Using the term on the spectrum

[Greencabbages3]

Hello all 👋

I'm less than a year into my diagnosis and that of my child's so I'm learning as I go along😕. I was at my child's autism group & another parent there used the term above and another attendee wasn't impressed and told the lady off!

Can anyone help me understand why this was an offensive thing to say?
Also can anyone give suggestions for good books to read?

Thanks 😊

I've never heard of this term being problematic. I guess like most thing, it's a personal preference? Some people find 'person with autism' offensive which I only recently became aware of

@Greencabbages3 it's because very many people don't know what a spectrum or spectrum condition is, which leads to some claiming that "everyone is on the spectrum somewhere". This is ignorant and minimises the needs of others.

Diverse and divergent are also regularly misused.

A spectrum is NOT a simple scale with less effected at one end and severely effected at the other. I've posted the following quite recently:

Change wavelength to neurological or psychological variables or parameters.
Change Relative Energy to intensity or impact

In which case the different curves could represent or identify different neurological conditions including NT, ADHD, ASD, dyslexia etc etc.

There are two main reasons it's disliked:

1 - It's a euphemism for "autistic", as though the latter is some kind of dirty word...and we don't need a euphemism, because it's not a dirty or taboo word. It's who we are, and the sooner people (usually parents of autistic kids) accept this and stop trying to hide behind daft euphemisms, the closer we are to actual acceptance for the autistic population.

2 - It conjures the idea of a scale in the mind of the average NT individual, with "normal" at one end and "Rain Man" at the other, and that's just not how neurodiversity spectrums work.

Reality is that the autism spectrum is more like a colour wheel, where an individual will be a bit of every colour (trait). A far more accurate description would be "in the spectrum", but try explaining that to the average user of the phrase "on the spectrum" and they'll already have walked away before the lightbulb has a chance to flash.

Yes! Especially to point one. NT people often slightly whisper it. And then I silently judge them.