LogFAQs > #947459204

COVxy posted...

It's the reason that there's widespread criticism of Autism Speaks, because they view autism as a disease. It's the reason people describe ABA therapy as "torture".

Can confirm.

I still remember averagejoel giving me shit a couple years ago, because I had my autistic daughter participating in ABA therapy. "Torture" was the exact word he used to describe it.

My daughter still has significant communication issues, which has delayed her development in other areas, but I would credit the time she spent with ABA as taking her from virtually no ability to verbally communicate at all to having at least the ability to engage in very basic communication (simple requests, identifying people and things, rudimentary emotion identification, etc).

I've increasingly gotten the impression that a lot of people mistakenly think autism is just some kind of personality quirk, or something. Like they don't realize it also frequently accompanies and contributes to other developmental delays.