Quirky, Yes -- Hopeless, No: practical tips to help your child with Asperger's syndrome be more socially accepted, by Cynthia La Brie Norall with Beth Wagner Brust, is a topical guidebook focused around handling children in the now defunct "Aspie" subset of autism spectrum conditions.
That subtype is basically: visual thinker, no learning disabilities, average to high IQ, mainstream education, fully verbal, no physical disabilities or conditions like epilepsy or cerebral palsy, and fixated on special interests with no general curiosity.
You can essentially look up information on subjects like anxiety, conversation, teasing, sarcasm, and courtesy. Each has a short section (less than 5 pages) and comes with a "See also:" for related subjects. There's a significant amount of repetition of concepts, since some subjects overlap in places. The overall message is what's in the title: autistic people are different, but you shouldn't give up on us. The book is meant to help you understand and give you immediate ideas of what to try. Sound great, right?
Honestly? I didn't really like this book. It got a lot of things right, but in some cases it did so in the worst way possible.
For example, one of the early sections talks about meltdowns, and how they're different than tantrums. The issue? The book doesn't use the word meltdown. It insists on giving you two different definitions of "tantrum," and explaining the autistic meltdown in great depth but not using the obvious word for it. The content is more or less accurate, in that meltdowns are not about control or getting what you want, but about being overwhelmed or overstimulated and not being able to handle it. If there's a perfectly good word to distinguish a not-tantrum from a tantrum, I can't understand why you wouldn't use it.
I also didn't like the "one size fits all" stereotypes the book liked to trumpet. The thing about autism is that it's a spectrum. The well-worn saying is, "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." That includes the subset like myself who were given the label "Asperger's Syndrome" instead of "autism" or "high functioning autism." There are going to be differences, so saying "all Aspies do this" or "all Aspies have this problem," or "Aspies think like this" is a massive red flag, and wrong to boot.
This book has tons of those massive red flags. A personally irritating example is in the section about taking an interest in other people. The book opines that autistic people are not interested in others, which is a problem because that behavior is expected. It then says, "Can we rewire the brain to insert an interest in people? No, unfortunately, there is no way to hardwire in social thinking." And then talks about how you can train autistic people to fake interest in others so the social expectation is fulfilled.
So, excuse me? I'm an autistic person with a general interest in everyone and everything, including other people. I have had that interest since I was young, and have only gotten better at expressing it as I aged. I wasn't aware that I apparently don't exist, thanks for that heads up (sarcasm).
Speaking of ways I don't exist, there were a couple mentions of gender talks and dating. While I absolutely agree it's important to discuss these things, the assumption the book makes, that autistic children will be cisgender (either male OR female, both, transgender, or none of the above) and only care about straight dating (never mind all the gay and bi folks), is woefully shortsighted. Autistic people often find ourselves in gender minorities. I myself am agender, which puts me in the transgender category... and apparently again, I don't exist. Talk about LGBTQIA issues, for Pete's sake. It is 2020 and sex and gender are way more complicated than, "did you check what's in their pants?"
And speaking of things that are outdated... This whole book, while published in 2009, seems to be stuck in the 90s. Paper and pencil solutions are stressed. Phone skills and analog clock-reading skills are pointed out as important. Look, I get that not every person has a smartphone, but these days, even under the poverty line, it's the vast majority. Children these days are more likely to use a smartphone for organizational solutions, text far more than call, and use their cell phones for clocks rather than squint at a clock with hands.
There's a time and place for paper-and-pencil solutions, or whiteboards, or what have you. But the issue of smartphones was basically entirely ignored throughout the book, and that strikes me as a staggering oversight. Particularly when talking about bullying. The book focuses only on in-person bullying, but cyberbullying is now quite common and badly needs addressing in great detail.
My last criticism is that the book seems steeped heavily in the ableist "autism separate from child" mentality. The fallacy in Autism $peaks' publicity stuff is that the autism can somehow be peeled away from a person, "freeing" the normal human underneath, or some such nonsense. This shows up in various points in the book, but the one that irked me enough to note it down was on page 163: "Unlike more severe autism, Asperger's syndrome is surmountable to a degree."
Hi, it's me again, the twice-nonexistent autistic human! My autism is not a chronic disease. I have learned to function in your bullshit neurotypical society, but that does not mean I have somehow "overcome" my neurology. I am still autistic, and I will still be autistic even if I solve all my health problems and function at my very best. Please don't imply my existence is something to be "surmounted," and if I just try hard enough I'll be "normal." Yikes.
This is probably the most blistering review I've written and opted to publish, and I think the book bothered me because it got many things right but missed the mark in so many important ways. The authors spent hundreds of hours around autistic kids, but it's like they never spoke to autistic adults or even heard of neurodiversity at all. I hate to belabor the obvious, but like... maybe do that before you publish your book next time?
