I don’t think that a lot of people know what ABA/masking “therapy” actually does to autistic children.

(ANALOGY) If you’re taking a pan out of a hot oven and it hurts your hand, you’ll scrunch your face up and go “ow!” But then someone else comes along and tells you to be quiet, and then force you to keep taking out and putting back in the pan, until you don’t react when you do it. It still hurts, of course, but you’ve been conditioned to not react whenever you are burned by the pan. You could’ve used an oven mitt or had someone else get the pan for you, or maybe just not have done it at all, but you were told for years what the “right way” to take the pan out was. And now you’ve built up callouses, and take the pan out the exact way you were trained to, unconsciously ignoring your pain. It still hurts, but you’re not supposed to do it another painless way, and instead continue to hurt, because it’s all you were taught to do.

ABA doesn’t make autistic kids’ lives easier, it makes the parents’ lives easier, because now they won’t have to listen to their child telling them that they’re in pain. Your child is upset and hurting, but it’s too “hard/stressful” for you to acknowledge and help them.

WE ARE NOT AN ANNOYANCE OR A BURDEN. WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN. WE ARE NOT A BROKEN PUZZLE THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT BACK TOGETHER.

We are people, we have thoughts and feelings, and we feel pain. But we keep it bottled up inside because showing love and care for your child is apparently too “difficult” for you.

(EDIT)

Holy shit this post blew up real quickly

I think the main reason growing up autistic and raising autistic kids is so hard is because society doesn’t accept us yet. I hear a lot of autism parents rant about how difficult autism is and how some parents just cannot cope. It made me think of the nearsighted analogy I see floating around so I’m gonna expand on it.

I’m nearsighted, which is technically a disability, but I’m easily able to get glasses, to get them repaired when I need to, and nobody thinks twice about it. I got teased a little bit when I first got them, but people wearing glasses is basically considered normal and kids will tease you for anything.

But imagine if nearsighted people kept failing classes because they couldn’t see the chalkboard and glasses were too expensive or you had to jump through hoops to get them. Imagine if instead of wearing glasses, they had to go to expensive and ineffective therapies to train their eyes to see normally.

Of course, these methods would lead to physical and mental exhaustion and really painful eye strain as well as feelings of guilt and shame for something that’s beyond the individual’s control, so nearsighted people would protest that they are ineffective. But what do they know? They’re nearsighted.

Imagine if you were told you were stupid for holding the book close to your face to read, or not being able to read a billboard. Imagine if you were trained not to squint because squinting made the people around you uncomfortable. Imagine if people told you that if you would just go outside more or try harder, your vision would go back to normal.

Imagine finally getting glasses, only to find out that they don’t actually help because they’re one-size-fits-all. They just make everything blurry in a different way and give you a killer headache on top of that.

Imagine growing up with access to glasses that do help a little bit, then becoming an adult and realizing that you can’t get help if your glasses break or your vision changes because the only nearsightedness programs around are for children and you’ve aged out of them.

Imagine people assuming you were stupid, slow, lazy, and irresponsible just because you have a physical difference in your eyes that could easily be fixed with glasses, but for some reason nobody thinks to accommodate you.

Imagine seeing your mom cry because she hates that her nearsighted child will never experience the world the way someone with 20/20 vision does. Imagine hearing her tell her friends that she’s afraid to send you to school because of the way the other kids treat you, and because the school doesn’t do anything to help. Imagine hearing her say that sometimes she wishes she aborted you because the stress is too much.

Imagine seeing on the news that a mother killed her nearsighted son because she “couldn’t cope with the stress” and not being charged with murder because the court sees it as a valid reason to kill someone.

If we as a society put more effort into accommodating neurodivergent people, parents wouldn’t be fighting against the world to provide for their kids. Autism would be just another way kids can be different from each other.

What about a Cabernet that funds ABA Therapy for children with Autism!? What Can Your Cab Do? • • The dark, ruby red Cabernet Sauvignon is a pleasure for the senses with the aromas of lush black cherry, cassis and a hint of tobacco. #onehopewine #viaonehope #winenight #autismawareness #autism #cabernetsauvignon #cabernet #winelovers #wineforacause #wineforcharity #charitydonation #winetasting #girlboss #drinkwine #getpaid #dreamjob #nonprofit

No autistic person will ever fund a therapy that harms us and causes us PTSD. Also, wine? Really? This is just as bad as putting an Autism Speaks logo on a thong!

One Hope????? My Autistic fat ass!!!! 

More like at least 86% of autistic people exposed to ABA gives us PTSD (PDF), so thanks for the trauma and abuse.  Might want to start looking at the new waves of science starting to come out, showing how fucked up ABA is. Cause researchers are finally starting to listen to autistic people and get us on board with conducting research, and it’s starting to show. The statistics regarding our mental health is starting to hit, and the big questions on where our mental health issues are coming from are going to get asked. 

ABA is unscientific

… or, “Autism is a cognitive disorder, not a behavioural one”.

(This is an accessible version of an earlier post designed to be text-to-speech friendly)

Criticisms of ABA from autistic perspectives are generally framed in moral terms - ABA (when used in autism treatment) is abusive and dehumanising, can cause PTSD, and assumes autistic inferiority.

These are valid criticisms, but they suggest that ABA practitioners just need to slightly change their practices and everything will be fine. While it would be great if ABA practitioners did make these changes (well documented elsewhere), the flaws of the practice run much deeper.

Behaviour Analysis - the “BA” in “ABA” - is based on a once-controversial hypothesis that has now been rejected by the scientific consensus

Behaviourism was invented by American psychologist John B. Watson in 1913. In his own words,

“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.” End quote.

In simple terms, behaviourism is a theory which says that understanding behaviour doesn’t require an understanding of mental states, like thoughts and feelings.

Even behaviourists quickly realised that this is rubbish. Speak to one today, and they’re much more likely to cite B.F. Skinner, another American psychologist who described himself as a “radical behaviorist”. Skinner admitted that mental states are important, but thought that they could be understood via simple cause-and-effect mechanisms. Mental states are just additional forms of behaviour, and so can’t be the ultimate cause of behaviour - all behaviour is ultimately caused by the environment.

This idea received very little traction outside of America, and is why (thankfully) ABA is rarely practised outside of North America. Even in the US, the evidence was stacked firmly against behaviourism. Noam Chomsky was an early critic in the late 50s, but by the 70s behaviourism was discredited in the scientific community.

What were the specific issues with Skinner’s radical behaviourism?

Firstly, it promoted the notion of a “blank slate”, which says that all behaviour is the result of learning. This is rubbish. Lots of behaviour is the result of genetics and other biological processes.

Secondly, computers started performing logical tasks. This convinced people that the processor might actually be important. We now take this for granted.

Perhaps most importantly, the mind is extremely complicated. It’s what’s known as a chaotic system. If you’re not familiar with chaos theory, think of the weather. We can predict the weather for tomorrow with a high degree of accuracy, but there are so many factors at work that we can’t predict the weather with complete accuracy. If we want to predict the weather for next week, there’s way too much uncertainty. Similarly, you can’t always predict how someone will react to a stimulus. There are simply too many variables.

But I heard that ABA was scientifically supported?

To an extent, it is.

There is evidence that applying behaviourist methods - essentially dog training - can result in changes in a person’s behaviour. But this fundamentally overlooks the reason that the person is doing what they are doing.

There is also no evidence that ABA is actually good for autistic people. There are no studies examining whether ABA reduces rates of mental illness or increases happiness.

No other therapy has as much evidence that it can successfully change behaviours, but most other therapies simply aren’t as well studied.

How did behaviourists manage to get all this science done after the scientific community rejected them? They became insular. They stopped paying attention to psychology and isolated themselves. They started their own journals; today, these are rarely cited.

But behaviourists still got funding, and they still managed to exert huge influence over autism treatment in America (and to a lesser extent, Canada). How did this happen?

Autism parents.

“Autism parents” (that is, the self-martyred parents of autistic people) have a long, chequered history of believing in bullshit. Of course, many people with autistic children are good parents, but unfortunately a vocal minority will do anything to turn their child into an NT. The work of ABA pioneer Ivan Lovaas, in which he used extreme punishments to force autistic children to comply with his demands, was promising. It also threw out the equally bullshit “refrigerator mother” hypothesis, which unfairly blamed parents for autism. Influential autism parents, who would go on to found organisations like Autism Speaks, got right behind Lovaas, even if the theories he was working with were utter bullshit.

That’s why there’s such a mountain of evidence that ABA “works”.

Independent analysis is more sceptical.

Even Lovaas himself admitted that ABA was unrealistic:

“Effective treatment for severe behavioral disorders is seen to require early intervention carried out during all or most of the child’s waking hours, addressing all significant behaviors in all of the child’s environments, by all significant persons, for many years.” End quote.

What if ABA practitioners got a better understanding of the autistic mind?

In a conversation about sensory issues, an ABA practitioner admitted to me that behaviourists do not discuss the sensory issues that usually come with autism. This horrified me. How can you hope to understand our behaviour if you don’t have the first idea how our minds work?

Acknowledging that autism is a difference in cognition - something which the evidence overwhelmingly supports - would utterly destroy ABA. It wouldn’t be ABA any more. ABA is only concerned with behaviour, and autism isn’t a difference in behaviour. It’s a difference in cognition, which causes differences in behaviour.

Conclusion

ABA is based on unscientific principles and a highly flawed theory of autism. ABA supposes that autism is a behavioural disorder, not a cognitive one. Even if ABA were not cruel, abusive, and inappropriately targeted, it would still be a poor choice of therapy.

When opposing ABA, autistic advocates should not allow the assertion that ABA is scientific to go unchallenged.

I remember reading about token economy therapy for schizophrenic people, and that’s based in behaviorism. In this therapy model, patients who are able to behave as a normal person would were given tokens that could be used to buy various items and privileges.

However, one of the main criticisms of this therapy was that it merely rewards the mimicking of normal behavior rather than treating the actual symptoms of schizophrenia.

A specific case study provided with the description of this therapy was about a schizophrenic man who believed that he was the US government (referring to himself as “we” and acting as though he had to pass legislation). When interviewed, he continued to show indications of delusional thinking and described what a waste of time it was to have to pretend to be normal to get things he wanted.

Just something to give more perspective on this.

We offer Registered Behavior Technician training and Courses to people who are wanting to pursue the certificate of an RBT, which is a certificate provided by the BACB. The certificate allows people to be more knowledgeable and successful in the Behavioral Heath field, especially when associated with Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy techniques.

Read this. ABA is damaging. http://loveexplosions.net/resources-compliance-aba-social-skills-indistinguishability-whole-body-listening/

this is a link to a PDF about the connection between ABA and PTSD in the autistic population. At least 80%, this study suggests, fits the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis, with others showing PTSS (the study is published in the journal Advances in Autism, btw)

ABA is abuse.  ABA is TRAUMA

To my Autistic friends:

My daughter is 4. She is Deaf and Autistic. We’re not sure to what degree quite yet, but we have her clinical diagnosis next week. I am requesting something I can not get from scientific journals and therapy books: your experiences.

Please try to remember that I’m just a mom who wants what is best for her kid. I know that every case is different. I just feel that so much talk of Autism dehumanizes the individual. Hearing stories from the point of view of somebody who grew up with Autism would round out my understanding. Please feel free to share. Your stories can be anonymous if you choose.

