Black-and-white photo of an autistic child receiving an electric shock as part of ABA therapy.

On ABA: They Hate You. Yes, You.

When people claim that “cure autism now” and the disease model and the Judge Rotenberg Center are not about me, well I beg to differ. The only reason they’re not about me is that I’m old and verbal enough to not be vulnerable to that kind of abuse. Autistic people do not get abused [and/or put in ABA therapy] because they are low-functioning, they get abused because they do weird things.

Should Parents Tell Employers About Their Child’s Special Needs?

Anonymous Kids with special needs have, well, special needs. These needs not only present my kid with a lot of challenges; sometimes they mean I need to take unscheduled time off work. (It’s just how it is.) Aside from the time I need for standard IEPs, evaluations, school visits, and the like, my kid has also spent a fair amount of time in the hospital. My kid isn’t the type you leave and say, “be nice to the nurses.” You just don’t do that to a minimally verbal kid with intellectual disability. When my kid is in the hospital a parent has to be there. Which means no work during that time. When my kid was in the hospital, keeping my manager in the loop was not my main priority. I thought leaving a message on his voicemail, such as, “I’m in an ambulance with my son. It’s two AM…

What Happens When You Devalue People

N. M. Silber extemporarysanity.wordpress.com We want April — Autism Acceptance Month — to matter, to help further acceptance and understanding of autistic experiences, happiness, and rights for autistic people of all ages and abilities. We will be publishing your Autism Acceptance posts and pictures all month long. If you want to participate, contact us at thinkingautism at gmail dot com. -TPGA Editors Trigger Warning: Situations described could cause a stress related response in individuals who have been restrained, especially those overcoming PTSD. What happens when a group of people is systematically devalued? Society is given permission to treat them differently. They are denied organ transplants and medical care. When they are murdered people empathize with their killers. When they are unable to force themselves to look and act and react to a world that they experience and perceive differently than the masses they are mistreated, locked in closets, restrained, shocked…

Disney and Autism Speaks: When Criticizing Corporations Is Necessary

Brenda Rothman mamabegood.blogspot.com In my recent post about my autistic son not being accommodated at Disney World, some people responded with a vehement defense of Disney. It’s almost as if they themselves felt attacked. The same thing happened in the comments of Lydia Brown’s post about Autism Speaks. Neither Disney nor Autism Speaks will suffer from our criticisms. People will still visit and enjoy Disney. People will still donate, work for, and receive services from Autism Speaks. But those corporations, their goals, employees, and supporters can harm others. The readers who respond defensively aren’t really defending the corporations. Maybe they’re defending the kind employees they’ve met, like the Disney cast member who went out of her way to help their child, to make him happier, more comfortable, make their experience easier. Or the Autism Speaks parent volunteer who has an adorable autistic child, who loves her child more than life,…