Trigger Warning: Abuse
This is a response to an ableist Cracked article called "5 Shocking Realities of Working With Disturbed Children". The article only focused on the staffs' side and not on the students' side and justified the abuse of these institutionalized people.
The Cracked article described abuse such as a preteen's arms being restrained, resulting in her banging her head. The article says it in a way that makes it seem like she did this deliberately, but more likely, she was very stressed and self-injured as a last resort. Anyone would do something like that under severe enough stress, and considering that this is someone who has gone traumatic events, she was probably very stressed already. The restraint clearly did not calm her down and it did not stop her from being violent. The article condones abuse being done to someone who already has problems due to experiencing abuse, which will just make the problem worse.
Also, the Cracked article uses functioning labels, which can over-estimate or under-estimate someone's abilities and can be used to dismiss what someone says. In addition to that, it condones using compliance therapy to control "low-functioning" autistics, which can give them PTSD. It also says that "low-functioning" autistics are violent, which is not the case if they are not extremely stressed out. The article also lumps them in the same label as the one given to the children who have gone through traumatic experiences. While autistics and children who have gone through abuse can appear superficially the same, children who have gone through abuse do not have autistic neurology if they weren't autistic in the first place.
The Cracked article describes a non-speaking autistic who had to sign the word "please" to get a Cheeto. Why did he have to say please to grab another Cheeto? No wonder he upset; he had to sign please every time he wanted to have another one of the many Cheetos in the bag.
No comments:
Post a Comment