Autistic adult here, but I can hear so I can’t speak about the deafness part. One thing is don’t worry about “degrees” of autism. Labels like “mild, severe” or “low functioning, high functioning” are useless and arbitrary and are usually used to dismiss autistic people anyway. It took till I was 15 in 1995 to get diagnosed. I was aware of being different, but didn’t know there was a word for it. Make sure you communicate to her that she is autistic and what that means. It just means her brain works a different way and some things might be harder for her. Make sure you stress that she is not broken or less. Autistic people are different, so no two autistic people will behave the same exact way even if their sensory sensitivities are similar. Try to keep her away from any therapy that tries to make her look “indistinguishable from peers” as in it tries to stop all stimming and tries to make her play like a neurotypical child (ie making her roll a car on the floor instead of flipping it upside down to spin the wheels.) All “indistinguishable from peers” does is make autistic people “palatable” to neurotypicals, it doesn’t help us and can actually hinder us later in life. Let her know that bullying is not okay, and listen to her if she ever comes to you saying kids are being mean to her. I was bullied to the point of attempting suicide as a teen because nobody listened to me. Teach her manners, like saying please, thank you, excuse me, etc and teach her when she should say those things. Social rules aren’t inherent to most autistic people, so giving us a peek behind the curtain of how social situations work can help us better navigate them. One last thing: Don’t push for eye contact. It can be really uncomfortable or painful. A part of the brain in autistic people gets hyperactive when we look at eyes and faces– some of us can’t stand to look at faces at all! So don’t force it. She can still look towards you or over the top of your head or focus between the eyes if she can tolerate looking at faces. (I know facial expressions make up for “tone” in sign language.) I think that’s about it. Good luck with your kiddo! <3

disclaimer: I'm Corina Becker, the VP of AWN. The Autism Women's Network has some welcome packages for newly diagnosed girls (possibly when she's older) and for their parents. The packages are PDFs with information about Autism, about AWN, advice from autistic peers and ally parents, and some resources for information, etc. right on our front page at https://autismwomensnetwork.org/ A lot of what we strife for is similar to what the Deaf communities are fighting for too, so I'd also recommend getting in touch with that community too. There's probably an autistic Deaf community, cause intersections happen. But a lot of it is realizing that your child's brain works differently, and figuring out how to be her parent. She still needs the same things as other kids, but now you know she's living in a social environment not built for her. Teach her what she needs to know, fight for her rights, and when she's old enough, teach her to fight for her own rights. Including body autonomy.

I wanted to ask you this question specifically because I think we’re in similar situations. I’m applying for a four month intensive that will give me a Developmental Disability Counselor certification and a fast track to employment in this field. The only catch is that I will have to take a course called “Introduction to ABA”. I realized that in order to get to what I really want (changing the system from the inside and being able to truly live “Nothing about us without us”), I’m going to have to submit to the ABA course and recognize that it’s probably not the venue to start explaining why it’s bad. I was also advised to use “Asperger’s” on my application (since disclosing is actually my selling point in this situation) instead of “Autistic”. 

The actual question is: Is it OK for me to do these things? I feel like I’m betraying my community by doing this, but I do have my eyes on the prize, and I realize that in order to get through the door, I’ll have to make some sacrifices. My adviser told me that once I’m employed there will be room for me to start improving things for us, but do you think the community will accept that I’m doing this for the time being?

Oh gosh, I love this question so much because it deals with a whole lot of really big things that are also really hard things.

When it comes to ABA, you are right. You have to get through the class in order to make the changes you want to make. Without, you are excluded from the positions of power that allow you to affect the most change.

So take the course. Don’t just take it though, excel in it. Be the best student you know how to be. Ask questions - not to be subversive or discredit the practice - but to learn everything about it that you can. It is perfectly valid to learn the ins and outs of ABA so that you can undermine it.

It is so exceptionally important that the people who have been abused by ABA are the people that lead to fight against ABA. But having working knowledge of the practice from the other side is another important aspect of that fight.

Pathos and ethos are equally important in that each has a role in affecting the people around us. Some people are going to be swayed by the emotionally charged appeals of those who have suffered abuse, while others are going to be swayed by the appeal to authority. Those of us who have been through ABA are the emotion, those of us who learn it are the authority.

When you put those two together, you have the most universally convincing argument possible. I wish we could just take people at their word, but I’m also a realist, and recognize that in the world we live in, we need both voices.

Even so, there are ways that you can be subversive while also attending the classes. Let’s take person first and identity first language, for example. Most people are going to push for person first. You can say that you prefer to use autistic, which is the standard used by the self-advocacy groups like ASAN.

If anyone calls you on it, you have two routes: 1.) state that APA guidelines allow for identity first language or that 2.) if they would like you would be happy to provide a citation for the use of identity language. In fact, it is not exactly uncommon in academic publications that use identity language to see a citation for a study on the need for identity first language. I suggest adding one of the common citations for that into MS Word so you can insert it easily in your preferred (presumably APA) formating.

You can also reframe questions in ways that don’t make accusations but do get other students thinking. Instead of saying, “ABA causes PTSD,” for example, you can ask a questions like, “I read that some people that went through ABA were later diagnosed with PTSD. Obviously ABA does what it is supposed to, but how do I address parents’ concerns about harmful effects? Are there any studies you can recommend regarding long term effects?”

I have yet to have anyone do anything other than blow that question off, but honestly? That’s all you need to start changing the minds of people who are open to change.

Keep yourself educated on studies in other types of therapy. CBT has proven effective, and so has putting the parents through “Awareness” training (put another way, ABA to make the parents understand autistic perspectives). Seek things studies out, and if you have the opportunity use them. Have to write a paper on ABA? Rather than frame it as ABA is bad, frame it as self-advocacy groups have pushed back against ABA, do their arguments have any merit? Cite long term studies on ABA or the lack thereof, and frame it as, “if the advocacy groups are ever going to be onboard, these studies need to be done to address these concerns.”

This, btw, is pretty much how I handle all of my psych classes. Rather than assault the institution directly, I ask questions that I know are loaded or unanswered and leave it at, “it seems prudent to address these concerns.” This is especially important with ABA because while it is awful for many reasons, it is effective. Like, it does what it claims it does. So don’t even try, at least not in that setting. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be subversive even as you toe the line.

