Exercise caution! There are false theories and myths about Aspergers. Powerful autism organizations and well-known autism 'experts' have done a lot of damage to the perception of Aspies and autistics. They aren't the only ones. Misinformation spreads like unquarantined plagues. The good news is truth harmonizes and is logical. This makes it possible to expose the wrongful assumptions spreading around.
Assumptions are opinions. They're like theories in that they may be valid, but they also could be invalid. Facts are always valid. Too many people accept theories as facts, especially those which have received a lot of publicity.
Psychologists observe very young children on the autism spectrum for research. Neuro-A-typical adults are commonly excluded from their studies.
Carly Fleischmann, an autistic girl born in Toronto, Canada, insightfully said when she was 14, "I think people get a lot of their information from so-called experts but if a horse is sick, you don’t ask a fish what’s wrong with the horse. You go right to the horse’s mouth."
What's in The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is not from the horse's mouth. With each new version of the DSM, neuro-A-typical diagnoses increasingly become blurred. Their solution was to eliminate Aspergers from the DSM-5 by relabeling it Social Communication Disorder. They don't seem to realize Aspergers is who someone is; whereas, Social Communication Disorder is not. Deficits, impairments, and difficulties with communication usually decrease in Aspies as they get older. Aspergers remains the unchanged throughout an Aspie's life because it is not a disorder or disease that needs to be fixed or cured.
Communication issues will always exist between individuals with a 30 IQ (or more) point difference. In this way, age is not going to make that much of a difference when adding in the intelligence level factor.
The ICD-10 contains Asperger's syndrome. Under the proposed revision of the ICD-11 due in May 2017, this label may change to Social Reciprocity Disorder. Since the DSM and ICD try to retain a good correlation, Asperger's syndrome will vanish as a diagnosis.
Autistic people with very severe challenges will receive an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis enabling them to receive help.
Near the bottom of the New York Time’s article A Powerful Identity, a Vanishing Diagnosis by Claudia Willis (published November 2nd, 2009) is this:
The proposed elimination of autism subtypes comes at the very moment when research suggests that the disorder may have scores of varieties. Investigators have already identified more than a dozen gene patterns associated with autism, but Dr. Lord, of Michigan, said the genetic markers “don’t seem to map at all into what people currently call Asperger’s or P.D.D.”What's puzzling is, “How can something be a subtype of something else that’s unrelated genetically?” In spite of more than a dozen gene patterns associated with autism not seeming to map at all into what people currently call Asperger’s, the identity of Asperger’s will still be an autism subtype?
Even though an Asperger diagnosis will vanish, Aspie children will still receive help, except it will increasingly come from older Aspies instead of improperly coming from neurotypicals. Both Aspie and NT children need the same amount of help socially. As they get older, it's the NTs who have a greater need to continue their education in social skills to know how to socialize with Aspies.
Aspies need to teach NTs about Aspie ways. NTs need to teach Aspies about NT ways. They are two difficult cultures blended into the same society. Each should be respected, while remaining true to who they are. Being an Asperger "chameleon" is exhausting, unhealthy, and wrong for NTs to expect.
Kamila and Henry Markram are on the right path with saying, "Autists should fight for the way they believe the next generation of autistic children should be raised – those that succeed to free their locked up genius can help free the next generation."
Debunking the Theory of Mind explains why statements such as, "Aspies have a huge disconnect between thinking and feeling" and are totally wrong. Asperger's theory does about-face eradicates the foolish notion Aspies lack empathy.
There are innumerable publications online to dispel Asperger myths in existence. The problem is a lot of money has been invested into false theories, so they're the ones which are most likely to get listed in search results. Accessing the truth about Aspergers requires serious effort. Learning God's truth is no different.
