my best friend is autistic & her mom is forcing her to go on a gluten-free diet and take a ~magic pill~ (falsely advertised probiotic) called the All Star Probiotic to cure her autism. what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
i can drop the link to the site if anyone wants to see how fucked up it is but basically the site claims that gut health is directly related to brain health and because people on the spectrum generally have gut problems (not mentioned: the fact that those gut problems are usually due to sensory issues with food affecting their diet) and this pill will fix the gut problems. it never directly claims it’ll cure autism but it’s pretty heavily implied, and all the reviews make me physically ill.
here’s a couple screenshots from the site i still have on my phone
there’s no links to or even mentions of research studies anywhere on the site as far as i’ve found. i am on the spectrum and have been offered these by my best friend’s mom several times. please please spread that a gluten free diet is not going to cure autism (it’s been shown there’s a correlation with GLUTEN SENSITIVE autistic kids not having EXTREME meltdowns but that’s all, and it hasn’t even been proven) and there is no magic pill cure, nor does there need to be.
this makes me so unbelievably upset. normally i like to see a mix of opinions on my posts because it exposes me to other beliefs and helps me develop my own ideas on things, but if you in any way think that any part of this- “this” being trying to cure a child’s autism by forcing them to take internet pills or making them keep a diet that’s causing them physical stomach pains and other discomfort they weren’t experiencing to any degree before- is fine or acceptable behavior as a parent or other legal guardian, don’t ever interact with my blog again.
basic science: if we’re not in pain from our gluten sensitivity or intolerance, WE WILL HAVE LESS ISSUES
but if we are NOT celiac or gluten sensitive
THIS WILL DO NOTHING
YOU CANT CURE AUTISM, IT IS HOW YOUR BRAIN HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY WIRED
THAT’S LIKE TRYING TO TURN A CAT INTO A DOG
IT DOESN’T WORK
you can abuse it and dress it up as a dog, and train it to mimick a dog
BUT IT IS STILL A CAT
so ABA, and pulling shit like this to try to ‘normalize’ and ‘cure’ your child?
YOUR KID IS STILL AUTISTIC
YOU’RE JUST A SHITTY PARENT
Pretty much.
I am one of the autistic people with adult-diagnosed celiac. This quack stuff is extra disturbing, the way it manages to harm both autistics and people with actual autoimmune conditions at the same time.
People here have probably at some point read my descriptions of what ‘cousin’ meant in autistic communities and why I think reviving the term is important. I wrote about it again on my other blog for Autistic History Month. I also submitted it to the people doing Autistic History Month so hopefully they’ll post it somewhere. I’d been going to write something else, but this post came out of me at the last minute, and seemed far more useful than what I had been going to write.
Bringing people together with words like ‘cousin’ allows people to identify with autistic people, without putting pressure on them to figure out instantly whether they are actually autistic or not. It allows people to acknowledge that most skills and difficulties autistic people experience are not totally unique to autistic people. It allows people to acknowledge the vast grey area that is both outside of standard definitions of autism, and outside of neurotypical, but that resembles autism in important ways. It allows people to acknowledge that the boundary between autistic and nonautistic is fuzzy at best. And it does all that while contributing to people understanding more about themselves and each other, and bringing people together into friendships, communities, and other relationships they might not otherwise have.
So I really believe that it would not only be a good thing to remember the word ‘cousin’ and what it used to mean, but to revive it and expand its use for more than just autistic people. It allows for so much more flexibility than people are currently given about a lot of different identity groups, and that’s important. So if you like the idea of cousins, by all means, use it and adapt it as much as you want, for whatever groups of people in your own life you think it would best apply to.
“These caregiver stock images illustrate the pervasiveness of the caregiver cliché. It tells us that caregivers are sturdy medical professionals who help infirm shut-ins who have nothing to offer them in return except beatific smiles of gratitude.”
People with ADHD tend to have time blindness.. Which means we dont tend to have a good grasp at how long things take.
Now this really fucks us up cause we end up being unable to start doing things cause we think it’ll take a long time only for it to take a very short time when we actually do it.
Now obviously if someone says ten minutes, we know what it means numerically. But what we don’t easily grasp is what can be done in those ten minutes.
My friends are coming over in ten minutes? I can easily clean up the house and change before then…… Wait, theyre already here? How’s that possible?!
Op I like you cuz you make me feel less shitty about my shortcomings. It’s not just me being shitty! Amazing! It’s a legit thing! Which I still need to deal with and stuff but at least it’s like, not just cuz I’m a terrible person!
