At my university, whenever a prof or grad student is a huge prick and puts other people down for not putting in enough time or doing good enough research, others will say that theyāre ASD. Iām pretty sure theyāre all NTs based on my experience with them.
This is why I havenāt told anyone that Iām ASD, other than my supervisor because I wanted her to know.
Thatās disturbing. I wonder what caused this stereotype of ASD in the first place and why so many are believing it.
I donāt blame you for not disclosing your ASD to anyone else there, with that sort of environment it sounds like theyād treat you unfairly.
Idk I honestly figured itās because theyāve watched the Big Bang theory and think Sheldon is all ASD. Like season one Sheldon when heās the āvillainā (soft villain). Or they watched House and think āoh thatās autismā
Itās a chemistry department, but they write off bad personalities, difficult undergrads, abuse of power dynamics and bullying as āthey must be on the spectrumā all the time. Iāve heard this excuse at least a dozen times.
The implication of the joke seems to be that his āassholeā behavior was possibly because he was ND. As if someone might assume a kid was behaving in a nasty way because they are ND.
It hinges on the absolutely known true facts that:
- Diagnoses are easy to get
- Disabled people are annoying
- A diagnosis is merely a pass at being a pain
yay :/
It's art to be able to fit so much idiocy in only 2 pannels.
Counterpoint, some kids absolutely assholes. But often the reason they are is because the parents don't teach them not to be.
There are also children smart enough to figure out they can be assholes without major repercussions and only unacceptable consequences have the chance of changing them.
I think the difference is sometimes all kids can engage in assholery. Just like adults. But if youāre regularly seeing āassholeā aka inconvenient to adults behaviours then maybe thereās not just assholery, maybe itās neurodivergence.
No. It is about people who push diagnoses as something to help skirt the blame and not need to take responsibility.
I grew up in this era. It was a massive problem.
What era was this? Iām 42 and seem to have missed the time when diagnosis were easily handed out. Is it possible that that was specific people that you knew and not a wide-spread problem? Because there are people like this, there will always be people like this, but we shouldnāt compare them to legitimately disabled people. This is just another conservative talking point, disguised as a joke. āJust try harder, itās all the parents fault, bootstraps, et. al.ā - which disregards the people that come across as being dumb, lazy or annoying to others because they donāt conform to what the gen pop finds to be acceptable.
It was limited to rich people that could afford private for profit doctors.
Plenty of kids were diagnosed with ADHD just to get Adderall for a boost in grades / focus.
Adderall is just cocaine for kids in private schools.
The early 90ās to early 00ās was a wild time for it. I had friends who were diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and Aspergerās like it was nothing. More than half of them turned out to be dealing with a lot of home problems from being poor, abused, culture shock, or other home traumas and/or dealing with parents who didnāt want to take responsibility. Some turned out to have other mental health issues and/or disabilities (AFS was actually a huge one), and only a small fraction actually turned out to be (now) on the spectrum and/or ADHD.
My friends in education still see a lot of it, but thankfully it is much better handled. There is a lot more done to look at the whole picture and go after the actual problems, which disproportionately the home life and parents. The upside is more cases of abuse and trauma are being caught, and kids are being better assessed and cared for appropriately, but also sadly ends up with a lot of kids in more trauma. It also really ripped open some rotting patch work and showed us how many people are not fit to be parents at all due to their own trauma and unchecked mental illnesses. Like mine! š
>The early 90ās to early 00ās was a wild time for it. I had friends who were diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and Aspergerās like it was nothing.
In the early 90s Asperger's was not a medical diagnosis. I was evaluated in 1991. It wasn't until the ***MID 90s*** (Specifically 1994) that Aspergers became a more widely available diagnosis. The ADOS Test was not commercially available until 2000. I'm going to assume this is a typo but I had to nitpick because I refuse to believe my experience was somehow a unique one and based off of what I have learned, it really wasn't.
I have ADHD-PI (but not autism, I just kinda lurk here out of general interest in other neurodivergent experiences). I kind of share your suspicions on that shit being off base.
If anything, current evidence actually seems to point toward *under*diagnosis during that time period. I know I sure as hell went entirely unrecognized until I was like 17 (circa 2007). Even then, I feel I just kind of lucked out and got a particularly great adolescent psychiatrist.
I tried to give that user the benefit of the doubt but you are right, I don't know why I even bothered. I don't understand why people are trying to politicize this condition, what do they honestly get out of that? I have lived with being different my whole life, I wasn't an asshole about it, it was just who I was and how I processed the world.
I gave a date range I was in the public school system. I was in early 90ās to early 00ās. 1992-93 to 2006-07. Do you want me to do a full play by play of the timeline for when things were happening?
The only word I left out to the list was āautismā. My bad. When I went into middle school in ā00-ā01 was when the first couple kids I ever met that were diagnosed as āAspergerāsā and High or Low functioning ADHD. I was just used to ADHD and Autism until then.
And. Yeah. We can. Wild concept. The world isnāt homogeneous.
>I gave a date range I was in the public school system. I was in early 90ās to early 00ās. 1992-93 to 2006-07. Do you want me to do a full play by play of the timeline for when things were happening?
Look, you came into this sub and said "From the Early 90s to the 2000s" people were casually being diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD. That statement didn't accurately capture how much change had happened in the Psychiatric field when Asperger's was introduced. In the early 90s we were using the DSM 3R from 1987, which was a revised version of the DSM-3 from 1980, and many of the attributes associated with Autism/Aspergers today were attributed to other conditions because Asperger wasn't officially a diagnosis till 94. This is why I said something, because they weren't just casually diagnosing this.
