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"Autism
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Note Cards by people with autism |
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That is an actual quote from one of our young Retreat guests, overheard as she whizzed past me in the ‘gator, the wildly popular intra-camp vehicle loaned to KindTree by Star Rentals on South A Street in Springfield. Once again contributors and volunteers - you and people like you - made this another successful event. Dave Lester g ave boat rides, Jenaguru played for free, the Scouts gave us a price break, Springfield Rotary donated 2 full scholarships, we had food from Umpqua Dairy, Springfield Creamery, Toby’s Tofu, Emerald Valley Kitchens, Organically Grown Co-op, Surata Tofu, Bread Stop, Bagel Sphere, Cafe Mam, Market of Choice. We had stuff from Bi-mart, the Hilyard Center, Molly Stelzl, Michelle Jones, Ben Franklin Stores, Rhonda Way, Eugene Freezing and Storage, and the Lester Family. Volunteers numbered over 30 this year (Y’all come to the Potluck, ‘K?). Some of the 90 guests helped out a lot, along with our Board members, Joy and Carly, Luke Mead, Michael Omogrosso, Julie, Cameron and Deborah, Steve Tsinger, Molly Stelzl, Sandi Orbell, Ryan Sweeney, Randy Hamme, Rachael, Zach and Ryan, Susan Jones, Darren Brooks, Laural Henry, Nicole Borgard, Serena Welchel, Art Kennedy, Amory, Franklin, Jerry Linville, and Nel Applegate. Thanks to all of you, and anyone I left out. Check out the pictures online right here. As usual, a few things went awry, but we hung in there as a community, we are always reminded that none of us can do it alone. Next year we are on for August 19 - 21. Mark your calendar now. As KindTree gets bigger - serving more people monthly with new artists, new computer users, more Retreat guests - we find our organizational challenges growing. Many of you are already helping around the edges. Consider doing more. We have vacancies on our Board. We are considering more extensive committees for various projects. Help is urgently needed with maintaining our database (whee!), keeping up with the web site needs - especially our notecard inventory and PayPal code, coordinating tech support for our computer program. We need people with energy and skills. Call us. 521 7208. We always have fun. We’ve chosen new images for our now annual Holiday Card sale. (see below) These cards earn money (50% of sale price) for the artists, raise awareness and make great cards. You can help sell them (call me 521 7208) AND you can buy them. They aren’t cheap, but neither are your friends and family. I hope. Anyway. AND come to our fun-raiser. Make a mask. Wear it. You will make people smile. What more do you want? See you there, Tim Mueller
comfortable than the disappointment and perplexity born of fre quent social miscommunications, or even that there exist auties who shun human companionship as boring and pointless. The assumption that a particular autie has no friends because s/he wants only solitude is as absurd as assuming that someone is single because s/he is asexual or antisocial. There is a wide spectrum of sociability in the autistic as well as neuronormal spectrum. Like everybody else, we range from reclusive to extremely social. (That some “misguided romantics” see us as innocents who are entirely incapa ble of manipulativeness or guile smacks suspiciously of the “innocent savagery” ascribed to indigenous peoples.) I strongly suspect that a sociable temperament makes one’s own autism more frustrating because it imposes the dou ble-edged sword of “human growth.” I think that my own extroverted nature has forced me to push myself harder than a mellower or more introverted bent would have. This is by no means all for the good: I have failed at so many more things and embarrassed myself more than just about anybody I know, autistic or otherwise. Though this may serve to build the dubious virtue of “character”, there should more to life than a relentless barrage of hard knocks. My friend Nan Lester draws a crucial distinction between empathy and social perspective, which is lost on many diagnosing psychiatrists. Autists don’t lack empathy so much as we lack social perspective. Empathy enables one to feel another’s personal situation or mood. It’s a basic human--even animal--instinct. Social perspective, on the other hand, is a loftier skill that enables one to put oneself into another’s shoes, so to speak, even when that person’s needs clash with one’s own. Social perspective allows a person to act upon his or her empathy with some objectivity, in addition to “feeling that other person’s pain” and caring about it. It is a learned skill that can be elusive for folks with autism. Just as autism comprises a spectrum,
so does social skill. The following is my rough and primitive
approximation of the spectrum of social skill, from lesser to
greater: 1) “appropriate”ness (as in not scratching
one’s genitals in public or laughing at funerals)... 2)
impulse control (as in not rebuking a person for being annoying)
... 3) politeness (as in saying “thank you” and excusing
oneself)... 4) considerateness (as in paying one’s own way,
and not overstaying one’s wel come)... 5) thoughtfulness
(as in remembering special occasions with a-propos gifts)... 6)
compassion and comforting (knowing what to say or how to be helpful
in a delicate or difficult situation)... 7) saintliness and spiritual
enlightenment (just kidding!). These skills enable one to survive
in a situation requiring reciprocal interaction with peers, such
as the Neuronormal children generally pick up the first four “levels” by osmosis sometime in primary school, but work at the upper three; they are motivated by social pressures. Autists, on the other hand, have to be taught the first three by persistent, patient, inspiring and insightful teachers with whom they have excellent rapport, as we start out lacking the motivation or sense of consequence to perform them on our own. The “upper three,” so central to rewarding and reciprocal relationships (such as deep friendship and marriage), are major milestones of stellar achievement to some “high-functioning” autists, but by no means all. For autists, these skills require concentration and discipline, which are generally born of nothing short of tremendous social motivation. Likewise, there exists a spectrum of empathy, but that’s for a later Stim Page. All this goes to illustrate the herculean social effort expended by extroverted and social autists, more of whom there are of us than one might realize. Community Calendar, September and Beyond... September 24 6 - 8:30 PM. KindTree Volunteer Potluck. At Bridgeway House, 10th and Jefferson. Come help us celebrate our volunteer - that’s YOU! 689-2228 for info.
