The Latest in Original Autism News: Placing Autistic People in the Workforce

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on January 1, 2013)

For over five years, I have worked part time at Goretti’s, a local supermarket in my hometown of Millbury, with a minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. Besides bagging groceries, my tasks also include sweeping up the floor, putting baskets back into the lobby, vacuuming the lobby, removing carriages from the parking lot, disposing of trash and cardboard into their respective compactors, tending to the recycling machines, and returning unwanted items to their respective aisles. Although I am capable of more advanced tasks than this, I have not been able to bring myself to look for a higher paying job that would make use of them. Even though I have reading and writing skills refined from years of college, this blog, and an increasing personal library of books here at home, there is one obstacle that I have yet to overcome: communicating with other people in a way that would allow me to make sense to those other people. That is because I have my autism, a social psychological condition which makes communication and social interaction among other people different from people without it (generally referred to as “neurotypicals” in most autism circles) and decidedly more difficult, which ranges based on severity. Most people diagnosed with autism are generally unemployed because of their difficulty communicating with other people and understanding unwritten social rules and norms which most people take for granted. In my case, I still live with my parents even after graduating from high school in 2006 and college in 2011. I generally depend on them with college finances, driving, having a roof over my head, and so forth.

The Latest in Original Autism News/ The Role of Older Fathers in the Development of Autism, the Dangers of Special Education Cutting, and a New Martial Arts Program for Autistic Kids in New Jersey

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on August 23, 2012)

In today’s news, a study published online by the science journal Nature provides the best support yet for the argument that the cause of autism is a genetic factor. However, it is doubtful that this recent finding will persuade other people who hold onto the popular belief that vaccinations in children are correlated with the development of autism in those children.

Last year, an autistic man was denied a heart transplant because of his autism. Now I just have to ask: how would autism, a complex developmental disorder that, depending on the severity of the spectrum, affects the ability to socialize and communicate with other people as well as a sensibility to noise, could possible complicate a surgical procedure that would pretty much save that man’s life, among other benefits to his health? Today, an Australian autism expert warns of the dangers that autistic children in that country would have to face if funding for the special education of these children gets cut.

There is some good news for autistic youths interested in martial arts. In New Jersey, a new martial arts program called Special Dragons is recently set up to give autistic children activities that would help them achieve success in their daily lives as well as in school. Aside from getting exercise, they will also provide anti-bullying strategies for those who experience bullying on a daily basis.

Judge Rotenberg Center: Taking a Stand vs Turning a Blind Eye

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on August 12, 2012)

It has been quite a while since I last wrote about the Judge Rotenberg Center, a special education school based in Canton, MA for children and young people with behavioral, emotional, and developmental problems and disorders. It is also the only school in the whole country that legally uses aversive therapy to improve their behavior and make them better and more productive independent members of our society, or so they claim. As I have stated in my first posting on the Center, this “behavior modification program,” consists of electric shocks, physical and mechanical restraints, punishment-and-reward programs, forced cohesion to behavioral expectations, and 24/7 monitoring at all times. Numerous investigations have been conducted and actions have been taken against the JRC in regards to the questionable effectiveness of this aversive treatment in disabled children and how it is actually damaging them physically and psychologically. The latest news I have obtained are cases in point.

The Verbal Abuse of Autistic Children: A Silent Social Problem

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on April 28, 2012)

As most people familiar with autism already know, the developmental disorder makes self-expression for children and adults affected by autism difficult at best and impossible at worst. That aspect of the disability alone makes them susceptible to a social problem that would go unnoticed by their families and friends: verbal abuse. I bring up this fact because two days ago, I read an article in the Telegram and Gazette about how an autistic 10-year-old boy has been going through verbal abuse at his New Jersey school and how his father found out about it by placing a hidden tape recorder on him upon receiving reports of outbursts and physical violence against teachers. Though the recordings, the father learned how members of the school’s staff were calling his son names like “bastard,” “tard,” “a hippo in a ballerina suit,” and “little dog.” Just today, I read that a teacher was placed on paid leave by the school upon learning of the probe. Legal and privacy issues aside, I find this treatment against a child who can’t express the problem on his own to be revolting. In my opinion as an autistic individual, the teachers responsible for this abuse seem to consider children like him to be sub-human. According to the article, there have been at least nine other incidents across the US since 2003 in which verbal abuse against autistic children at school. Those were only officially reported cases. Now I’m not trying to raise a panic among parents here, but I wonder if there are other such incidents that are going unreported due in part to the fact that autistic children have difficulty expressing themselves, especially when it comes to them being mistreated by other people.

