9:00pm October 11, 2014

This is surreal.

I am reading a book by Soma Mukhopadhyay.

And despite everything I don’t like about what she’s done now and in the past. (And I know she’s renounced some of her past actions.)

I am finding the book easy to read and less inaccurate about autism than most books of its type, despite all the broken mirror neuron bullshit that gets thrown in

I haven’t finished the book yet. But of what I’ve read so far, I get the impression of someone who was given no roadmap at all for how to raise an autistic kid and managed to do very well under the circumstances.

Yes I know she hit him every time she tried to look away, although she does not so far mention that in this book. (He mentions it in his.) No I don’t see that as culturally excusable. (Yes I find the idea that such things are culturally excusable offensive. I come from a culture where hitting kids, in much more sadistic ways than she did, was the norm up until my dad broke the cycle. If someone said “but they’re Okies, that’s normal for them, you’re being culturally insensitive” I would be pissed, and twice as pissed if it came from another Okie.) Yes, I know he claims to be proud of being slapped. Whatever – I’ve seen her explicitly tell parents not to hit their autistic kids. And people do change. I’m withholding judgement there until I know more.

But what impresses me is how much of autism she understands, for a nonautistic person. I worry that she may use that knowledge to manipulate rather than to understand us. But I haven’t got to that part yet, so I’m again withholding judgement. I know enough about the Rapid Prompting Method to have a serious set of reservations alongside a serious set of “for some people this is the only thing that can work”, just like I have with FC. As with FC, some of the reasons are identical and some are very different. And as with FC, I could see myself as a candidate for this at certain points in my life and have a vested interest in understanding RPM thoroughly. Some of it is ingenious and some of it is alarming as all hell.

Will try to update as I read more. But this is not what I expected. At all. Read with caution. My tastes are erratic in autism books.

Now to see if I’ll sleep or if I’ll just drift in and out.

Notes: