Autistic Adults are Not Large Children

Published April 16, 2009 @ 10:32AM PT

At the misguided career workshop (told you it gave me unfortunate fodder for many a post to come), the tendency of some to treat adults with disabilities as though they are children was particularly excruciating.

"Tell us about your employment situation," the speaker encouraged one of the other folks on the spectrum present.

The person talked about how annoyed he was that he was stuck in a menial manual labor job when he had just graduated with a degree in psychology.

While explaining his frustration at having his real skills ignored by a system that refused to see him as capable of more than stocking shelves, the audience was silent; when he mentioned his graduation, everyone clapped and whispered, such an inspiration!

Later, workshop organizers told me how amazed and inspired they were by my ability to have a professional writing job. Much clapping, oh yes, every time I said anything at all. The clapping was all for "wow look what that really impaired-looking person can do," not for the content of my communications, like the need to consider employment supports that aren't visual for some.

"The clapping is very demeaning," I tried to explain to blank stares. "You would not clap if an adult who didn't have a disability told you this same information." More blank stares.

The final blow came when I realized my name card said "Dora Raymaker Young Adult" on it. I am nearly 40.

Treating adults with developmental disabilities like small children is a big problem. Shapiro (No Pity p. 191) describes the difference at a self-advocacy conference between a self-advocate run session on flirting versus a session on rape run by the director of the local rape crisis center who wasn't used to interacting with people with intellectual or developmental disabilities,

Of the two seminars, the one on flirting succeeds precisely because it starts from an assumption that the people in the room are adults and, like others of their age, are interested in flirting, dating, and sex. The antirape session misfires because the moderator assumes, correctly, that the participants are vulnerable but incorrectly that their vulnerability and retardation make them children.

...Thirty adults have come to the antirape seminar because they desperately want to exorcise their own bad experiences and to learn how to protect themselves. But the moderator does not address the personal tragedies of real-life adults who have had horrible experiences, instead she keeps everything safely in the third person of role playing. She shows a video of elementary school children being approached by caricature-evil child abusers with arched eyebrows and smarmy smiles.

There is a balance to respect: Autistic adults may need support in some traditionally "adult" areas, but that does not mean that we are children who need others to wow over mundane accomplishments while ignoring our real skills, ignoring our ability to contribute in meaningful ways to adult discussions, or dismissing our adult experiences, perspective, and needs. It does not mean that materials and activities developed for educating small children are appropriate or useful to us. Or that we find being treated like a child any less offensive than any other adult would.

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Dora, thanks for continuing to educate. I share your blogs on facebook and help pave the way for my seven year old with autism to have a better future.

Posted by Rebecca Billings on 04/16/2009 @ 11:30AM PT
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@Dora. Although I am a NT(hope that is correct) I have found the whole career workshop for the disable upsetting.

I have attended these workshops. Here are some observations etc. I have gotten from the experience. You can't just hand people information and expect them to have success. That is frustration learning. You need to take them from an instructional level(person has some skills) and get them to a mastery level where they have practice and overcome mistakes with strategies of success.

1. If the speaker is inspirational and you sense that they are really committed to helping people get jobs, then you are in the right place. The speaker puts her heart into helping you. She wants you to be successful. Usually they have a sibling with a disability. Ask what successes they have had with helping people get jobs.

1A. My son's DVR (Dept of Vocational Rehab) had an autistic brother. She taught about her brother and the DVR. She was a god-send. She made sure we knew all about DVR and how to work the system. She pointed out Dos and Don'ts. Although my son refuse services we learned alot.

2. Some speakers have attitude problems. It is their attitude about helping people like you. I have seen this attitude at some of the agencies I have worked at. Basically they resent the cost of the disable to society. Resources should go to those who can do more.

3. Some speakers go thru the motions and put the least amount of effort in their job. Watching a cartoon movie of elementary school kids is an example.

3A. I have worked with people who have no real world experience when it comes to their job. And they don't want to have that experience. My boss at the community home for autistic/mentally retarded refused to be near these people. She like doing the paperwork and evaluating people she never got close to.

4. If a person is clapping and it is stupid you can tell they don't have the real world experience of working with the disable people. There are people treating others as children and that is demeaning. Many times I have seen people not very interested in their job. What a waste of resources for the disable.

4A. I was pretty upset at a One Stop who had an autistic adult at the workshop. He had training/degree in paralegal. His mentor said basically at the workshop that she has tried to help him for 3-4 months and blamed him for not getting a job. Basically she was just handing him information. She wasn't willing to role play interviews and give feedback. He kept coming back to her because he didn't know what else to do.

5. Is there valuable information presented and handed out that would help the person getting a job.

6. The fact they were amazed that you were a writer says a lot. They have low expectations of autistic people abilities. Your presence at the workshop educated these people. How can they help you find a job with low expectations?

6A. My blind roommates in college were getting ready to graduate with a degree in education and the other one a degree in social work. At that time blind people worked in match factories. They got no help from the college. They were told they weren't qualified for anything even though they had degrees. They were thinking about getting a match factory job.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

We have to have the right expectations of success.

Posted by L I on 04/16/2009 @ 12:23PM PT
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I've been told (by people who obviously didn't know what they were talking about) that the ability to write coherently must clearly indicate that a given person isn't autistic or on the spectrum. It isn't just that there's a sense that those with developmental differences are children, because teenagers are technically children, but that they're somewhere akin to toddlers.

Anyway, loads of misconceptions out there.

Posted by Natasha Chart on 04/16/2009 @ 01:42PM PT
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Nearly forty eh, I wish I was nearly forty again. To anyone older you are a young adult and I am probably a mere whippersnapper to a centenarian :)

Oh well I guess the danger is in getting too old that one enters ones second childhood to quote Shakespeare. I am probably still at the justice stage seeing as how my clothes do seem to shrink.

Posted by Laurentius Rex on 04/16/2009 @ 02:34PM PT
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I found this interesting and it did make me think. I have many times thought that impaired people in this way were children. Sometimes no offese is meant by this behavior but it is good for people to be made more aware of these realities.

Posted by Kristin Sisson on 04/16/2009 @ 03:51PM PT
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I have been quite shocked in the difference in attitude towards my son since leaving school and joining the adult world.
Demeaning is putting it mildly!

Posted by Casdok Shrek on 04/17/2009 @ 01:23AM PT
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Clearly, the presenters/sponsors never learned the most basic and important maxim (to me anyway):

PRESUME COMPETENCE

I used to tell my son's IEP team that all the time. They thought it was wonderful to create a goal about putting pegs in a board when I was asking them to write goals about dressing himself.

BTW, I applaud your *content* very often; you make me think a lot!

Posted by Niksmom . on 04/17/2009 @ 08:22AM PT
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What's funny to me about what you say is that I've mangaged to (albieit sloppily) master the dresses self task, but I still can't do the peg board test LOL

Thanks for the comment--knowing something I wrote is usesful or makes someone think is the best compliment I can get!

Posted by Dora Raymaker on 04/17/2009 @ 09:43AM PT
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Which reminds me of another issue... people not getting that the relative "hardness" of tasks may not be the same for the person they're working with as it is for themselves.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the IEP team thinks that "dresses self" is a more advanced skill than "puts pegs in a board in a certain way" and is holding off on teaching it for just that reason.

I see this in job-related stuff all the time. No, food service and custodial jobs are not "easier" jobs than software development for some people-- quite the opposite!

Posted by Cody Boisclair on 04/18/2009 @ 09:12AM PT
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.