Oh, for fuck's sake.

[rivka]

Ninety-nine percent of the time, when I'm offensive, (a) I know that I'm being offensive, (b) I'm doing it on purpose, and (c) I'm willing to acknowledge it. This may not be much of a virtue, but sometimes it's all I've got.

In another journal to which I shall not link, a commenter presented the opinion that "autism and ADD are 'massively overdiagnosed.' " When I asked if she had any evidence for this claim, she posted a long set of justifications involving lazy teachers, parents with no discipline skills, venal psychologists, and suggestive idiots who see symptom lists on the internet and become convinced that their child is autistic. Here's the money quote:

what is often diagnosed as autism is more likely a lack of parenting skills combined with a therapist's interest in creating a lucrative "treatment" plan - one that involves "specialists" "drugs" and "group therapy" - all of which line someone's pockets.

My response, I acknowledge, was not at all kind or temperate. I regretted, afterwards, not making the same points in slightly more temperate language. But I am not amused, today, to discover that she made a long self-pitying post in her own journal about how victimized she was by my horrible attack. Because she is never one to make a point offensively, herself. She's very gentle.

If the bit I quoted above is not unbelievably offensive to parents of autistic children and to mental health treatment providers, then I need a new definition for the word. Yes, when I fired back, I was harsh. But I'll be damned if I'm going to accept a version of events in which I am supposed to have fired the first shot.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I doubt you were more than a trifle over the top.

I also doubt she has any grounds to be more than briefly annoyed, and certainly not offended.

It may be she never expected anything approaching a heated, and reasoned, response to her insulting tone.

TK

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

First things first: did you intend for this to be public? 'Cause there's a good chance she's reading this right now. If you did, fine; but I didn't want you to get into trouble if it was an oversight.

And otherwise? I'm sure you were a lot more gentle than I would have been. I would have been tempted to wish an autistic child on her.

-J

[abbylee]

Right. 'cause people who get into those jobs are in it for the money and parents would rather blame a disease than have a happy child.

Mistakes are made all the time. But those mistakes are made with the belief that it's best for the child, not because people are lazy or greedy.

[castiron.livejournal.com]

<sarcasm>
Yeah, my son's near-total lack of verbal and social skills is totally due to my and my ex's bad parenting and to the school's wanting to shell out lots of money on special ed teachers for him; it couldn't possibly have anything to do with something actually being wired wrong in his little brain, now, could it?
</sarcasm>

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Irrelevant to the interpersonal issues at hand, I'd be interested to hear from you in a semi-professional sense about diagnosis trends in autism and ADHD. I used to work in an academic field that was trendy as hell, depsite being based in hard facts, so I don't think medicine is necessarily immune to fads, despite all the good will and interest in scientific evidence in the world. As an uninformed observer only of news about health, I do see a trend towards expanding definitions of mental health problems (in children and adults) to define as illness behaviors and personalities that would once have fallen on the quirky/gloomy/antisocial end of normal. And I say this as a woman on anti-depressant meds for 4 years after crippling episodes of depression and anxiety who wonders often enough if I really merit them, so perhaps that gives you a sense of the emotionally ingrained nature of my skepticism.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I was going to write some sarcastic, snarky, pithy comment about her comments, but I'm shaking too much.

The sad thing is, as a parent of a high functioning autistic kid, I've wondered some of those things -- is it something I did? or didn't do? am I just a crappy parent who can't instill discipline that my eleven year old throws tantrums? We work and we work on things getting better, and they do up to a point, and then things go to hell, and I keep wondering.. is it me?

Shit, I'm crying.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Wow, I feel like such a dupe! For years I've held K's hand while she waited outside various offices and met with doctors and school admistrators trying to find something that would work for her son. I've listened to her cry about his inablity to resond appropriately to emotional interaction. I've actually admired the people who worked like dogs to get him into the programs that allowed him graduate high school and attend the local community college.

I mean, I even believed that there was something wrong with this kid that the adults around him were struggling to fix.

And it turns out it was all about money and bad parenting. Boy, am I gullible.

But shouldn't some of the blame be on the kid? I mean the shifty little devil was exhibiting symptoms at the tender age of two, just to lure me in to the over-diagnosing festival. He probably did it to get those cool drugs, right?

Bah. Offensive may indeed be the applicable description here, but I think it applies to her. And I'm willing to bet your response was more temperate than mine would have been.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Ick.

What is her background, that she feels she's such an authority on the subject? What is it she thinks gives her such special insight?

