The Perils of Passing

6 November 2006 at 0:58 (Advocacy, Autism/Asperger's, Inclusiveness, Parenting, Special Education, Stress)

“Third Rock from the Sun” television show:
One of the human characters, Mary, was explaining to Dick (one of the aliens trying to impersonate humans), her reservations regarding dating him.

Mary: “It’s as if you were out of sync with every other person on this planet!”
Dick: “What do you mean? Every day I go out of my way to do things that appear normal!”

There’s a lot of attention placed upon trying to make people with various differences appear to be “normal”, everything from in-the-ear hearing aids (that often are not as useful as behind-the-ear aids), to prostheses, to training autistics to mimic NT social behaviour. Not all of these are bad things necessarily. Given the current popularity of going around wearing a Bluetooth mobile phone on one’s ear like some kind of of cyborg, I can see hearing aids turning into equally high-tech decorative bits.

Unfortunately, emulation works against the overall health of the autistic, for a number of reasons.

Emulation is not a viable goal because it creates additional stress.

Spending extra energy to appear normal is stressful. Spending time trying to make eye contact and worrying if it is being done enough, and suppressing little mannerisms or tics adds to the work load of existing. Spending mental energy attending to these things means having less to devote to other activities, such as decoding speech or organizing and monitoring the visual environment.

Even if depression has a partly genetic basis, extra environmental stress worsens that.

Emulation is not a viable goal because even if the social rituals like eye-contact are performed, that does not mean the autistic will gain the same information from the activity.

Whether or not emotional perception on the part of the autistic is due to less eye contact and facial observation or vice versa, may be a chicken and egg question that will doubtless take more neurophysiological study to unravel. However, the result is the same, because even if the autistic attends to facial observation, that does not necessarily mean the same information will be perceived.

Emulation is not a viable goal because an impaired ability to do so results in ostracism from the community.

If it isn’t done well all the time, people feel fooled. Trying to normalize me or make me “indistinguishable from my peers” isn’t going to work. I don’t do it well. My little weirdnesses aren’t that noticeable at first, but they pile up like snowflakes obscuring the scenery. Then people get annoyed at me because they feel betrayed and fooled, thinking I was a one-of-them normal person.

Emulation is not a viable goal because it devalues the inherent qualities of the person.

Lack of acceptance for who or what one truly is leads to additional stress, depression, increases and/or aggravates the types of stress-related health problems. Lack of acceptance for who or what one truly is leads to increased self-esteem problems and increases the difficulties in social interaction.

My recommendation:

Quit trying to forcibly mold autistic children (and adults) to emulate neurotypical behaviors. Focus instead upon working with the person rather than against them. Work with their skills and aptitudes, work upon stress-reduction techniques, and work on methods for interacting with others that are natural for both the autistic and neurotypical people. Work beyond denial or tolerance toward acceptance and appreciation of diversity in schools, work places, medical care settings, and other arenas of social interaction.