When Children with Autism Grow Up
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My daughter was diagnosed at 16 months. She is now 20 months, so this is all very new to us.
The one thing I have learned is that if you have met one person with Autism then you have met one person with Autism. It's important to realize that Autism is a spectrum and therefore the needs of an individual can be very different and varied.
The other thing I would like people who are fortunate enough to not have encountered Autism is that early and intense therapy is ABSOLUTELY crucial. If you are a parent and suspect something, DO NOT hesitate. If you see legislation that adds support for young children then support it. In the long run society will save a lot more money and lives if we address this early rather than later.
If you aren't yet involved with any parent groups, consider that option. I've found the community to be warm, helpful, and willing to share information or services, resources, programs, etc. Good luck to you and your daughter.
We are very engaged with the community and are engaged in every therapy available to us.
My mind though, when not consumed with doing all we can for my daughter, drifts to those parents who don't have families to help. Parents who can't afford to have one parents stay at home (my wife left her career as a Pharmacist, a big part of who she is). It's crushing to think that there are kids who could lose a diagnosis if they had the opportunities my child has. My daughter spends 30 hours a week in various therapies between speech, OT, PT and ABA. She's making amazing progress... but how do you scale that for a general population?
My perspective on society and the services that ought to be a right has changed drastically. It's a shame it took something like this for me to see it.
Even after 3 there is a tremendous value to these therapies... it's never too late.
Our daughter has difficulty in path planning (fine motor). She was delayed walking and as a result had low muscle tone. Her attention (eye contact, joint attention) was also poor, which made learning other skills difficult. Since very young she would hyper focus on objects like strings and would tantrum when you try to transition her to new task or object. The objects were usually not appropriate or typical and her interaction with them was not considered typical (repetitive behavior).
She now walks, has great eye contact and joint attention and is learning new words everyday (though still has some speech issues). She also plays more creatively and appropriately with toys... it's really opened up so much for her.
Mostly these are play based therapies. The difference is the way that tasks are broken down. For a lot of kids you have to master and work on REALLY basic steps for a long time before moving to even basic things (like stacking rings or requesting an object).
Any kid would benefit from these therapies, there is no magic to them. It's time and observation. We set goals for her then work with specialists to break down the operations and work with her to master fundamentals. Each new skill tends to unlock all sorts of other skills.
ABA is a trial based therapy that has a lot of good and bad information out there about it. It is basically what I just described but in a much more structured and documented manner. It's one of the more researched methods of treatment and has been proven to be highly effective. It's again tailored to the child, so there is no good way of describing other than to say that it emphasizes mastery of skills, errorless learning (no negative responses for wrong behavior) and intense hours (some kids do 40 hours of ABA a week alone).
As I mentioned, each kid really has their own set of issues, so it's tough to say what will work for each kid.
I read a few Behaviorist books when she was diagnosed. A lot of the therapies/techniques are really just good parenting advice.
A few articles on the topic might help for anyone unfamiliar that wants to learn more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564498/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-bacteria-may-p... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141114-autis...
I don't know a huge amount about the connection, but I know many autistic kids have GI issues (loose stools) and this has many families considering diet changes as a treatment, so to speak.
If you look through my history, you will see that I actually donate stool for stool transplants. My understanding of the connection (or what the hypothesis is) is that the flora of children doesn't adjust the same in autistic kids as it does in others. We naturally have a level of Clostridia bugs in our guts when we are born and they typically taper off at around 10 months or so. It's believed that in some kids, it doesn't taper off and continues to grow in their gut. As we know, Clostridia bacteria are great at producing toxins (botulism, c. diff toxin, GAS gangrene) and it's believed the Clostridia that are in the babies guts are producing neurotoxins that produce these autism symptoms. We've completed transplants on a few autistic kids with mixed results (younger kids seem to do better than older kids, the thinking is that the older you get, the more damage the neurotoxins have done).
As many have pointed out, autism is still such a new diagnosis, and it's truly a spectrum of symptoms, but also a spectrum of causes. Therefore a stool transplant might not work for every child.
The biomedical side of autism is often dismissed, and likely misunderstood, which I think explains the downvotes. Spending time with hundreds of children with autism, and you start to hear similar complaints and issues. Many of these kids are sick.
Diet can drastically alter these populations, and therefore when parents adjust diets (remove gluten, remove dairy etc etc) they are actually adjusting the gut flora.