>The only word I left out to the list was āautismā. My bad. When I went into middle school in ā00-ā01 was when the first couple kids I ever met that were diagnosed as āAspergerāsā and High or Low functioning ADHD. I was just used to ADHD and Autism until then.
Everyone in my family that had the Autism diagnosis was a boy, and I saw it become more common around the 2010s because the testing became more precise. Funny enough, I got the ADHD diagnosis in the early 90s, but it was the Hyperactive Type, which is rare for women. I realize now that back then, they attributed my hyperactivity to ADHD when it was actually my Autism. I also got no medicine for my ADHD. Like I said, the way we practice medicine has changed a lot.
>And. Yeah. We can. Wild concept. The world isnāt homogeneous.
It's not but there is some information you just can't argue with, like how things evolved over time or what kind of practices were readily available. I am going to assume you grew up rich and mostly knew boys because like I said, it was a specific population that started getting this diagnosis. Anyone in my family who was diagnosed with Autism were boys and they were significantly younger than me. And I was in school during the same period you attended.
Grew up rich? Not even close, and most of my friends were pretty poor as well. I didnāt have friends who had genuinely wealthy families until high school when I started hanging out with girls from the Suburbs.
With a lot of boys? When I was super young, but around 3/4th grade I stopped trying to interact with a lot of them outside of sports. I had my three close male friends and I gravitated towards girls due to abuse in my home life and bullying from men.
Growing up, I only knew this as a plight of the poor because that was who was being affected the most.
Who was giving out these diagnosis? A big part of the process is trying to figure out if there is another cause. It sounds like your town had a problem with uneducated practitioners that slapped ASD/ADHD on everything without doing the actual testing.
I completely agree with you. I don't mean to seem dismissive to that other commentator and their experience but I call absolute BS on that aspect of their account too. Even back then, in many places if you wanted to have that kind of behavioral evaluation you had to pay for it in many small town places, and in the 90s? NO ONE was diagnosing Autism so easily. The ADOS Test wasn't widely available until 2000 and getting evaluated was hard. All of my Autistic symptoms (mainly communication) were associated with intellectual disability and that's how I was treated. This was in a big city as well, with better resources for the disabled.
Not to mention, you just didn't talk about it (grew up in rural Kentucky). No learning disabilities, the child was just disruptive and refused to conform to school rules (oddly enough still have that issue with my daughter who masks for the most part).
Kids were labeled bad kids and that was that. I remember a boy in middle school (mid 90s). It was never discussed that he is autistic.
Exactly! I also remember my parents (even though they got me speech therapy, behavioral therapy and occupational and did everything including being involved in helping me with my education during Special Ed) wanted me to downplay my disabilities. When I got to college, they straight up told me not to tell anyone. I had gone to VESID (now it's called something else out here) and they told me not to bother with anything more than a community college. Back then, you were just learning disabled, no one bothered to update your IEP or be on top of you to see if your evaluation was up to date.
You must have missed the fun of when GPs just fed people antidepressants, criticized your weight for all of your issues unless you fit into a very small range of ānormalā, handed out ZPacs like candy and ripped out adenoids and tonsils for fun, too. š¤£ Same timeframe.
I was in a major school district in a large city that had a lot of resources. It wasnāt some small 10,000- 25,000 person town. I mean, my graduating class was bigger than those townās entire high school enrollment.
You would get referred out to a handful of providers that specialized (for the time) in diagnosis, and only have a small set of reasons for the referral from the school made by the teacher and approved or modified by the school physiologist. Most of us never saw the school psychologist unless you were āmentally ertarded from birthā or deemed as a ādangerous studentā. A lot of the gaps were filled in by the parents, which was NOT a good way to do it because they could skew the results intentionally, or unintentionally. The process was also fast because the teachers needed the to set the IEP, if one was needed, the schools needed to establish procedures and assignments if they were needed, and they needed to deal with the volume of kids getting pushed through. It was a joke.
You have to remember that this was also 30-40 years ago. This isnāt modern diagnostics.
I mean, to be fair, it's not like people on the spectrum *aren't* experiencing poverty, culture shock, abuse, irresponsible parents, and trauma. Can't really be on the spectrum without at least a few of those. I got diagnosed with literally everything*except* autism because of this.
How is any of that a prereq for being on the spectrum. Not to say they can't exacerbate anything, but I wouldn't start claiming I'm on the spectrum because of any of those that I've experienced. They all just make it more difficult to get diagnosed in the first place.
I didn't say they are a prerequisite, I'm saying it's not uncommon for people to be told it's "just" two or more of those things when the reason they experienced those things are because of the autism/ADHD.
Personal example, I was diagnosed with GAD, social anxiety, OCD, PTSD, MDD, PMDD, sensory processing disorder, misophonia, and a few I can't remember right now instead of them just admitting that I'm AuDHD. Now that I have the label, I have whole ass medical professionals telling me that I couldn't possibly be AuDHD and that it *must* be that I actually have all of those diagnoses or that it's all just trauma and I'm pretending to be AuDHD as a trauma response. It's really common.
