Hi. I'm new here. I'm not deaf and I can't even sign anything more than the alphabet, which just about everybody can do.
I guess you're wondering why I'm here, then. Okay, long story follows. I'll try to make it shorter.
I have Asperger Syndrome. That's a form of high-functioning autism. Over the past few years, with more autistic people having access to the Internet, a sort of online autistic culture has begun to form. We think differently from most people; and we're very diverse; but we share the experience of being very different from others around us in a very basic, neurological way. Some of us write instead of speaking; others don't use language at all. As an Aspie, I'm only slightly autistic; so I can speak well, though my language is quite formal, and I don't hold up my side of a conversation well.
(I probably should learn sign. Some autistics speak it instead of a vocal language, and it might be better to have one more tool for communication at my disposal.)
The communication barriers make us different; but that's only some of it. We think differently, too. Many of us think in pictures. Many of us think in very out-of-the-box ways... we come up with ideas which most people wouldn't think of. And then there are the special interests... obsessions, you might call them; topics which we're fascinated with, things which give us great joy, subjects we learn about to the point that we could write books about the subject. (My major obsessions, so far, have been astrophysics, Lord of the Rings, feral cat management, and now psychology.)
The problem is that most people who are told, "Your child has autism", think only of how horrible it will be for their family; how their "normal child" has been stolen away and replaced by a changeling who can't relate to them and will probably spend his whole life locked away in a world of his own. And naturally, these people, with this very wrong stereotype of autism, want to cure their children.
I, and most of the other autistic people I have met on the Internet, do not want to be cured. We may have a disability; but the fact is that most of the problem lies not with the strange ways we think but with the way that other people do not accept the way we think. From bullying in elementary school to discrimination in the workplace, we find very few environments where we're accepted as simply people who happen to be different. We can make contributions to society: I am going to be an engineer, for example; and even a completely nonverbal autistic person with an IQ of 20 can be a loved and loving part of a family. (Don't let them tell you that an autistic person cannot love someone: We do. We are simply not very good at communicating it.)
So I'm here because I've learned that deaf people have made their own culture; because I think that is what autistic people want to do, too. But we're divided down the middle... Some would say as an Aspie, I'm "not autistic enough"... some Aspies would say that anyone who is disabled by autism should be cured, but they are not disabled, so they shouldn't be cured... Then there are the parents, desperate to find the "normal child" hidden somewhere in an autistic child's brain, who hate us for telling them, "Your child is autistic... can't you just love him the way he is, and teach him to live in a world he doesn't fit into, instead of constantly telling him he isn't normal and that this is somehow unacceptable?" What, may I ask, is so horrible about not being normal, anyway?
I guess what I want to learn here is, How did you do it? And how can we do the same?
That wasn't very short. Oh, well, I guess that gives you an example of one more feature of Asperger's: The tendency to lecture!
I guess you're wondering why I'm here, then. Okay, long story follows. I'll try to make it shorter.
I have Asperger Syndrome. That's a form of high-functioning autism. Over the past few years, with more autistic people having access to the Internet, a sort of online autistic culture has begun to form. We think differently from most people; and we're very diverse; but we share the experience of being very different from others around us in a very basic, neurological way. Some of us write instead of speaking; others don't use language at all. As an Aspie, I'm only slightly autistic; so I can speak well, though my language is quite formal, and I don't hold up my side of a conversation well.
(I probably should learn sign. Some autistics speak it instead of a vocal language, and it might be better to have one more tool for communication at my disposal.)
The communication barriers make us different; but that's only some of it. We think differently, too. Many of us think in pictures. Many of us think in very out-of-the-box ways... we come up with ideas which most people wouldn't think of. And then there are the special interests... obsessions, you might call them; topics which we're fascinated with, things which give us great joy, subjects we learn about to the point that we could write books about the subject. (My major obsessions, so far, have been astrophysics, Lord of the Rings, feral cat management, and now psychology.)
The problem is that most people who are told, "Your child has autism", think only of how horrible it will be for their family; how their "normal child" has been stolen away and replaced by a changeling who can't relate to them and will probably spend his whole life locked away in a world of his own. And naturally, these people, with this very wrong stereotype of autism, want to cure their children.
I, and most of the other autistic people I have met on the Internet, do not want to be cured. We may have a disability; but the fact is that most of the problem lies not with the strange ways we think but with the way that other people do not accept the way we think. From bullying in elementary school to discrimination in the workplace, we find very few environments where we're accepted as simply people who happen to be different. We can make contributions to society: I am going to be an engineer, for example; and even a completely nonverbal autistic person with an IQ of 20 can be a loved and loving part of a family. (Don't let them tell you that an autistic person cannot love someone: We do. We are simply not very good at communicating it.)
So I'm here because I've learned that deaf people have made their own culture; because I think that is what autistic people want to do, too. But we're divided down the middle... Some would say as an Aspie, I'm "not autistic enough"... some Aspies would say that anyone who is disabled by autism should be cured, but they are not disabled, so they shouldn't be cured... Then there are the parents, desperate to find the "normal child" hidden somewhere in an autistic child's brain, who hate us for telling them, "Your child is autistic... can't you just love him the way he is, and teach him to live in a world he doesn't fit into, instead of constantly telling him he isn't normal and that this is somehow unacceptable?" What, may I ask, is so horrible about not being normal, anyway?
I guess what I want to learn here is, How did you do it? And how can we do the same?
That wasn't very short. Oh, well, I guess that gives you an example of one more feature of Asperger's: The tendency to lecture!
to AD!!! 
