Truthfully I don't always understand how some parents advocate for their autistic children. How does showing how aggressive their meltdowns can be help them? The general public will sympathise with the parents but avoid autistic people as a result - ThreadSky

neuroliminality.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Truthfully I don't always understand how some parents advocate for their autistic children. How does showing how aggressive their meltdowns can be help them?

The general public will sympathise with the parents but avoid autistic people as a result

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tishtishtish.bsky.social•3 days ago

That’s exactly their goal though!

Just something I noticed as an Autistic mom raising Autistic kids with more support needs than me. Those parents are not actually interested in actually helping Autistic kids

letitbesimple.com•3 days ago

I relate in many contexts. I don't expect to get everything everyone does or says. But it seems what people do or say is based on what makes sense or seems true to them, even if it doesn't make sense or seem true to me. People are just doing their best given their thinking. I accept them w/o judging

spaghettimodel.bsky.social•2 days ago

I get frustrated with parents who put children in situations that are novel because the adults want the experience but then video the autistic child’s experience. The children are often stressed, I see signs, but parents have a camera on them narrating for them? It’s odd.

solidaddecosta.bsky.social•3 days ago

That's because some autistic parents don't want to help their children, but advocate for eugenics (see: Aut!sm Speaks.)

neuroliminality.bsky.social•3 days ago

I get that raising autistic children can be extremely challenging (obviously) but I just think that there's better ways of representing and talking about the difficulties

vaila.bsky.social•3 days ago

I agree there’re better ways. I once attended some social work training as a parent. The trainer (also a parent) said we’ve created a system where you have to prove how “bad” life is to get services, benefits etc. So that normalises parents sharing this kind of info with strangers. Made sense to me.

jennuh.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes. I’m a social worker and a parent to an L3 autistic child. I try to be very strength focused about him and his caseworker often has to say, “okay. But on his WORST day, what is that?” And she’s right. Because without those data points, he loses access to his caregiver. 🙃

neuroliminality.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah strength focused is important is some contexts but describing the challenges accurately is important too. At the same time I think recording and posting such incidents on social media is another thing altogether

jennuh.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah. Both of my children are significantly disabled. I don’t often post their challenges on social media. I will sometimes post about insurance denials or whatever. I just like to relish in them as humans. We adopted them knowing they were disabled. They’re my humans. People either get it or they

jennuh.bsky.social•3 days ago

Don’t. Most of my small group of people on social media get it without us saying. And I appreciate that so much.

vaila.bsky.social•3 days ago

Especially in a world where you can monetise social media, if you give people the message that sharing personal info is how you get help and some people don’t actually get adequate help through the official channels, some may think, okay let’s take it further and share more with more people.

neuroliminality.bsky.social•3 days ago

Just saw this on Instagram that accurately describes how I feel about the issue (as an autistic individual, a SPED teacher and a parent)

vaila.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’m just about to do our annual reassessment and I hate it so much. I want to claw my skin off afterwards as it feels grimy having to rate my kid on the number scales they use and dredged up all my “worst” examples for their reports. He’s a person not a numerical score.

alpha-aurora.bsky.social•3 days ago

I can’t speak for anyone but me, my meltdowns occurred bc of parental/caregiver ignorance and cruelty.

neuroliminality.bsky.social•3 days ago

Lmao in my teenage years, same.

Not to mention, my mom would be having meltdowns that were extremely triggering

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