The GFCF diet (and others) seems to get criticized because parental reporting doesn't seem to match scientific studies. But the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. The Autism Research Institute has surveyed thousands of parents about diet and results, and some of the diets have a high success rate with helping some symptoms.
Our daughter had severe GERD at a young age, she would be screaming through the night in pain. Apparently GERD and gastro issues are somewhat typical of kids with ASD.
That being said I did a lot of reading on effective treatments. There's absolutely no shortage of parents seeing results with dietary changes and it's a fascinating area. Unfortunately I have not found any studies that conclusively make any link that we feel comfortable implementing.
Gluten intolerance and dairy intolerance run in my family. For the last 4 months we have cut out gluten. The reason is that it seems to anecdotally have a high link to symptoms and it's super easy to eliminate (comparatively).
Our Pediatrician (who is well versed on this sort of thing) expressed concerns that often the strict diets bring a fair amount of stress to both the parents and child. ASD kids often have feeding issues already... I know several who only eat 1 or 2 types of foods. She did not feel comfortable based on the research recommending any drastic change.
On a side note... there are a TON of well meaning and desperate parents out there. There are also TONs of unscrupulous companies who will make all sorts of claims. One of my biggest concerns is with all the poorly researched vitamin and medical interventions. I am not stupid enough to dismiss the entire field as without merit... but I have seen some pretty awful claims and therapies that have huge risk and almost no factual evidence. It's a scary landscape out there if you are uneducated and desperate.
You don't have to do a ton of searching to find some really scary interventions out there being done on very young children.
The day we implemented the diet, I took her to the cabinet and opened it up. It was empty but for a few things she still could have, and we eventually filled it with things she was allowed.
Flash forward to today, and her favorite foods are almost entirely vegetables and meats. She is very restricted - no dairy, gluten, soy, corn, sugar, any grains, and little processed food overall. She has been sick (cold) once in the past three years and attends elementary school.
The stress of a child not sleeping for years far outweighs the stress of meal planning and preparation, at least in my family (wife is at home).
I'm not a doctor (if that wasn't obvious already), but diet worked for us and she quickly realized that she would have to eat from choices we provided. There was no more than maybe a day of any negativity about it from her. Her diet now is incredibly healthy, and my wife is creative to make things that are safe alternatives to stuff that other kids are eating.
Some diets take more prep time than others, but I don't know that I've ever heard of stress to family or child as a stated objection to try it.
What has been you experience since the alteration? My daughter has trouble with feeding, but at this age it's less about what it is than it is about the process itself. She eats veggies and meats mostly anyway... so eliminating most things would be fairly straightforward for us.
My concerns are minimal... I just don't want to restrict without good cause.
Some people fear the diets because they are afraid of lacking nutrition. You do need to be aware of which diets may end up naturally being deficient in certain things, and you need to make an effort to include those things (like calcium or perhaps D in CF).
The biggest concern of mine when talking about diet is effort. Many people don't do it because 'it's too hard', and they don't want to spend that amount of time in the kitchen. Some allow a level of cheating ('one piece of pizza won't kill him/her'), which defeats the purpose of the diet entirely.
So the 'stress to the child/family' objection your doctor offered is the weakest of the usual objections, and if you really wanted to try diet your doctor likely wouldn't object.
In our case, daughter had diarrhea and loose stools for almost an entire year, every day. We started on SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet), which was originally designed for Crohn's or colitis patients I believe, and within a short time (weeks maybe?) she started being entirely regular.
We all (wife, daughter, me) did the early part of the diet together, so when we sat down she was eating what we were eating. First few days was basically broths, then it gradually introduces easy to digest foods (well cooked meats and certain vegetables). Her stomach has been fine ever since. We're not still on SCD, but we still eliminate several things as I mentioned before.
If you want more details on anything about my experience, my email is in my profile.
i mean... shit... even this autistic adult got on the front page of hacker news! fuck yeah.
and i did it twice in the same week...
:)
EDIT: changed some wording
I also know plenty of people who're diagnosed and consider it one fact among many and not worth much mention.
So I'm not sure "shouldn't" is quite accurate.
Maybe "even if autism is, to you, an important part of your identity, remember that a diagnosis is meant to enable you instead of restrict you" better expresses the meaning I -think- the rest of what you're saying implies you were aiming for?
He was one of the people I was thinking of as "part of identity".
Under DSM-V, Asperger's was rolled into ASD and lost it's classification as a subcategory. That is how I understand it.
