"Myyyy son did just fiiine with ABA! No speech until he was five, but thanks to ABA, he's now married and running his own engineering firm and blaaablaablaa!"
Yes, dear, thank you, dear. He probably would have gotten there with a bit of speech therapy or just leaving him be too.
Your son's autism is not the same autism as many nonspeaking autistic people's autism. #ListenToNonspeakers
Also, I can't quite explain why in great detail right now, but you're an ableist cow.
If you can't understand how being 26 years old and spending 25 years deprived of communication whilst treated as someone who is intellectually disabled and unmotivated is torturous, then maybe you need to learn a bit more about empathy first.
This treatment is NOT suitable for someone who is intellectually disabled, nor is it suitable for a nonspeaker who isn't.
As we move to #BanABA, it's becoming clear that we need to educate ourselves and each other about what ABA actually is and what practitioners believe, otherwise people (even autistic people) may be confused about why it's abusive.
This morning one of my autistic friends told me that he attends an autism centre where people are very nice to him, and where they do PBS (a form of ABA) on the nonspeaking residents. They don't do PBS on him, he says.
How can they be abusing anyone if they're such nice people, he asks?
IDEAS ON AUTISTIC ADVOCACY FOR 2022 AND BEYOND T[THREAD]
Religious history provides a number of useful metaphors for what I want to say. These metaphors do not require you to accept the religion, they're more like hooks or mnemonic aids, so I'll be using them outside of their original context.
"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins."
Actually, not all autistic people want inclusive classrooms. Some of us want specialised classes; we just don't want to be infantilised and abused and given an inferior education.
What are some of the usual problems with SEN schools and special ed classes? Here are some of them, explained by a nonspeaking autistic teenager. emmashopebook.com/2016/02/09/can…
Thank you for your interest in our Bad Autism Study. This study is based on previous bad autism studies, but with some enhancements and extra questions to make it worse. If you're a veteran participant in bad autism studies, you'll recognise some old questions.
The Bad Autism Study takes the form of a series of polls over the next few weeks. You can withdraw at any time, but you must answer all the questions.
You will not be compensated for your participation, but your effort may help the researcher get a postgraduate qualification.