Carly Fleischmann posted on facebook about a study concluding that ABA may cause or exacerbate OCD. (The study isn’t available online yet.)
She was met with the usual howls of outrage and staggering lack of insight by a number of neurotypical parents.
Well my son had OCD even before he was diagnosed and received ABA. When he was almost 2 years old he would line his crayons up in the same order everyday before he would do his arts and crafts projects with me. If I moved a crayon or disrupted the line he would fix it immediately. He is a child of routine and he made his own routines. When he comes home from school, even if he has to go to the bathroom, there’s an order of the things he must do before he does anything else. Shoes off first, coat off next, a little dance around the living room area and then he’s free to do what he wants.
Linig up crayons in colour order is OCD? Taking your shoes and coat off in the same order every time is OCD?
WTF???
What is wrong with these people? A ‘success’, for this woman, seems to be a child who doesn’t line his crayons up in colour order, who undresses randomly, and to hell with the internal distress this destruction of routine causes.
I do believe slowly control should be removed to some degree to give the person a feeling of self worth.
Gosh, thanks! It’s so nice to know that NTs will consider removing a degree of their control of autistic people. Let’s not get overexcited and use words like autonomy, hey?
My son receives 30 hours a week IBI
Can you imagine, as a kid, being observed and hassled and prodded into ‘correct’ behaviour for this amount of time every week? The likelihood of becoming stressed and anxious at not being able to perform? The knowledge that this is being done because you are made wrong and these people aren’t going to stop until you are fixed?
Not looking forward to April. Really not.
Oh my god.
Lining up crayons in rainbow order is not OCD. To hear people with OCD describe what it’s really like, it’s terrifying, it’s nowhere near as charming as it is in “As Good As It Gets,” and it’s not needing to line up crayons in order. (I have a friend who can explain it really well, and when she did, I was like “Oooohhhhh!” She completely made it make sense why it’s debilitating.)
THAT sounds like plain old garden-variety autistic love of order. I.e., yeah, her son was already autistic when he was diagnosed with autism. Either she, or her son’s diagnostician, sounds like they don’t understand what OCD is, and that scares me to death for that kid if he’s being treated like he has it.
Kind of blows the ‘all parents know everything there is to know about their own child’s autism’ argument out of the water, doesn’t it?
I so badly wanted one of those enormous tins of coloured pencils. My parents kept buying me the standard twelve-pack, while the rich kids at school had things like this:
http://www.carandache.com/m/la-couleur/artistes-et-professionnels/les-crayons/prismalo80ans-angle-artistes-/index.lbl
It was always interpreted as me wanting something just because it was expensive, when what I really wanted was something that was so beautiful to organise, every pencil in its perfect place.
OMG, I could not function without the 96-color pack of Crayolas when I was about 6.
Or if someone took them out of rainbow order.
I had the 40 box. I think my grandparents gave it to me. The colours were just heartachingly beautiful. Did you know that carandache means “pencil” in Russian?
I saw her post, too. I thought it was brave of her, and that the parents were predictably bad.
This is way late, but I just stumbled upon your blog. I remember feeling the same way when Carly posted this. I was so upset that so many people didn’t get it.
Thanks for writing.
-Jude
“being stressed and anxious about ‘performing’ – namely, pleasuring my normal betters – is the entirety of my life. I am their slave; they own me as property; I am a lesser being and subhuman because they have told me I am.”
This is precisely the goal of most ‘interventions’ poured out upon autist; and it is the chief evidence for ‘all Normal people are inherently psychopathic (to at least some degree)’.
All psychopaths have as a goal ‘creation of a willing victim’; and the ultimate goal of most mistreatment directed toward autistic individuals is that precise end.