I interpret it as they think they can find treatments that will course-correct the development of a child, but they're not saying anything about fixing something that's already broken.
This isnt a moral judgement, theres nothing wrong with being disabled, but it remaims a disability that many people struggle due to.
As a comparison, if you put a bonobo with chimps the bonobo will be severely disabled socially, but it won't be when compared to other bonobos.
The fact that autists can communicate with each other does not fit typical models of disability. A blind person should be blind to another blind person.
The person has a disability. Part of the person may be broken, but the person isn't broken. I'm autistic. My sensory processing wiring is different and arguably broken. But I am not. I'm disabled. I can overcome the broken parts that result in my disability with support.
But I agree broken is not the right word for those poor folks because they were never functional to begin with!
Being blind is a problem. It's not a moral judgment, you aren't less of a person, but you aren't going to be driving any time soon.
These people are not operating within the nominal range of human behavior that might be classified as "functional."
Only 20-30% of adult Autistics can even hold a job. Not a 'good' job, mind you, ANY job.
In Uk they made studies about this: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/up-to-90-of-middle-aged-and-older...
Skimming a couple (due to time constraints) of the sources mentioned in the study, one source [1] mention that "3 in 10 autistic people of working age are in employment", and the other [2] that "approximately 50% fail to achieve independence in their living status, employment, and close relationships"
It doesn't seem to support the claim that "90% of autistics are undiagnosed and work".
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-buckland-revi... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-020-04763-2
Or gonad undies.
Still, my point stands. Most people who have it badly enough to get diagnosed can't hold jobs. Autism isn't some quirky personality trait that makes you a special cool kid on Tik-tok. It's a government recognized disability.
Me too, but you and are very lucky.
In my case I have uneven capabilities, but my worst functions are still average and my best are very high. It's far more common for the best capabilities to be average and the worst to be far below. It's like one of those character creation screens in a game where you get to distribute skill points and someone hit 'random'. I got lucky and there were plenty of points to distribute randomly. Most seem to have had fewer to start with.
> I think your stats are out of date.
I looked it up before I made that post yesterday. It's pretty current, unfortunately. There is a ton of variation regionally, and there are different definitions, etc... Like all statistics it's more complicated than the headline, but the TLDR is that globally the diagnosed adult population averages around that number and it's literally one of the worst forms of disability to have as far as employment goes.
See:
* https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-025-07139-6
* https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-026-07467-1
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11861060/
* https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-buckland-revi...
But the parent post is also wrong. Statistics vary, but employment among autistic people is as high as 58% in the US (which shouldnt be surprising, given that many autistic folks have no diminishment of iq).
So, definitely huge unemployment rate, but not so dire are the gp suggests.
It says that in the USA (numbers are much worse internationally) :
* 58% had EVER held a paid job since leaving high school.
* About 42% had never worked for pay.
* Nearly 80% of those who worked were working part-time.
* Only about 21% had worked full-time in their current/most recent job.
* 19% had ever lived away from home independently
[0] https://drexel.edu/autisminstitute/news-events/news/2015/Apr...
His mother nearly bankrupted herself paying for private school for kids on the spectrum. His parents sued the local school system because they didn't have any teachers who had any skill with autistic children. couldn't protect him from bullying and couldn't or wouldn't follow the IEP. (Note: this is one of those events that ruin retirement plans). The state claims to have resources for my partner and her child, but when they try to get help, the state says it didn't realize she would need that much help.
Then there is the never-ending struggle to get appropriate psychiatric and psychological help for him, and if you think it's hard to find a psychiatrist for ordinary mental illnesses, finding someone who knows how to deal with kids on the spectrum is almost impossible.
His disability has had a negative impact on my relationship with his mother. As she has to make room for her child's emotional outbursts, I make room for my partner's angst about having a child who will never function on his own. There is a big loss of day-to-day intimacy because you never know when you will have to put up an emotional barrier against his behavior.
yea, in my eyes, that counts as broken
I suspect some who say they like autistic traits, mean "level 1" on the ASD.
May I ask if this child is level 2 or level 3 ASD? I'm imagining it is quite a different reality with level 1 vs level 2/3.
My kid is truly high functioning. Only professionals tag her immediately. For everyone else it takes some long term intimate interaction to realize something is wrong. Any autistic adult who says this is great is coping. I have talked to too many high functioning autistic women and there only seem to be two camp: lots of mental health issues with possible commitments or intense treatment that their parents poured so much money into. And never of those is okay or what I'd wish on a kid. I didn't even know it was possible for a 7 year old to be suicidal without a major life event and apparently this is just a thing with some high functioning autistic kids. This is not okay.
If it's any consolation, childhood years can be very tough around that age for autistic kids, but many of us find significant communities once we get online and around other autistic people our own age. Many of us go on to be very successful and happy adults once we find our niche.
Level 2 is "requires substantial support". This is where there are significant obvious impairments to daily life. You may not see emotional reciprocity, and peer relationships may be difficult. Sensory sensitivities may be more pronounced.
