Why do they keep changing the terminology?

[wendihouse22]

Not sure if anyone else agrees but..... I was brought up short by one of the professionals a few weeks ago, for referring to my son's dx as ASD. The woman had a look of (firstly) horror and then pity on her face as she explained to me, the thick parent, that "we do not refer to Autistic Spectrum Disorder now, we feel it is derogatory. We now say "Autistic Spectrum Condition".

I felt a right fool.

I felt like saying.....doesn't really matter what you call it, it means second class citizen. Giving it a more PC name won't stop the days centres closing; open more vital special schools/colleges; train more TA's; finance more autism outreach workers; provide more speech and language resources; stop the constant battle for appropriate services/DLA/mobility.

Gets on my wick!

My honest opinion?

Faffing around with words like this achieves 2 things:-
1/ Keeps pesky parents in their place as most hit a point where they do know as much as the professional who only sees the kids once every 6 months for an hour if at all about their specific childs needs.
2/ It's an avoidance technique to distract from the lack of true measures and accountability for each professional discipline - "oh we know that none of the kids on our watch can tie their shoe laces yet but look - our new terminolgy shows just how much we care about these kids!"

Cynical moi?

I remember a friend being told not to call her mixed race 3 year old lil girl "chocolate drop" by some puffed up family support worker as it was supposedly derogatory. The little loved chocolate drops and saw the term purely as her Mums personal term of endearment. Yet this woman, who incidently had no experience of living in a mixed race household herself in the 70's saw fit to judge and try and make the Mum feel bad, so she could feel better about herself. It's the same ol shite recycled into a different context.

Really? Well my ds' statement just arrived and that says 'disorder'.

And I like 'disorder' as I feel it is more 'apt' and more likely to be taken seriously (though I prefer an alternative if all things were equal).

Condition reminds me of something you put on your hair to make it shiney.

Ask the 'professional' if they are so PC have they bothered to ask your ds what he calls it? He is, after all, the one who has to live with it.

No, didn't think of that. We probably won't see her again (if ever) until Statement Review next year.

I thought ASC was the American term and ASD the British one. At DS's assessment in January and ever since, every professional we've been involved with has used ASD.

I wonder if the 'we' she referred to was the royal we - as in just her own opinion, or that of the organisation she represented. Its certainly not the case around here.

I hate it when they come over all superior like that, as if because they've read some books about AS'D' they somehow know more than a parent that's had to live with it since the birth of their child. It always feels like they need to put us in our place to keep the control.

The National Autistic Society was thinking about changing all of ASD to become ASC last year, but even they are still using both terms right now. I think it's not a 'disorder', but a different design of brain, with pluses and minuses. Yet 'condition' makes it sound sort of medical and temporary somehow. Difficult. Either is acceptable in most of the work I do.

Could it be Autism Spectrum disability perhaps?

It could be, but then you get a proportion of people on the autism spectrum who say "I'm not disabled and think it's an insult to use that term", so that's not always a winner either. Although, to get a diagnosis, you do have to be at a level where it really is a disability (in law), so I'm not sure what the point is of claiming it isn't.

I don't like ASC, it sounds like it's trying too hard not to upset the poor old parents with a less 'disabled' sounding name. Mind you, I don't like change! I've heard professionals call ASD just the Autism Spectrum, which is too easily confused with Asperger Syndrome (AS)

You could say to that professional, 'Well, whatever you call it, it's me that lives with it'. Pompous ass

The Autistic Spectrum is a collective term used to include a wide range of disabilities, syndromes and disorders.
These issues include:
Aspergers Syndrome,
Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
Hyperlexia
Savant Syndrome
Pragmatic Language Impairment
and many more
There are also subdivisions High Function Autism, and Low Functioning Autism.

International Research finds out more about the different variations and subtypes all the time, as they develop new technologies to understand how thew brain works, and more especially the reasons why some part of the brain do not function as well in some when compared to others.

PubMed is the largest online medical research paper library which has links to a wide range of international research journals covering every aspect of medical research. all can create their own online research paper collections at PubMed to help understand the issues that interest them.
I have listed some of my online PubMed research paper collections on a web site, and the web page closest to this thread is my Invisible Disability web page of research paper collections

If you have done your own research and have the research papers to support what you say, this will either confirm what the professionals are saying, or suggest that you know more than they do, and it is they who need to do more research.

Why don't they call it ASC - autistic spectrum club - then only the very elite can be members :)

agree with ZZZ and bakelite. think the professional in question was being discourteous and inconsiderate using a pedantic point to put you down. TY

I like the autistic spectrum club! When DS was first DX I felt like I was being forced to join some sort of club of parents with DC with SN. But I later found that it's quite exclusive and was full of my new best friends.