As for the whole Asperger thing, I wouldn’t personally do it because I’m that girl who would dare someone to turn me down on the basis of my autism, but I absolutely do believe that when you’re dealing with the hierarchy of stigma it is okay to call yourself an aspie or an HFA.

The simple reality of it is that people who want to work in that field are a dime a dozen. There just is not a shortage of people. In order to Change the World from the inside, you have to play by their rules, at least for a little bit. If you don’t, they will just ignore you.

Put another way, respectability politics of any kind is bullshit. But I have no problem at all playing respectability politics to subvert an institution.

There’s a theme in all of this that I want you to consider: You are using their tools against them. That is so, so, powerful when fighting for marginalized individuals, and there is nothing wrong with it. It is and always has been the primary strategy of subversives throughout history, for good or bad.

I have a lot more thoughts on this, but this is already long so I’m going to call it here. Keep your eye on the long fight. Let those of us who can fight the now fight. We need both.

it might be a little more confrontational, but from what I can see in autism research, studies don't actually hold up to scientific quality. A lot of studies done on small groups, which are then held up as proving to support ABA works. In my research methods class, I was told that a study needs to have at *least* 2000 participants in order for the results to have significance. So it's not even that ABA is supported by science, it's only supported by the low-quality of studies that wouldn't be looked at as significant in other fields. And they claim that they have to do small studies because gathering a sample size is "too hard" with the way autistic people are so diverse. So that might be another angle you can look at, if you're feeling up to it.

Connectivity test, blah blah blah.

I stole Groot’s datapad. Just kidding, I’m upgrading his software and decided to check out this “Autism Speaks” that Groot n’ Drax are all fired up about. 

What a bunch of losers! How the hell is lighting buildings up blue helping anybody? Autism Speaks sounds like a cult to me. BRB a sec, I’m gonna research some more and finish typing this. Groot can delete it later if he doesn’t want it on his blog. He knows I’m gonna do a test post. BRB.

ETA: Whoops, forgot I started this. The research took longer than I expected. I thought it was gonna be funny. It’s not. I’m pissed off at all you stupid jackasses that are lighting it up blue.

Don’t feed me the bullshit line of “what about really severely autistic people?” or “The lower functioning people NEED a cure!”

First off, shut up. Second off, you’re a douchebag.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people aren’t smart!”

Where did this functioning crap come from? What’s that got to do with intelligence?

Is Groot stupid? NO! 

I mean, yeah, sometimes it’s frustrating to discuss plans with him. It’s a guarantee that you can give him instructions and he’ll only retain some of it. Usually, it’s the bits I’d call the least important. 

Don’t get me wrong– Groot understands words. He understands what you say to him. Telling him to repeat a plan back lets me know what he hangs onto and what he doesn’t. Sometimes he scrambles up the words in his head and remembers a plan out of order. You shoulda seen the time I put him in charge of a bomb with a “kill everything” button. I’m the dumbass for putting a “kill everything” button on it in the first place.

First off, Groot works best with direct instructions. Describe whatever thing you want him to do or get in as much detail as possible. Tell him to wait until you say ‘go’ and he’ll stand there all day until you say go, but he’ll execute his part of a plan immediately if you don’t give him a cue to wait. That’s the mistake I made in the Kyln. I didn’t tell him to wait until I said go get the battery. That was on me. 

Secondly, Groot depends on prompts and cues. Some are internal, some are external. He messes up if a prompt or cue isn’t clear or obvious enough. He messes up if there’s an environmental prompt or cue that looks like the one you tell him to watch for. And if that ain’t complicated enough, what constitutes obvious to him can go totally unnoticed by everyone else. 

Humies call it autism and I call it Groot being Groot. You’ve gotta be patient and go at his pace. I ain’t the most patient guy out there, but I try to be for Groot. He can’t change how his brain works; I can change my approach when I lay out a plan. 

So, to reiterate, sometimes it’s frustrating to go over plans with Groot. That doesn’t mean he’s stupid. It means you have to be patient and keep explaining until he gets it and knows what cues and prompts to watch for.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people are like little kids in adult bodies!”

Ugh. Stop. The only time Groot is a baby is when he’s actually, ya know, a baby. 

Raising tiny Groot was a riot. Nothing’s funnier than a ten inch tall angry baby tree who thinks he’s eight feet tall….then he knocks your block off and you remember how strong Flora Colossi are.  

I know what an intellectual disability is. (Drax just told me to replace the r word. Whatever.) Groot doesn’t have one. Even if he did, he still ain’t a baby unless he’s actually a baby.

We all kinda amassed an arsenal of sensory stuff for Groot. A lot of it is what people consider toys that kids play with. Baby Flora Colossi that are big enough to run around need stimulation. Being exposed to a lot of stuff early kinda helped Groot be able to tolerate a lot more chaos now than he could before. He’s still got a limit, but I think it’s higher now than it used to be. 

The toys help and Groot still plays with them. He puts stuff in his mouth a lot. That doesn’t mean he’s a kid in an adult body. He uses his teeth to figure out the texture of surfaces. If it works for him, it works. 

Oh, by the way? Swearing baby Groot is the funniest thing you’ll ever hear. You’d crack up too if you saw a tiny tree smile innocently while he calls somebody a bag of gaping buttfucked assholes.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people can’t communicate!” 

From the mouths of people who aren’t autistic. They’re the experts, right? (That was sarcasm, btw.)

Can you douchebags quit the function crap?

Groot communicates loud and clear if you know how to listen to him. He moves around. He makes noises. He gives off scents. Those damn huge eyes of his are like a book to me and they’re full of his bleeding gold heart. There ain’t nobody I know with a bigger heart than Groot. He’ll give you his arm if you need it. 

He lets me know he doesn’t like somebody by growling in the lowest register of his voice. You can feel the vibration if you stand next to him. Anybody who earns that growl is ‘special’ because Groot ain’t somebody who hates other people without a good reason. So if he’s growling about you, you did something shitty. Guess who’s been making him growl lately? Yep. Autism Speaks.

