This idea that people with intellectual disabilities cannot learn is a very dangerous idea and it leads to us being harmed. I think it is important to autistics with intellectual disabilities that we get the support to learn.
Functioning labels do not always relate to people’s real skills and can be based on hurtful stereotypes about autistic people. They also assume that people’s skills cannot change over time.
Spectrum Disordered www.facebook.com/asdisordered We’ve all heard or experienced horror stories about accessing services and supports. Often the idea of receiving services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), including autism, conjures up images of institutions—visions of Willowbrook. Or, ideas of what is “optimal” for us look like segregated lives, or “intentional” communities where the
Kerima Çevik intersecteddisability.blogspot.com theautismwars.blogspot.com Kerima Çevik, photo courtesy the author [image: Gray haired Afro-Latina woman next to a windowshade, looking to the left.] [Content note: Contains descriptions of involuntary medical procedure, including sterilization, on Black and disabled people.] I am trying to plow my way through Judith Newman’s autism parenting book To Siri with Love: A
Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com [image description: a movie poster for Life Animated. The movie title is in red on a blue background. The top half of Owen Suskind’s head is at the bottom of the image and line drawings of figures from Disney animated movies surround him.] Last week I went with friends to the Portland
Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com We don’t have enough good movies about autism. This is a fact. And by “good” I don’t mean “struggles pluckily and inspires non-disabled people to be grateful for their own lives” or “overcomes their disabilities thereby inspiring non-disabled people to try harder in their own lives.” I mean we don’t
J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.” That’s a mouthful to say, let alone hear. It was explained as a type of autism. That was 16 years ago. I did not have the Internet at home. There was no Google for further research. Dustin Hoffman had provided my only
The stated goals of yesterday’s Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Full Committee Hearing: “1 in 88 Children: A Look into the Federal Response to the Rising Rates of Autism” were to “…get a clearer picture on what is being done, what questions still need to be answered and what needs exist for those children, adults
Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com Most parents fret about their kids’ hygiene and how it is affected by factors like circumcision, tooth brushing, or toilet training. Said fretting escalates when the kids in question have a disability, but hygiene doesn’t have to be the skunk cabbage in the parenting bouquet — not if parents do
Diane Lightfoot www.unitedresponse.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-work/supported-living United Response was set up in 1973 to provide a service based on supported living principles to a handful of adults with learning disabilities in a house in West Sussex. At the time, most such adults usually found themselves placed in institutions, isolated from the rest of society, with few rights and
