I know damn well that I could deal with some things (say, deafness) better than others, and mental disabilities are an area I cannot deal with.

I hope you won’t get too pissed off, when you get to be extremely old and possibly a bit addled, and people who think like you (your own family?), no longer want to deal with you.

You’ll understand that, right? You won’t feel sadness when they want nothing more to do with you?

My mother, a singer and musician with an enormous ego (repeatedly lauded for her beauty and talent nightly), a feminist before her time (this was 1956), multiply married, simply refused to believe what doctors said about me and CP. No child of HERS would be retarded, period. And she proceeded according to that assumption, much as Michael Berube has described his son learning French. It takes a certain EGO to totally buck the system, and I am sure MB enjoys doing it, too. ;) But not everyone is like that, which I fully realize.

Nonetheless, my experience is real, and I think it bears repeating: she simply rejected the conventional wisdom she didn’t like, and accepted what made sense to her. Unfortunately, this still means she trusted doctors too much, when they wanted to do surgery and unnecessarily meddle with my body. But it also means that when they said I couldn’t go to a regular public school, she threw a nuclear-level fit, unlike anything the Ohio public school system had probably seen up until that time. She announced HER son, CP or not, was actually a GENIUS that I would blow the other children AWAY academically (such ego!) and intimidated them into thinking they might be denying an education to Albert Einstein himself, or somebody like that. Not surprisingly, I did very well in school. The teachers whispered to each other that I “was a genius”–and this was based on nothing more substantial than my mother’s emphatic insistence.

So much is already decided, by parental expectations. For everyone, not just disabled people.

I don’t think most people understand or appreciate the extent of that truth, because it DOES implicate everyone, and able-bodied people aren’t ready to admit that truth also applies to themselves, and what their parents expected of THEM. How shaped are we by the simple expectations of our class, gender, race, ability? It’s overwhelming to think about; it applies to every part of life.

But that realization is what made me a political person, and a lefty in particular.

“Christopher: I would suggest that for conditions such as Asperger’s one could ask whether the conditions were truly examples of mental disabilities versus examples of the extreme edges of normal variation or maybe some mixture of the two.”

Well, um, this is what I was trying to say… there’s no clear bright line separating “has Asperger’s” from “Is completely normal”… there’s some weird middle ground where a person could be either. So what would it mean for those people if Asperger’s “cured”?

I find it incredibly condescending to be told that my dis-order is beneficial, particularly by a person who claims to suffer from mild depression. There is another name for mild depression. It’s called a mood swing. When you are CLINICALLY diagnosed with depression, the effects go far beyond a periodic “sad” feeling into territory where you literally wake up every day feeling that life is something to be endured until you can go back to sleep again. There is nothing beneficial about wanting to spend your life unconscious.

Did I not explicitly say up there that for most of us, depression keeps us from doing anything, including art?

Also, I never said I suffer from mild depression.

I said, that as a person who suffers from depression, I know how hard depression can make it to do art.

Or… you know, exactly what you’re acting like I don’t know.

What, I gotta add clinical on every time I talk about myself?

I’ve been on anti-depression meds since I was in fifth grade. I go off ‘em and I never want to get out of bed. I’ve felt this way on a flipping field trip to France with a lot of good friends.

My mom takes a ton of anti-depressants and anti-pyschotics that cost $1000 dollars a month, and she sees a therapist once a week.

And there was that guy who diagnosed me with Aspergers, but I’ve never followed up on it because

A. Tests cost money, which I don’t have.

B. If I have it, my symptoms are significantly more mild then, you know, the other three people I’ve known who had Asperger’s.

My point is… I’ve never heard any scientist come up with a big bright solid line that differentiates DEPRESSION from persistant sadness, certainly not anything like an extra chromosome.

As far as I can tell, the only difference between a “mood swing” and clinical depression is how much it hampers your ability to live life.

Actually, as far as I’ve been able to tell the only difference between a person with Asperger’s and a “computer nerd who needs help from miss manners” is also one of degree, rather then of one having a big noticeable biological difference from the other

If there IS in fact, a physiological difference feel free to tell me.

I may be talking out of my ass, but it’s not because I have no experience.

Me, I think it’s kinda condescending to act like a person who has a different view of mental illness then you do can’t POSSIBLY suffer from it, even when they explicitly say they do.

I mean, we all know about the tortured artist stereotype, and I think there’s some truth to it. As a person who suffers from depression, I know that laymen tend to underestimate how hard the disease makes it to do ANYTHING, let alone art, but I do still think there’s a sweet spot where you can be depressed enough to be able to see the world in a way that other people don’t, but not so depressed that life becomes unbearable.”