Level 3 is where people may be nonverbal or not always verbal. They may need significantly different communication systems like pictures. Aggressive outbursts, repetitive and narrow interests, self harm like head banging, shutdowns or meltdowns from moderate to mild stimulae are not uncommon. They will likely need supervision and may need support to consistently complete basic daily tasks like eating, toileting, etc.
I'm diagnosed level 2. What you are describing does not at all sound like level 1. Perhaps you've flipped the scale and meant somewhere between 2 and 3?
Do you have any biological children? This child is not yours, you made that sufficiently clear.
GP, you don’t have to do it.
I’d much rather be alone forever than treat another human being as a mere obstacle to my happiness.
Separating would be significantly destructive / damaging on both a personal and financial levels.
That said, I entered this relationship without fully understanding the impact of an autistic child. I would not condemn anyone who refused to be in a relationship if the other person had an autistic child.
Let me correct that for you,
> I would not condemn anyone who refused to be in a relationship if the other person had a child.
Being a step parent is one of the most difficult things a person can do.
If you can’t or don’t want to do it that’s fine.
From my admittedly limited experience, the parent and child have relationship that will keep you on the outside even if the family has made a conscious choice to include you as a step parent. I have made a conscious choice to be okay with being on the outside.
My deepest relationship and commitment is with my partner. Everything else is secondary... except maybe watering the plants in the garden during a drought.
You have 2 options.
Stop making so many harmful assumptions about your partners child. Theirs a good chance he’s just weird and he’ll grow out of it, but you’re not exactly helping here.
Hell, to be honest I was weird as shit as a kid until my dad kicked me out and then I matured real quick.
If I had to guess my issue is that I’m essentially half asleep most of the time unless I have a Red Bull or 2.
Or you can always just leave.
Right now your post reads like ; “This annoying kid is messing up my relationship with his mom, I’m the victim here”
I’d venture to say all kids are annoying and if you can’t deal with that date someone without kids.
No, I do not have any children of my own. I am thankful for that because my ex-wife apparently was also autistic but not diagnosed until after divorce. On my maternal side of the family all of us kids inherited some form of severe depression through my brother was schizoaffective. I survived, found good treatment that left me feeling like myself with a clear mind. My brother on the other hand was tortured by his demons and ended up taking his life a couple of years ago.
Not having kids was a conscious decision because I didn't want to take a chance of spreading the family curse to the next generation
I would guess that even if this platform has more autistic people due to being tech focused, autistic tech nerds and programmers are on the extreme end of high-functioning. Many low-functioning autistic people will never be able to have a job or live by themselves.
This is the same issue as high-functioning ADHD'ers saying "ADHD is my superpower", meanwhile people with severe ADHD do significantly worse than the general population in basically any metric, up to having a lower life expectancy.
This isnt to say its morally bad, theres nothing wrong with being autistic or having ADHD, but it is a disability. Just like someone who's deaf can live a totally happy life but still be disabled because they are not able to hear, someone with autism is disabled because they are not able to process social cues at the same speed, even if they are a great person and have a good life.
It’s such a wide concept. Essentially it boils down to how a brain processes sensory information and at what point it becomes overwhelmed.
We all have tolerances set at different gauges. It’s a disability if it’s at odds with the environment a person finds themselves in.
There's no judgement or moralizing in having a disability. Autism and ADHD like you mentioned are disabilities.
But the people who have them are not broken. Having a disability means some part of your life is more difficult. But that's very very different from you as a person are broken.
For example, if you can fix the environment and the person can now function equally to someone without a disability, then maybe it's the environment that's broken. If you can fix the social expectation and suddenly the person can function equally, then maybe the society is broken. Even if you cannot accommodate the person's needs, insinuating they are broken is not a great framing -- it creates a sense of pity rather than constructively looking at means to support them.
All the stuff you feel towards any other human?
If you see a person without legs, do you tell him he is a piece of shit because he can't run? So why harass autistic people?
The same is true of basically anyone that doesn't fit into what you typically see - there's always some people that will treat them poorly. It's unfortunate, but was probably adaptive during our evolution, and something we just have to deal with today.
If you have not yet realized it, here is a black pill for you: most people are deeply manipulative and bullying basically all the time. For example nearly all social rules that are commonly accepted in society are basically about which kinds of manipulations and bullying of other people are accepted by most people vs not.
With this in mind, the answer to your question
> So why harass autistic people?
is trivial: because it is currently socially mostly accepted.
They have to hide themselves because it's socially acceptable to harass them.
It's been proven multiple times that neurotypicals refuse to interact with autists automatically https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700
Their experience of the world is a disorder "to be cured"
If the future is here but not evenly distributed then the dystopia is here but not everyone lives in it. Some maintain it.
What exactly are we doing here?
This is, in fact, not true.
Can you elaborate on that?
They really are. Like, you can alter the environment all you want but someone who needs glasses to see has broken eyes. Is it super common and do we have a cure? Yes and yes, but it's still, you know, not working. Disabled. Busted. Broken. Whichever word you pick isn't going to change the reality.
Yes, having a disability is hard. But the person is not broken.
What? Why not?
I'd say the opposite is true, frankly. I'm more worried about people's inability to follow simple instructions, like making a hamburger correctly.