VoxOrion wrote:I wonder why Asbergers Syndrome is suddenly the pop-culture thing du jour. There's that movie about the AS guy, the President from BSG was playing an Asbergers person on one of the medical dramas, and the new Parenthood show has parents dealing with a kid who has AS. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. I also heard that the term is part of teen slang and stuff "You're going all Asbergers on me", "that's my Asbergers"... I guess it's "interesting" to see people who aren't... neurotypical (man, I hate that term) in functional "normal" lives as opposed to folks who are on the full blown autism spectrum?

Mark Haddon's The Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nighttime kicked it off over here back in 2003. I think (with novels at least), it allows for a very particular kind of voice, at the same time allowing the narrator to be exceedingly inquisitive and at the same time blankly uncomprehending. You can creep a lot of stuff up on the reader with that kind of device, not least what's going on with the narrator. Also allows the writer to question what's going on with accepted norms of behaviour.

Them literary fiction guys don't always have aliens to plonk in their stories. That's the problem.

TenuredVulture wrote:

The Dude wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Isn't Aspergers (like a lot these kinds of things) essentially a constellation of symptoms? If I'm right about that, then isn't also the case the a lot so-called syndromes really just mean some challenges coping with certain expectations. It's only a disorder because society expects certain responses. ADHD for instance only really emerges in large numbers when schools start expecting 7 year olds to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day. I can't do that now. But if the child were say helping the family plant crops or hunt rabbits for dinner or even feed chickesn, there wouldn't be any reason to to diagnose the child as anything.

I know there's a spectrum here, and some people really cannot function without sustained interventions. On the other hand, do we really want to diagnose every personality quirk that someone may have as a syndrome?

It's definitely a lot more than a personality quirk, though.

ADHD is much more than kids not being able to sit in class for 8 hours. The symptoms emerge before kids are even in actual school

All I'm saying is much of what we might consider "mental illness" has a lot to do with social structure and the ensuing expectations.

oohhh, hark at the reincarnated voice of rd laing.

Yeah, well, I think Laing might have been on to something.

Go see some of the kids at Episcopal hospital

The Dude wrote:Go see some of the kids at Episcopal hospital

I'm not arguing that there aren't real disorders, and I'm far from even suggesting that people aren't really suffering. Finally, I am not arguing that people who are suffering do not deserve treatment.

What I am suggesting is that in the rush to pathologize people who for one reason or another find themselves at odds with a very particular way in which society operates and what is deemed normal, we aren't responding to the suffering in the most effective and compassionate way.

The most obvious case for what I'm talking about is homosexuality, which at one time was listed as a mental illness.

Yeah, i agree there are certain examples of that. but we were talking about a couple well-known conditions specifically, on the flip side of your argument, and they were ignored for years

penis nicknames: thread worthy?

All I'm saying is if ADHD, for instance, is a spectrum, and kid's lives are more and more structured, and schools are limiting recess and cutting back on PE, then it's plausible that kids who at one time would have been ok in school are now medicated. Sometimes, I wonder if we aren't far too narrow in how we describe "neurotypical".

All I'm saying is if ADHD, for instance, is a spectrum, and kid's lives are more and more structured, and schools are limiting recess and cutting back on PE, then it's plausible that kids who at one time would have been ok in school are now medicated. Sometimes, I wonder if we aren't far too narrow in how we describe "neurotypical".

The reason I wonder about all this is that a few weeks ago, I was looking at a list of characteristics associated with autism, and out of something like 15, I had several of them. Now, I don't think I'm autistic, but if someone wanted to "diagnose" me, I'm sure they could come up with something.

I know, already said I agree with you in certain instances. just not autism/asberger's or lots of mental illness

again, these things are often diagnosed before schooling begins, b/c there are definite symptoms. not just bored kids

Here's a learning opportunity kids... never ever tell a parent of a kid on the autism spectrum that their kid doesn't really have a problem.

Wizlah wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:I wonder why Asbergers Syndrome is suddenly the pop-culture thing du jour. There's that movie about the AS guy, the President from BSG was playing an Asbergers person on one of the medical dramas, and the new Parenthood show has parents dealing with a kid who has AS. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. I also heard that the term is part of teen slang and stuff "You're going all Asbergers on me", "that's my Asbergers"... I guess it's "interesting" to see people who aren't... neurotypical (man, I hate that term) in functional "normal" lives as opposed to folks who are on the full blown autism spectrum?

Mark Haddon's The Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nighttime kicked it off over here back in 2003. I think (with novels at least), it allows for a very particular kind of voice, at the same time allowing the narrator to be exceedingly inquisitive and at the same time blankly uncomprehending. You can creep a lot of stuff up on the reader with that kind of device, not least what's going on with the narrator. Also allows the writer to question what's going on with accepted norms of behaviour.