Since the diagnosis, my life has improved 100 fold. Not so much because I got go to some courses and group meetings about the subject, but because I was finally able to understand who I was and why. All the weird and inexplicable things I saw in my past, suddenly fit. Like a giant puzzle you've been trying to solve for 30 years and in a matter of weeks, every piece just falls into place.
And more importantly, being able to explain to others who I am and not feeling the need to try to 'fit in'. I learned it is perfectly OK to be me and this almost solely improved my mood, energy and ability to function in daily life.
For those interested, I've also written up a few articles on my experiences in various daily things:
- https://jteeuwen.nl/autism/hfa.html - https://jteeuwen.nl/autism/a_night_on_the_town.html - https://jteeuwen.nl/autism/phonecall.html
Admittedly, we went into it thinking "maybe it's Autism, maybe it's not... but we can't get therapy for the delays unless we get the diagnosis". Having read substantially more and seen more children on the spectrum it's pretty clear. But it's a good question and by no means an exact science.
I recall a study that was done on early intervention (12 months I believe) where the majority of children diagnosed with Autism were able to shed their diagnosis by age 3 (or something like that). The trouble is that the initial diagnosis may have just been wrong... it may have just been a delay caused by something else. The good thing is that the therapy is beneficial for anyone... so there's little need (beyond monetarily) to be concerned with misdiagnosis.
EDIT:
fecak's list is spot on.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISBI.2007.356861 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISBI.2007.357110 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0681-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75759-7_107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1362361310386506
Winterborne view shows what happens in some abusive care homes. (Some people have gone to prison because they were so abusive.) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/winterbourne-view...
This should be changing. Government has said that people should be released wherever possible and that support should be provided in the community rather than in hospital settings.
I don't know what will happen when he grows up. I just hope that he will keep smiling, keep being happy. If I can help him keep that, that's all that will matter.
Not sure where you are located. Hopefully legislation like this will be the norm nationwide.
http://www.autismspeaks.org/advocacy/advocacy-news/mass-lawmakers-approve-medicaid-expansion-tax-free-savings-planI think that along with the below-living-wage salary, the seeming futility of her efforts make the job really difficult for her. She has to remind herself that improving her students' quality of life and giving them love/connection in the moment is worthwhile, even if there's no way to "protect" them from the realities of life after ~20.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/...
Though the data we have is under constant scrutiny for
its accuracy, methodology, and usefulness, the Centers
for Disease Control reports that the current rate of
autism diagnosis in the United States is 1 in 68. This
is a continuation of a trend identified by the
Environmental Protection Agency that started between
1988 and 1992, when the worldwide diagnosis of autism
spiked from 6 in 10,000 kids to 24 in 10,000.
This article is mostly talking about the most low-functioning forms of autism, for which the numbers are far far lower than 1 in 68.
I actually don't care one bit about the diagnosis itself. It's not as if having the diagnosis means you can take a pill to get rid of it. The only benefit we got from a diagnosis came from insurance paying for certain claims they previously would not have.
How do we know this is the case and not that it was under-diagnosed in the past? I also see this logic with ADHD. Yet in the past, a lot of these children would be shoved off to group homes or labeled 'slow' and such. At least with diagnosis they have a chance for recovery. I don't think past diagnosis stats are unquestionable. We actually don't know what the real rate should be. At least not yet.
The term "Asperger's disorder" will not appear in the
DSM-5, the latest revision of the manual, and instead
its symptoms will come under the newly added "autism
spectrum disorder", which is already used widely. That
umbrella diagnosis will include children with severe
autism, who often do not talk or interact, as well as
those with milder forms.
This all makes it very hard to answer the question "are more people today autistic than 50 years ago?"
Sorry that I cannot remember the firm name
[1]http://ca.specialisterne.com/about-specialisterne/sap-partne...
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/putting-the-...
Far from being "institutionalized" the guys he works with (and they're all male -- there's are separate homes for women) really feel like a family, and they get better, and more knowledgeable, support in the house than they often might living with aging, or distant relatives.
I know homes like these have gotten a bad reputation, but there are some really excellent organizations out there, and there's no shame in saying "you'd probably be better off at a place that's designed to support your needs."
Also, I wonder why I'm being downvoted. Google meddling with search results is nothing new, sometimes they're even legally/politically forced to do so. Assuming we get unfiltered results is very naive.
Try an experiment, look at this this:
No results found for "cow thiophenol romanesque establishment".
The search result without the quotes seems to just be noise, any random page about cows or romanesque architecture or thiophenols.
