Is there such a thing as a GC Autism support charity?

Omg I absolutely cannot stand people who refer to themselves as 'neurospicy'!! What a horrendous term 😫😫

And then there are those who self ID purely as ‘neurodivergent’ which seems to be a catch all for people with no diagnosis who want to be treated special.

Let’s not forget those who use the horrendous “neurospicy” - usually people vacillating between self-diagnosed autism & self-diagnosed ADHD. Quite a high correlation with those who claim a trans identity (usually non-binary; & very frequently to be found lecturing people about the fact that their gender ≠ their gender expression & it is a pain no cis-person can imagine to be referred to as “she/her” just because they have long hair, wear make-up, & their wardrobe of dresses, skirts, high heels, boob tubes etc is used to accentuate their female body).

Loud autism “activists” are a nightmare. Even if they actually have autism, which not all of them do; they advocate for the desires of a limited subsection of the autistic community ie that which is most able. Not that they will acknowledge that reality - I don’t mean in the sense of an understandable refusal to engage in disability too trumps; but rather, the boggling reverse: insisting that so-called “high-functioning autism” is in fact vastly more disabling than being an adult with autism & who is doubly incontient, unable to communicate/able to communicate only very minimally, & will never be able to live independently.

I was starting with IQ, I wasn’t suggesting stopping with just IQ as a source of neurodivergence. Very high IQ is considered a special educational need/additional support need and is as much of a ‘neurodivergence’ as learning disability so why discount it?

LD is 2 SD below mean, but 1 SD is still ‘divergent’ from the mean; it is not ‘neurotypical’ and brings us down to 68% of the population.

The average age of the uk population is 40. The brain does not mature until 25 so those under this age (29%) are ‘divergent’ from the rest of the population. That leaves us with 48% of the population.

Only two measures and we already find only a minority of the population is ‘neurotypical’

What do you mean by NT? Who do you consider neurotypical? Starting with IQ, how many standard deviations from the mean?

That's a good question and when I talk about it I'm more talking about the way it's being used, rather than having a firm idea of it myself.

I'm not sure standard deviation of IQ is useful for a lot of conditions as many of them are not inherently linked to IQ, and also the standard deviation would only work going down the scale from average (you are not considered automatically non-NT for having a very high IQ).

I think there's some confusion over the term "Neurodiverse". Everyine is neurodiverse as a PP said, and the term was invented to emphasise that people with ASD, ADHD etc are all part of a natural tange of "diversity".

When "ND" is used about things like ASD I think it means "neurodivergent" when basically does boil down to "not typical" but no one is really typical, so that is hard to define.

I think this group is run by the DD of a Mumsnetter.

What do you mean by NT? Who do you consider neurotypical? Starting with IQ, how many standard deviations from the mean?

The only things we know of that actually cause/ are caused by neuro differences are psychopathy, dementia and schizophrenia.

I don't think that's true - I've seen numerous papers and studies (because of research related to my job) about structural brain differences/signatures in autism, dyspraxia and other SEN.

However it is true that NT people are not all the same and only ND people are "different". Everyone's different and has different innate neurological strengths and weaknesses.

I really agree with TempestTost below as well about how masking, social struggles etc are seen as things only ND people can have. Everyone is on the introvert/extrovert spectrum, has different and sometimes maladaptive or unhelpful ways of handling life, finds some things difficult. I tried to say that to my trans-identifying, autism-identifying relative and they just told me in that case I have ASD too

It's not, it actually includes everyone. No one can be diverse unless there are others in the group to be diverse from.

And brain injuries, including hypoxia injuries at birth.

And Age. We know significant changes to the brain take place at puberty.

And left handed and right handed people have their brains wired differently.

I actually think ‘neurodiversity’ is not a helpful term at all, and in reality pretty meaningless.

I know it's veered off topic, but I have an autistic DD and I find the groups aimed at girls to be free of it. I assume the girls who think they are boys self exclude and it's very much about autism presenting differently in girls, so wouldn't be much use to families who have a boy developing a gender ID as he'd still have been diagnosed as a male and signposted accordingly. I'm in one parent group and there's the occasional NB but most conversations slip into female pronouns without anyone being chastised.

And addiction to physiologically addictive substances like opiods but not habit addictions.

Even the words neurotypical and neurodiverse suggest a difference in brain activity that does not exist and cannot be used for diagnosis and so factually these terms suggesting the brain is wired differently are in fact not true.

The only things we know of that actually cause/ are caused by neuro differences are psychopathy, dementia and schizophrenia.

I'm really unclear what support autism charities offer at all. Meet other parents of autistic kids - but why would I need to when I could arrange a family gathering?

Most adult autistic individuals I know (quite a lot) are actually down to earth, sensible, getting on in life and their jobs as best they can with reasonable adjustments, who do not expect society to circle round them and stay clear of autism activism. They do need some extra supports which they mostly receive and were diagnosed a good number of years ago. Some do struggle with their mental health though.

Just want to be clear, these political activists extolling their lived experience to all who will listen are not representative of all autistic adults.

There has a this real divide built up (by ND loud voices) between the ND and NT. With ND people encouraged to believe that they and only them struggle with the NT environment

This is another issue; autism and, to a lesser but more recent and growing extent, ADHD are force teaming with other ‘neurodiversities’ but then ignore those other conditions and dominate the discussion. I saw one autistic individual recently bemoaning that a ND initiative wasn’t headed up by someone autistic (her). Absolutely no consideration or awareness of the plethora of other conditions that come under ‘neurodiversity’. Most other conditions are still ignored/lacking awareness/getting on with life/trying to be heard.