As a person with severe depression I am going to have to categorically disagree with these conclusions. While I understand that the POINT is that disabilities come in degrees, and that specific disabilities such as autism and ADHD are often found in individuals with other spectacular performance capabilities, it is rediculous to try to attribute those capabilities to the disability.

That special viewpoint Christopher attributes to individuals with depression? It’s called empathy. Yes, personal suffering does raise awareness of external suffering, but I know plenty of people who are just as empathetic as I, but do not have to spend $400.00 a month on medication to alleviate their depression enough to function. Who do not have to see two therapists and a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. Who do not continually face the threat of being put on anti-psychotics (which, by the way, are also enormously expensive, particularly when, like myself, you miss the economic cutoffs on both sides for healthcare – I’m too poor to afford private, and too “wealthy” to qualify for governmental aid).

Depression does not make me special, unique, or gifted. It causes me an enormous amount of pain, costs me a great deal of time and money, and it severely inhibits my ability to do the academic work that I am intellectually capable of (and that I am spiritually inspired to undertake as a Biblical archaeologist). It is a disability because it dis-ables me.

I find it incredibly condescending to be told that my dis-order is beneficial, particularly by a person who claims to suffer from mild depression. There is another name for mild depression. It’s called a mood swing. When you are CLINICALLY diagnosed with depression, the effects go far beyond a periodic “sad” feeling into territory where you literally wake up every day feeling that life is something to be endured until you can go back to sleep again. There is nothing beneficial about wanting to spend your life unconscious.

I am extremely fortunate that my disability is something that can be alleviated with medication and regular medical and psychological monitoring, but I have to state unequivically that I too wish that all disabilities could magically disappear. Were I not able to treat my disability, I would in fact prefer that my parents aborted me rather than forcing me to spend my life suffering out of some misguided idea that they deserved a biological child or that as a fetus I had some inherent “right” to be alive, regardless of my parent’s ability or resources to care for me. (And as an artist, I can tell you that it is not depression which produces functional art – my best and most critically acclaimed work has been produced while in treatment and on medication because I was mentally capable of doing the work and processing the emotions that viewers respond to)

I have a daughter with Asperger’s. You are treading dangerously close to being one of the the deserving-a-punch-in-the-face, “they’re here to show us God’s love”, smiley happy types who don’t know what it’s like. Asperger’s is not simply being a brilliant computer nerd who needs a little help from Miss Manners. What you don’t read about in Newsweek is the physical disabilities that go along with it (trust me, not just a little clumsiness) and the other mental issues that tend to cluster with it, like ADD and dyspnea.

So, while I get that you’re trying to point out that disability comes in degrees and is not all a horrible sentence of lifetime misery, please don’t try to prove your point by talking out of your ass.

because there are people who say “i can handle raising a child of normal abilities, but the extra work that disabilities would bring with it is too much for me to take on” does not mean that there is a danger of everyone feeling that way, any more than the number of people that choose to not have kids at all means the human species is in any danger of dying out.

That having been said and being a person with probable AS myself, I would not judge a person who had an abortion because they were carrying a fetus with AS negatively. It’s a hard life and raising a child with AS is difficult. Just…not without its positive aspects.

This ties in somewhat to what Savage said earlier, in the discussion of will and sef determination for a parent relating their wanting a child to their wanting of a’normal’ child, and all that deviancy from that entails.
All parenting, for any span of normal or gifted or challenged, has an aspect of advocacy to it. As a parent, the expectation of the general social framework is that you are an advocate for the child in your care. The schools, the legal system, all of it breaks down when that assumption fails. That’s why the wanted child thing is so critical. Care of any child is not a benign, removed process, it is an involved, life absorbing one, and it intensifies with every deviation from the bell curve in any direction. That’s why it is important to actively understand and accept a child with differences. These kids will have a harder time dealing with a world in which they are unusual, that assumes that differences are intolerable. If the parent is not commited to active, educated (whether self taught or otherwise) advocacy, then both the parent and the child will have a far far harder time of it. ADHD is an excellent example, considering the complexity of medication issues and higher IQ. Aspergers involves issues with socialization and participation that requires repeated behaviour modeling. This is not a schooling issue, it’s an issue that involves all aspects of a family’s life. Going into that without awareness and acceptance can be dangerous for the group. At some point all caregivers make that decision, whether to be caregivers, or to simply punch the clock. I suspect that it’s true with parents as well.