It is 7th day today of my Autism Acceptance campaign. As indicated earlier, the first step in acceptance is awareness. Autism is complex to understand. It is a spectrum disorder and thus each autistic person is unique. There would be some common traits in behaviour, interactions etc., still each person is different and unique. For common people to understand this aspect, especially “spectrum disorder” is not easy. Hence taking the analogy shown in the poster.
Autism .. It’s not a processing error.. It’s a different Operating System..
It is a very good analogy to understand Autism better. Majority of us are comfortable using Windows Operating systems, and will find it difficult to use a different operating system such as Mac OS or Linux. In Linux too there are many flavours / variants. Redhat, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian etc. are some of the variants of Linux operating system. All these have the same basic concepts manifested differently, as in a spectrum. The common traits of Autism such as poor social communication; repetitive, odd or stereotypic behaviours; prefer to play alone; poor eye contact etc. are manifested differently with different degree of intensity in different autistic individuals.
Processing error happens for neurotypical (the so called ‘normal’) as well as for autistic persons. Then don’t consider Autism itself as a processing error.
Take away here is, Autism is not manifestation of any mistake or error, but it is just being different, because of neurodevelopment disorder. Let us try to understand them by observing them, and try to communicate with them the way they understand the world, and lead to a better acceptance and inclusion.
I have been doing music therapy for autistic persons for past few years. The way each person perceives, understands and responds is very different. I have to communicate differently with each person. For the same action, command in different operating systems are different, and I have to figure out and discover the appropriate command for communicating with each person. This is very different from dealing with neurotypical (the so called ‘normal’) persons.
Let us try to learn more operating systems to be comfortable in this inclusive world!
Beautifully and clearly put across.
ReplyDeleteVery well explained
ReplyDeleteAutism therapy near me I am impressed. I don't think Ive met anyone who knows as much about this subject as you do. You are truly well informed and very intelligent. You wrote something that people could understand and made the subject intriguing for everyone. Really, great blog you have got here.
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