Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

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> There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum,

I would be interested to see comments made by people who use the diagnosis to excuse poor behaviour. (Edit: I reworded this to be less confrontational and less angry. Sorry for original wording.)

I am aware of people struggling to get more acceptance of neuro diversity. That's because they're fed-up of being mocked (if lucky) or murdered (less lucky) by police

http://www.inquisitr.com/1726930/alabama-police-officers-rec...

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/5-times-police-kille...

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/06/29/37770.htm

> DAYTON, Ohio (CN) - Dayton police "mistook" a mentally handicapped teenager's speech impediment for "disrespect," so they Tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat him and called for backup from "upward of 20 police officers" after the boy rode his bicycle home to ask his mother for help, the boy's mom says.

It's not really surprising that neuro-atypical people are getting militant when they're faced with widespread discrimination that causes shorter, less good, lives.

My wife would probably be better able to respond to specific websites and discussion as she's been far more involved in the online communities surrounding our daughters disorder. I've asked for some links from her, but there were several comments in the linked article that seem to suggest accepting neuro-diversity warts and all.

Believe me that I'm tickled by my daughters extreme interests - but we DO want to cure her of her disruptive and dangerous behaviors.

We have called the sheriffs office during one of our daughters most extreme tantrums - they couldn't have been nicer or more understanding and helped us out considerably during their visit. I suspect our county sheriff (Santa Cruz, ca) has had extra training in that regard.

On the other hand, we have also had to deal with child protective services, called because of bruises noticed by the school. We got the third degree, but since we've also had to do a lot of video recording of her tantrums, it was pretty easy to establish that - aside from our having to restrain her, her bruises were self inflicted.

On her good days, she's a joy and a wonder. On her bad days, she's a beast from the nether pits of hell. But we will stick by her.

> On her good days, she's a joy and a wonder. On her bad days, she's a beast from the nether pits of hell. But we will stick by her.

I don't understand this. Shouldn't the behavior be constant?

Have you been able to coax good days out of her by changing the environment, food, your behavior, etc? Can you predict the bad days? Is there a pattern?

> I don't understand this. Shouldn't the behavior be constant?

Spoken like a programmer. Adults aren't even consistent. Ever seen a woman going completely apeshit at a male for some reason (sometime justified, sometimes not)?

Biological organisms have significant variations. Sometimes you get an angel; sometimes you get a devil; sometimes both.

In the past, resources were sufficiently scarce that children (and adults) who weren't capable of fitting into society were killed or allowed to die.

> Ever seen a woman going completely apeshit at a male for some reason (sometime justified, sometimes not)?

Why would you use that example?

I needed an example of an adult giving an emotionally based, uncontrolled outburst.

I have easily seen a dozen or more incidents of women doing this in public. I have only ever once seen a man do this.

I suspect the imbalance is because men prone to this behavior resort to violence privately. Strangers will step in to help a woman but not a man.

I've never seen a woman do this so I suspect this is just your stereotype-based expectations biasing your interpretations. Peoples' memory of events are notoriously unreliable and extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion, like the suggestion that women are more prone to emotional outbursts, which is an age-old trope. http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2012/mar...

Children, neurotypical or not, have very inconsistent behaviors. You may be able to generalize in some broad cases, but a child presented with a stimulus may react one way any given day, and completely the opposite the next day. They're as unpredictable as can be.

I think @salgernon was expressing his perception, practically in the form of a question, seeking constructive dialog on the topic. I think a call for citation followed by random anecdote is not a great response to an invitation for a thoughtful dialog with someone with unique experience in the field.

I'm not sure if you're talking about a completely different issue, or the flip side of the same coin. Awareness and sensitivity to others' abilities I guess could be on the same spectrum as making excuses for violent behavior, but I think it's different forces at play.

We definitely need more empathy in this world (and lets not even get into police assault here). But at the same time, there can be a good reason why a child is misbehaving or even acting violently, but that behavior is still unacceptable. I've never personally experienced the parent who feels like their child is entitled to their kid's violent outburst in public space ____, but certainly we hear the stories. More often, I just feel awful for parents who are dealing with a meltdown in the moment, because, been there, done that.

As a parent in that situation, it's usually just, "ok, lets get the heck out of here." As a parent watching those situations, I always want to help somehow, but it seems like there's a huge taboo to even acknowledge the situation, let alone try to intervene. Personally I'd be too afraid to even open my mouth because the other parent would assume I was going to chastise them rather than try to help somehow.

> Can you point to any evidence of this "movement"?

Maybe you didn't mean it, but your response comes off as a confrontational challenge to a father who deals with the community directly

EDIT: I read your HN profile, so given your candidness, take my question with a grain of salt

I struggle with tone so I am grateful to you for pointing it out.

Actually, (as another person on the spectrum), I believe you've just been tone-policed by a privileged person. Note that the confrontational tone, random anecdotes and judgement of people involved in the community were all present in your post's parent - so the only difference seems to be that the original post is a neurotypical parent.

This is a common strawmanning of communities, so it's no wonder some of us get irate - I do, for example. Sure, there are neglectful parent who try to hide their neglect (or inability to handle an overwhelming situation) behind claims that it's all "working as intended" - but positing them as representative of people who ask for more acceptance is unfair.

Ultimately, confrontation and aggression isn't all that great, but you need two sides to keep things civil. I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent, which isn't surprising for someone who's conscious of their tone issues - and that its perception comes from a bigger dissonance between expected and perceived aggression.

This wasn't tone-policing, it was tone-neighborhood watch at worst. You can't dismiss an argument because of tone, but you certainly can call someone's attention to how their argument may be interpreted by their tone.

There's no straw-manning going on here. He interpreted (quite sensibly in my opinion) it as a challenge to the father. Regardless if that was intended or not, it was the first-read impression I had as well. Now that the OP has clarified his position, now I know that it was not the intended position. If it were not for the response, none of this would have been clarified.

> tone-neighborhood watch

Nice name for a tone-lynch-mob, but are you sure that's any better than tone-police?

> as a challenge to the father

Seriously? The OP starts with "There seems to be a movement to accept any and all behaviors of children on the spectrum". If that's not the challenge, then I don't know what is. It's not possible to slap someone with an iron gauntlet over the Internet though. That's as fair as "there seems to be a movement to enslave all men/whites/extremely rich rocket company owners" - I'm even sure you're going to find a few people who do have those beliefs, but representing them as anything but fringe is unfair and challenging.

> Nice name for a tone-lynch-mob

You wanted to talk about strawmanning?

Your name just reminded me of Terry Pratchet's death

While I gently agree with some of what you say it's probably important to note that I say in my profile that I struggle with tone and that I welcome email or downvotes to guide me to do better. And I sometimes talk about the increased hostility on HN.

So I invited this tone policing. (And of course I continue to do so)

> I believe your comment was far less aggressive than it's parent,

I'll be honest: I thought so too. It's interesting to me that other people read the posts so differently.

Still, the change I made stopped downvotes so tone matters.

>they're fed-up of being [...] murdered [...] by police

Are they more likely to suffer police brutality than the average person in their community?

I don't have any numbers, but it is not entirely unfeasible that they would be. Police tend to react strongly if someone acts confrontationally with them, and this is something that autistic people might do more often. They don't mean harm, but how would the police know they don't?

Police can be trained to recognize various disorders and understand how to deal with them non-violently, but in the end, it may be difficult to see quickly that you should act differently if a non-compliant and threatening-looking person is autistic, compared to other non-compliant and threatening-looking persons.

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