Autism Spectrum Disorder
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Autism and ADHD: The Complete Playbook for Social Challenges

Understanding key differences between the social challenges of ADHD and autism is often the key to effective supports.

1 Comment: Autism and ADHD: The Complete Playbook for Social Challenges

  1. From the article:
    “With autism, the foundation of intervention is behavioral therapy. One of the primary tools is applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy, which employs the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) theory to improve behaviors. Simplistically this can be explained as, A) you make a request, B) your child complies, and C) you reward the desired action. When you repeat this approach, you increase the positive behaviors and reduce potentially challenging ones.”

    If only It was that simple, the problem is that a dysregulated child needs to become regulated (dysregulation can be emotional or SENSORY, which is why the snuggles that effectively co-regulated your typical child aren’t necessarily going to help your Autistic child) so they can *learn,* so Behaviorism is ineffective at best and traumatizing for the majority of people subjected to it. Gay Conversion Therapy was developed at the same time, by the same people, and uses the same techniques as ABA, it should hardly be a shocker that people who have been through either or both (since Autistic people are also more likely to be LGBTQIA) report increased rates of Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal behavior.

    Here, I have a proposition for you typical people out there: I will give you wonderful rewards (I’ll even let you pick them, which is what most token reward systems allow children to do), but in return, YOU need to successfully act ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, like someone you are not. So, to be fair, YOU need to conform to your stereotypes of Autistic behavior. You are not allowed to connect with or empathize with other people. Friends? Nope, you just lost all your tokens. You will not be allowed to communicate using language, only given access to a very limited set of picture symbols to communicate.

    How long do you think you could stand it? Now, pretend you are a preschooler, and the only way you get treats that are just given to your typical peers are only given to you if you pretend to be someone you are not. Every day. Might just warp your personality a bit?!

    ABA needs the same bans that are finally happening in some areas for Gay Conversion Therapy! This is the simple starting goal.

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