How I agree with Jim Cosgrove’s moving letter (27 April) about the perils of classifying children and young people into categories and the desirability of an inclusive approach to all manifestations of the human experience.
However, as the mother of an adult son who was diagnosed with “non-typical Asperger’s” at the age of 20, I can say that the diagnosis was for him a liberation. It was a recognition that his inability to understand or relate to certain ways of doing things was not a sign of stupidity or moral failure but because he had a different way of seeing the world from the norm, which wasn’t his fault.
And where had he got this sense of stupidity and moral failure from in the first place? Well, sadly, from the great majority of teachers he encountered in his school career, who were inclined to judge, condemn or write off anyone who did not conform to their rather unimaginative standards of how children should be. As a result he left school with a handful of below-C-grade GCSEs.
The diagnosis in adulthood gave him access to appropriate support at college, to an occupational psychologist’s assessment at the jobcentre, and to recognition by subsequent employers of his potential, given the provision of some very simple communication and support mechanisms at work.
He is now employed full time in a permanent job, well qualified in a recognised skilled trade, well liked by his managers and colleagues, and very happy and comfortable in his own skin.
Name and address supplied
• The rejection of the term “autism” because it covers a number of separate conditions is curious, because the same could be said about diseases such as cancer, and yet it’s still a perfectly useful word. And it’s hardly surprising that the term Asperger’s syndrome is falling out of use, when many autistic people are unwilling to use the label knowing the full extent of Hans Asperger’s Nazi collaboration.
But the absolute sin is claiming that everyone is on the autistic spectrum because, apart from anything else, misusing a word doesn’t make it a bad word. Especially because it was understood to refer to the range of different diagnostic labels for autism, not just “how autistic are you”. Based on this, I think I can safely ignore The Myth of Autism, and carry on just being autistic, the “useless” diagnostic label that has allowed me to access essential services since my childhood. Why would people want it to be obsolete?
John Nisbet
Balcombe, West Sussex
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