Why do people care that other people's children aren't vaccinated? If your children are vaccinated they're protected, period. Who cares about other people's children, especially if they have all sorts of unfounded ideas about vaccination? Why not live and let live? Why do people want to force other people to vaccinate their children? I never understood that but I'm sure I'm missing something hugely obvious.
I would vaccinate my children but I don't understand why I should also join some movement that is trying to force other people to do something they don't want.
And what is the plan to go about that?
Just force-vaccinate these folks' children, something they vehemently oppose, thus traumatizing both parents and children in the process? What is the proposed plan to go about this in a way that is acceptable to both sides? Or is it the case that these anti-vaxxers shouldn't be respected and should have no rights just because they believe a fantasy? Because if that's going to be the new standard we'll have to have a giant conversation about gods.
And if less than 80% - 90% of the total population are unvaccinated, you get these large outbreaks like we're seeing today. At 95%, it's a lot harder for that happen.
On the other end, you have some who are entirely non-verbal and often non-communicative in any form, entirely unable to care for themselves, and often have accompanying medical issues (gastro, immunity, etc.).
We call both autism, yet they are entirely different other than a few shared characteristics. Is it likely that both groups have the same cause?
- Do the parents have autism? - Is the father old? - Is the mother old? - Was the child born (very early)? - Did the mother have certain illnesses during pragnency?
http://www.neurologen-und-psychiater-im-netz.org/kinder-juge...
I'm sorry, but we have plenty of them. The visibility seems to be a bit lower though. Google for things like "Impfschaden" or "Hirnschrei"...
Or google the people who were involved in the making of this "documentary": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVh4QaDmXB8
Nonetheless, it's possible to break out the causes of autism into two main groups:
1. Genetics. Based on large twin studies and family studies, it is believe that the underlying between 50 and 80% of autism cases are due to a genetic mutation, set of genetic mutations or otherwise influenced by genetics. The advance of sequencing technology in the past five years has made possible to sequence the genes in the human genome across thousands individuals with autism and their families. This has given rise to the idea that "de novo" mutations, new mutations which arise in the child, are a primary cause of autism. Every newborn has a set of new mutations, which are mostly benign or inconsequential. However, a small fraction of new mutations are detrimental to the production of key molecules or proteins needed by neurons to function properly. Researchers have identified that perhaps 20-30% of cases of autism have a new mutation which could plausibly underly autism. However, these mutations are incredible diverse-- the same de novo mutation is seen more than once only very rarely, and the top 5-10 most commonly mutated genes account for only ~1% of autism. The long tail makes it necessary to sequence tens of thousands of individuals to pick up signal. A second set.
2. Environment. It's thought (but poorly understood) that certain environmental factors, especially during pregnancy, could also underly autism. Alcohol, for example, can cause Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which can present with autism-like features. Unfortunately, this half of the equation is not my subject expertise so I'll leave it at that.
As a note about searching for information: While google can be unreliable, Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) can be quite helpful.
Some additional resources:
[1] A review on the de novo genetic hypothesis for ASD that I wrote a few years back: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24387789
[2] A large sibling/twin study from California about that heritability of autism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21727249
[3] A recent large-scale sequencing study for autism (sorry, paywall): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25363768
[4] A review of ASD epidemiology and etiologies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17367287
--- Edit: formatting linebreaks
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/health/mental-illness-risk...
His social skills are still not great, with an inability to focus on someone when they are talking, as well as biting and hitting others.
He's incredibly smart though, with an ability to replay any piece of music that he just heard, and replay it on the piano. He's never taken a piano class or was taught piano in his life.
Can his trajectory still change at the age of 11? It seems like the school is doing quite a bit, but he doesn't seem to progress and still stuck in the same behaviors as he was in the second grade (first time he was in the same classroom as my daughter).
My 35-year-old brother is also autistic with some incredible savant skills. During his teen years, he spent all of his free time reading maps; at one time he held much of the world's roadmap in his head. (I never use GPS; I just call him when I need directions.) However, he also struggles with severe anxiety and occasionally gets violent.
With age, he has become more aware of his shortcomings. He can control himself to a limited extent—mostly by recognizing when he's about to melt down and then removing himself to a private place where it's safe for him to explode. But he still explodes. I always wonder how improved his life might be today if he had the benefit of the early childhood therapies that are more common these days.
Silicon Valley has the largest group of Autism kids, while the cause is unclear, I believe it has something to do with IT-engineer-or-STEM-brain _statistically_.
