Wandering is perhaps the least understood behavior of autism, and the most dangerous to the person with autism. Before I worked on this issue, I thought back to any instance where I wandered off, and what caused me to do so.
I came up with the three listed in the second panel: Boredom (or lack of stimulation), Interests, and (over) Stimulation.Continue Reading
An amusing moment I recall is when I was home from school once in high school, and had the TV on as stimulation in the background. It was running an episode of “Blue’s Clues”, and they were covering emotions. I actually got one of them wrong on the section of matching up body language with an emotion.
However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t comprehend or understand emotions, or what other people are going through. In fact, I tend to use some of my experiences to help other people if they’re having a rough time. I enjoy helping people…that’s one of the biggest reasons I started to make AuTalkz, in fact!Continue Reading
Though it can be inspirational to hear that a celebrity has Asperger’s, it tends to be more annoying than anything else, especially in the cases where someone admits it and was diagnosed long ago, but hasn’t come out and said it until now.
There are a lot of breakthroughs being made in autism research, and psychologists are starting to understand it more and more. I feel it’s become “mainstream”, even. The diagnosis rate is going up, and people are either getting diagnosed as adults or coming out and saying they’ve had it all their lives.
by : Nikki Jeanette/creator of “AuTalkz”
For the longest time, the word “retard” was used as a horrible insult. In fact, that’s partially the reason why the DSM changed it to “Intellectual Disability”.
Hang on, I’m going somewhere with this.
So, the place I saw this word thrown around the most as an insult was the gaming community (as that’s pretty much my social life, and not many people actually call someone a “retard” in person…cause, you know, safety of that computer screen).
At the time when I first began to play MMOs (which was shortly before WoW came out), it wasn’t used often. As WoW and other games grew, I noticed that the word “retard” was used more and more often as an insult.
It completely blew up to the point where practically everyone was using it, and moderators (in MMOs or social chatrooms) just didn’t care or did nothing.
These days, I’ve been seeing something new used in place of “retard”. It’s, you’ve guessed it, “autistic”.
Though it’s easy to get caught up in the negative, with a little humor Nikki J. reminds us to look for the good in life, and stay resilient.