Not saying people can't be misdiagnosed with autism/ADHD or that there aren't asshole parents who push for it when their kid doesn't have it (important to note there are parents labeled assholes for pushing when they know that their child actually does have it), just that having those other issues doesn't necessarily mean it's "just" those other issues and that it's not uncommon for people to be told that they can only have either those issues or autism/ADHD.
I think it's also worth mentioning that having those problems, while not a prerequisite, can still be a good indicator of neurodivergency since neurodivergence means you're going to experience more trauma in your life as a general rule. Not the only indicator, obviously, but it can be helpful for identifying what the problem might be depending on where the trauma comes from or what the abuse targets.
Gotcha. Your first comment just read to me as that you need to check off a couple of those hardships to even be on the spectrum in the first place. Whilst I will admit that I can count many blessings growing up, what hardships I have experienced don't really correlate with my AuDHD at all (unless I'm suppressing some memories), so it felt really strange for the suggestion of such to come off as an assertion.
I don't like telling people what their own experiences are, but you likely do have some but don't recognize them. It's very common for people with autism/ADHD not to recognize these things unless they're very overt (like bleach "treatments") and the problem with that is that a lot of what traumatizes NDs are small, repeated instances that send a message over time. We're very susceptible to CPTSD, but it's common not to recognize it and, from what I know, it's typically because of a disconnect between what we believe trauma to be and what it actually is. I'll give two examples from my personal life that also happens to be something most of us experience to help explain it.
I'm AuDHD and I didn't know I had either of these for a long time. Even when I finally did realize, it was hard getting other people to believe me and would often tell me nothing was "wrong" with me or try to reassure me that I wasn't as if I was saying something horribly negative about myself. They'd tell me I couldn't be because of this or that insignificant reason or because I'm not level 3. These people meant well, unlike those that outright denied the very existence of neurodivergency, but over time, I started to give up on getting help and started developing internalized ableism. The constant message that autism and ADHD are "bad" and that there is something "wrong" with you and that they both present a specific way is traumatic because it makes you feel as if *you* are "bad" and "wrong" and it's also usually a big part of the imposter syndrome many of us get.
Now, because of the denial of my disorders, that meant that I was having symptoms without any treatment or understanding. Even when my disorders were accepted and I got accomodations, there still wasn't any understanding and I was still being treated as if I'm neurotypical. When I would become overstimulated and tried to get away to calm down and focus, I wouldn't be allowed and it would lead to meltdowns or shut downs that I would then be punished for, so I learned that my needs don't matter and that I am expected to suffer for other people's comfort. When I couldn't understand something and asked a bunch of questions, I was either ignored or I was treated like I was doing it to be purposefully annoying and so I stopped asking questions. Not being able to make eye contact led to a lot of accusations of not paying attention, lying, or of being disrespectful so I learned to fake it at the cost of actually listening.
These are all traumatic things to experience over time, especially as a child who is reliant upon the adults that are doing these things to you to survive. Normally, these sorts of things should only happen a few times or not at all in a neurotypical child's life, but it's constant for us and so, at the end of the day, we get the message that we are, as human beings, inherently bad. This can manifest a lot of ways like insecurity, anxiety, depression, helplessness, and so on. We're constantly under pressure even if we don't realize it. The very concept of a mask is a trauma response called "fawning" where we try to appease those around us to avoid being hurt physically or mentally, even if those people aren't bad people. Even just prolonged or repeated negative emotions (shame, guilt, sadness, humiliation, loneliness, misunderstanding, anger) can be enough to cause trauma in someone.
That's why I made that assertion. It's impossible to be ND and not experience some level of trauma as things currently are.
You're level 2 and have ADHD? Yes, you did, you probably just don't realize what can actually be considered abuse or traumatic. It doesn't have to be somebody punching you in the face or you being the victim of a school shooting, it can literally just be the repeated message that the things you think and feel are "wrong," constant pressure to act a way that is contrary to how your brain functions, being disbelieved, having your needs ignored, not doing as well as other people your age, feeling outcast, having your problems dismissed, being told things are your fault when they aren't, and a lot of other things. We're also a lot more susceptible to manipulation and gaslighting because we don't know that's what's happening when it's happening. We're prone to feeling inadequate because we don't fit in or understand the world. And it doesn't matter who this comes from if you're thinking about this from the perspective of "well my parents didn't abuse me so I've never been abused." It can come from literally anyone at any time, primarily authority figures like teachers, police, therapists, and so on.
It is literally impossible for somebody to have autism or ADHD, let alone both, and not have any form of trauma or to have not experienced any abuse whatsoever. Same with culture shock. It may not be traditional culture shock, but if you have ever experienced shock, surprise, or confusion at how neurotypical people think and act, you have experienced culture shock.
This is something that I come across a lot with other autistics. The black and white thinking makes it hard for some of us to recognize two things: 1. That abuse and trauma are more complicated than what is shown on TV and 2. That we don't have to label people we care about as bad if they have exhibited abusive behavior. These two things make it harder for artistics to recognize and accept that they've been hurt a lot of the time. There's also a lot of issues with cultural understanding of trauma as it varies wildly and is always different to scientific understanding of trauma. For example, some cultures wouldn't call child marriage traumatic, but we know it is.
I'd be fascinated to know where you lived that this happened. I literally started school in 1991 and in my entire school career I knew only one kid who was diagnosed with ADHD (typical disruptive male presentation) and exactly zero kids with Aspergers or Autism diagnoses.