That subtype is basically: visual thinker, no learning disabilities, average to high IQ, mainstream education, fully verbal, no physical disabilities or conditions like epilepsy or cerebral palsy, and fixated on special interests with no general curiosity.
You can essentially look up information on subjects like anxiety, conversation, teasing, sarcasm, and courtesy. Each has a short section (less than 5 pages) and comes with a "See also:" for related subjects. There's a significant amount of repetition of concepts, since some subjects overlap in places. The overall message is what's in the title: autistic people are different, but you shouldn't give up on us. The book is meant to help you understand and give you immediate ideas of what to try. Sound great, right?
Honestly? I didn't really like this book. It got a lot of things right, but in some cases it did so in the worst way possible.
For example, one of the early sections talks about meltdowns, and how they're different than tantrums. The issue? The book doesn't use the word meltdown. It insists on giving you two different definitions of "tantrum," and explaining the autistic meltdown in great depth but not using the obvious word for it. The content is more or less accurate, in that meltdowns are not about control or getting what you want, but about being overwhelmed or overstimulated and not being able to handle it. If there's a perfectly good word to distinguish a not-tantrum from a tantrum, I can't understand why you wouldn't use it.
I also didn't like the "one size fits all" stereotypes the book liked to trumpet. The thing about autism is that it's a spectrum. The well-worn saying is, "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." That includes the subset like myself who were given the label "Asperger's Syndrome" instead of "autism" or "high functioning autism." There are going to be differences, so saying "all Aspies do this" or "all Aspies have this problem," or "Aspies think like this" is a massive red flag, and wrong to boot.
This book has tons of those massive red flags. A personally irritating example is in the section about taking an interest in other people. The book opines that autistic people are not interested in others, which is a problem because that behavior is expected. It then says, "Can we rewire the brain to insert an interest in people? No, unfortunately, there is no way to hardwire in social thinking." And then talks about how you can train autistic people to fake interest in others so the social expectation is fulfilled.
So, excuse me? I'm an autistic person with a general interest in everyone and everything, including other people. I have had that interest since I was young, and have only gotten better at expressing it as I aged. I wasn't aware that I apparently don't exist, thanks for that heads up (sarcasm).
Speaking of ways I don't exist, there were a couple mentions of gender talks and dating. While I absolutely agree it's important to discuss these things, the assumption the book makes, that autistic children will be cisgender (either male OR female, both, transgender, or none of the above) and only care about straight dating (never mind all the gay and bi folks), is woefully shortsighted. Autistic people often find ourselves in gender minorities. I myself am agender, which puts me in the transgender category... and apparently again, I don't exist. Talk about LGBTQIA issues, for Pete's sake. It is 2020 and sex and gender are way more complicated than, "did you check what's in their pants?"
And speaking of things that are outdated... This whole book, while published in 2009, seems to be stuck in the 90s. Paper and pencil solutions are stressed. Phone skills and analog clock-reading skills are pointed out as important. Look, I get that not every person has a smartphone, but these days, even under the poverty line, it's the vast majority. Children these days are more likely to use a smartphone for organizational solutions, text far more than call, and use their cell phones for clocks rather than squint at a clock with hands.
There's a time and place for paper-and-pencil solutions, or whiteboards, or what have you. But the issue of smartphones was basically entirely ignored throughout the book, and that strikes me as a staggering oversight. Particularly when talking about bullying. The book focuses only on in-person bullying, but cyberbullying is now quite common and badly needs addressing in great detail.
My last criticism is that the book seems steeped heavily in the ableist "autism separate from child" mentality. The fallacy in Autism $peaks' publicity stuff is that the autism can somehow be peeled away from a person, "freeing" the normal human underneath, or some such nonsense. This shows up in various points in the book, but the one that irked me enough to note it down was on page 163: "Unlike more severe autism, Asperger's syndrome is surmountable to a degree."
Hi, it's me again, the twice-nonexistent autistic human! My autism is not a chronic disease. I have learned to function in your bullshit neurotypical society, but that does not mean I have somehow "overcome" my neurology. I am still autistic, and I will still be autistic even if I solve all my health problems and function at my very best. Please don't imply my existence is something to be "surmounted," and if I just try hard enough I'll be "normal." Yikes.
This is probably the most blistering review I've written and opted to publish, and I think the book bothered me because it got many things right but missed the mark in so many important ways. The authors spent hundreds of hours around autistic kids, but it's like they never spoke to autistic adults or even heard of neurodiversity at all. I hate to belabor the obvious, but like... maybe do that before you publish your book next time?
Read This Book If
You're the parent of an autistic child, and your kid fits neatly into the subtype of autism I've described above. Most likely, they will not, because autistic people vary quite a lot in our characteristics. You can still read this book, but it has a lot of problems, not the least of which is that the information would have been most useful in the 90s, and has not been updated for the age of smartphones, cyberbullying, and social media. There were also major issues with ableism and sweeping stereotypes, which I really did not appreciate.
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