Subscribe Via RSSDealing with Autism and Cultural Stigmas
When Sharon daVanport from the Asperger Women Association recently invited me to be a guest on her internet radio show, I was both interested and worried. I worried about talking for an audience and for an entire hour, at that.
As it turns out, Sharon made it easy because she’s a great host and fun to talk to. She has a knack for bringing out the best in people.
We had so many things to talk about that I probably didn’t go as much into detail about the cultural aspect of autism as I meant to! I mentioned that disabilities are accepted as an excuse for isolating a person from society in Asian culture, and that few children with disabilities/birth defects even get a chance to go to school. So many of the Korean folk stories I was told as a child made fun of people who looked or acted different in some way. That’s the culture that even modern-day East Asians are coming from – everyone is supposed to look and act exactly the same or face ridicule. It’s very different from the American emphasis on individuality and diversity.
There’s also a belief that anything that has to do with psych or mental health will ruin your reputation and career, which is probably why families are so eager to hide or give up for adoption children with disabilities. You wouldn’t believe how many times I was told growing up I was once an “animal” and lucky my family chose to keep me. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to teaching the kids no one else wanted and felt so strongly about not treating them the way other teachers did.
I don’t think this is a reason to discount one’s culture. It makes you who you are, whether you like it or not. If you’re an adult considering a diagnosis or you already have a diagnosis and your family is not being accepting, you might have to just be sensitive to where they’re coming from, love them for being your family, and figure out what you can do what you can for yourself without alienating them. The same goes for grandparents who aren’t accepting of grandchildren on the spectrum.
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2 Responses
Thank you Sandy! You were a delight to have on the show. I am happy to see you were able to elaborate on the cultural stigmas in this blog post; something which we did not have a chance to discuss in length yesterday as we had planned. I will talk with you soon and be in touch via email. Again, thank you for being such a great guest. Give MollyPup hugs from the AWA :-]
Sharon daVanport’s last blog post..Aspie Mom Chronicles…a time to heal
It is strange to me how people deal with “different.” When all “different” is, is another kind of normal. We spend our whole life trying to integrate the system and miss out completely on maturing into the individuals we were meant to be. I do not have AS, but I can tell you that our struggles are not all that different in that regard. My little six year-old came back from school today in tears because people made fun of her name. Her first name is French. She begged me to use her middle name (english) in school. To conclude, I would rather being different than near-sighted and ignorant. Wouldn’t you?