October 10 Autism Rocks Family Pre-Halloween Benefit. October 9 & 10 Future Horizons Presents: HFA Autism/ Asperger's Portland, OR. Tony Attwood, Ph.D., Jeanie McAfee, M.D. Where: Embassy Suites Hotel Portland. 9000 S. W. Washington Square, Tigard, OR 97223 For Hotel reservations call 503-644-4000 October 16 NWAF presents: Preparing for Adult Life Topics: Independent living and housing issues; employment and work-readiness; college assistance; financial planning for folks with special needs. Location: 519 15th Street, Oregon City, OR Cost: $25 requested donation Phone 503/557-2111 Fax 503/557-2156 www.autismnwaf.org Schedule: 8¬-8:55 a.m.: Registration. 9¬-10:30 a.m.: Mary-Minn Sirag. Personal and anecdotal talk about autism in the workplace, housing situations, and academic settings. 10:40¬-11:30 a.m.: Bobbie Kurek (Shangri-La Court) supported employment. 11:30¬-11:40 a.m.: James (self-advocate) on his successes working at Jack in the Box. 11:40 a.m.¬12:30 p.m.: Scott Pelham (OTAC) 12:30¬1:15 p.m. : Lunch (on your own). 1:15¬2:15 p.m. : Nancy Hart (Lane Community College) on college assistance programs. 2:15¬2:30 p.m.: Break. 2:30¬4:00 p.m.: Douglas Richards on special needs trusts, guardianships, family and legal issues, and planning/needs analysis. He created the Conduit Trust, a life planning program around special needs. 4:00¬5:00 p.m.: Discussion. October 19
Bridgeway House dinner and auction fundraiser at Koho Bistro.
345 0805 for more info. "Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them." — Dwight David Eisenhower, 1963
Autism - Making the Connection Aug 5th 2004 From The Economist print edition For the first time, researchers have shown a biological basis for autism IT MIGHT take only the touch of peach fuzz to make an autistic child howl in pain. The odour of the fruit could be so overpowering that he gags. For reasons that are not well understood, people with autism do not integrate all of their senses in ways that help them understand properly what they are experiencing. There is no cure; intense behavioural therapies serve only to lessen the symptoms. A team headed by Marcel Just, of Carnegie Mellon University, and Nancy Minshew, of the University of Pittsburgh, has found evidence of how the brains of people with autism function differently from those without the disorder. Using a brain-scanning technique called functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI), Dr Just, Dr Minshew and their team compared the brain ac tivity of young adults who had "high-functioning" autism (in which an autist's IQ score is normal) with that of non-autistic participants. The experi ment was designed to examine two regions of the brain known to be associated with language-Broca's area and Wernicke's area-when the participants were reading. Three differences emerged. First, Wernicke's area, the part responsible for understanding individual words, was more active in autists than non-au tists. Second, Broca's area-where the components of language are integrated to produce meaning-was less active. Third, the activity of the two areas was less synchronised. This research has led Dr Just to offer an explanation he calls "underconnectivity theory". It depends on a recent body of work which suggests that the brain's white matter (the wiring that connects the main bodies of the nerve cells, or grey matter, together) is less dense and less abundant in the brain of an autistic person than in that of a non-autist. Dr Just suggests that abnormal white matter causes the grey matter to adapt to the resulting lack of communication. This hones some regions to levels of superior ability, while others fall by the wayside. The team chose to examine Broca's and Wernicke's areas because language-based experiments are easy to conduct. But if the underconnectivity theory applies to the rest of the brain, too, it would be less of a mystery why some people with autism are hypersensitive to their environments, and others are able to do certain tasks, such as arithmetic, so well. And if it is true that underconnectivity is indeed the main problem, then treatments might be developed to stimulate the growth of the white-matter wiring. VISIT eSCRIP and Help Us OUT!! Thanks for Listening.
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