And… onto Week #3 of the #AutismUpside campaign on Twitter! We’ve got more coming in, so pop in and take a look!
Autism Upsides Week 3: AWN’s April Campaign
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Tag Archives: autism
Services = IQ ≤ 70
*sighs*
My Mom is still working on making connections with Eastern Health, trying to get services for me so that I can live independently. I’m working (somewhat – I seriously need help with motivation, depression has me in its grasp) on getting Income Support and Employment Insurance. I’ve filled out the forms and stuff, now it’s mostly waiting.
But for Mom… she keeps running into the same old problem. “If she has an IQ of higher than 70, we can’t help her.”
Click for further venting and expressions of dissatisfaction
Autism Upsides Week 2: AWN’s April Campaign
The Autism Upsides campaign on Twitter has been going wonderfully, to the extent that the storify I set up last week has become extremely long. There have been so many tweets coming in; definitely something for all of us to be proud of. In order to ensure that people who have already read most of it don’t have to go through clicking “Read More” a ridiculous number of times, I’ve decided to split the Storify of the Autism Upsides campaign up into weeks, rather than just have one for the entire month.
So, here is Week 2 (Monday April 15th to Sunday April 24th, 2013) of the Autism Women’s Network #autismupside campaign on Twitter.
Meltdown of Frustration
Well, it’s happened. The meltdown (at least the first of them) that I figure I’ve been moving towards since December at the latest has finally expressed itself. And I’m pretty sure that at the moment, I am non-verbal – or maybe even soundless.
And every time I think the tears have stopped, they just start up again.
Partial #NonVerbal Autism: Camp NaNoWrimo April 2013 #2
Okay, didn’t expect to be doing a post on this, but it turns out that one of the main characters in my Camp NaNoWriMo novel (It Came From the Library, in case anyone forgot ;)) is autistic. In some ways, she’s a combo of one of my best friends and myself.
(In other ways not, but she’s sort of a homage to my best friend. Shh! Don’t tell her! *pauses* Whoops, she reads this. Oh well, she deserves it. She’s been my friend through thick and thin for over 10 years now, and the support she’s provided me has been truly invaluable. Even if we’ve never met in person, she deserves the appellation of “best friend”.)
The thing is, I want the character to be partially non-verbal. When she gets stressed, she can lose her words. But I don’t have this issue (not unless I’m so seriously stressed that I’m on the edge of a meltdown and about to go over, or I’m being forced to make a decision), so I don’t have as much information about it as I’d like. I have read a number of blog entries that mention it (Ballastexistenz, for one, and Unstrange Mind’s, to provide two examples of bloggers who have brought it up), but I’d like more info, if anyone’s willing to provide it. (Note: This is not a demand. I’m just hoping that some of you who have non-verbal periods would be willing to share info and thoughts with me. Questions are below, as well as details about the character.)
Autism Upsides: AWN’s April Campaign
The Autism Women’s Network is running a Twitter campaign for the month of April focusing on the upsides of autism. Because I think this is important, I’ve created a Storify of it, and am embedding it in this post. I will be updating it throughout the month, so pop by to check it out later on as well! And if you’re on twitter, please think about adding your own Autism Upsides to the campaign using the hashtag #autismupside.
🙂 tagAught
Recommendation: Wiring the Brain- The Genetics of Emergent Phenotypes
I mentioned this blog post in my post on “Autism Speaks: I Want to Say”, but I think it deserves its own post recommending it.
Recommendation: Musing’s Survey #1
Okay, Musing of an Aspie‘s “Take a Test Tuesday” has now changed over to “Take a Survey Tuesday”, at least for a month. I highly recommend them; the questions are asked by ASDers for other ASDers. The first one, now up, is about relationships – friendships, family, romantic.
So, what are you doing still over here? Pop over to her post and either fill out the survey on Survey Monkey, or answer in the comments!
😉 tagAught
“Autistic People Are”…
Today is the flash blog day for Autistic People Are, a follow-up to last week’s Autistic People Should flash blog. I’m not going to write a terribly long post today, because what I have to say is fairly short.
Autistic people are fellow human beings.
Yes, “fellow human beings” is emphasized. Because that’s how we should be treated.
Please, think about that before you start trolling or hating.
[Edit: Mar. 03/13] Check out Unstrange Mind’s post about Autistic People Are; it gives details about what these two flash blogs are all about, and what’s been done so far. [/End Edit]
Thank you.
😐 tagAught
“Autistic People Should”…
Today is the “Autistic People Should” flash blog day. It’s being done because when you type “autistic people should” into autocomplete search engines, you get some pretty disgusting top searches (for details, check out the Autistic People Should blog, and some of the posts there – I’m not going to honor that search by typing any of those terms into this post). (Warning: Can be triggering.)
I had a hard time coming up with answers to that question. (Speaking of questions, I highly recommend reading Musings of an Aspie’s post on Autistic People Should in particular – it has some excellent details and suggestions.)
But I was thinking about it this morning, and I found myself coming up with some interesting (and hopefully much better) ways to complete that sentence.
Autistic people should be able to be themselves.
Autistic people should not have to be ashamed of / angry about / embarrassed about / humiliated by who they are.
Autistic people should not have to conform to the social mores of allistic / neurotypical society. (Please note that I’m not saying anything here about the “moral” mores. What I mean is that we should not be expected to want to go out a lot, make lots of friends, enjoy loud and bright places, etc. We should still be held to the standards of not hurting people and the like. We are perfectly capable of that.)
Autistic people should be able to live in the way that they prefer. (Independent, independent with support, etc.)
Autistic people should be accepted / respected for who and what they are.
Autistic people should not be looked down upon as “defective” or “damaged”.
Autistic people should be listened to about who they are and what they want.
In other words: Autistic people should be treated like human beings, because that is what they are.
[Edit: Feb. 23/13 @20:40] Unstrange Mind has also done an Autistic People Should post focused on the fact that we are all human beings.
Thank you.
😐 tagAught