But yeah ... there is engineering brain from what I see.
I saw Temple Grandin speak at a state fair some years back, she's interesting, and I'm paraphrasing and probably misquoting but what I heard was something along the lines of if the species had to rely completely on neurotypicals, we'd still be living in caves and wearing hides, with a side dish of if a brain gets stuck or trapped on something like mathematical analysis of animal behavior as relates to architecture then we end up with her PHD dissertation revolutionizing livestock facility design, but much more likely if the brain gets stuck on lining up thomas the tank engine action figures, then the long term outcome is not so good. Also she had some opinions about discipline that were not the current mantras. No one at the event seems to like medication other than people with a financial interest in medication, I was surprised at that uniform consensus.
That's incredibly rude and condescending, and patently untrue.
http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-risk-...
No need for Rand Paul vaccination conspiracies or some hand-wavy pseudo-science about "tech brains." Humanity has had techy people since day one. Its not a new thing.
EDIT: good article how some people are able to function with autism (which may look like treatment but it is not) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/the-kids-who-beat...
Of course, this is not a scientific study, and there may have been other influences in their improvement. But a definite improvement has been made.
Our brains are wired wrong to participate in society without correction (internal or external); yet we still want to participate.
I'm on the mild end of the spectrum, to the point where I barely notice the effects in my day to day life, and I too hope it's something which can be treated.
He was getting downvoted originally for posting a pointless and silly response. He then edited it to its current non-sillyness.
It's a shame that HN doesn't give you an indication when people do ninja edits like that.
For example, my wife's 20 year old cousin with who has cerebral palsy(motor skills mostly ok, intelligence level of a 10 year old) is a curler in the Special Olympics and recently won the provincial cup. She has purpose in life but if I understand your position correctly its not meaningful because of her disability.
Another example. I coach tykes football. I like having the younger kids and watching them learn and develop over a few years of ball. Every year we get new kids and every year we get one or two with varying degrees of ASD(obviously mild) or ADHD. And the one thing we agree on as coaches is to treat them all the same. Its amazing how much gaining a little confidence coupled with strong, steady reinforcement from a non-relative can go a long way in helping a child.
I guess my point is that everyone can be given purpose in life. People shouldn't be shuffled away somewhere out of sight because they make us uncomfortable by reminding us how we won the life lottery and they didn't.
My worry is that someone in Scooter's position has already been shuffled away. We don't know how Scooter perceives his situation, but we should be worried that he feels trapped, futile or meaningless.
This is not much different than kids put into the Children's Aid system. Now that's another shit show that needs fixing.
I was thinking about what the ideal solution is for a guy like that. I actually thought he should be moved to a group home, for both his sake and the sake of others. Jail is a really horrible place for well-adjusted adults, let alone those who aren't.
> Can this be changed?
I dunno. How would you change it? I think group homes are the right idea, though maybe not the right implementation. Unfortunately it's not straightforward unless you're interested in proffering platitudes that never seem to really go anywhere: E.g. "We should spend more on mental health." Many of us agree with that, but when it comes time to pull out our checkbook most of us show how much of a priority it really is.
And that's not just because we're all dicks - there's just a shitload of terrible things going on in the world, and maybe mental health is priority #5 for us behind third-world poverty, or cancer research, or maybe we're just scraping to get by ourselves.
Typically we count on family to be the support system for people like Scooter, and that works if the family's capable of that level of care. But sometimes it ends up that either the parents can't care for them and admit it, or more frustrating, can't care for them and don't admit it. Group homes are probably the best option for adults with special needs that fall into those two categories.
Alternatively you could have a caregiver who acts like a family support system (checks in regularly, schedules appts, etc.) but that could be even more isolating - finding a peer group can be really hard even for more "well-adjusted" adults, and maybe a caregiver who treats you like family is actually really inappropriate if said caregiver has no intention of sticking around for the long-term.
If the solution is "let's all just be accepting and mindful of people with different wants and needs than our own", well shit, yeah, let me know when that happens. History is pretty much summed up as the antithesis of that statement.
Anyway, rambling over. It's a weird issue. I'm glad we moved away from sanitariums but I think we all agree we haven't come close to anything even good yet.
I keep having this suspicion that many that gets diagnosed function "fine" when left to their own devices, but burn out during (long) sessions of social interaction.
And they come to the fore now as more and more of life become highly oriented around "face time".
The parent of a high-functioning child may only want a diagnosis when the child nears adulthood, in order to get adult services.