He’s also got this “centering” noise that’s sort of a droning groan. Kinda reminds me of monks chanting. He’ll walk around the perimeter of a space and do that over and over. Groot has a weird sense of depth perception when he’s inside enclosed spaces like ships or buildings. He said pacing a room and groaning until he hears his voice bounce off surfaces gives him a sense of its size. I…don’t quite understand how it helps him, but I ain’t gonna make him stop doing what works for him.

It still weirds me out that other people don’t understand Groot when he talks. Yeah, yeah, I hear the syllables “I am Groot” just like anyone else does. It’s less about the syllables and more about the meaning in them. I understood what he was saying before I knew language was a thing. Then all the mutilation started and… well I don’t wanna go there.

I guess listening to Groot is like listening to an orchestra play some dead guy’s music. All those flashy instruments in the orchestra work together to make the sounds we call music and that music means something. It makes you feel things that go beyond words.

Groot’s voice has all kinds of overtones and undertones. The closest thing I can equate to what I hear when Groot talks is that throat singing thing monks do, but at really high or low frequencies all happening at the same time.   There’s a lot of layers to the sound and they get more complex if there’s a lot of information. His mood affects his voice. His overtones get louder when he’s scared and the undertones get louder when he’s pissed off. I still know what he’s saying because those tones don’t change pitch.

So like I said before, Groot’s voice has a lot of layers and complexities to it. Hearing him do the equivalent to recite a ten page sonnet by some dead guy –I think it’s Britney Spears?– is gonna have more harmonics to it than hearing him tell someone to go fuck themselves. 

A lot of what he says is based on context, too. He could say something outside that sounds exactly the same when he says it inside and it’ll mean two totally different things. That’s something I figured out from getting to know him. It’s experience.

I learned something really interesting when Groot was a tiny pissed off twig. All those overtones and undertones happened at a higher pitch…and kept the same configuration. Same open fifths or major sevenths or whatever those intervals are. I ain’t a music buff, okay?

Groot’s communication doesn’t end at his voice. You’ve gotta take note of the scents he gives off, his body language and facial expression. If I talk to you, you get my words as syllables arranged in a specific sequence over a period of time depending on how much I’m saying. You’ll be paying attention to my gestures, tone of voice and the look on my face. Groot gives all the same meaning to you almost simultaneously. 

Heck, sometimes Groot only has to make a gesture and it’ll say a lot. To him, two people exchanging an emotion is a conversation. He’ll look at me and smirk, I’ll laugh because I know he’s smirking about whatever bullshit we pulled on Quill, Gamora or Drax, and in Groot’s mind that’s equal to us saying “hey, remember when..?” out loud. He looks right into my eyes once in awhile. That’s something really personal for his species. I don’t take those looks for granted, ever. 

People get so stuck on ‘talking’ being words coming out of mouths. Apply those rules to Groot and you miss out. There’s a lot of meaning in just about everything he does. He makes perfect sense to me about 90% of the time. 

I guess all you ape-based aliens can’t hear what I hear or smell what I smell. It’s a shame that the really funny stuff he says doesn’t translate too well into text. 

Now, after saying that, it doesn’t mean I pretend I’ve got a total understanding of Groot-speak or that I know him better than he knows himself. I’m not gonna go all Autism Mom™ and detail all his rough times for the internet to see. Not my stories to tell anyway. 

I know Groot well enough to tell when something’s wrong. Groot has a behavioral baseline and he doesn’t veer off it unless there’s a problem. It’s up to me to figure out what’s wrong. He can’t localize pain, so that’s when I prod him until we find the source. He can’t turn off his stress response when he’s triggered, so it’s up to me to figure out what triggered him and get rid of it to stop the flashbacks.

The SIB is hard. Groot knows what he looks like when he’s doing it. As bad as it feels to watch Groot go through it, it ain’t close to how bad he’s feeling. We figured out how to deal with his SIB together. There’s a standard procedure for his everyday freakouts. That’s how I know a regular freakout from him telling me something’s wrong. The standard procedure calms him down quick if it’s his usual sensory issues.

It’s always necessary to stop or redirect him when he’s beating the hell out of himself. Groot gets real sick if bacteria gets into his cambium tissue. He needs help to not bite himself and, like I said, we figured out what works for us to keep us both safe until his freakout blows over. I think you humies out there call them meltdowns, don’t you? Yeah. Meltdowns. Groot and I get through ‘em together.

I never stop at controlling his behavior when something’s wrong. I go through the checklist of known sources of trouble and go from there. Getting to the bottom of the issue is gonna take longer than usual because Groot can’t always tell me the exact problem when his brain is all scrambled up. He doesn’t flip out for no reason. Stuff nobody notices makes him go through the roof or triggers the crap out of him. 

Since some stupid asshole is gonna ask: NO, he doesn’t ruin my day if he flips out. It’s not like he decides to act like that. I’ll drop everything to get Groot through a bad day. He does the same thing for me.

Same Autism Speaks assholes: “Really severe low functioning autistic people can’t form relationships!”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I’m getting tired of this function crap. Seriously, stop it.

How many people can say they’ve known their best friend all their life? No matter how far back I look in my memory, I see Groot smiling at me. You wouldn’t be reading this if I never met him. He understands me because he was there going through his own hell while I went through mine. I’m a dickhead at him a lot, and he doesn’t hold it against me. He knows why I’m such a dickhead and he calls me on it when I go too far. We call each other horrible names all the time, but we stay away from the shit said to us on Halfworld.

We bonded through our trauma. As shitty as my memories of Halfworld are, Groot is in almost all of them. He was the only person there that didn’t treat me like dirt. He was the first person to show me what compassion looks like. He was the one good reason I kept fighting to stay alive and escape. 