And then there are those who self ID purely as ‘neurodivergent’ which seems to be a catch all for people with no diagnosis who want to be treated special.

Ultimately it's not helping them as a group, and certainly not as individuals, though it may feel good and comforting and satisfying at the time.

It makes hiring them very fraught, if you think you may have to make extreme accommodations.

I've mentioned this here before, but I have two employees in my workplace who tick the boxes for several things. One is autistic (and I don't think self-diagnosed I have no doubt it's true,) and the other supposedly ADHD and anxiety (might be true, not sure.) Also both identify as "queer".

They work on the same team (a team of two) and have creates a sort of cabal and pretty much pull out the "you must accommodate" card any time anyone brings up that they don't do more than the bare minimum, and not even that really. Everyone else works around the fact that we know the things they are responsible for will simply never get done. They spend a large part of the day playing video games to help them "cope".

The CEO is afraid to challenge them I think, but I don't think he'd be too ready to add anyone else with similar diagnoses to the group. Which is potentially too bad because they might do very well.

I so agree with this. There has a this real divide built up (by ND loud voices) between the ND and NT. With ND people encouraged to believe that they and only them struggle with the NT environment. When many, many people do, and for a multitude of different reasons. Life IS hard!

This coupled with @BonfireLady's depiction of resilience as a 'bad' thing for autistic people means they are constantly being told they are victims, no-one understands, but the world must always make adjustments.

Now, I am firmly for reasonable adjustments, but these should be made for anyone with additional needs and be REASONABLE. It's like TRAs are top of the hierarchy pile, and adult autistics are putting themselves there too. Sacred caste status.

Ultimately it's not helping them as a group, and certainly not as individuals, though it may feel good and comforting and satisfying at the time.

It's funny how "lived experience" is now this massive deal and yet when it comes to telling people they can be the opposite sex it doesn't matter at all that even though you have zero lived experience of being male/female you can just decide you are. Makes no sense.

I’m shocked you got that response from an SLT. They were probably given training by someone with lived experience - of autism but not SLCN. Though perhaps it also represents a convenient way of managing waiting lists.

I've found, talking to some of the autistic adults that seem to be the ones dominating these groups, that they often have a very warped view of how easy things are for other people.

For example, in discussions on masking, there doesn't seem to be much understanding that everyone does this in certain settings, and that it can be tiring for many if not most. For someone autistic this may be more challenging, but the thing in itself is actually a normal part of living in society.

Similarly many children have normal developmental challenges around communication or appropriate behaviours, and it's the job of parents to help them navigate these things.

I think this lack of perspective makes it very hard to navigate these discussions.

@BonfireLady also agreed, and yet resilience is one of the best tools all of us have in the face of any struggle. To deny this tool to one group, autistic kids is cruel. DS has significant and profound challenges. I am proud of his growing and determined resilience and this will give him many advantages and his mental wellbeing is much better because of it. He has really come far in regulating his own responses, because hitting out because the iPad glitched is not going to help him. Now he doesn’t, and he is much happier for it.

100% agree. I am extremely worried about this. I’ve already had a SLT (speech) therapist ridicule and look down at me for wanting more speech therapy for DS - she told me we needed to ‘respect his authentic autistic voice’ - and basically leave him with zero speech support.

Kids behaviour is not being well supported either. Resulting in a lot of disregulated autistic teenagers and young adults with self harm/aggression/mental health issues who are somehow to fend for themselves or with an exhausted family. I don’t know how we can’t see the crisis in this.

@BonfireLady this is the clearest explanation of reasonable adjustment and resilience I've ever read and has been very helpful. Thankyou.

Another big red flag for me in the autism parenting group I was in (other than the gender identity discussions) was that I was told the word resilience, and the concept of resilience, was bad. Ableist in fact.

Whilst I do agree that some of my daughter's brilliant skills are akin to an "autism superpower", this has to be carefully balanced out with reality. The reasonable adjustments that she gets at school should be just that: reasonable. Instead, the prevailing view was that effectively everything should be accommodated, no resilience on the part of my daughter was required and the brilliant bits of her personality and skillset should be elevated.
No. The world is not like that. The world is full of all sorts of different and sometimes difficult situations. Yes, my daughter needs some reasonable adjustments because of her autism but she absolutely needs resilience. Everyone does. She also needs to understand that she isn't a victim or the centre of the world.

When you layer gender identity in to this mix it becomes even more destructive. An adolescent child who is figuring themselves out is being encouraged to have free reign on how they process what it means to be a boy or a girl. With no guardrails or frame of reference, and with active encouragement about everyone being free to choose their "identity" they are vulnerable to the messaging that comes from the TRAs and Be Kind people. Instead of "there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or girl" it seems to filter through as "you can do girl things or boy things, so you can choose which you want to be". It all then gets underpinned by the victim/ableist problem if it gets challenged.

Plenty of autistic children and adults feel very out of place among their peers, they don't fit in or relate to others or find it hard to find others who share their interests and passions. This is very isolating and it can feel very comforting to be told that not feeling like a girly girl or a rough-and-tumble boy must mean you are trans or non-binary.

Not only this but there's the love bombing of being able to join a group of peers who will welcome you with open arms at first and all you have to do is declare yourself non binary.