Monday, October 22, 2007

Jeremy- First View

Here is a sneak peek for our bloggers. Jeremy is an adult who has autism. Thanks to Mark and Meredith for doing this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can you see that Jeremy is a totally differnt kind of autistic person than what used to be called autistic? I don't doubt that he he is on the spectrum, but you hae to see what has happened to the definition of autism. THIS widening of the definition of autism to include more and more people is why we have folks who will cry "autism epidemic" when there has not been one.

One common "trick" is for people to mention the epidemic as if it was just counting "severe" cases of autism, not mentioning all the Jeremies on the spectrum (the majority of the whole spectrum group are not "severely" affected or retarded) . The other part of the trick is to say "epidemic of autism" and then immediately follow that mention with a story about a "low functioning" or retarded autistic person so that people beleive that the whole spectrum is comprised of "low functioning" or retarded autistics.

All autistic people need help, the kinds of help they need can differ greatly. For instance, my autistic child will never go to college, but needs different supports. My child is just as fabulous as Jeremy is, but quite different.