Heye Sophia's List: Social Flexibility

• Morality really didn't have anything do to with it - but they didn't know that. 
• social flexibility
• I was the same with everyone - from the janitor, to my classmates, to the teacher.    Behaving differently with different people didn't compute with me.  It felt wrong, somehow.  Like I wasn't being true to myself. I was just "me." 

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• They are also proposing to create a new diagnosis called social communication disorder.
• To be labeled autistic, the individual also has to have additional symptoms such as sensory problems, fixated interests or repetitive behavior.
• Do Not Get Hung Up On Labels
• you must remember that the following words all mean the same thing.  Asperger, Aspie, geek, nerd, mild autism, social communication disorder or socially awkward. The science clearly shows that the social problems on the autism spectrum are a true continuum.

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• "We were being bombarded with due process requests," she says, by parents who sought legal recourse against a school system they believed wasn't providing the necessary education for their children, as schools are required to do under the 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• I learned that parents were more advanced than we were about knowing what was good for children with autism."
• increase in public awareness and recognition of the disorder.
• Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA)
• Educating autistic children can be a challenge in the best of circumstances.
• aren't able to respond appropriately to their environment and form relationships with other people.
• And that education, for the most part, is the responsibility of public school districts.
• The IDEA guarantees all school-age children with learning disabilities (including autism) a "free and appropriate public education,"
• But what parents want and what school districts are willing to provide sometimes doesn't match up.
• schools are required to give students the chance to make educational progress, but the law does not require them to educate children to their absolute highest level or maximize their potential.
• many school districts argue that such expensive services are not necessary for a child's education, let alone affordable.
• In ABA treatment, the therapist gives the child a stimulus--like a question or a request to sit down--along with the correct response. The therapist uses attention, praise or a tangible incentive like toys or food to reward the child for repeating the right answer or completing the task; any other response is ignored.
• It will cost approximately $6 million to support an untreated autistic person to age 50," Mulick explains. "If you spend $150,000 and they become capable of normal learning by third grade, that's a huge savings."
• Leaf and his colleagues also met with parents to explain the new program and teach the parents how to provide the necessary in-home support.
• ABA strategy

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• "the 'abnormal' condition known as Asperger's syndrome" could be "remarkably similar to the 'normal' functioning of an engineer's mind,"
• Were their kids, he wondered, getting a double dose of some kind of autism-causing genes?

  • This makes me wonder whether this autism has to do with NURTURE instead of NATURE.

  • The kids of engineers/math whizzes.
• He'd begun to theorize that this sort of brain type would be common in any population that brought people with very strong math, science and tech skills to cluster together — and to think that if these high systemizers were choosing one another as mates, they might be particularly likely to have autistic children.
• Assortative mating — or, in common language, the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together — has long been known to play a big role in how people choose their marriage partners.
• "People are attracted to each other based on their similarities," says Carol Mathews, a psychiatrist with the UCSF Medical Center who has studied the role of assortative mating in psychiatric disorders. "It's not necessarily a conscious choice."
• Beyond certain familiar links that he expects he may find between, say, engineer parents and children with speech delays,

  • It's hard for me to research autism around the globe because the info I'm finding is about organizations that raise awareness around the world, instead of how uninformed societies view autistic people.

  • I can tie in loneliness/social interaction of the PARENTS and relate that to their autistic kids... I think I want to use this to compare autism in different countries.
• We are also collecting data on dyslexia and ADHD," he says, "but precisely which types of parents are more at risk for having such a child is exactly what we are wanting to discover."

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• I still have to validate how he feels regardless of the cause.
• I can honestly say that twelve years after the initial diagnosis, I am starting to forget what life was like without autism.
• I want him to be happy and independent.
• In the end, acceptance does not mean complacency.  For me, it means accepting my son for who he is with or without autism.  
•  Accepting but still never giving up hope that my child will get better. 
• I told him that I wasn't trying to erase his autism but that sometimes we all need to learn and follow the same social rules.
• Social rules aren't just there so that we can have friends, but also so that we can get along in life; keep a job; stay out of trouble; and more. I told him that while his autism contributes to who he is as a person and to his strengths, the autism also sometimes makes it difficult for him to understand social skills; participate in typical activities; and create or maintain friendships.
• So if he likes his autism, do I really have the right to counsel him otherwise?
• A Journey of Acceptance

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• 4 common mistakes people make in interpreting body language.
• When a Smile is Not a Smile.
• cover discomfort with a smile.
• The key is in the eyes, where true smiles include narrowed, squinting eyes that produce the "crow's feet" at the corners of the eyes.
• Believing We Can Tell Lies From Truths.
• When Touch Does Not Mean Affection.
• men may touch women as a sign of dominance. Also, in some very interesting studies, it was found that waitresses who touch their customers (a light touch when delivering the bill) get larger tips.
• "Uhs" Are Speech Errors That Suggest Nervousness.
• "uhs" filled in the dead space between words or phrases and made the speech seem more fluid and uninterrupted.

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