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Works Cited

Samuels, Christina A. "Autism Issues Complicate Anti-Bullying Task." Education Week. N.p., 6 May 2014. Web. 9 May 2014.

Sashin, Daphne. "How Bobby Smith Learned to Talk at 9, and Other Autism Success Stories." CNN. Cable News Network, 29 Apr. 2014. Web. 09 May 2014.

Szalavitz, Maia, and Maia Szalavitz. "Why Autistic Kids Make Easy Targets for School Bullies | TIME.com." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 08 May 2014.

Tynan, Dan. "Eight Things You Ought to Know About Autism (but Might Not)." Eight Things You Ought to Know About Autism (but Might Not). Time, 27 Apr. 2014. Web. 09 May 2014.

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Autistic kids are 5 times more likely to be bullied than typical peers. As many autistic kids and teens have much trouble seeing social cues, they can be easy targets for bullies who have nothing better to do than to exploit a kid just like them (well, maybe the autistic kid had the upper hand there). Eileen Riley-Hall, a mother of an autistic girl, recalls a moment when "little boys were getting her to say dirty words and then laughing at her." Riley-Hall explains, "She thought this was a good thing and that they were being friendly, but they were really making fun of her." Another case of this bullying happened around May 6, 2014, in Maryland.

According to police, a 16-year-old autistic teen was bullied on a cellphone video of him getting kicked in the groin, pulled by his hair, and persuaded into jumping into a frozen lake. Pretty scary stuff.

The really bad thing besides all of this is that the teen eventually defended the perps in court.

This can also be difficult in a school environment. Research shows that it isn’t about making sure kids don’t hurt, its more about creating everything to work. The environment of school, if created well, can help. Adult intervention is a huge part of keeping autistic children and teens safe and helpful.

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In part 1, you learned that there are many shades of autism. I know what your (at least

my) really dumb analogy/pun part of your brain is thinking. Yeah, “duh Fifty Shades of Autism LOL XD roflcopter!” That analogy has nothing to do with autism though, there are way more than 50 shades of autism. In the last part, you learned about low-functioning autism. But here is where it gets even more interesting: you can actually be really really smart, but really really socially slow at the same time. Instead of being impaired in intelligence and social skills, you can be impaired in just social skills. One case of this is now 26-year-old speech pathologist Kat Muir. Obviously, by her job title, she isn’t impaired in speech, in fact, she teaches it as a profession. She has high-functioning ASD. A huge challenge for people on the high end of the spectrum is learning how to be socially typical, or at least a little bit. In a private junior high school, she always thought of conversation as a “contest to see who could say the most interesting thing.” When other girls were saying “Ah, did you see Britney last night, she was SO GOOD!” Muir would jump in and say “Planes in World War I has synchronized guns so the gunmen didn’t shoot their propellers off.” They didn’t care. So they’d tell her that. She got better when she moved into a big public high school, where people seemed at least a little bit more tolerant of differences. She would remind herself to talk about what other people talk about.

A quote from Muir to people without ASD: "Everyone with autism has something to say. Learn to speak our language, and we will learn to speak yours."

But I actually thought that that fact about World War I was really interesting. Can’t

tell why they wouldn’t, either…

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THE PROBLEMS WITH DIAGNOSING AUTISM, and the CAUSE (not really).

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THE PROBLEMS WITH DIAGNOSING AUTISM, and the CAUSE (not really).

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Autism is extremely difficult to diagnose. Scientists actually still don't really know how autism is even caused. To recall this, I will use a situation a few years ago. This particular situation is called the MMR vaccine controversy. The whole thing started when a fraudulent research paper published in the Lancet (a scientific/medical research journal) claimed that there was a link between the MMS vaccine and the cause of autism. The reason this was fraudulent is because, no, causing autism has no link to vaccines. Going back to diagnosis, there is no one indicator to say "This person has autism," or "this person doesn't." Just like there are many types of autism on the spectrum, there are many ways to diagnose it. The other problem is scientists still have no certain idea how autism is caused, as there is no blood/medical test known.

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AUTISM SUCCESS STORIES - BOBBY SMITH - CONTINUED

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AUTISM SUCCESS STORIES - BOBBY SMITH - CONTINUED

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When Smith hit the good ‘ol 9 years mark, he knew about 50 words. To put that into perspective, the average 6-year-old knows about 10,000 to 20,000 words. Until behavioral therapist Sharon Holbert taught Bobby Smith over the course of over 6 months how to basically, well: talk. Not to say it wasn’t easy; Bobby would still kick and hit Sharon over and over again for over 6 months, and he still only uses mostly single sentences like “I want rice cakes please,” or “I want swim at the beach.” But she did it.

Oh, and the fits: those have been taken care of too.

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Bobby Smith is a now 10 year old boy with low functioning autism. One typical thing about kids with low-functioning autism is their usual inability to speak. They will usually have fits, maybe trying to express their mind. This also happened to Bobby. That’s crazy. Imagine having a million thoughts and never being able to speak for a year. That’s some scary stuff, if I do say so myself. Usually, this factor lives on until their adult years: some being able to talk IN THEIR TWENTIES. TWENTIES. Now imagine that you couldn’t talk for 24 years. That’s basically how it turns out for most. But not for Bobby.

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It is a condition that is difficult to see not just for average schmoes but for doctors. It was not really exactly diagnosed until around 50 to 30 years ago. Heck, the word autism wasn’t even first used until about a hundred years ago. The reason it wasn’t diagnosed correctly until a few decades ago is because of the fact that it isn’t one thing.

It’s tons of things. The reason it’s called Autism Spectrum Disorder is because one autistic patient may not be exactly like another. One autistic person may be, well (I don’t like using this word…), retarded; when another maybe, well, genius.

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Why is the ribbon for autism awareness a puzzle piece? Basically it has two main meanings: One of them is that the sophisticated nature of a puzzle represents the sophisticated nature of autism itself. The second is that the bright colors represent hope.

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Have you ever called somebody “retarded”?

You probably played around with that and just, said it. Just a joke, right? Well, no.

Your “joke” is actually nothing close to a joke. It’s a problem. Autism reflects what you belched and shows that it isn’t a laughing matter. Autism (or ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)) is a mental disease that has one common symptom: an inability to interact, communicate, or even talk with others like a typical peer.