Once again David Andrews has given someone the benefit of his patently self-evident experience. If anything you say about wanting to learn is true you should go through what he said with a fine-toothed comb.

Probably, since BMS apparently thinks he’s the only person who knows what autism is, and that the rest of us (who DO know … like… ed-psychs and whatever!) should STFU.

He’s a concern troll, here for no other reason than to derail the discussion. He’s taken it far from the actual topic posted in the beginning. He’s made it all about him!

BMS: “I am here on this blog to learn from some of those who are posting here.”

The hell you are! We tell you things and you still insist on behaving in an objectionable way… like when we tell you our experiences, you still tell us that you don’t believe them, or when you make a criterion out of a prejudice… like it or not, you behave exactly like a troll. A concern troll, is the type, I believe.

BMS: “I am 50 years old, majored in psychology,”

Then a lot of things should be clear to you with that background:

1- development is not linear… even clinical/abnormal psychology texts talk of this thing called the principle of equifinality, in which it is seen that people can get to the same developmental point as each other having gone by different developmental routes;
2- development is not lead by a person’s biology: this is not to say that biological factors have no impact on development (of course they do), but there are many other factors involved as well;
3- diagnosis of autism is based on behaviour, and diagnosis cancer is made on the basis of a medical investigation that includes biopsies and blood tests; in a number of decades of medical and biological investigations into “what it is in the brain that causes autism”, there has been nothing consistent in the findings… this is not to say that there are no biological influences on whether or not someone develops along an autistic trajectory (obviously, there must be), but it does mean that it is not simply a matter of biological causation… and it is certainly important to be aware that – just because a given behavioural result (such as a difficulty in fine motor control, such as is required for manipulating a pen in the action of writing) can be brought about by, for example, a lesion in the motor cortex – the converse does not necessarily apply: such a difficulty is not necessarily the result of a lesion in the motor cortex of the brain… and this means that comparing autism and cancer is (apart from being offensive to anyone who has a diagnosis of either and/or both) not a sensible act (scientifically speaking);
4- comparison of autism and alcoholism is actually a better one but still has no merit scientifically, since the issues are different; the good point here is that neither is actually a “disease” (unlike in the autism-cancer comparison) and that both are indeed multifactorial in their aetiologies… but… they are still different issues; and – sadly – you still think of alcoholism as a disease… and – as Joseph points out – being autistic is like being drunk… NOT!

There’s probably more, but I’m not your tutor and you basically cut yourself off from my sense of goodwill… as you will see later.

BMS: “I honestly mean no harm, just talking, trying to learn a thing or two.”

So far you haven’t taken anything on board… you behaviour hasn’t changed since you started posting… you still disregard people’s experiences (many of which are actually very painful, at an emotional level, for us to tell about because of the impact that these experiences have had on our lives), and call us liars, in effect… that is doing harm (in that it reinforces the very negative self-concepts that most of us have had to find ways to rid outselves of and that were brought about by that very sort of behaviour in which you are engaging – namely, ignoring what we say and assuming that we have nothing to say when we say it), and it certainly isn’t convincing evidence of a will to learn anything from our experiences.

BMS: “most of you seem to be looking for some sort of justification for being total asses”

So, someone tells you that your behaviour is like that of those who have no empathy at all (e. g., John Best Junior – who is known to go round behaving in an offensive and arrogant manner, with the intention of causing upset for people who have largely had way more than enough upset in their lives anyway) and you react like that … even when the person saying somethign to you has asked you politely (very politely… I believe the word “please” was used in the comment) not to behave in that way! Who died and made you god? You are arrogant and you are being offensive and I doubt that you really have any empathy in you… if you did have, you’d certainly understand why such questions and statements as “who in their right mind would want to be diagnosed with autism?” and “as the above comment illustrates, most of you seem to be looking for some sort of justification for being total asses” actually are as offensive as we perceive them to be. Seems to me that you’re projecting your own personality deficiencies onto us there… and the best is that you ask us to “understand where you are coming from” and we try to understand that and we recognise that you have experiences of being the parent of an autistic son… we get it! But then you refuse point blank to understand us and our experiences! So, with this “empathy” thing… you’re being all take and no give. That is the behaviour of and arrogant arse, who doesn’t care about the feelings of those against whom his makes statements such as “as the above comment illustrates, most of you seem to be looking for some sort of justification for being total asses” ... clearly you are using your own child’s autism diagnosis as an excuse for being a total arse on this blog. And I’m not the only one who thinks so:

Joseph has noted it:

“I’m really not being an asshat when I confuse “my son is not autism” with “my son is not autistic.” I don’t mean to be insulting when I claim being autistic is like being drunk. Finally, I don’t really mean to question the diagnoses of autistic adults, except maybe I do.”

“You trouble me. You don’t listen, first of all. You favor your intuition over evidence. That mis/undiagnosed autistic adults exist is not a matter of opinion. You need me to cite the literature or something?

You don’t address arguments, and then you repeat your views just the same as if they haven’t been dealt with already.

Your analogies make no sense. Realizing one is autistic is not like remembering something you should’ve known all along.”

“Does that mean blogging should be an exclusion criteria in your view? It wouldn’t surprise me if you think that.”

Looks like Joseph’s spotted it BIG time:

“He was asking both, actually, and acting like a troll, to be honest. He was basically alleging that autistic adults who can’t work are defrauding the system or some such. I think everyone here has been overly polite to bensmyson under the circumstances.”

Socrates has also noted it:

“But if you ask someone with high functioning Autism – “What use is Autism?” – with the implicit view that it is of no use – people are obviously going to snap back at you.”

Dedj has seen it too:

“The ‘above comment’ was quite reasonable in its tone and content. You did make the implicit accusation that one would have to be mentally unbalanced and/or irrational to actively seek a diagnosis.

You have compounded your error by attempting to claim that any offence taken at your quite openly offensive comment is indicative of ‘issues’ in the reader.”

And we’re supposed to believe that you are here to discuss, and debate and to … learn? What have you learned from us while you’ve been shouting us down all this time?

I used a considerable amount of my training and expertise – as a psychology major, at Bachelor level, and as a professional psychologist with a Master of Education degree in Special education (Educational Psychology) – in another post, if I recall correctly.

And in making your statement about “as the above comment illustrates, most of you seem to be looking for some sort of justification for being total asses” (which seems strongly to have been directed at me, since I am the one who made the comment – which Dedj says was “quite reasonable in its tone and content”) ... could you please explain to me how I am not supposed to see that as just a fucking great big kick in the teeth from someone who chooses to be an ungrateful bastard?

And of course … you reserve for yourself the right to judge all autistic adults on our behaviour (and blame it on our “issues”) ... whilst (when told about your own behaviour) you choose to engage in some sort of passive-aggressive shit… such as:

“I have found it incredibly tiring to have a genuine, informative conversation with the lot of you in that every post that spews my way seems to have been scooped out of a pile of poop and intentionally meant to hurt”

and

“Thanks Joseph, feel free to post for me from now on, you got skills brother. Your mindful perception of the truthful intent is spot on.”

What would you like us to think about you, BMS?
Do you think your behaviour is going to get you that result?
What will you have to do with your thinking and actions in order to get us to actually not feel antagonised by the things you post here?
You have a major in psychology…. telling me that you can’t use it to figure out the answers to these questions?

As Sullivan said: “I find the concept of challenging an adult autistic’s diagnosis to be exceedingly rude.” He’s right, and this is exactly what you’ve been doing. When you say things like:

“Clay I find it hard to believe you are autistic. Holding a job for 10 years immediately disqualifies you in my opinion”

and Clay then responds:

“I have a written Dx, and YOU are not entitled to an effing opinion!”

... can you not see from a simple exchange like that what it is you’re doing?

This is all the same as JBJr likes to do! Provoking responses! You think we perceive your comments as being designed to hurt, yes? Can you STILL not see why we think that? Because if you CAN see why, you shouldn’t be making such comments. And if you CAN’T see why, then you actually ARE lacking in empathy.

Which one is it?

