  - detaro 8y ago
    It's not a dismissal. It's common on HN to point out the year if the submitter forgot to include it in the title, both for other readers and so a mod that sees the note can add it to the title.
  - richardhod 8y ago
    No worries. They updated to choose the revised 2008 date instead, which is good enough. It's also interesting to note that it's easy to ascribe negative intent to entirely [helpful and] descriptive statements. I've done this before too. A Jerry Springer Learning moment, perhaps! This is quite a common ape attribute that it is worth practising not doing. Instead: 'if in doubt, assume good and helpful intent' makes for a useful rule of thumb.
    - joejerryronnie 8y ago
      Hear, hear - lesson learned!
nicoburns 8y ago
If you like this, then you may be interested in Pathological Demand Avoidance, an autism profile characterised by better social skills relative to other people with autism but a lot of anxiety around the everyday demands of life. It's increasingly being recognised in the UK, but is only just beginning to spread abroad. (I haven't yet been diagnosed, but I believe that this describes me exceptionally well.) Article: https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx Book: http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU
- zozbot123 8y ago
  Genuine question and not a dismissal - what makes this a form of autism, of all things? Plenty of people who are generally considered NT are indeed anxious, sometimes to an extreme and pathological extent. And it's only natural for anxiety to center on demands of some sort that may have been placed on the individual.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    I have two daughters on the spectrum and this profile of Pathological Demand Avoidance describes their challenges very accurately. There are many factors that go into an autism diagnosis, but to your specific question of how this autism profile differs from an NT with anxiety challenges - I think it's the degree to which the extreme avoidance occurs and the downstream effects. For instance, a request to brush teeth can result in a 3 hour violent meltdown. Attempting to get a 60-pound child from the car into school can result in an injury and visit to the ER for a para-trained, full grown adult. And it's not just once in a while, it is every single demand asked of the child every single day.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    A very reasonable question, and there is still some controversy over that in the medical community. For me, it's because it comes with a whole host of classically autistic symptoms like struggling with eye contact, overload from sensory processing, difficulty understanding social norms, etc, but only at times when I'm stressed or otherwise in a low energy mood. I also had to put a lot of effort into learning other people's social norms - my intuitive ones were different in ways which seem similar to other people on the autism spectrum - but unlike some forms of autism, I have been able to learn the rules of neurotypical people to the point that you probably wouldn't be able to tell I was autistic if you met me. I still find a lot of these rules utterly bizarre.
cultus 8y ago
It turns out Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazis, including referring children for euthanasia. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1
- sctb 8y ago
  That's rather off topic.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ColanR 8y ago
I'm somewhat familiar with 'homeschooling', and I wonder if a lot of the problems described in the article re: social integration could be mitigated with a one-on-one education where a parent is working with the child. Since it seems like a lot of the issues described came out of a (for the child) hostile learning environment. (yes, I know this is not always practical)
- nicoburns 8y ago
  I totally agree with this. I feel like we generally treat children badly (a complete lack of respect, they are not treated as equals), it's just that typical children put up with this. A lot of this 'poor behaviour' is a rational reaction to treatment that an adult would never put up with.
  - selimthegrim 8y ago
    This sounds like grad students and professors.
- cybervegan 8y ago
  50 y/o Aspie here, late diagnosis (about 6 years ago). This is exactly why my wife is home-schooling our kids. My 14 y/o step-daughter (diagnosed with ASD) and our younger 6 and 7 y/o boys, who show some signs. The eldest is going through the process of diagnosis. Step-daughter had serious anxiety problems with school, and was falling too far behind. Schools here in the UK are supposed to make provisions for kids with special needs, but don't have the funding or support to do it. The younger boys were also getting left behind in the classroom... Home ed was the only way to get them back on track. Challenging, but it seems to be working - my wife does most of it. She trained as a teacher, so knows how to assess progress and plan curriculum etc.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  Isolating that "weird kid" with homeschooling is not going to have any kind of positive effect on their social integration. How do you expect someone to even hope to learn about social norms if they aren't exposed to them? Especially when most of these wishy washy, unspoken social rules are learned entirely through observation and practice? Yes, you need coaching, but the bottom line is that no one is going to pick up on social norms to the point of "passing" without being exposed to them regularly. Unfortunately that means lots of fruitless anxiety in those of us who cannot learn such norms, but one must understand that avoidance is not a valid solution to the core problem of social difficulty.

