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.

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.

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

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…

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.

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.

 _________  ___  ___  ________  ________   ___  __    ________  ___       
|\___   ___|\  \|\  \|\   __  \|\   ___  \|\  \|\  \ |\   ____\|\  \      
\|___ \  \_\ \  \\\  \ \  \|\  \ \  \\ \  \ \  \/  /|\ \  \___|\ \  \     
     \ \  \ \ \   __  \ \   __  \ \  \\ \  \ \   ___  \ \_____  \ \  \    
      \ \  \ \ \  \ \  \ \  \ \  \ \  \\ \  \ \  \\ \  \|____|\  \ \__\   
       \ \__\ \ \__\ \__\ \__\ \__\ \__\\ \__\ \__\\ \__\____\_\  \|__|   
        \|__|  \|__|\|__|\|__|\|__|\|__| \|__|\|__| \|__|\_________\  ___ 
                                                        \|_________| |\__\
                                                                     \|__|