Meantime… having been as helpful as I possibly could be to you, and having been kicked in the bollocks for it (by you!), I’m going to concur with Joseph now:

“So you come here accusing autistic adults of fraud without one shred of evidence, and you don’t want people to belittle you? Get off your high horse, you effing asshole.”

S.,

Clay asked:

“I thought there was some question about that. Did you follow up on the suggestion of another diagnosis that was made by David Andrews awhile ago?”

Bet you haven’t!

Because to go and investigate that routte more thoroughly, you’d actually end up with the CDD/Heller’s diagnosis (there is no loss of anything in the autism diagnoses… being a specialist in this area, I must insist that I know far more than you ever will about this unless you also take a master’s degree in psychology and theme it towards autism… all 1800 hours of it!). And with a Heller’s dx for Ben, you would not be able to come back here and bully the living fuck out of us, would you?

And here’s a huge clue for you:

“I do not understand why you have to be so mean to the people here. Most of them are autistic. They have managed to make something of their lives, often against the odds. They have done what you want for your son. Yet this seems to threaten you.

To my mind you are the only person here acting self righteous at the expense of others.”

Mike is a really nice chap… has no axes to grind with anyone, and really isn’t out for conflict or trying to put anybody down or “in their place”. He’s a Bachelor of Education, and that’s a lower degree than mine; but I have a lot of respect for Mike and for his expertise. He’s been using the content of his degree all of his professional life, and in his personal life too, I’ll wager, since he has an autistic son. So, you can take it from this that I’m not dissing your ‘knowledge’ on the basis of you having a lower degree than me (hell, I don’t know if you did or didn’t do a higher one… so why would my disdain for you be based on the issue of who has the highest degree… this is not a pissing competition, and I’m going to pre-empt that argument, just in case you try to use it). My disdain is based on the fact that what you say and what you do are totally different, and what you do has been found to be extremely arrogant and offensive to the vast majority of us here… especially those of us who have written diagnoses on the autism spectrum that you are trying to un-diagnose.

“I could say more, but you get the general idea”
(S. P. Morrissey, “Dagenham Dave”, from the CD Southpaw Grammar)

Does that make him autistic in the expert opinion of BMS?

Actually it would seem to be that it’s very difficult for you to get that nobody here, nobody, is suggesting giving up on Ben.

Truth is Ben is the reason I’m bothering to respond to you. In the hope that because of my words that it dawns on you that it isn’t a good idea to try make Ben into something he isn’t. After all it’s very likely he’ll assemble some social grace skills over time. Good gravy, only 3 and he TALKS already?

The one thing that you run into over and over again with late-diagnosed autistic adults is a childhood (and sometimes adulthood) of well intentioned parents trying to force them into being “normal”, and great rifts and unhappiness coming from that. Of course those parents didn’t have a diagnosis to help guide the way, to give some explicit explaination of what was going on. You have no excuse, stop the willful self-imposed ignorance.

He’s a classic crank. There’s no possible data that would cause him to acknowledge being wrong. The guy is a piece of work. I wouldn’t blame you if you ban him, Sullivan.

http://cometscorner-clay.blogs.....nosis.html

So, If you hold a job for ten years you are not autistic. Somebody better tell Temple Grandin.

Accepting autism is not the same as giving up on a child. It does mean giving up on belittling any autistic adult who does not satisfy your preconceptions.

I applaud your aims for your son. I do not understand why you have to be so mean to the people here. Most of them are autistic. They have managed to make something of their lives, often against the odds. They have done what you want for your son. Yet this seems to threaten you.

To my mind you are the only person here acting self righteous at the expense of others.

I worked for 45 years altogether, from 17 to 63, and I held that last job for 16 years, 6 years before, and 10 years after diagnosis, since you don’t seem to comprehend very well. I have a written Dx, and YOU are not entitled to an effing opinion! Click on my name there, go to my blog, where I tell about some of the many jobs I had, starting with serving in the Navy for two enlistments in the Viet Nam era.

I am so sorry I don’t meet your criteria for being autistic, but then, it makes everyone else realize that you don’t know jack-shit about it, except what you learned from Jenny McCarthy!