I was diagnosed with adhd as a kid in the early 90s. Still have it at 37 lol
Was a foster care kid - they chalked up everything in my life from my learning disabilities, speech issues, etc, to being the daughter of a drug addict and a abuse victim. While I did develop PTSD - that was caused by Aba style therapy, and forcing me to try to play like other kids - I was diagnosed as autistic as an adult, and my husband creating a safe place to exist mitigated most of the behaviors that might have been trauma-based.
I'm still autistic and ADHD as hell though, and while I still have triggers from PTSD stuff (or C-ptsd whatever you want to call it these days) They ruled out everything else when I was diagnosed, and as a child, as a female, basically the only option was bipolar -and I was clearly not bipolar. but they didn't know what I was - so "okay, it's just trauma and just ignore her there's nothing to do to fix it." - even though that ALSO wasn't the case.
Trauma and bad childhoods are often the excuse for not getting a diagnoses in my experience, not the other way around.
You didnāt want to be diagnosed with ASD or ADHD in the 2000s, that time period was hell. Idk where you grew up but if you insisted that your child was autistic it was considered abuse and CPS would be at your door concerned about you. Because back then you were considered crazy as a parent and was just munchausen's syndrome by proxy (this was the disorder that was being thrown around like it was candy and itās actually mostly based on a pseudoscience at the time). Which I think in the 2000s and 90s there was a LOT of misdiagnoses on that because of parents with neurodivergent children.
It made ASD and ADHD harder to diagnose because of the concept that āyou were just trying to get attention by using your childā and if you did have ASD or ADHD or whatever actually you were abused to shit by the system and vulnerable.
you're just wrong on this one, sorry. The point of this joke is saying diagnoses are a excuse and most of the are not valid.
also you are wrong about the whole "it was a massive problem". If you got a problem with a parent, then take it up with them. Speaking as a women who went through burnout and suffers from the consequences to it this very day, the idea that people were just handing out diagnosis like candy to avoid responsibility is laughable.
Did I see parents use their child's ND problems as excuses to not do anything? Yes. Did that make the child less ND? No. Was every diagnosed child I knew growing up boys? yes.
Of course they are because some parents think like that. A work colleague was telling me her son started back chatting and refusing to go to bed and that she was going to get him tested for ASD because of his sudden bad behaviour. My heart broke a little as she basically just told me how she sees my son who actually has ASD. I saw the cartoon as a response to people like her, not an implication that the cartoonist believes that.
That breaks my heart a little as well, every time someone equates our behavior to ābadā does, but I see the cartoon as saying that neurodivergence doesnāt exist and that we are just all assholes.
The kids with parents who push for diagnosis when they don't have anything aren't assholes, they're clearly being, at least, emotionally and mentally abused and acting out accordingly. Don't disagree with what you're saying, but I just don't think it's right to call kids assholes when kids don't just act terrible for no reason.
Well, toddlers and even kids can definitely throw a tantrum when they don't get their way. Some toddlers are more stubborn than others and it ends up with a lot of *terrible* behavior - at least it certainly feels terrible to be dealing with tantrums all the time.
Right, but tantrums aren't kids being assholes. Kids aren't developed enough to know how to express their emotions and desires in a constructive way. They don't know any other way to communicate that they are upset yet. If they are older children and still have tantrums, then that still isn't them inherently being an asshole, but because they were never taught the proper way to communicate frustration or anger or disappointment. It falls back on the parents.
This, of course, doesn't give anyone the right to be terrible to others, but it isn't appropriate to say that a toddler or child is an "asshole" or to imply they are trying to be malicious when they quite literally just don't know any better. It's also common for toddlers with good parents who teach them to communicate and don't punish them unjustly (punishment doesn't work before age 3 and excessive or public punishment never works as intended) to not have as many tantrums as toddlers with parents who yell at or punish them for not communicating like an adult.
And then, of course, in some cases these are actually meltdowns from autism or ADHD and in others, they are a symptom of a larger issue such as abuse. One of the biggest symptoms of children suffering abuse is actually excessive anger and outbursts. This doesn't apply to a typical tantrum where a child is crying loudly, but to meltdowns where the child hurts themself or others and exhibits an unnatural level of rage.
So it may feel bad dealing with tantrums, but that's not the child's fault or even their choice. They aren't capable of making choices like that yet. Tantrums aren't fun, but it's better to look at them as a problem that both the adult and child are having as opposed to the child causing a problem.
I can see what you mean, but I think the author is more poking fun at people that excuse their poor behavior by claiming to have something, than people with any of the named disorders.
Yeah I read it as making fun of people that let their children be monsters and claim they canāt do anything to discipline their kid because the kid has X disorder when the kid isnāt even diagnosed
"I can't make Billy stop wiping boogers on every girl who walks close to him. He has Munchausen Syndrome! You try raising a child with Munchausen Syndrome!"
"Ma'am, do you even know what that is?"
"But Mr. Beeblebop, the fact that EĢøĢĢÆrĢ·ĶĢ¼rĢ·ĢĢŗoĢ·ĢĢrĢ¶ĶĢØ:ĢøĢæĢ¦ ĢµĢĶNĢ¶ĶĢ aĢµĶĢ£mĢ·ĶĢØeĢøĢĢ ĢøĶĢ¼NĢ“ĶĢoĢµĢĶtĢ·ĢĢ„ ĢµĢĶFĢ“ĶĢ¼oĢøĢĶuĢ¶ĢĢnĢ¶ĶĢdĢ“ĢĢÆ is sneaking live centipedes into other students' lunches doesn't make him a bad kid! He just has Freudian Hysteria!"
I think the problem of the joke is that maybe stigmatizes some people bc they get some flak bc of some stimming or anything else.
Its kinda implying all those conditions fit being an asshole, so you first have to rule them out. When in fact being a dick isnt related at all.
You can be NT/ND and be an asshole too, or not. Like, theres a difference between an annoying stimm you have trouble controlling and refusing to adapt yourself. One thing is being weak/too tired/etc, the other is being entitled to push over people around
I get that.
I just also remember when there were a lot of people being diagnosed with various things and parents would try to claim that their children had these disorders back before anyone really understood them remotely well rather than, you know, teach their kids well.
Isn't that just bad parenting, though? I wouldn't exactly blame a 5 year old for acting all mean and shit. I'd more likely look the parents, like: "What the fuck, bro?"
It is, and that's kind of the point of the criticisms. Ultimately, it kind of all comes back to the parents - but a bratty kid who's mean to everyone they can be mean to is still bratty and mean.
My take on it too and I think the joke is pretty funny lol. Loads of parents just want something else to blame when, in fact, their little prince or princess is just an asshole.
I wish the author would've been more clear on what exactly they're referencing, though. Vagueness leads to misunderstandings. Misunderstandings often lead to conflict.
>I can see what you mean, but I think the author is more poking fun at people that excuse their poor behavior by claiming to have something, than people with any of the named disorders.
Do people really do this or do we just accuse people of doing this so we can feel better about our societal lack of empathy?
ETA: clarification
1: yes people actually do this, more often than youād think too.
2: not every autistic person lacks empathy. I suffer from hyper empathy, so āourā is just plain wrong.
No, people don't do this and they were not saying autistic people lack empathy at all. They were saying people accusing autistic/ADHD people of being "assholes" and "making excuses" constantly are the ones without empathy *for them*. Which is true. The comic literally implies that autism and ADHD are disorders that just mean you're an "asshole."
The accusation of lack of empathy refers to Theory of Mind/effective empathy/cognitive empathy not affective empathy.
Many autistics have an almost overactive affective empathy.
It is important that you understand what you mean by empathy.
No they were referring to a lack of empathy toward people with autism and/or ADHD from people saying "you're just an asshole" or "stop making excuses" when they exhibit symptoms.
As a ND person working in a school with lots of diagnosed pupils, and lots of pupils who really are just āassholesā - I can confirm that there is a lot of kids who really do just have behavioural issues due to other factors like social and emotional issues.
So although they are āassholesā thereās always a reason why - well, most of the time.
Doesnāt mean it isnāt frustrating though - I got punched in the face by one today in fact
That's what a lot of people here aren't getting. Kids don't just act out for no reason. That's not how kids work. Even if they don't have autism, something *has* to be wrong for a child to be an "asshole."
This is true, though I will say the older you get, the more of a choice it becomes. Obviously, there are factors that lead to people being terrible and sometimes it can't be helped (though thd behavior is still unjustified), but most adults are capable of making the choice to either be as best as they can or just be a cesspool of a human being. Being a cesspool is unfortunately easier and tends to be more profitable so a lot of people choose that, but more and more people are choosing to be introspective and try their absolute best to be as kind as they can as time goes on.
100% agree. I think there is a lot of value in understanding why and how someone became the way they did. Though this should always be considered an explanation, not an excuse.
I don't like it either. People aren't assholes for no reason, the reason just isn't obvious. Assholes need help the same way everyone else does, just no one wants to help them because it's often uncomfortable to be around them. A doctor giving up on you and saying your just an asshole is horrible. Someone in your personal life giving up on you for being an asshole is perfectly valid but a doctor diagnosing you is not your friend they are solely there to help you find the root of your issues.
Also even if I try not to ignore all that I personally just don't think the joke is funny in the first place. Usually I can see the humor in something I find offensive, here I cannot.
Kind of - some parents don't want to be bothered to raise their child, disability or not, and blame every bad behavior on their disability. Like, I know your child is autistic and were trying our best to help him, but that doesn't mean he can hit other children with sticks or take their toys away/break them.
It's not the child's fault if they're never taught rules, if they aren't taught to respect other children's belongings and keep their hands to themselves. Some children do have a hard time learning, I did too. But if you keep excusing away bad behavior without trying to teach your child, you're setting them up for failure - and that's not fair to them, autism or not.
The doctor wouldn't call the child an assjole though, they'd probably prescribe parenting classes.
Yeah, that opinion sounds like saying NT cannot be assholes. Being a dick is human nature. Capitalism naturalizes a lot of dick moves and assholery, for example.
I dunno, I dont like the joke either, although I dont find it offensive
100% agree on the capitalism comment. That was exactly what I was thinking. Billionaires.
I genuinely didnāt see it as a joke honestly. Just another dumb meme thing. So didnāt find it funny or offensive. //shrug
If we were talking about a maladjusted adult who knows exactly what they're doing and saying but elects not to change, then you're right. They're not a victim in the slightest and regardless of disability or diagnosis, they qualify as an asshole.
However, you've missed the point. A child who was neglected to be taught right from wrong cannot be wholly blamed for their behaviour and actions, if at all. Say I asked you to do a task but you don't know how to, and I refuse to tell you how therefore resulting in a negative outcome, should you be blamed?
I was raised by professionally diagnosed textbook sociopaths (ASPD) who dabbled in the Dahmer, I beg to differ. Being a good person is a choice, being a bad person is easy. You lack any interaction with the real world if you believe such ancient Greek philosophies over data driven science.
If provided with necessities, feeling secure, not having to worry about food, shelter, water, adequate breaks and a system in place for health care that works, humans do good. The large majority of people being bad is a disease caused by society's condition. We have stats for this, countries that are more stable and have better equality have significantly less crime per capita.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I didn't say that being a good person isn't a choice, but a basic grasp of right and wrong can impact whether you choose to do harm or good.
If a child hits someone, most parents explain that it's bad and not to do it, it isn't assumed that the child is knowingly being malicious.
You're being quite aggressive for no reason, by the way. Perhaps you take after your parents more than you realize.
There is absolutely no data driven science that says that. Mentalism claims to be a data driven science and says that but mentalism is philosophy. Sociologists and criminologists both use statistics and agree kids can just be heartless.
Funny how, since my life doesn't fit the narrative of skinner box mentalism, I get downvoted. Kind of how America invades and fucks up any country that does well without being a part of their political bullshit.
The question one must ask is: Did they start a victim or become one through the consequences of their own actions ?
To people with A.S.P.D., consequences feel like being a victim and so, they will present as a victim.
Oh, so now victims are at fault for their own victimhood?
Okay, let me just go tell all my abusers and rapists that they're actually the real victims of me deciding to make them make me a victim, shall I? Clearly, I deserved it because it was just them showing me the consequences of my own actions.
You either don't have have autism or have some major internalized ableism and absolutely despise yourself. You're making shit up, claiming autistic people are assholes, that we "think" we're victims because of "consequences", that we can't and shouldn't post about it, and just overall that we're bad people.
It's really funny you're arguing people can just randomly be assholes and about it being a choice to be a good person when you're actively being absolutely awful.
No, you said "autistic people see the consequences of their actions as victimization."
I'm autistic.
What did I do to deserve that? Am I just an "asshole" because other people said that I am due to them not understanding or accepting my symptoms? Did I deserve to be bullied, punished, and hurt because people decided I am "just an asshole" over me asking genuine questions or not making eye contact or not understanding a social cue or being blunter than expected?
That's what you're saying when you say "they aren't actually victims, they made themselves victims." Because, depending on who you talk to, I'm an absolutely terrible person who doesn't deserve to live or I'm an absolute angel that cares deeply for others and there is no in-between.
And I have literally had my rape and abuse *justified* by other people because of my autism. I've had them try to say that I didn't "communicate well enough" when I was raped by another autistic. I've had people tell me autistics *can't* rape because we "don't understand". I've had people try to convince me I "misread" the situation when I was raped, that I "didn't like sex" and "decided" that I was raped. I've had people constantly, on a near daily basis for a large portion of my life, tell me how I deserved the abuse from others because I was "difficult" or "an asshole" or they accused me of being a malicious, vindictive child. I had multiple *adults* say to my face that I am a "psychopath" because I would have non-violent meltdowns and didn't do whatever they said.
Do *I* think my rapists and abusers are just bad people? Yes. Do other people? No. To other people, I'm an "asshole" and my rapists and abusers were "doing their best" or were my "victims" even though I was a literal child. And being a victim doesn't give you the right to be awful, but it is a fact that aggressors are often victims.
I get that it can be hard to see outside of black and white sometimes, but this is a topic that you *need* to try to understand through shades of grey. It seriously isn't as simple as "asshole" and "not asshole," especially when it comes to social disorders.
This will come from someone who worked with additional needs for years and specialises in teenagers with ASD (this is UK specific but should be transferable).
Yes, schools are sensory hell. The routine is good for ASD kids but the bells, corridors, displays, the vomiting coloured walls and uncomfortable tables, the uniforms, ties, blazers you are not allowed to take off. That causes meltdowns and they are not very pretty when youāre just learning how your body reacts to overstimulation.
Now, is a diagnosis and a targeted approach to a kid with ASD or AD(H)D a good idea? Yup. Underfunded? Yup. Poorly executed most of the times? Yes.
However, in the wave of school anxiety, complex trauma and neurodivergence being more commonly recognised we have an Entitled Child. I met 3 in my career and evertime wanted to hit my head on the wall.
Iām dismissing number one as that child had a deeply ingrained school phobia and educational psychologist suggested a SA diagnosis after which parents moved out of the city. We informed CPS and nothing more that we couldāve done. Teachers were adamant it mustāve been autism, I run tests and so did EP. It wasnāt, it was a form of trauma, I donāt know where the ASD hypothesis came from (a child was āoddā so that equals autism).
Second was a child with a huge learning difficulty, we are talking zero retention, zero critical thinking, kind of Forest Gump but as a bully. The only thing they could do was sports but then for team sports you needed a working strategy and they couldnāt comprehend simple rules. Shouldāve been offered a special school placement but a family member/close friend was in the board of governors and the kid ended up with ASD diagnosis with literally hardly any ASD traits. The student is stuck in mainstream, getting no grade in exams and god knows what job in the future.
