Said Christopher Banks, the president and chief executive of the Autism Society, quoted in "Donald Triplett, first person diagnosed with autism, dies at 89/With support from his family and hometown, he graduated from college, worked as a bank teller and traveled the world" (WaPo).
The obituary links to this Atlantic article from 2010, "Autism's First Child." Excerpt:
[I]’s clear that Donald reached his potential thanks, in large part, to the world he occupied—the world of Forest, Mississippi—and how it decided to respond to the odd child in its midst.... In Forest, it appears, Donald was showered with acceptance, starting with the mother who defied experts to bring him back home [from a mental institution], and continuing on to classmates from his childhood and golfing partners today. Donald’s neighbors not only shrug off his oddities, but openly admire his strengths—while taking a protective stance with any outsider whose intentions toward Donald may not have been sufficiently spelled out. On three occasions, while talking with townspeople who know Donald, we were advised, in strikingly similar language each time: “If what you’re doing hurts Don, I know where to find you.” We took the point: in Forest, Donald is “one of us.”
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If he had been raised in an enlighten place (I.e.progressive district) he would have been forced to transition.
I hate the way the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition) put all degrees of autistic behavior in one "disorder". But this category ranges from people who are a little odd to those who can't eat or toilet by themselves, or use language. Different "autistic" people have very different possibilities, and should be treated very differently. To say it's all "a spectrum" obscures more than it illuminates.
There is some truth to the saying that we Southerners put crazy on the front porch.
God bless them for it.
This happened in the middle of Mississippi in the 1930s (and on).
It makes you wonder who were the people who kept their autistic children with the family and who put them in the institutions. Compare the north and the south.
My Mother was raised on a red dirt cotton farm during the depression. I know these people. She didn't have electricity until the tenth grade, but they learned self reliance & taking care of each other. She didn't know what color her neighbors were growing up. Everyone was poor.
I agree with Roger Sweeney about the lumping of all people with autism into a single category. Why did they get rid of Asperger's as a diagnosis, for instance?
I'm close to a couple of young people who either were or could have been diagnosed thusly in childhood. One family received that diagnosis and sought all the services and so forth that went with it. Their child, nearing 30 now, is a journeyman electrician and almost self-supporting (he shares a house his parents were able to buy for him with a couple of roommates, both also formerly considered Aspie - aside from that he doesn't get money from his parents and takes care of himself with minimal intervention).
The other was never diagnosed, but it seemed obvious to us that she could have been. She didn't have an IEP in school, just a bunch of flexible teachers - she is higher-functioning and also, I think, just somewhat smarter than our other young friend, but shares most of his social characteristics. She got a 4-year college degree in a STEM field but is having a great deal of difficulty getting and keeping a job. Her parents, who have never even suggested that she has any neurological disability, only difference, expect her to become independent, though they acknowledge her struggles and aren't blind to her eccentricities. She may succeed but I think the jury's out.
Which approach is better? ISTM that it depends on whether the person has the capability to function in society without too many accommodations (there's only so much you can do for anyone with issues either physical or neurological - can't have a blind surgeon so far, nor can a person with profound or even moderate autism be a good preschool teacher).
It's lovely that this town supported their homie so thoroughly. I hope my two young friends end up in similar circles.
I also wonder, have wondered for years, how many of the people I interact with online are on that spectrum. And how many people think I'm there? After all, it takes a certain single-mindedness to come to a place like this every day, thinking it matters...
It's different for our host; she's made a commitment to her hobby (or is it a legit job by now? One can hope). The rest of us are just hangers-on.
This is much closer to the south I have come to know than the 2-D portrayals of racist, backwards, hillbillies per the MSM.
By 1930, the largest mental hospital in the world was "Millidgeville" -- Central Hospital in Millidgeville, Georgia. But that doesn't tell us if percentages of institutionalization were higher in the North or South. There was far more poverty and malnutrition in the South. Subsistence farmers, black and white, often could not care for and feed an unproductive family member. Millidgeville, bad as it was, was sometimes better than endangering a whole family.
The Millidgeville card catalogues used to be available. Women and adolescent girls were institutionalized and lobotomized for purportedly being sexually rebellious and/or drinking and drugging. The same was done to women in the North, in Hollywood, and to members of rich and famous political families like the Kennedys. Women did not have similar power to institutionalize male relatives for those reasons.
In the South, abused and impoverished women with children to feed, even some black ones, sometimes turned to the KKK for help, though much less so for blacks by the 30's.
So when men were put in Millidgeville for being drunks, addicts, predators, or wife-beaters, it was sometimes through courts, sometimes Klans -- which were often one and the same. The KKK was primarily made up of better-off and locally powerful white men, not poor ones, and they continued delivering extra-legal punishment, including beatings and institutionalization, on white men who flagrantly abused and abandoned their families, though they generally (not always) reserved harsher treatment of blacks, of course.
Remember the retarded Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird? He kills Mayella Ewell's violent father, though only after the man attacks Atticus Finch's children, not for repeatedly abusing his daughter, which was known but considered his business. The town leaders decide not to investigate the killing or send Boo away.
These days, Seattle, Los Angeles, and NYC vie for being the largest open-air mental institutions in the country.
Small town America!
If you threaten someone who might bully a person, is that anti-bullying?
Elon Musk is definitely on the spectrum, and as far as I know never received any special treatment for it. He definitely was bullied in school for being different.
As a teacher I meet many of these kids who do indeed encompass a broad spectrum of behaviors and abilities. Usually the "normal" kids know who they are, just like they know who the smart kids and who the dumb/unmotivated kids are. In my experience they are tolerated but usually ostracized by the other kids. Many of them don't even notice. The key to reaching these kids is to find their obsession. One of the ones I had last year was fixated on the Titanic. (He's probably very excited right now) Another, born in Pomona and has never left the country and whose mother was a crack addict insists that he is British on his dad's side and French Canadian on his mother's side. He comes to school in a three-piece suit and speaks in a faux British accent. He hangs out in my room because he found out I lived in England while growing up. Many of them are quite smart, merely socially inept.
After all, it takes a certain single-mindedness to come to a place like this every day, thinking it matters...
Well, I am socially awkward and apparently need to be hit with a clue-bat.
Does the article mention what were this man's feelings and those of his fellow townsmen about affirmative care for the trans-gendered. I suspect that the writer didn't delve into this subject. Perhaps a bit of a cover up. Can this men and his fellows be said to have led worthy lives if, as I suspect, they were on the wrong side of this issue.
Sounds like the model for Forest Gump.
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