Autism

There are a lot of symptoms attributed to ASD on the DSM-5 that you could inflict on any neurotypical kid with enough trauma. I think we need to pay attention to the possibility that a lot of autistic kids are turning out disabled not because it is the natural development of their phenotype but because they get raised in an environment too disruptive to their needs even before they’re capable of expressing them.

I think there is some merit to this, just from observing people parent NT children. Many parents don't seem to think of their children as people and aren't willing to be inconvenienced in any way for them. Trauma and neglect definitely don't do any child favors. I don't think that 100% catering to a child doesn't them any favors either, but compromise is necessary for living with literally anyone.

Please do not do this shit. Not being able to see is objectively a disadvantage. You could find or create environments where the harm is reduced or even negated, but there’s going to be virtually none where it’s good without buts. It’s great that some communities of blind people feel proud of their own culture, but many of those are cultivating this extremely toxic tendency to disavow the possibility to cure blindness even for those for whom it is possible because they dogmatically latch onto an identity.

Equating autism and blindness in this way gives a legitimacy to these attitudes that they do not deserve and is fairly disingenuous about what autism is.

I think there there is an inherit disadvantage in not being typical. I'm not ND, but I do have several invisible afflictions that doctors acknowledge, but don't have a label for because well premies should be glad to be alive. I can't change my many many afflictions due to having been born early. It definitely was and still is a disadvantage and there is no cure. It's just how I am. I won't say that there aren't toxic people in let's say the blind community who cling to their afflictions, but I think it's important to know that sometimes you don't get a cure. You're just how you are. Premies born after me don't suffer the same disabilities as the premies I know who are my age because they get better care in the hospital and outside it. Great, but that does nothing for me who has perfect vision technically, but can't see so many things. or a great many things I'm just stuck with as an adult.

I'd like my kid to be typical. I want to be typical even now. It's easier. She's left handed and that sucks. It's harder to be left-handed. If it were possible to give her a pill to make her magically right-handed I'd give it to her. As it stands, her chance of death is elevated for no other reason than she was born left handed. Accommodation is cool and all, but all of society has an assumption about handed-ness. This neurodiversity. I wish I could give her a pill to make her neurotypical. Shit I wish I could take a pill that could make my brain process things right like it would have if I was physically okay at the right times. But... I don't think that will happen for me or her and I think it's okay to accept that. It's okay to take a fix if it ever happens too.

I feel like what's wrong is that we think that even mental illnesses need fixing. There are some mental illnesses which can be fixed. They are temporary state in the same way that a cold is a temporary state. However, some mental illnesses are just how you are. You can take steps to mitigate it like the way that someone who can walk uses a wheelchair, but fundamentally it's all just life-aids, not a fix. If you have clinical depression, those pills are just life aids, they are not fixing anything. It's completely unlike when I fell into a depressive episode once. The pills fixed me because for me it was a temporary state. after a month I could just walk away. I think that's a difference that needs to be understood. A person who broke their legs using a wheelchair is completely different than an amputee using a wheelchair. One uses the wheel chair as a temporary aid until they are "fixed" and one has an eternal state that will always need the aid.

I think it's unfortunate that people feel shame about needing life-aids permanently or temporarily. I was born physically disabled and I lean on any crutch I can. I really think this is why I've been able to effortlessly support my child and she doesn't feel any kind of way about her condition with autism. I'm always saddened by parents who refuse to give their kid life-aids because they want them to be "normal". Even before I knew my kid had ASD I offered her anything that would aid her because who cares really. I want her to be happy and successful and if you complete the race in a wheelchair, you still completed the race which is more than some people can do even able and with a wheelchair.