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Alicorn comments on How to tell apart science from pseudo-science in a field you don't know ? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Watch out for sensory issues. If the kid reacts to, I dunno, styrofoam like it's full of shards of broken glass and he can't bear to touch it, keep him away from styrofoam (there is no training this sort of thing away, although you could get a learned-helplessness oh-they're-torturing-me-again reaction if you tried too hard - and I'm given to understand that some treatment plans do aim at that, presumably because suffering in silence is less disruptive for caretakers than screaming in discomfort). Keeping away sensory aversives frees up brainpower to do other things, as well as being an important form of not-torturing-the-kid.
Treat stimmy behaviors like ordinary fidgeting. They are only weird relative to a framework that an autistic does not operate within. Specifically, they do not say anything in particular about whether he is paying attention, especially to a person who he wouldn't be likely to make eye contact with anyway.
Explain substeps of tasks that do not get understood promptly. (If "get a bowl of cereal" results in the kid staring blankly into space, try "get a bowl out of the cupboard and put it on the counter, open the cereal box and pour cereal into the bowl until the bowl is mostly full, close and put away the cereal box, get the milk out of the fridge and pour it into the bowl until it comes most of the way up to the line of the cereal, put the cap back on the milk and put it away, get a spoon from the drawer and eat the cereal with it". And if that doesn't work, maybe the kid doesn't want to get a bowl of cereal. I'd certainly look funny at anyone instructing me to get a bowl of cereal for no obvious reason or just to see if I could; maybe I don't want any and don't want to perform tricks for someone who is curious about whether I can do them.)
Citation needed. This sounds plausible enough that people are likely to listen to it, so I'd like some sort of confirmation that it's based in fact.
I have an autism diagnosis and multiple autistic friends. I poked around the literature on autism for a paper in grad school (although it was mostly on theory of mind). I have read books and blogs and aggregated therefrom a general model of autism that has yet to be dinged by any of this.
Also, "don't do things to people that they find abhorrent for no goddamn reason" and "if someone never makes eye contact anyway their rocking is insignificant information about whether you have their attention, and rocking is only atypical, not fundamentally different from pen-twirling" and "one thing to try if giving someone an instruction doesn't work is making sure they have it taskified; also don't expect giving the people around you commands to work all the time" all seem pretty basic to me. And really ought to be status-quo, requiring citations to deviate therefrom. I would certainly require a citation if I had a kid and someone told me that they should be forced into contact with objects they don't like, and aren't to be allowed to move around as they please even if they aren't hurting anyone, and that their not doing everything I say is a sign of a Serious Problem. The allistic equivalents would be unambiguous abuse, and plenty of autistic people are capable of telling others what the autistic-specific versions of those abuses are.
Following this advise strikes me as likely to result in the kid growing up with phobias and habits that will make it hard for him to fit into the adult world.
Seriously, you give this kind of advise to parents raising autistic children and then wonder why gatherings with a high proportion of autistic adults are full of people that come of as creepy.
I cannot abide the taste of mint or the feel of apricots. I don't happen to rock, but I trace patterns on surfaces sometimes. I tell people to operationalize or rephrase or break-into-steps things they want me to do, if I need them to. Miraculously, I can function as an adult. It's actually way easier than functioning as a child, since people don't feel entitled to manipulate my environment or make demands on me as much as they used to.
So can I (I'm also autistic), but I know autistic people who aren't that lucky.
Do you think torturing, restraining, or incomprehensibly bossing them as children would have helped?
Well, "incomprehensibly bossing" is how a lot of people see the creepiness thread.
This comment seems like it could be perceived as straw-manning. Backing up your statement with evidence that this is an accurate model of what people do with their autistic children would help.
It could be perceived as such. Given the context however it seems that Alicorn isn't making an additional claim about what most people do and is instead adding labels to the behavior that Eugine did actively advocate (or criticise the deprecation of). Even if those things were never done by anyone the adovcation thereof could still be criticized. (And so any weakness in the argument is of a different kind to 'straw man'.)
For better or worse there are the implied premises here that:
The second two seem straightforward and while using the word 'torture' has its own problems the meaning is at least clear.
This comment does all of the things I was concerned about Alicorn's not doing. The conversation I'd expect to ensue from her comment would be an argument over the definitions of "torture," "incomprehensible bossing" &etc, which wouldn't be explicit so much as the bashing together of "Doing these things to autistics is good" and "Doing these things to autistics is evil." I have good reasons to expect this, because it's what I've seen take place subsequent to such a remark a million times and with no positive outcome in any instance. (Add any amount, to taste, of "You're not a real autistic so you can't remark on the subjective experience of the Less High Functioning" and "People are actually being tortured and killed, so I shouldn't have to be nice to you or explain these things out. Therefore I'll just vaguely antagonize at you until you go away.")
I'll also point out that "doing things that are abhorrent to people for no goddamn reason" doesn't pay attention to the fact that people who do e.g. ABA do believe that what they're doing will improve the quality of life of whoever they're doing it to.
So is your claim that increasing the chances that the child will be able to fit into adult society doesn't count as a good reason?
Dude, people would totally do all these things if they thought a more normal seeming kid would be the end result. Many people would do these things in the full knowledge that they were "torturing, restraining, or incomprehensibly bossing" their children; justifying it as being for their own good.
How do I know this?
I have Asperger's and I can see pretty clear ways my childhood could have been marginally to vastly less pleasnt that would have resulted in faster social functionality, and they would have been annoying as fuck to deal with. I've come to this realisation as result of the education/social skills subthread on the startup post. I would probably have had even worse social skills tha I actually did at 17 without being forced to spend time with people I mostly didn't like, didn't care about and didn't have any common interest with. I'd be willing to do something similar with any of my children in a similar situation. Obviously I'd prefer better options.
As for restaining or incomprehensibly bossing, people do this with neurotypical children all the time. I fail to see why they'd behave any differently with autistic children. No torture though; pointless negative utility for all.
They may, for instance, learn that the meaning and effect of their 'bossing' behavior is different on the child in question and realise "Hey, me keeping up the incomprehensible bossing and restraining despite knowing the (significantly negative) consequences in this case would mean I'm a total asshat, I'm going to stop!" So, crudely speaking the reason you claim to fail to see is that not all people are one of ignorant, incompetent or malicious. I can only assume that you are intending to deny the premises (regarding the degree of negative effect those behaviors can have.)
I'd say it's more guilt by association.
Today I learned that I should go re-read the Wikipedia page on fallacies.
Did you read the whole thread? This is my summary of more specific behaviors.
Which way? Is the stimming more likely when you have their attention or when you don't?
I'm not sure. Naively on priors, someone under stress is more likely to stim - and someone who's paying attention to another thing is more likely to be under stress.
Sidenote: This applies to us ADHD kids too. Fidgeting is how we make our brains work. It is self-medication. Now, if one kid making their brain work is making 29 other brains not work (ie by making distracting noises) you obviously have a problem. But that problem should be solved with a view to helping us find harmless ways to fidget, not making us stop fidgeting entirely.
Data point: I'm 27, work at a tech startup, and would've had a much harder time staying alert in a meeting today if I hadn't been turning an hourglass over in my hand and watching the patterns the sand made.
Citation: http://adhdmomma.com/2011/12/guest-post-fidgeting-helps-kids-stay.html http://phys.org/news162554898.html