Quote:
Originally Posted by Rose76
I wonder if there is anyone who could be considered 100% "normal," if you examined every single tendency that person had.
I suspect that integral to the human condition is the need by each and every human being to struggle against various dysfunctional tendencies. We all have dysfunctional tendencies. I suppose a case could be made for any human being that this particular human being is living with some form of a disorder.
That even seems to be a direction we are moving in - this attributing every difficulty a person has in life to that person being affected by some diagnosis. There was a time when we believed that all men were sinners and that all encountered difficulty in life due to that. Medicine is replacing religion as the provider of a rationale for human shortcomings and failures. Your kid is the worst reader in the 2nd grade? Then he must have "dyslexia," a fancy sounding term from Greek that simply boils down to mean difficulty reading. So he has difficulty reading because he has "difficulty reading disorder." Oh . . . what an insight! That's way preferable to your kid being a little slow, or maybe just not liking reading. We want everything deficient in our natures to be the result of a clinical syndrome. I've always tended to be late for appointments. Am I disorganised or lacking in self-discipline? Heck no! Those would be character flaws. I prefer to conceptualize my chronic tardiness as "procrastination disorder." It has to do with neuronal synapses in my brain and the neurochemicals bouncing around in there. I probably deserve applause for managing to show up anywhere at anytime. What we're doing is engaging in tautology, whereby we imagine we have some deep insight that isn't really an insight at all. It's a word game.
I'm not opposed to identifying some problems as clinical syndromes. Obviously, some kids truly are "retarded" - a perfectly decent word that originally simply meant "delayed," as in "developmental delay." But we have elasticised diagnostic categories to the point that just about anyone can qualify for at least a few diagnoses. (Nobody has just one anymore. If you've got one, you probably have some "comorbid" conditions.)
My point, germane to the O.P.'s original query is this: What, Clairerobin, is your point. Suppose we all agree, just for the sake of argument, that - yes, your husband probably has an autistic spectrum disorder. What are you going to do with that finding? If you search hard enough, I'll bet you could find a clinical analyst somewhere who will concur in bestowing that label upon your husband. Then what? How would that be useful to you? I'm genuinely interested to know where you are looking to go with this.
|
I lived for a long time not even being able to move the furniture around, because change upset Peter. Even moving the salt and pepper shaker to a different location caused a need for discussion. He would replace something that needed replacing, but be unable to throw out the old item. He hoards sudoku puzzles from the newspaper. He can't possibly do all of those sudoku puzzles and the pile just keeps growing. He can't throw them out. He obsessively changes the radio station ten times in one minute, veering all over the road. This is dangerous. Is it really necessary to do that? Or is it OCD? What if he hits someone when he drifts into the other lane? He invades other peoples space and has no perception of boundaries. And he blurts our things that are better left unspoken. This isn't even close to normal. It's easy to say there's nothing amiss, when you don't have to live with the disruptions. if you lived with him for a week, you would take back your opinion. Of this I'm certain.
Once I was able to get him to see other people, not just me, saw his behaviour as either abnormal or unacceptable, he agreed to address the more harmful aspects of it, such as veering all over the road while he unnecessarily dug in the glovebox or talked on his cell phone. He lacks judgment about what is okay and not okay to do. Once he himself admitted, other people did not do many of the things he did, such as being unable to throw things out, like a shoebox, he began working on himself. So he no longer goes behind the counter in stores or restaurants now. So he's improved a fair bit. But our adult children are also displaying many of the same (and some different) behaviours. For example, my son used to measure the distance of his furniture from the wall. All of his furniture had to be exactly 3 inches from the wall or he wasn't okay. There is not one single restaurant in the entire world that can serve a meal to my daughter without her changing some aspect of it. No matter what meal she gets, homemade or restaurant, she has to change it from how it's served. This merely makes their life harder, because they are convinced they can't be happy unless they "fix" an imagined problem, like not being to throw out a shoebox. if their behaviour merely effects themselves, that's fair. But veering all over the road, because you have to obsessively change the radio station ten times over 60 seconds, and you only stop because you are told to stop, makes his OCD a danger to others. If I didn't stop him, how many times would he change the radio station? 20? 30? And meanwhile he's veering into the other lane. Most people don't do that? Being unable to throw out a shoebox is sad. They don't have to live with the torment that comes with being unable to find a single restaurant in the entire world that can make a meal without you have to change it somehow to make it acceptable. They make their own lives harder. And they impact others, in many, many different ways. He caused someone to go off the road on a highway on ramp, because he takes chances with his driving and isn't (wasn't at that time) focussed enough on his driving. He gets easily distracted (by the radio). So he caused an accident from a lack of judgment with his driving. People with autism are not very good drivers, because judgment is a huge part of driving. I've pushed him to improve his driving. And he's much better than he was 10 years ago, because he recognises his abnormalities impact others. If you care about the person with autism, we have a moral obligation to help them, rather than do the easy thing and declare everyone's abnormal behaviours as normal, even if it means they hurt others emotional of physically.
And my daughter is displaying symptoms of autism. My son's OCD, anxiety and other abnormal behaviour has improved enormously, since he committed himself to working on himself. He no longer obsessively writes notes to remember trivial things, such as "Today Ryan said he lost his notebook." I'm pretty sure remembering that his friend Ryan lost his notebook is not a crucial thing to remember to maintain a good and happy life. In fact, if he could put aside the need to write notes about completely insignificant things, perhaps he could spend his time doing something that might actually make him happy. And that's exactly what's happened, my son's life has improved enormously once he realised he could work around the abnormalities. Indulging someone as normal when their behaviour is abnormal is lazy, neglectful and uncaring.