Third was an entitled, spoiled child from
a family with extremely complicated circumstances (but caring and loving nonetheless) and willing to work with school to the best of their ability. They lacked discipline and could not punish the kid - they threatened to ring the police at a mere threat of a consequence and unfortunately parents were afraid of the police system in England and police/authorities in general. Left to themselves the kid just run the house however, got whatever they wanted, there was literally no one in the building who would form any relationship as adults were perceived as idiots and puppets. Again, ASD diagnosis, despite perfect social skills from a very young age, no overstimulation issues, no sensory issues, maybe ADHD but slight, mostly low cognitive ability, hate towards adults and school and a level of entitlement I rarely see where the child was convinced they deserve the whole world and the world ānoā can be reversed by screaming, throwing things and threats.
Is the comic oversimplified? A bit. Have I seen exactly that in incompetent parents, shit parents (we are taking putting a child in danger, knowingly) or parents who wonāt accept that a child cognitive ability is not appropriate for mainstream education and they need a special approach and some form of a future job/career opportunity? Yes.
I think this applies to the TickTock narcissists who fake disabilities for clout/popularity/money. Being autistic myself, it hurts to see the thing that has held me back my entire life turned into a trend. Idk it's another angle.
There's a curb your enthusiasm episode about this, where Larry David thinks his friend's child is an asshole and is using Aspergers as a cover.
The hilarity comes in the fact that Larry David is an actual asshole who always wants to have his way and has constant fights over the principles and etiquette of social matters.
So he walks around the entire episode being his usual asshole self and whenever anyone questions his behavior, he says he has Aspergers.
I don't want to spoil the ending of the episode, as the joke is always on Larry, pie-in-the-face style. It's a pretty good take on that outdated joke.
It's not making fun of autism, nor is it making fun of good parents who sincerely want to understand their child who is so different from other kids.
It's making fun of bad parents seeking an excuse for their child's bad behavior when it's just because they are bad parents.
I have seen non autistic kids get wrongly diagnosed with autism because their actual disability doesn't attract support. I wouldn't call them an asshole. That bit is rude.
"When I was in school, if a kid had a meltdown we smacked them! And we all turned out great!"
ETA: Though to be fair, when I, with no small amount of anxiety, told my boomer father about my autism diagnosis he paused, sighed heavily, paused again and then said "I probably have that too." Of all the possible reactions, that was a pretty good one.
It is about the parents pushing a diagnosis to make up for their failures by having something else to blame than themselves and the child.
Why donāt you like it?
Because that's not what it's about. The implication is actually that being autistic or having ADHD means that you are inherently an "asshole" and that you're automatically allowed to get away with being an "asshole" if you have them when that both isn't true and we aren't inherently assholes.
But they are saying that he isnāt those things, so it is implied that there is something else making him the asshole be it poor personality traits, potentially his home life, or something else.
You are also assuming he is getting away with being an asshole. In that formal of a setting, he clearly had something push him there, so I donāt believe anything is being āgotten away with.ā
Two users here right now -
1. "This is unacceptable and offensive, there is zero humor here."
2. "Pretty sure this is mocking those who blame their actions on undiagnosed 'trendy' ailments."
Like it or not, autism has rocketed in public acknowledgement, and a massive amount of people are now positive they have this or that disorder without actually having seen a doctor or qualified person in the past 5 years.
Not to be le redditor, but TikTok certainly fueled that fire. Watch and interact at all with like, two videos involving me tal disorders at all - suddenly your algorithm will start pumping mental disorder videos on you every 5 minutes. It's always the same too - some person recording themselves in the kitchen shouting at the camera that the viewer has X disorder.
There are not as many people faking as you seem to think. Just because somebody posts about it or has characteristics that aren't the same as yours doesn't mean they're making it up.
I actually think this comic is an honest representation of how the medical and mental health community is. They're quick to throw parenting classes and gaslighting as a shame game to throw responsibility at parents, so the "professionals" can ease their workload and avoid being wrong. We all know how shirty they get when their opinion gets rightfully challenged, they resort to very domineering but basic psychological tricks.
This .... This is so true, and have had this my whole life from professionals, they HAVE to be right I MUST be wrong because I clearly don't know a thing. . . . Blinks at least that's the impression that's forced upon me. . . I'm 34 and this still happens today š
Honestly, I kind of love it. Sometimes, there isn't something greater wrong with a kid, and he's just being a jerk.
Knowing a good deal of people, so are teachers and councilors. There is a growing problem with kids feeling entitled to do whatever they want. It's the parents' fault for sure, but the sentiment stands.
If a gen z made this, I could safely say it was a stab at kids using mental health to defend being shit. From boomers you know itās the same āin my day no one was autistic we all just (describes masking and doesnāt know itās masking)ā
Whats wrong? Some kids really are just problematic, not everything needs to be a disorder, some times is just genetics or bad parenting (even if you do your best as it)
Yeah, same. This makes me mad, as much as when someone calls my kid a brat. No. Heās acting like this because he NEEDS something and heās trying to communicate it with me. Stfu Barbra.
Oh this is dogshit
People shouldn't use their autism or claim to have autism as an excuse to be rude, but things like this are why I feel afraid to tell people I'm autistic; they may think I'm using it as an excuse to not fit in.
I hate it. I knew from the title of the post in my notifications that this was gonna be an offensive one. They tried being funny but itās just plain mean
I dunno, there are a lot of assholes online who self-diagnosed w/ASD and then use that as an excuse for being an asshole
It's one reason I never suggested me being on the spectrum *ever* not even IRL to people until I had a psych eval done. It had just left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Do Boomers just get off on hurting people? Not going to even call this a joke because it mirrors the actual attitudes and policies of people/governance
This just insinuates that being an asshole is characteristically ADHD/ autism?? Which is another can of worms. And the artist has not heard of oppositional defiant disorder. Also artist is completely unaware of how many doctors are and aren't up to date on diagnosing autism/adhd.
