#autpunk

That is bullshit.

I recognize that high functioning people like that have their own struggles and need for supports but they cannot transition from one level to going up a level or two levels for one day only. It’s like me saying that sometimes I can have a functioning day when the government tells me otherwise, like all of a sudden I can make myself my own meals with zero support from my parents then the next day I’m back to needing extremely high support from parents due to quote unquote my extremely low functioning.

See how this basically makes no sense?

Levels 2 to 3 are long states. They might not be as permenant like some nonverbal autistic people are, but they are not changing from day to day, that is for sure at least. They don’t change day to day. If anything if they are changing, it is in the period of years and not even by a couple. It can change in 5 to 10 and so forth years, not days, not months, not weeks, YEARS.

Their needs and support are different than those who have higher needs and higher level of needed support to get through their day. Their services and types of support will be different than those who need a higher amount and slash or a different type of support that is more suited for someone with their current abilities and needs.

And that is okay, that is valid. Please give love to people with lower support needs than you do, instead of engaging in attacks directed towards those who are higher and lower than you are on the support needs spectrum.

One thing that i dislike seeing on social media from actually autistic community is the idea slash myth that ALL (Keyword ALL) ABA Therapy is bad, harmful, useless and aimed at making autistic people "neurotypical".

Especially if those who claim that ABA Therapy is bad are those who have never personally experienced it yet regurgitate the very real lived experiences of those who actually have gone to ABA Therapy. Because they personally cannot understand how it works if they have not actually experienced it. I'm not trying to gatekeep or be nasty to anyone by saying this, but i don't trust those people who regurgitate the negatives and or the positives of effects of ABA without actually going through the process of it.

Like if a family member or a friend of mine say that they agree with my opinion, this one that i will express in this post. I would not be feeling secure and confident with their support, since they haven't been through it themselves so i don't really understand how they can understand how ABA Therapy works. I mean, i am a client and not a therapist myself so i don't get the intricacies of it, but i can understand that it is helping me with known concerns such as poor regulation skills and lack of independence as an autistic adult, even if it is by a little bit still. But i do think that lived experience like this should be more trustworthy than people who copy what others have said regarding it without actually going through with that process themselves, if that makes sense.

While i understand and respect those with lived experiences sharing that their ABA Therapy was indeed all of that, bad harmful useless and negative for them as an autistic person, that isn't necessarily the same for me and for perhaps other ABA Therapy goers. Me personally, i have experienced only positive experiences and results after going such as an improvement in self regulation skills, life skills and so on. But the nuance is that my experience is not the end all be all experience and so called "consensus" within the large and wider autism online space, especially even on here since there is representation of people with higher support needs whose voices should be listened to. The same could be said for people who declare that ABA Therapy is harmful, etc for autistic people.

And even within my own experiences with various ABA Therapy centers, the story and the effects it has on me changes between the years and the centers that i have been going to as a child and as an adult autistic now. Which should also be considered. This also supports my point of ABA Therapy itself being nuanced and not just black and white, as each company or center that does ABA has many different views, perspectives, programs and ways going about things such as a client's challenging behaviours. Some may be less neuro affirming while others are neuro affirming, and that can be to a degree of how less or more a center is neuro affirming to clients and parents. This kind of nuance, for example, should be considered amongst other nuances and changes in how things are done.

With that said, my personal opinion on ABA Therapy is that, when done right or with no harm or both really, can be helpful. It was really helpful for me as a child even though they did use "planned ignoring" which, in my personal opinion again, really did more harm than help me with challenging behaviours. As most of what i behaved like as a child was mostly for communication purposes, not for attention seeking which was what the IBI center i was with at the time thought was the reason behind my behaviours. Because, i had learnt to read clocks, although i am not the best at that and still prefer digital over analog clocks, and learnt some signs around the community. I don't remember a lot from that time as i was a child, a very young one then, but i do remember that it was the thing that allowed me to returm to my home school district and eventually return to mainstream class, and that is what i consider is important when i talk about controversial topics.

The same could be said for when i went to ABA Therapy again as an teenager to an adult nowadays. However, there is nuance in that the first center that we tried was seemingly doing terribly when it comes to their financial situation. By that i meant that it did not seem as organized and as well funded by their clients and their children's paying for the therapy (The company advertised ABA Therapy for only people under 18 which means minors, children, teens. Same with the next center that i went to.). When i went, there was literally no way for me to practice cooking and other life skills because there was no equipment that could facilitate any of that, so instead of life skills programs, we did social skills, and reading comprehension (I think?) programs. And that was it, only one hour per week for stuff that i felt and still feel did not do much to help me improve on my self regulation skills at all.

However, the next center that i went to for ABA Therapy was better in that it had more equipment and was more equipped to take on someone with my kind of needs. That meant i could do my life skills, and learn how to cook small meals such as noodles and cookies if i was hungry enough to be interested. I went for about 2 hours two days a week, and it was more helpful than the last center was. More interesting too, in my personal opinion and from what i've observed walking around the center during the breaks in between tasks and my programs. This one i consider to be the best and should be a sort of a role model for other ABA centers slash companies, but obviously this is just my honest and personal opinion that i know lacks nuance so i do not expect anyone to take this endorsement, so to speak, as seriously as they learn from other takes from other creators talking about their lived experiences with ABA.

Like, for example, on Discord, Twitter (ESPECIALLY TWITTER), Reddit and so on and so forth. Because so many people have been saying that if you meet one autistic person you've met only one autistic person and to not use that person to generalize what autism presents as, yet that advice isn't being heeded when it comes to sharing and discussing controversial topics.

By this i mean, people who has autism and people who don't have autism spread the myth that EVERYone with autism accepts and agrees with what they and/or their side of the debate has said, without understanding the nuance that people with autism will have a difference in opinions, just like people without autism do. And i think that the majority of the online autism community needs to learn this, as do the people listening in, persay by perusing our content regarding anything to do with autism.

For example, people on both sides (TYPICALLY) of the self diagnosis debate usually says that everyone, both anti and pro self diagnosis, agrees with what they have said. Before educating myself, i made a couple of overgeneralized statements, saying that "real" autistics do not like and think self diagnosed autistic people were "really" autistic despite me not asking for a consensus on who agrees and on who disagrees with me for example. And this goes to show that we are not heeding the advice of not overgeneralizing autistic people and their opinions, by treating them as the end all be all voice of the autism community.

While i understand that there is a consensus, there is nuance within that consensus and that not everyone is thinking of the same definition when it came to what self diagnosis really is, to further explain my example of something that i actually did before i matured and learned some life lessons. And so, i believed that everyone who self diagnosed was just because they looked at some autism content through social media ONLY and not also using medical websites to research to further support evidence of their autism (which is valid might i add) without researching myself to see if there are other types of self diagnosis and self suspicion online. That was harmful because i was overgeneralizing and ignoring possible nuance that goes into controversial topics such as this.

The reason why i used myself as an example is that it is so that i don't accidentally offend someone else, or another group within this community by using their example without fully understanding the context and especially the nuanced side of the debate. But it can also be interpretted as sort of a cautionary tale, which i am fine with because i regret ever doing that which i used as an example. However, my point still stands with adding further nuance and involving everyone within this autism community so that we can grow as people altogether. That is why i shared the previous post about preferring to use the colour blue, the puzzle piece and the blue pumpkin if it was available when i was a child.

i have seen much too often autistics trying to prove they are worth to be alive and be accommodated at the expense of higher support needs autistics. i have seen them talk about higher support needs autistics as if they are not important, not deserving of compassion, and not even human. i have seen autistic people say they don't want to be associated with them. that is disgusting. you should know better