Some really weird shit in Lenny Schafer's report today, yo. He's on a tear about diagnosis and who's "really" autistic or not. I'm not a big one for purity tests or loyalty oaths. The DSM-IV diagnostic categories are an unholy mess, it's true: the criteria for autism are for infantile autism, or Kanner-type autism, or classical autism (Mozart, anyone? He's been so rumored). This makes for, um, confusion, since autism is also a spectrum disorder. Which means that there are degrees and kinds. My favorite quote on the subject: Stephen Shore, "When you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." So my kid had a language disorder, not a delay. This was a qualitative communication impairment. Was she better off than a kid with a severe speech delay? Depends on what happened once/if the language finally came in. She debatelessly had a disability that affected her ability to interact with other similar mammals in her environment and her ability to learn from aforesaid environment. Am I pinning a diagnosis on a kid who didn't need it? Fuck that.

Is Asperger's different from autism as defined in the DSM-IV? Sure. But we're talking about academic constructs. Clumsy ones. With confusing names, which is why you have shit like PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). Which means, basically: some of column A, not enough of column B, and not your typical person neurologically.

Kids with greater impairments need more intervention. A person with some Asperger traits should not presume to speak for all people with autism, especially those who quite literally cannot speak for themselves. But don't be telling me that my kid's issues don't count: I think one of the big shames is that parents of kids w/Asperger's look at things like ABA and think, "Nah, my kid doesn't need that. That's for kids with REAL impairments." Asperger's, HFA, and PDD are real impairments. Not alternate ways of being: qualitative impairments in ability to attend to the world and learn from it. Doesn't mean I want a different kid (take that, Jim Sinclair and Valeri Paradiz). Doesn't mean I don't accept her as is: she is perfect, thank you very much. It means that there are very specific things she is going to need help with.

Okay, done ranting. Found this interesting-looking Asperger video mentioned in an online list.