Need Advice

V

vickygleitz

New Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2014
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
I tried to type this yesterday and I think I accidentally erased it rather than sending it. If I did send it, please excuse the redundancy.

I am not Deaf. I am an autistic mother, grandmother and soon to be great grandmother. I read about the Deaf culture and I am fascinated and hopeful that you can give me advice on heping to build Autistic culture.

Our young people have a 28 TIMES greater rate of attempted suicide than the general population. They have spent a childhood forced into the torture chambers known as public schools. They are often abused by their own family members and the vast majority have had to deal with deeply ingrained feelings of being "less than,"

Last week I organized an autistic, run only by autistics , mini retreat. We are attempting to encourage other mini retreats through out the country because so many of our people have never even met another autistic. And our people are so frightened of even more rejection that, when given the opportunity, are too afraid.

One of the projects we are working on is an actual physical autistic community within an already existing community.

What we need most is an Autistic culture, a culture where we can be supportive of each other and proud of, rather than ashamed of our unique wiring.

I truly am sorry for jumping into your forum like this,but I figured you all might understand in ways most NT's don't [and don't seem to want to]and give me
based on how Deaf have done it, share some advice on building a seperate culture. Too many of my peope are taking their lives from feeling so alone.

thank you SOOOOOOO much.

Vicky
 
I don't know whether you were in USA or outside USA. What country you are from can say a lot about how people with autism are treated.
 
I am a WP member. After 5 months of teling others about autHaven, offering free scholarships for lodging, food,presentations, the Denver Aquarium, not one of them attended. We still had a crowd, mainly other Autistic activists.

I have heard over and over again about the enormous support of each other in the Deaf culture. How was that established? How could my people succeed in something simmilar?
 
What is it that you would be attempting to do with this community? Support autistic people how? (Its a good idea im interested) or what other ideas do you have other than this community?
 
I'll admit I don't know much about autism but don't one of the traits involve difficulties in social interactions? I would think it would be really hard to get a group of anti-socials together.

I mean if you think about it, if you don't like hanging around people why would you want to go to a social event?

Now, it's kind of overgeneralizing the Deaf as one big shiny happy family; we really are a diverse collection of people who just happen to share the same disability. I've actually disliked some deaf people and in my 34 years of life on this planet all of my friends have been hearing. I even went to a deaf school for summer camp and hated it.

Plus nowadays with the convenience of the internet it's not really worthwhile anymore to travel to some place to meet some people for a few hours. Why go through all that hassle if you can just join an online forum like this?

My 2 cents on this is to focus more on online resources such as facebook, twitter, or meetup.com or whatever is out there. You say there have been too many suicides and well, think about it, if someone is suicidal they're not going to be thinking about going to some meetup. Instead they'll most likely be looking around online for answers or advice. And again, due to the autisum trait of anti-socialism it's kind of a difficult situation; how do you get a person like that to reach out for help? At least make it easier by offering some online resource like stories on dealing with autism or even some youtube page talking about your struggles with autism so others will know they are not alone.

Hope that helps and good luck!
 
Well its not so much that people with autism are anti social. I have two nieces and one cousin who are autostic all in different places in the autiam spectrum. And well a friend of mine is also autistic. Ea h peraon with autism is different ao it may be hard to have only one thing for a whole group of people. But i agree with the above post, maybe something on internet might work more,
 
I'm not really certain what to say except perhaps that our (deaf) commonality is what binds us.....
 
I can kind of see where she is going.. she'd like some kind of small community where autistics can easily get together in a physical sense much like the deaf clubs, deaf camps or whatever else out there.

I do agree that not all autistics are 'anti social' I have met one who is on the spectrum (19 now). He likes to hang with people but at times does have 'meltdowns' and doesn't want to be anywhere near people (don't want to go further into detail). I have known of one deaf girl with Asperger's but I haven't talked to her mother in many years so no idea what's going on.

My suggestion is to keep trying. It takes a lot and a few years maybe to get the word out about get-togethers, camps, conventions etc and for it to grow. I do hope you are able to do something like that, certainly would help to lessen the 'aloneness' feeling.

Then again even in today's world I would wager that A LOT of people even supposedly 'normal' healthy people still feel ridiculously alone in a vast sea of people.
 
Thank you for your responses. Autistic people, in general are not anti social. We do tend towards being socially inept though. [within a group of Autistics though, I feel socially just fine] most of us also have fairly severe sensory issues. Sounds and lights can HURT terribly, for example. our amydalas, being thicker and denser send us into an almost permanent stage of 'fight or flight." For some of us that results in "meltdowns." For some of us that involves folding inside of ourselves, hiding from a very loud, often cruel, world.

My husband and I are working on a physical autistic community. a place where there are others like us living together, a place that is not a 24/7 attack on our senses, a place where we can be accepted. Unfortunately, many if not most Autistics have bought into the NT [neuro typical apha leaders] lies that we are not capable of these types of interactions.

Okay,I am going to rephrase my original question. For those of you who do not consider yourself disabled, that prefer and love Deaf culture. If you were forced to physicaly move far from where you are now, what steps would you take to reestablish Deaf culture in your community?

Thanks so much.

vicky
 
Hmm... it's kind of a long shot but maybe you want to emphasize fun on your meetups? For example, you can have board games, card games, etc... Again I'm ignorant on autism so I don't know what would be fun for people with this kind of condition?
 
Back
Top