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Home tomorrow, and Offensive Autistic form
I fly home tomorrow. These trips to the US seem to go quicker every time. Of course, it doesn't help that this time I spent a week either in bed or lying around on the sofa complaining about how ill I was.
Grant didn't have a lot of time off work because he's saving his vacation days for visiting me at Christmas (12th December to 1st January - well, arriving on 13th and flying back the morning of 1st). So we've mostly been travelling at weekends. We went to a zoo a couple of hours east of here, which made us a little unhappy and uncomfortable because the animals really didn't have enough space and some of them were displaying stress behaviours. The grizzly bears were okay, the North American black bear cubs were okay, but the black bear adults and the wolves were definitely very unhappy. We've also been to the Corning Museum of Glass - which does have some science as well as art, and to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. Tonight we were supposed to be going to the Rochester Contemporary Art Center but Grant is asleep. Also I am supposed to be doing some paperwork and getting myself ready to go home tomorrow, and instead I am involved in two fairly weighty conversations on Discord :(
Grant has a new psychologist who specialises in treating adults with autism. This is a good thing. However, as part of the assessment she's given me a Repetitive Behaviors Scale – Revised (RBS-R) form to fill in and it's really fucking offensive. I have to fill in whether certain behaviours have occured in the past month and then rate them, on a scale of:
0 - Behavior does not occur
1 - Behavior occurs and is a mild problem
2 - Behavior occurs and is a moderate problem
3 - Behavior occurs and is a severe problem.
Where is the option for "Behaviour occurs but isn't a problem, it's normal autistic behaviour"?
Okay, let's take "Arranges certain objects in a particular pattern or place; Need for things to be even or symmetrical". Grant has preferred ways for me to load his dishwasher (with one point of each square plates pointing downwards, so it is a fat diamond in the dishwasher; rather than the more usual method of arranging each square plate so that an edge is downwards) and preferred ways to stack the plates in the cupboard (so that each plate is arranged with its pattern in the same direction). Is this a "problem"? No! It's his fucking house. He follows my rules in my house, I follow his rules in his house. That's just basic manners. It makes no difference to me whether I put the plates corner-down or side-down in the dishwasher. So why are we pathologising his requirement? It's just that this form, written by a neurotypical or allistic person, thinks that there's something WRONG with being autistic. And it offends the hell out of me.
Grant didn't have a lot of time off work because he's saving his vacation days for visiting me at Christmas (12th December to 1st January - well, arriving on 13th and flying back the morning of 1st). So we've mostly been travelling at weekends. We went to a zoo a couple of hours east of here, which made us a little unhappy and uncomfortable because the animals really didn't have enough space and some of them were displaying stress behaviours. The grizzly bears were okay, the North American black bear cubs were okay, but the black bear adults and the wolves were definitely very unhappy. We've also been to the Corning Museum of Glass - which does have some science as well as art, and to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. Tonight we were supposed to be going to the Rochester Contemporary Art Center but Grant is asleep. Also I am supposed to be doing some paperwork and getting myself ready to go home tomorrow, and instead I am involved in two fairly weighty conversations on Discord :(
Grant has a new psychologist who specialises in treating adults with autism. This is a good thing. However, as part of the assessment she's given me a Repetitive Behaviors Scale – Revised (RBS-R) form to fill in and it's really fucking offensive. I have to fill in whether certain behaviours have occured in the past month and then rate them, on a scale of:
0 - Behavior does not occur
1 - Behavior occurs and is a mild problem
2 - Behavior occurs and is a moderate problem
3 - Behavior occurs and is a severe problem.
Where is the option for "Behaviour occurs but isn't a problem, it's normal autistic behaviour"?
Okay, let's take "Arranges certain objects in a particular pattern or place; Need for things to be even or symmetrical". Grant has preferred ways for me to load his dishwasher (with one point of each square plates pointing downwards, so it is a fat diamond in the dishwasher; rather than the more usual method of arranging each square plate so that an edge is downwards) and preferred ways to stack the plates in the cupboard (so that each plate is arranged with its pattern in the same direction). Is this a "problem"? No! It's his fucking house. He follows my rules in my house, I follow his rules in his house. That's just basic manners. It makes no difference to me whether I put the plates corner-down or side-down in the dishwasher. So why are we pathologising his requirement? It's just that this form, written by a neurotypical or allistic person, thinks that there's something WRONG with being autistic. And it offends the hell out of me.
no subject
no subject
The only reason that rocking or flapping is a problem is because neurotypical people stare. Otherwise, who cares? It's just so frustrating to have judgements placed on people.
Grant is very good at "passing" for NT but, assuming that form is scored by adding up the numbers, he got 25. I tried it for myself and scored 7. According to an academic paper I found, average for an autistic person of his age and functioning level is 21.something.