My Autism Checklist
Autism! It isn’t just for quiet boys who love trains!
I was a child in the 90’s, during the Asperger’s diagnosis boom. More and more kids were being identified as on the Autism spectrum. The checklists were getting to be well-known and more widely utilized, leading to more identification of something that had always been there. Some people mistook this as an increase in Autism, rather than an increase in knowledge. These people typically panicked, assuming more Autism (and more Autistic people) had to be a bad thing.
Autism was getting to be well-known, but in very limited, stereotyped terms. Trouble with eye contact. Repetitive play, lining up trucks or cars. Meltdowns that were obvious and troublesome. Poor academic performance, at least in some areas. If you weren’t “bad enough”, or weren’t bad in certain ways, you wouldn’t even be considered. I was not diagnosed with anything.
A Conventional Autism Checklist:
Are you the parent of a child?
Is your child not meeting developmental milestones?