Groot saved me from turning into the mindless weapon they were building me to be. I swore I wasn’t gonna leave him behind when I blew that place. He’s too nice for that dump. I’m glad we did that together. We both figured out what a great team we are. Me and Groot against the universe.

Halfworld messed my head up. I’m a certified nutcase, and you know what? So is Groot. We’re mentally ill and messed up. I think Groot takes care of me more often than I take care of him. He’s good at it. He looks out for me.  

Groot scoops me up when I get drunk, cleans my puke and piss off me and pretty much babysits me until I sober up. He never complains or bats an eye. I hate being drunk, btw. I drink to shut off the flashbacks and panic attacks. So Groot makes sure I don’t hurt myself when I drink myself stupid. It ain’t any different than me pinning his wrists behind his back and patting his neck to tell him it’s gonna be fine while he’s face down on the floor screaming. 

I had to lose Groot once to realize how much he means to me. A universe without Groot ain’t a universe I want to be in. I’m the luckiest bastard alive to have a friend like him. He died for me. No hesitation at all. He died while looking into my eyes and wiping the tears off my face. He took care of me to the end. I’ll never forget that.

I asked him why he was doing it. He said I’m his forest. Technically, he said ‘we’, which meant Quill, Drax and Gamora, too… but Groot called me family. Flora Colossi identify themselves both as individuals and by who they call their forest– their family. He sees me as part of him, like you might look at your arm or leg as part of you. I’m not gonna get all sappy and tell you what part of me is his. I think you jackasses already know.

He was smiling…he was fucking smiling. Then I got KO’ed and woke up to see my best friend reduced to a pile of sticks. 

I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with myself without Groot. I kept a piece of him to talk to because I figured he’d want that. Then the twig I kept yawned. I realized Groot was growing back because I (unknowingly at the time) planted that undamaged twig in the right kind of dirt. Hearing that yawn was the happiest moment of my life.

So all you wannabe “autism advocates” who suck the blue sack of Autism Speaks can go screw yourselves. You don’t know jack about autism beyond stupid facts. 

You’re not celebrating your kids, you’re parading around hoping to earn a gold star for showing the world you want a replacement for what you see as a defective child. 

You see the protesters all over the internet. You see what autistic people are saying. You ignore them when they’re right in your face. Then you get mad at them for getting in your face at all. 

Ignorance isn’t an excuse anymore. You’re hurting autistic people like Groot when you support Autism Speaks, and you expect Groot to be grateful? Fuck off. I hate two-faced people like you.

I’ve done worse things than any of you jerks. I don’t deserve a friend like Groot, but he sticks around because he’s loyal like that. The autistic people you blue-wearing losers live with deserve better than what they get from you. I don’t care if that’s mean! How about you research Autism Speaks before you give me crap for saying what I’m saying? 

Groot doesn’t need fixing and neither do autistic people. You can teach ‘em how to do a lot without squashing their identity away. 

I remember hearing Halfworld employees argue about whether or not Groot is actually conscious. They didn’t think he could do much more than sit there and stare off into space. 

Guess what? I taught Groot how to read traffic signals. I taught him how to fly a ship. I taught him how to play card games. I taught him how to disable security systems. There’s a lot that he can’t do without some help, but he can do a lot more with aid instead of having it done for him. 

Teach him based on how he learns and he soaks it up like a sponge.

By the way, he’s usually dissociating when he’s staring at nothing. That’s not a bad thing unless he’s triggered. Sometimes he has to ‘disconnect’ from his body for awhile to stay calm. 

There’s a corner in the Milano he can go to if he needs to do that and everybody leaves him alone when he’s in there. Drax helped us put it together. There’s soft lights that don’t hurt his eyes. All his toys are in a set of cubbyholes hidden under a floor panel. The walls in that corner are decorated with mandalas and fractal art printed on exercise pads so he can bang his head into stuff without cracking himself open. Groot loves that corner. 

Autistic people say Autism Speaks sucks at listening. They’re right. Autism Speaks and its cult following make me sick. So you want autism gone? You want people like Groot gone?

I’ve got six words for you:

Fuck every single one of you.

Shove the blue up your collective ass. I accept Groot exactly the way he is and won’t change him for anything. 

P.S. Light it up blue, you say? Okay, I’ll light it up blue. I wish this was Autism Speaks headquarters.

#REDInstead

Rocket demonstrates how to talk about an autistic person who needs a lot of help without degrading or humiliating them. He’s very “that’s how it is with Groot” about it.

Parents of autistic kids (aka autism moms™) advertise left and right that they’re so strong for having an autistic kid and that they deserve all the sympathy in the world. They have their bumperstickers, tshirts and tote bags all decked out with slogans bragging about how much they do and proud how they are of themselves without even considering the child. They think it’s okay for them to tell everyone about their autistic kid and disclose personal details yet when an autistic person is simply proud of themselves they attack them saying they’re romanticizing autism, being attention seeking, embarrassing themselves, and putting themselves in danger.

Autism parents think it’s okay to use their child as a way to get attention without even thinking of their child’s safety as well as well being. They say an autistic person wearing an autism pride shirt is dangerous yet have no problem wearing an autism mom shirt while holding their child’s hand and having various bumper stickers devoted to “finding a cure” for autism. Additionally, they call themselves a superhero for taking care of their kid and being a parent. The constant complaining and negativity about their child obviously affects the child negatively yet the parents don’t care and act as if they’re the parent of the year. The child thinking they’re too needy, too much to handle, or that they’re something negative in their parents life leaves the kid to blame themselves, hate themselves, internalize the ableism their parents are perpetuating and more likely to comply to abusive requests/demands in order to please their parents. Kids shouldn’t be treated like burdens or like there is something wrong with them no matter.

Autism parents thrive off of the attention and sympathy they receive from belittling their child with no regards to how it effects the kid. Treating the child like they’re less than and needy forces the kid into thinking those things are true. Also kids are suppose to be needy and dependent on their parents yet autism moms act as if that’s only autism specific. Autism parents are so threatened by autistic people accepting autism and being proud of it. They’re scared they’ll no longer be able to control everything their child does and no longer receive the disgusting sympathy that fuels their ableist abusive egos.