Many of those diagnosed are indeed 'fine', and some might be almost unrecognizable as autistic to an untrained eye. Once you've been around children with autism for a long time, you understand which traits reveal their condition.
Long sessions of social interaction aren't likely to happen unless they are forced. Kids in classes are given several breaks a day, and might start at periods of 1-2 minutes without a break and build to 10-15 minutes without a break.
I'm not on some political correctness bender. Thinking about adults with autism as "grown up children" is at best neutral. Most likely it just feeds the misconception that adults with autism have the minds of children. At worst it suggests that children with autism growing up is problematic - and this is an idea that has long currency as the predominate attitude among western cultures.
Nobody is writing articles the "When Children with Dyslexia Grow Up" or "When Gifted Children Grow Up" because we implicitly accept that people with these identifying traits are adults when they have grown up. Why not just call the article "Adults with Autism"?
Because the article is largely about how bad being around an an adult with autism made the author feel. There's more about how hard it was to go into work than about his antagonist’s suffering childhood sexual abuse - and in narrative form the autistic adult is the author's antagonist no two ways about it. The arc is of the author disconnecting himself from the relationship.
Now don't get me wrong, the freeing is a rational choice. But this is a story about the normal person and Scooter is always "the other." Casting him as "a child grown up" rather than an adult makes the ultimate "He aint my kid" decision palatable because it denies normal adult bonds - the author can't be held to the standards of an adult relationship: friendship and just plain good manners of saying goodbye because it is the right thing todo are off the table.
It's really fucking hard to sort through and classifying adults with autism as grown children doesn't make it easier to get it right.
I think the title structure would work for any domain where most reporting/writing focuses on the condition in children, rather than their later development as adults.
It is the stories of twenty gifted people, not our story about encountering them.
I did not interpret the antagonism you did. The author was grappling with his own feelings of being attached to Scooter but also having to deal with the fact that Scooter could get violent very easily. The decision to not say goodbye was justified in the article. This is not a normal adult relationship, because the author is a paid caregiver of an autistic adult.
"When he was unable to regulate the information coming into his brain, I would perform a process called the Wilbarger Protocol. It was intimate. I would move a soft brush on Scooter’s arms, legs, neck, and back. Then he would put his hand in mine and I would grab his fingers one at a time, compressing the joints in toward his palm. Firm but gentle, confident but caring. I would watch his face, look for some tension to drop from it and then linger there, count to 10 in my head, and then move on to the next one."
This would matter more if this wasn't how society runs in general. White (and not so white) lies are the lubrication of social interaction: when a random someone asks how your day is going, they don't really want to know. They want to hear something positive or perhaps a mildly amusing quip. Anything else and the social interaction breaks down uncomfortable silence.
Took me awhile to learn that one.
Scooter may have ended up interacting with society better, or worse, had he always been told the truth, but human interactions are never so clean. I have trouble faulting the narrator of this story for being human in such a difficult and uncomfortable situation.
I'm not sure what it matters what society does in general, Scooter is not interacting with all of society, but rather the people in his immediate location.
Furthermore, you're talking as if these are all foregone conclusions but that is not the case. We are alive now, have agency, and can make changes as we see fit.
So, “Stressful” or “Annoying” is fine. But “I had this one customer who…” is not.
The only real lie is optional and it's mostly about how you want people to think of you. If 10% of the time you’re slightly unhappy that's considered reasonable, but if your unhappy 90% of the time people don't generally want to be around you.
There's a lot of literature about how Autism, and the various spectrum disorders, like the former Asperger's Syndrome are processing disorders. That the normal filters in a brain don't form for various reasons. And if a kid is unable to create those filters and work them actively, you get low functioning Autism, because they don't have a ruleset to focus on as to what are the important details and what aren't, thus leading very quickly to a level of overstimulation and "acting out".
Course, this is my assumption from talking to some High Functioning Autistics, and my own experience as being spectrummy. Mileage can and will vary.
I once asked my daughter's therapist what she would be like as an adult. They politely decline to answer that question. Now I know why.
It would be unprofessional for the therapist to say anything to try and predict the outcome for your daughter at age 3, as that prediction might impact your treatment and planning. If the therapist tells you to prepare for the absolute worst, you could be less inclined to try therapies that might work wonders. If a therapist tells you she'll be fine, you might also change your tactic.
Please don't assume that the therapist is withholding bad news, as that may not be the case.
I don't even care if they're right. Buzzfeed has never, ever been a credible source for information of any kind.