70 points by zeristor 8y ago

zeristor 8y ago

It’s been a while since I’ve read something this good

nkurz 8y ago
Yes, it's a surprisingly good article. Dredging through the "conversations" at the bottom, I was surprised to find that the author disclaimed that it was all based on personal experience. I also found mention of the original title: "The Little Professors: A vibrant hue in the Autistic rainbow". Not that it should be changed to this (apparently it was very shortlived) but it's a nice image.

richardhod 8y ago

[2006]

joejerryronnie 8y ago
Do you dismiss the General Theory of Relativity because [1915]? edit: my apologies, I read this as a dismissal but it looks to be an HNism - carry on good sir!
- detaro 8y ago
  It's not a dismissal. It's common on HN to point out the year if the submitter forgot to include it in the title, both for other readers and so a mod that sees the note can add it to the title.
- richardhod 8y ago
  No worries. They updated to choose the revised 2008 date instead, which is good enough. It's also interesting to note that it's easy to ascribe negative intent to entirely [helpful and] descriptive statements. I've done this before too. A Jerry Springer Learning moment, perhaps! This is quite a common ape attribute that it is worth practising not doing. Instead: 'if in doubt, assume good and helpful intent' makes for a useful rule of thumb.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    Hear, hear - lesson learned!

nicoburns 8y ago

If you like this, then you may be interested in Pathological Demand Avoidance, an autism profile characterised by better social skills relative to other people with autism but a lot of anxiety around the everyday demands of life. It's increasingly being recognised in the UK, but is only just beginning to spread abroad. (I haven't yet been diagnosed, but I believe that this describes me exceptionally well.) Article: https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx Book: http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU http://amzn.eu/d/fPCq5LU

zozbot123 8y ago
Genuine question and not a dismissal - what makes this a form of autism, of all things? Plenty of people who are generally considered NT are indeed anxious, sometimes to an extreme and pathological extent. And it's only natural for anxiety to center on demands of some sort that may have been placed on the individual.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  I have two daughters on the spectrum and this profile of Pathological Demand Avoidance describes their challenges very accurately. There are many factors that go into an autism diagnosis, but to your specific question of how this autism profile differs from an NT with anxiety challenges - I think it's the degree to which the extreme avoidance occurs and the downstream effects. For instance, a request to brush teeth can result in a 3 hour violent meltdown. Attempting to get a 60-pound child from the car into school can result in an injury and visit to the ER for a para-trained, full grown adult. And it's not just once in a while, it is every single demand asked of the child every single day.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  A very reasonable question, and there is still some controversy over that in the medical community. For me, it's because it comes with a whole host of classically autistic symptoms like struggling with eye contact, overload from sensory processing, difficulty understanding social norms, etc, but only at times when I'm stressed or otherwise in a low energy mood. I also had to put a lot of effort into learning other people's social norms - my intuitive ones were different in ways which seem similar to other people on the autism spectrum - but unlike some forms of autism, I have been able to learn the rules of neurotypical people to the point that you probably wouldn't be able to tell I was autistic if you met me. I still find a lot of these rules utterly bizarre.

cultus 8y ago

It turns out Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazis, including referring children for euthanasia. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1

sctb 8y ago
That's rather off topic.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ColanR 8y ago

I'm somewhat familiar with 'homeschooling', and I wonder if a lot of the problems described in the article re: social integration could be mitigated with a one-on-one education where a parent is working with the child. Since it seems like a lot of the issues described came out of a (for the child) hostile learning environment. (yes, I know this is not always practical)

nicoburns 8y ago
I totally agree with this. I feel like we generally treat children badly (a complete lack of respect, they are not treated as equals), it's just that typical children put up with this. A lot of this 'poor behaviour' is a rational reaction to treatment that an adult would never put up with.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  This sounds like grad students and professors.
cybervegan 8y ago
50 y/o Aspie here, late diagnosis (about 6 years ago). This is exactly why my wife is home-schooling our kids. My 14 y/o step-daughter (diagnosed with ASD) and our younger 6 and 7 y/o boys, who show some signs. The eldest is going through the process of diagnosis. Step-daughter had serious anxiety problems with school, and was falling too far behind. Schools here in the UK are supposed to make provisions for kids with special needs, but don't have the funding or support to do it. The younger boys were also getting left behind in the classroom... Home ed was the only way to get them back on track. Challenging, but it seems to be working - my wife does most of it. She trained as a teacher, so knows how to assess progress and plan curriculum etc.
fromthestart 8y ago
Isolating that "weird kid" with homeschooling is not going to have any kind of positive effect on their social integration. How do you expect someone to even hope to learn about social norms if they aren't exposed to them? Especially when most of these wishy washy, unspoken social rules are learned entirely through observation and practice? Yes, you need coaching, but the bottom line is that no one is going to pick up on social norms to the point of "passing" without being exposed to them regularly. Unfortunately that means lots of fruitless anxiety in those of us who cannot learn such norms, but one must understand that avoidance is not a valid solution to the core problem of social difficulty.