Autism moms think they’re victims and that autism is ruining their life. They have no regard to how that horrible rhetoric will affect the child as well attitudes people around them have. They want praise and attention as if raising an autistic kid is some impossible task that deserves a medal. Autism isn’t a tragedy or something wrong with your kid. Autism isn’t an excuse for abuse. Autistic kids aren’t less than, the short straw, or anything like that. They’re amazing, wonderful kids that don’t deserve the ableism people force on them.

“Early Intervention” should not be about eliminating evidence of your child being autistic by removing important coping skills like stimming, echolalia, or nonverbality

“Early Intervention” should be anticipating areas of need and providing relevant tools and resources, like AAC/signing, an introduction to sensory accommodations, and access to an autistic community, while eliminating stigma for utilizing those support systems

“Based on what I now know, I would not give my children the combined MMR vaccine. I would consider either using the vaccines singly (not available in this country but possible in mainland Europe) or not vaccinating at all. It may be safer for healthy children to catch these illnesses rather than run the risk of immunisation.”

-Dr. Richard Halvorsen

Wow! I totally agree…

….that your conclusions are based on disproved pseudoscience that is utter cum guzzled bullshit felched right out of the bull Andrew Wakefield fornicated with right before he spat on your brain. (I feel bad for the bull.)

I guess I should expect as much from a self-proclaimed anarchist and conspiracy theorist. I bet you think Earth is flat, that Stephen Hawking is fake, that the moon landing is fake and I also bet you believe in chemtrails, too.

Your shitty and baseless decision is risking the lives of everyone around you. Immunosuppressed people and people who can’t have certain vaccines due to allergies end up in the hospital or dead because of this bullshit. Your massively ignorant implication that autism is a bad result is the reason autistic people suffer through having bleach shoved up their ass or get forced through conversation therapy (ABA Lovaas style) because you can’t bear the idea of a child who isn’t perfect to your standards.

Fuck you. Please move to Uranus because decent people who are smart enough to avoid conspiracy bullshit like yours don’t want the diseases your ignorance is spreading. I feel bad for your kids, if you have any, and I feel bad for the kids they’ll infect with preventable issues later. The reason vaccines exist is because the diseases they protect people from are heinous and may have lifelong complications if the person survives them at all.

Refusing vaccines out of fear of autism is like not buying your kids winter coats because you’re afraid the coat will make them go blind. If your kid was born with retinitis pigmentosa, they’re going to go blind anyway whether you put a coat on them or let them lose fingers to frostbite. Likewise, if your kid is born with an autistic brain, they’re going to be autistic anyway whether you vaccinate them or let them be miserable with polio. 

It’s genes, not environment, that causes autism. I don’t need to repeat the shitty rhetoric of preferring a dead child to a disabled one, because that’s been said over 9,000 times already.

I’m so tired of conspiracy theorists like you making life hard for proper, intelligent people who have to fight your bullshit every day just to survive. You are doing so much harm and you’re literally making me sick.

I’m done with you. Now fuck off.

*** Don’t send the OP anon hate, it makes you look worse than them. ***

Groot gif found on Google. 12th Doctor gif from @doctorwhogeneration.

Lovaas literally didn’t see autistic people as human. Tell me again about the respect this man had for disabled people. Tell me he saw autistic people as humans and just wanted to help us live “in the real world”.

This is the therapist who created ABA. This is the therapy people are defending. If you are an “autism parent” who defends ABA, I suggest you read this passage and listen to autistic people when we say ABA is abusive and dehumanizing.

[Image: Text from what seems to be an e-book, a paragraph is highlighted in yellow and reads:

“He explained to Psychology Today, “You see, you start pretty much from scratch with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense - they have hair, a nose and a mouth - but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way of looking at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”]

This statement is out of context, and the original poster didn’t even bother to cut out the part above the highlighted paragraph that hints at what Lovaas likely really means. “…(lan)guage, intellectual and social behaviors where none had existed…” That is what he means. He even says in the quote that’s highlighted “but they are not people in a psychological sense.” The key word there is psychological.

He is not saying autistic people aren’t people in general and don’t deserve to be treated as people. He is saying that autistic people, especially children, lack certain social skills that most neurotypical people have almost inherently, such as reading expressions and understanding sarcasm. In that sense, yes it is like building a person when teaching an autistic person these skills.

Also keep in mind there are 191 other pages of this we aren’t seeing while looking at this screenshot, and the OP didn’t link us to the original source. We can’t even confirm for ourselves what he is saying in full context, we are just supposed to take their word for it. If they really cared about the apparent “abuse” in ABA therapy, wouldn’t they have provided more evidence to support their claim instead of saying “listen to us we’re autistic!”?

This post has “jump to conclusions” written all over it, and I encourage parents to do actual research instead of listening to emotional knee-jerks like this. If you choose to put your child into ABA, be sure you are able to confirm your child’s safety, and have a say in what goes on. Listening to autistic people is a great way to learn more about the experience, but autistic people are not the sole authority on this topic.

The fact than you think you’re little explanation of “what he really means” “in context” makes it any better is so beyond disturbing. 

@my-makeshift-masquerade Just for information’s sake, the quote is from Neurotribes. There are references at the end of said chapter. If you want me to look up page numbers and such, I can grab my copy and do that at a later date. But if you want to get to know what Lovaas was all about, you should read The Me Book. But I have a feeling that you don’t actually care about anything except justifying this streaming pile of dung, which is appalling. Never work with autistic people, or children in general, please. Lord.

Thank you for the offer. Information is always welcome! For the record, I don’t care about justification, but I do care about the truth. You calling Lovaas a steaming pile of dung shows you have no bias at all, right? Also, it’s a shame you say that, I work with myself all the time.

Oh, my bad for caring about stopping an abusive therapy that caused PTSD. Yeah I’m clearly supposed to just sit back and be ok with that.

