I have ony read up to page 5, sp apologies if I have missed something key.
I wanted to post because I am the parent of a NT teen who uses these insults.
We have 2 close families friends who have autistic kids. My ds knows them well. In both cases one of the parents is very likely autistic too.
My dds best friend all through primary has autism.
My nephew, ds's cousin has just been diagnosed, although dh and I have thought for a long time that he was on the spectrum.
My ds has grown up around kids with autism and knows them well. He is kind and gentle especially to one younger lad who we see often (very close friend)
He also has a friend at church who is a wheelchair user, I think he has cerebral palsy.
The reason I say all that is that ds really is very well informed about autism, and disability in general.
He is also 15, and the peer pressure is enormous. You use what ever everyone else uses. The irony being that they all all intelligent grammar school kids, and yet.....
Since he was about 10/11, he has used disablist and homophobic language as an insult (his uncle is gay, so again, not due to actual homophobia, or ignorance)
I have heard him use: spaz, moron, retard, gay, and recently autistic.
Each time I have done exactly what everyone would want me to do. I have sat down and explained where the word came from and why it is offensive (to be fair, they had no idea where spaz or moron or retard came from) I have explained why it is horrible, and why we don't want him to use it.
Usually, that word then drops out of his vocab, and another one takes its place.
recently, while on the x-box, I heard him say 'are you autistic???' when someone made a stupid move.
With ds, it works better if I pick my moment to talk to him, over the following week, I heard it often, it was obviously the latest word. That weekend, I made an opportunity and we talked about his use of the word.
I haven't heard it since.
But with all these words, I know they are continued to be used among the boys themselves, he is just careful not to use them in front of me as he knows they are not acceptable. He once said to me - well which words are we allowed to use? because it is natural for teens to throw insults around at each other, and all the insults were forbidden!
A poster up thread spoke about how as a teen when she was told that a word was offensive, she stopped using it, and her expectation was that others would do the same.
The trouble is, that assumes that you are not the sort of teen who does exactly the opposite of what their parents say. I remember a smug parent saying the same thing about why her kids never swore. When I explained to ds why we don't use swear words, when he was younger, he took great delight in 'forbidden words' as he is the sort of kid who loves doing the direct opposite of what adults expect (well, up to a point)
dd1 is 12, she is the direct opposite, and she would never, ever use any such language.
We can and do pull them up on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were on a bus with ds if you over heard him use it. I am not happy about that, but he DOES know. And he knows it well. If I ever hear him use it, he is pulled up. I know he would never be unkind to someone, and I think he would pull his friends up if they were (in fact he did just that when he was at primary and our friends son (who has autism) was being teased, he stepped in and told the boys not to pick on him, to leave him alone)