And, yes, she was offensive as hell.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Well, my gut feeling is that she might be right on the point of ADHD being a 'fashionable' diagnosis, and I can't help but feel that it might be related to kids no longer being allowed - if not _expected_ - to run around and expend a lot of energy. When I was in primary school, if kids - especially boys - were to have difficulties sitting still and concentrating, it was often simply ignored - they had plenty of opportunity to run around and climb trees and play football and get into all kinds of scrapes in their breaks, and they were expected to grow out of it.
As far as I am aware, most of them did.
I am slightly cynical as to whether, almost thirty years later (ugh!) the same standards would be applied, or whether parents and teachers wouldn't actively seek a diagnosis and ways to 'fix' what is so obviously 'wrong' with the child - after all, the child doesn't want to sit quietly in front of the video as my neighbour's kids spend at least half their time.
There also seem to be links between very wired behaviour and sugar highs or certain food additives - and *that* would most certainly make it a modern problem. In such cases, my impulse would be to _first_ see whether the problem cannot be controlled with a better diet and more chances to blow off steam rather than with drugs, but that doesn't seem to be everybody's first point of call.
Which, as I realise, is tremendously unfair on those people who *do* try, and *are* the best parents they or anyone else can be under their circumstances.

As for autism, thankfully I lack direct experience with it. I do, however, own a horse whose behaviour became more understandable - and more controllable - once I started looking into autism (somebody wrote about their kid and I thought 'that sounds just like my horse'), so on that account I have every inch of sympathy for the parents; but again, I wonder how much can be achieved with behavioural therapy and what role drugs can - or should - play.

As I said, these are musings of a laywoman. I do not think that the parents should be blamed, but living next door to a set of bad parents (not ill-meaning, just totally unskilled, which breeds a lot of verbal violence) I wonder whether milder tendencies that another set of parents would have absorbed wouldn't come out full blast when combined with helplessness before even average behaviour.

[perigee.livejournal.com]

She ended up (whether or not she knew she was doing it personally to you) implying that you had poor professional ethics. In my household, this doesn't even get a shot across the bow. It gets a bitchslap into next Tuesday.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

sigh ... sometimes parents of autistic children just get to the point where we don't have the energy to be offended by these things anymore.

I do lie awake at night going over everything mistake I could possibly have made with my daughter -- did I wait too long to have her assessed, did I miss key windows of possibility, did I make the wrong decision in mainstreaming her at first, or in sending her to a specialized school later, and on and on and on -- but people who are so clearly just whacking away at misinformed agendas don't make me feel any worse; they don't even figure on my radar any more. I can't be bothered.

Plus why does she think that drugs and "group therapy" are standard parts of a treatment plan for autism? Oh, well, forget it.

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

Well, my "anecdotal stuff" - or anecdotage, consists of...wait, isn't 'anecdotage' the part of old age where you sit around telling stories? I had a story, didn't I? What was it about? Oh, yeah, ADHD.

I was undiagnosed during my entire childhood. Back then (the 60s) they called it 'hyperactivity'. My teachers saw the fact that I was physically unable (at any rate, so it seemed to me) to stay in my seat and work - my fifth grade teacher finally, at the end of her rope, took a roll of masking tape and went around and around me and my chair one day. I related this story to my Psy.D. friend Susan, and she said I should definitely mention it to the neurologist...because it was 'pathognomonic' - which is now my very favorite word, just because I like the sound of it. Where was I? Oh yeah.

My parents scoffed at the notion that I was hyperactive. At home, I exhibited more of the inattentive ("oblivious!" they called it) behavior, or maybe they just didn't notice me walking around and around and around the dining room table talking to myself - telling myself a story, actually - which was one of my primary amusements. Or the constant leg movements, especially right before sleep.

I was fired from almost every job I ever had (LOTS of jobs) until I went on meds. I haven't been fired since (two quits, one dot-com bust). The Cylert enables me to function in the Farmers' world.

I'd just like to say that ADHD does have a dramatic upside. I was a better poet before I went on meds. I still am hyperaware of people around me...no one's picking MY pocket anytime soon. While I choose being able to work and not get fired, I miss the parts of the upside that are blunted by the meds (mental multitasking, mostly). I wish I could have a job where the Hunter brain is more valued, but those are scarce and they don't pay well.

Btw, the early part of this post wasn't me joking on being ADHD. I just decided to give you my unedited thoughtstream. Normally I go back and fix those things.

And btw Rivka: That stupid bitch can bite my ass. If you got medieval on her, go you!!! Thanks for standing up.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you know *my* opinion on that.

I do understand how it feels, though... it's a rough thing, when someone being that insensitive and unthinking just doesn't realize it. They can't/won't accept that you have a right to be upset, because they can't/won't accept that they made a mistake, so they have to and up jumping on you for being unfair.

And if the world was remotely fair, they'd learn tomorrow that you were right, they were wrong, and they have damn good reason to be horribly embarrassed at how they acted... but the odds are high that they won't have that realization.

Still... you did what you could.

[(Anonymous)]

Some interesting info in October issue of DISCOVER magazine. In Frontiers of Science--Behavior. Some studies seem to suggest that various infections during pregnancy may alter fetal brain chemistry. I won't go into the particulars, suffice it to say that there is a great deal more to learn and to make comments such as "...autism is more likely a lack of parenting skills..." is ignorant and deserved to be rebutted no matter how 'over the top' a fashion.