Them literary fiction guys don't always have aliens to plonk in their stories. That's the problem.

I just read that, which also contributes to Vox's feeling like AS is all over the place. Damn, that book is depressing.

With regards to TV's query, AS is pretty specific about it's symptoms/features. There is another diagnosis called PDD-NOS that is more of a catch-all for autism spectrum disorders (Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Non-Specified). It's a wide-range of "problems" that include not only an inability to recognize or interpret social nuances, but also usually packaged with that are sensory problems -- inability to handle being touched, sensitivity to loud noises, etc.

jeff2sf wrote:Here's a learning opportunity kids... never ever tell a parent of a kid on the autism spectrum that their kid doesn't really have a problem.

That's not even close to what I was suggesting.

z ipper wrote:what does everyone do for their taxes? i normally free file, but i bought a house and have these stocks so i'm just gonna pay someone because i'm not smrt. any recommendations/stay-away-froms?

TurboTax is not that hard to use.

lethal wrote:

z ipper wrote:what does everyone do for their taxes? i normally free file, but i bought a house and have these stocks so i'm just gonna pay someone because i'm not smrt. any recommendations/stay-away-froms?

TurboTax is not that hard to use.

I've used Turbo Tax online since I've owned a house and it's pretty easy. If you're getting a refund you'll have it within a couple weeks

TV - you're line of questioning is one I get often, and received from some of my closest friends. It's also addressed in most of the books I've read (soft, well meaning skepticism). There are others who have an attitude like "Give the kid to me for a week, I'll straighten them out". It is annoying when you get to a point and have to think "man, there's a description for everything at this point for crying out loud". I don't think you'll find much consensus for your line of thinking in regard to Aspergers among serious people, though (as in, folks who have the benefit of understanding it either first hand or through more training/study), and you are talking to someone who does believe pharmaceutical companies collude to "invent" needs - I am a skeptic, but not in this case.

AS is on the autism spectrum, though Mrs Vox could probably give you the specific reasons for that - I know there are some similarities (sensory issues and taxonomy, off of the top of my head), but I think the reason that AS is on the autism spectrum goes deeper into the medical than the symptomatic. There are a large number of symptoms and my son, for example, does not exhibit all of them, nor to the degree that some other kids we met do. There is a wider range of qualifications to AS than say, downs syndrome or autism, and there are a higher number of exceptions to the rule. Your questions aren't illogical. If the extent to my son's disorder were simply that he preferred to wear sweatpants over jeans, or that he still collects soft stuffed animals, or randomly change a schedule, etc - I'd agree. Those things in and of themselves may be quirks. When it stops being a quirk is when you see what happens if you force him to wear jeans, make a loud noise (or have a thunderstorm show up), mess with his expectations (like decide to go to K-Mart before the supermarket, even though you told him you'd to the opposite), etc - the loud moaning, the arm flapping, the absolute uncontrollable meltdown he experiences... As a bystander, your only response could be "that kid must be retarded". Given time with an ADHD child and an AS child, you would see there are very few similarities (and that's not to knock what ADHD folks deal with).

I also think it's difficult to rationalize an illness/defect/disorder/whatever when dealing with someone who has advanced degrees, a spouse, a good job, etc. That is possible with AS (though I'm told not to over-expect it) - I'd bet that it's more possible for people with AS than folks with a lot of other problems. One of your other points gets into the concept of "neurotypical" - it's one that annoys the wife and I, but mainly because it's dangerously close to "do nothing", which could be disastrous (look up the clinical depression and teen suicide incidents among folks with AS). If you get the opportunity to know someone who has AS, particularly a child that hasn't learned to cope, I think you'll see that while there is something to the "neurotypical" aspect, it doesn't explain enough.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Here's a learning opportunity kids... never ever tell a parent of a kid on the autism spectrum that their kid doesn't really have a problem.

That's not even close to what I was suggesting.

jeff's known for his insensitivity to nuance

not that there's anything wrong with that

Every time they say situation on 24 I say "Situation!"

I'm sorry if anything I posted on this was at all insensitive.

I never suggested "Do nothing" and I wasn't really thinking about Aspergers or any specific disorder. And I know for a fact that it's not about lack of discipline or any other such nonsense.

One of the things I try to keep in mind as a teacher is to try to figure out what the students can do, rather than focus on what they cannot.

What I was getting at (and this is where the reference to Laing was relevant) was the possibility of a distinction between "normal" and "healthy". Obviously, there's a lot of hippy dippy bullshit along those lines.

But kids are different, and requiring all of them to fit into a developmental and social pattern is bound to leave many of them frustrated and unhappy. It seems clear that boys especially can have trouble adapting to the rules of school, and this seems to be worsening as children's lives become increasingly structured and rule bound, with children have no say in those rules and little autonomy.

we need a non-random thoughts thread.