A lot of what we are made to believe are our shortcomings are caused by factors outside of our control. We can learn to control them to a point but learning to recognize them as not completely our fault is incredibly freeing.
I’ve exhaustively written and boosted posts about:
ways an on-record clinical diagnosis of autism can be used to materially harm autistic people
how an autism diagnosis can prevent you from accessing trans health care
how an autism diagnosis can be used to deny you the ability to immigrate to many countries, like new zealand and australia
the extreme difficulty and expense of obtaining an accurate autism evaluation for an adult
how clinical misdiagnosis does vastly more harm than incorrect self diagnosis
how my autism self diagnosis process began when multiple autistic people told me in person that i was probably autistic
how i wouldn’t have pursued clinical diagnosis if it weren’t necessary for government disability benefits
how multiple major autistic organizations affirm self diagnosed autistic people
how it’s scientifically validated that autistic people are experts on autism.
if you comprehend all of that but still disapprove of autistic self diagnosis, i don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people
“What common ground do people who were diagnosed or self-diagnosed in adulthood have?” Check out this interview with Elizabeth Bartmess, editor of ASAN’s new anthology about late-diagnosed autistic folks!
An old post from elmindreda, which gave me some major “aha!” moments when I first ran across it.
(No, any of a variety of problems with speech is not necessarily coming from Purposely Being Difficult, and/or Worrying Psych Symptoms. Shocking idea 😒)
With the state of my health sucking a lot of energy, I’ve been running into increasing troubles with communicative speech for a while now. I was reminded to hunt this down again, and thought I might as well share it.
It’s very common to divide autistic people into a ‘speaking’ and a ‘non-speaking’ group, and also to assume that the ability to speak implies the ability to communicate with speech. Those people who do so quite naturally place me into the ‘speaking’ group, since I’m most of the time able to produce understandable words, almost always strung together into sentences.
However, there’s a large grey area between being fully able to use speech to communicate and not having access to language at all, and it’s not linear either…
Since I haven’t seen a lot of descriptions of what it’s actually like to lose speech, or to be able to speak but not be able to use that ability to communicate (and those I’ve seen always seem to be missing things), I will attempt to describe some of the different ways I experience those things. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of other possible ways, too.
Diagnosis for autism/ADHD as an adult is complicated as hell
It really shouldn’t have to be but it is. Or it can be.
See I have figured out that there are three basic scenarios when it comes to autism or ADHD diagnosis as an adult.
•You luck out with people who know what the heck they’re doing to the point where they can diagnose with a mental health eval with a developmental/social history inventory for autism. Honestly for adults, this is a perfectly valid way for diagnosis due majorly to the fact that the expensive neuropsych test is not norm referenced to adults.
This is critically important because your test results have no baseline to compare to what those your age group are expected to be able to do on a social and developmental level. All diagnostic testing for medicine and education of this nature need to be norm referenced to the age group of the person being tested.
For ADHD, people who know what they’re doing should be able to diagnose through basic evaluation and trying coping mechanisms/medication. If the medication is effective for what it’s meant to do (focus your brain by slowing your high speed brain down), then there’s no question. I have questions about if ADHD diagnostic tests are norm referenced to adults.
•You get people who do nothing except tell you that you can’t be autistic/ADHD because of some biased reason they hold. I’ve had plenty of these.
•You get ones who insist that you need all the neuropsych/diagnostic testing to be “officially” diagnosed. Yeah, these people are annoying because, especially for autism, the testing isn’t accurate for adults. Depending on your region, you may need the diagnostic testing results for certain services. But for accommodations at university, a good mental health provider should be able to make a case without them.
This is basically a way of phone-banking and canvassing via text-based methods! Some of my fellow autistic friends have been using it in lieu of phone banking/in-person canvassing and find it more accessible.
I imagine other people would prefer this for a myriad of reasons as well, such as: mobility issues making it harder to canvass, auditory processing issues affecting phone conversations, social/phone anxiety, being busy and not having time to do the other options, or just not wanting to talk in person or on phones.
@clatterbane this seems up your ally to share even though you’re in the UK right now, haha
“We do not all face the same risks; as with every attack on members of our community, some of us are more directly targeted and others are more called upon to stand in solidarity.
The solidarity autistics have shown since January 2017 with other disabled people, even when they are not directly affected by an issue… has been amazing to watch. I am grateful today, as a trans person, to be a member of the autistic community.“
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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