News flash - you can be autistic and support things that harm other autistic people. You can be an autistic person and an asshole! Imagine that!

i mean, the context it was taken out of didn’t make anything better, i’m literally screaming right now

of course they have a bias, especially if the thing they have a bias against is actually shitty

what is even going on

Right?

Like ok, save for a bunch of right wing homophobes, I don’t tend to see people go, well saying conversion therapy is bad is showing you’re biased! No, we recognize that a bad thing is a bad thing.

Also I bring up conversion therapy because Lovaas was the father of BOTH. ABA and conversion therapy all come from the same place. It’s “funny” (no it’s not) that one is almost without question considered to be awful and the other is seen as “the most effective therapy” for autistic kids. As a queer autistic person, this pisses me off.

btw, there's a LOT of articles available online about the shit Lovaas said.  For example, the article referenced above is available here: http://www.neurodiversity.com/library_chance_1974.html

When people say vaccines cause autism.

When people use functioning labels.

When parents sign their kid up for ABA.

[All three reaction images are an animated GIF of Rocket Raccoon from the GOTG2 movie trailer slapping both hands against his head in frustration and shouting “NO!”]

Rocket gif by @scarletswitch  http://scarletswitch.tumblr.com/post/154007676237

(General “you” here)

Intensive ABA therapy aimed at making autistic people indistinguishable from their peers doesn’t break your child out of their autism shell, it forces them into a neurotypical shell.

Unlearning all the ABA bullshit is how autistic people “break out” of the shells you forced them into.

All humans are born with the capacity and drive to seek out a distinct individual sense of self. This agency is robbed of autistic people who are conditioned under behavioral therapy with ABA (appl…

I’m so glad I didn’t get ABA, but the bullying I got in school was pretty much like it because everything I did was something to be mocked, laughed at and hated. I have the last laugh today. People like me for the traits I got bullied for in school. *Snaps fingers in a Z pattern*

Acceptance isn’t

“I accept my autistic child as they are,” screamed the martyr Autism Mom as they put their child through every therapy imaginable to make their kid look indistinguishable from their neurotypical peers.

“I accept my child as they are,” screamed the martyr Autism Mom whose unvaccinated autistic child (who was “near vaccines in the doctor’s office and caught autism”) just gave an immuno-suppressed child whooping cough.

“I accept my child as they are,” screamed the martyr Autism Mom as they injected bleach into their child’s rectum and ignored the pained wails of someone whose intestines were being burned.

“I accept my child as they are,” screamed the martyr Autism Mom as they held a plastic bag over their child’s head until the child went gray and lifeless.

Uhh…Citation needed?

Also, why do you just stereotype every wrongdoer in each situation a “martyr autism mom”? That just shows how you are unwilling to listen to the mothers perspective. If all people do is shame parents of autistic children for trying to help their loved ones, and degrade their stress as nothing more than petty whining, do you realize what’s going to happen? Eventually they will stop listening to other perspectives at all, because it has always led to them being demonized for not knowing what to do, or making a mistake.

Yes, I am well aware killing your child is not a mistake, but the vast majority of mothers or caregivers would not murder their child in an obscene manner because they came out autistic. It is obvious this is trying to suggest therapy (the first item on the list) is equivalent in some way to murdering your child (the other three). Therapy is not equal to murder.

A mother trying therapy for her child is not doing so because they’re tired of their child being alive, or won’t accept them for who they are. They’re doing it because they want to help their child achieve and learn new things despite their setbacks. Therapy mostly teaches skills to autistic children that they will need/use for the rest of their lives. It’s almost never what the post above describes. I do agree that therapies that aim to stop an uncontrollable behavior need to be dropped, but comparing that and all other therapies to murder is overdoing it.

You missed the point. This post is a magnifying glass on a specific set of caregivers who do the most harm to autistic people. There are people who go to extremes to beat or destroy autism without any regard to what they’re putting the autistic person through so long as the autism disappears. If the lens I held up to martyr caregivers who are being harmful bothers you then good, I’m glad it did. Because IT HAPPENS more than the news will tell you. I know full well there are parents who are excellent and who are working in their child’s interest. That is the big difference– they put the kid first. Their agenda isn’t “destroy autism” and instead becomes “help this child grow up to be the best autistic person they can be”. It’s a vast difference from “Quiet hands! Sit still! Good job! Here’s a piece of candy.” If caregivers would listen more to autistic people– by visiting blogs written by autistic people or watching media created by autistic people– they would know the dangers of therapies that aim to hide all signs of autism to make the person look neurotypical on the outside. They should know these things from the mouths or fingertips of autistic people. But instead, they nod to the doctor/psychologist, get inundated by Autism Speaks and before you know it they’re caught up in a cycle of ignorance. Sometimes we autistic people have to yell, paint ugly pictures and use extremes to show the harm that has been done to us. A non-autistic child who experienced what an autistic child experiences in the JRC would have an abuse case with a lawyer and the works. An autistic child who talks about the same thing is told it’s for their own good and to shut up. They say what you say, that we try to paint all caregivers as bad. It’s so dismissive. Caregivers and parents are allowed to make mistakes. But there are so many who hear what autistic people say about why a therapy or organization is harmful and go with it anyway, which causes their child harm. So yes, they may get little Susan or Tim to sit still in class, but once Susan and Tim hit college they burn out because they’re being forced to meet a neurotypical standard that is far above them. But with accommodations and understanding, guess what? They’ll shine like the gems they are. I give parents or caregivers a chance if they didn’t know. But, I reiterate, there are a lot who know and keep doing it anyway because their agenda is more important than the comfort and peace of their child. They’re the ones who say “My son is 22 and wears diapers and blah blah blah” and you can just tell they don’t care what autistic people say. Those are the caregivers and parents I’m highlighting. So if this hit a nerve, good, because maybe it’ll make you more aware of what happens to autistic people every day behind closed doors.