The Latest in Original Autism News/ A University Support Program, A Possible Re-definition, and Obesity as Latest Cause of Disorder

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on April 9, 2012)

I have read a few curious and interesting articles regarding autism in the past week. The first, and most peculiar, article was one in my father’s latest issue of Arkansas, a magazine exclusively for members of the Arkansas Alumni Association. The short article discusses a support program at the University of Arkansas, which is designed to help autistic college students who have the cognitive abilities to succeed but require more help than their neurotypical peers. More information on this program can be found at the University’s website.

The Doug Flutie Foundation and UMass Lowell’s Disable the Label Week and Autism Awareness Month

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on March 25, 2012)

A few weeks ago, I spotted a curious article on the front page of The New Uxbridge Times during one of my shifts at Goretti’s Supermarket where I work. It discussed an Uxbridge resident who was selected to represent the Doug Flutie Foundation for Autism in this April’s Boston Marathon. I check out their website and learned that it was founded by Doug Flutie, a former NFL quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, in honor of his son, Doug Jr., who was diagnosed with autism, specifically Childhood Disintegration Disorder (CDD), at age three. Through that organization, he provides aid to financially struggling families in order to provide the support and resources they need to help relatives with autism. More details can be found in this link to the website.

Yesterday, I have also took notice to a few flyers autism-related programs supported by UMass Lowell while I was taking part in their study of autistic adults’ emotional responses to one-minute samples of music. One of those is their annual Disable the Label Week, which is held in the first week of April as part of UMass Lowell’s Autism Awareness Month. One of the events held that week on Tuesday is a performance by the Asperger’s Are Us comedy group comprised of four young men with Asperger’s Syndrome. Another event held on Wednesday during the Disable the Label Week is a free movie night show a movie titled Temple Grandin, a biopic of the autistic woman who is an expert in animal behavior who promoted humane treatment of animals in livestock handling facilities. More details can be found in this promotional flyer.

As an autistic man, I find these latest autism news updates to be really good since the Doug Flutie Foundation and UMass Lowell’s Disable the Label Week are both concerned with raising autism awareness and providing ways for autistic individuals and their families to improve the quality of their lives; I was especially glad to know that they are not portraying autism as a disease to be cured and affected individuals as “an infected population to be isolated and quarantined” as organizations like Autism Speaks would.

Would Practicing Martial Arts be Beneficial to People with Autism?

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on February 28, 2012)

Throughout my life, martial arts have fascinated me. As a child, I watched a TV show called Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. While I attended my brother’s little league hockey games, I hung around arcade machines, fixated on games including Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Darkstalkers, and Street Fighter. At some point during my early teens, I started playing the video game Tekken 3 for the original PlayStation. Starting in my late teenage years, I’ve been watching martial arts action movies featuring stars like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. Around the same time, I collected a few books on martial arts, focusing mainly on the pictures than the text; I have yet to actually read them. At one point, I attended a karate class 8 years ago not only as a form of exercise for getting strong but as a way I can fight back when I needed to defend myself. However, I felt I wasn’t really learning anything in the group lessons and repetition of the same instructions. After two months, I dropped out of the karate class and moved on with my life. In my spare time during the course of 8 years, I played fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, King of Fighters, Soul Caliber, and Virtua Fighter alongside other video games; my evenings are dominated by watching movies including Chinese action dramas like Iron Monkey, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Ip Man; Thai movies like Chocolate, featuring an autistic woman who absorbs fighting skills by watching movies, and the Ong-Bak series, featuring Muay Thai practitioner Tony Jaa; a Japanese movie titled Ichi, which featured a blind swordswoman; and (just last night) Only the Strong, which tells the story about a US soldier trained in Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, who returns to his hometown and goes up against a Jamaican crime lord who also practices Capoeira. At one point, I wrote a brief entry about autism, martial arts, and my personal fascination with martial arts in the old version of my blog three years ago.