My mother was a special education teacher, and she saw my stimming and sensory issues and decreed them to be a problem because I’d never be “normal” (and I use the term loosely). “You’re so smart! You can’t have any issue with anxiety! Lights are that bright for everyone, and no one else complains! Figure it out!”
I was in special ed and the teachers were like that there too. It’s so frustrating how the people with the most power over autistic people’s lives are so often the people who understand us the least.
The neuropsych doctor I was tested by told me that she had been a special education teacher herself, and that during the 70s-90s (and probably even now tbh) there was a heavy emphasis on making students act “acceptably” by stopping them from making larger stim motions and that now they realize it’s a bad idea. It sucks.
And that’s the whole ideology of ABA, to get rid of certain behaviors as if the reason people were doing those behaviors was simply because they couldn’t understand that they shouldn’t do them. Stimming isn’t just pointless disruption, it’s an important tool for self-regulation. Limited speaking isn’t just a refusal to communicate, it’s an actual difficulty with the medium of spoken word. Beating these traits out of people, either figuratively or literally, doesn’t solve the underlying issues that affect their internal experience and their happiness.
Sorry for ranting at you, I just get so mad about this topic.
I was in special ed and the teachers were like that there too. It’s so frustrating how the people with the most power over autistic people’s lives are so often the people who understand us the least.
The neuropsych doctor I was tested by told me that she had been a special education teacher herself, and that during the 70s-90s (and probably even now tbh) there was a heavy emphasis on making students act “acceptably” by stopping them from making larger stim motions and that now they realize it’s a bad idea. It sucks.
And that’s the whole ideology of ABA, to get rid of certain behaviors as if the reason people were doing those behaviors was simply because they couldn’t understand that they shouldn’t do them. Stimming isn’t just pointless disruption, it’s an important tool for self-regulation. Limited speaking isn’t just a refusal to communicate, it’s an actual difficulty with the medium of spoken word. Beating these traits out of people, either figuratively or literally, doesn’t solve the underlying issues that affect their internal experience and their happiness.
Sorry for ranting at you, I just get so mad about this topic.
Please don’t be sorry! I don’t know much about it but everything I learn makes me so angry.