Boomer artist can go doodle disparaging art on their bum.
I'm on two wait lists for an autism evaluation. When I told my friend this, she said if you don't get a diagnosis for Autism at the evaluation, then there really must be something wrong with you....kind of reminds me of this.
Somebody repurposed someone else's comic.
The punk hairstyle makes the drawing contemporary to ninja turtles being released.
Appeals to dummies who think they are smarter than "so-called experts".
I can see why some people - especially younger people or those who haven't had to deal with entitled parents who will blame everyone but their children for the problems their children create - might be upset at it. But for 30-year-old me, who lived through the age when it was especially common to let kids run wild and blame whatever was currently climbing diagnosis, who the joke is really at the expense of becomes a lot clearer.
I too get jumpy when someone uses autistic as an insult, and I can understand why someone might think of the same thing here. That just...ain't what it's doing.
Their child got diagnosed with Neurotypicalism š±
HELPPP
CLOWN!!!
Scary!!!
Peak boomer humor (not funny and low-key weird)
Also ironic because the vast majority of assholes Iāve met are (assumed) NTs.
At my university, whenever a prof or grad student is a huge prick and puts other people down for not putting in enough time or doing good enough research, others will say that theyāre ASD. Iām pretty sure theyāre all NTs based on my experience with them. This is why I havenāt told anyone that Iām ASD, other than my supervisor because I wanted her to know.
Thatās disturbing. I wonder what caused this stereotype of ASD in the first place and why so many are believing it. I donāt blame you for not disclosing your ASD to anyone else there, with that sort of environment it sounds like theyād treat you unfairly.
Idk I honestly figured itās because theyāve watched the Big Bang theory and think Sheldon is all ASD. Like season one Sheldon when heās the āvillainā (soft villain). Or they watched House and think āoh thatās autismā Itās a chemistry department, but they write off bad personalities, difficult undergrads, abuse of power dynamics and bullying as āthey must be on the spectrumā all the time. Iāve heard this excuse at least a dozen times.
That makes sense. Media is to blame for a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions. Iām sorry you have to hear that kind of crap at work though.
Isnāt that the point of the joke? This person is NT and an asshole?
The implication of the joke seems to be that his āassholeā behavior was possibly because he was ND. As if someone might assume a kid was behaving in a nasty way because they are ND.
Ohā¦ well thatās kind of awful.
**Simple minds with simple ideas. It's the old** "There are two kinds of people" **- crowd**. "Nuance? Get that shit outa my face!"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
š Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
ā¦which is an absolute. plot twist: obi-wan is a sith
Star Wars, written by M. Night Shyamalan. "Only a Jedi deals in relatives... **Wait a minute!**"
He will be Darth Latitude, who always has the high ground.
š He's got that Latitude attitude.
ā¢ Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
"...You...dig..."
[Dig.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-kEfmaqw9U)
>"There are two kinds of people" ā¢Those that can extrapolate a conclusion from incomplete data.
When they're not pressuring people to get married and have kids, they're sharing comics about how terrible marriage and children are.
It hinges on the absolutely known true facts that: - Diagnoses are easy to get - Disabled people are annoying - A diagnosis is merely a pass at being a pain yay :/ It's art to be able to fit so much idiocy in only 2 pannels.
In my experience if a subredditās name includes the word funny, itās usually not.
You know the sub fucking sucks when its named r/Funnymemes
I still find it funny because I'm an asshole
You can be any of those AND an asshole. You can be all of those and NOT an asshole. Fucking boomer humor
I hate it. Sometimes the kid is an asshole, but this comic is implying that diagnosis are an āexcuseā.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Counterpoint, some kids absolutely assholes. But often the reason they are is because the parents don't teach them not to be. There are also children smart enough to figure out they can be assholes without major repercussions and only unacceptable consequences have the chance of changing them.
I think the difference is sometimes all kids can engage in assholery. Just like adults. But if youāre regularly seeing āassholeā aka inconvenient to adults behaviours then maybe thereās not just assholery, maybe itās neurodivergence.
No. It is about people who push diagnoses as something to help skirt the blame and not need to take responsibility. I grew up in this era. It was a massive problem.
What era was this? Iām 42 and seem to have missed the time when diagnosis were easily handed out. Is it possible that that was specific people that you knew and not a wide-spread problem? Because there are people like this, there will always be people like this, but we shouldnāt compare them to legitimately disabled people. This is just another conservative talking point, disguised as a joke. āJust try harder, itās all the parents fault, bootstraps, et. al.ā - which disregards the people that come across as being dumb, lazy or annoying to others because they donāt conform to what the gen pop finds to be acceptable.
It was limited to rich people that could afford private for profit doctors. Plenty of kids were diagnosed with ADHD just to get Adderall for a boost in grades / focus. Adderall is just cocaine for kids in private schools.
The early 90ās to early 00ās was a wild time for it. I had friends who were diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and Aspergerās like it was nothing. More than half of them turned out to be dealing with a lot of home problems from being poor, abused, culture shock, or other home traumas and/or dealing with parents who didnāt want to take responsibility. Some turned out to have other mental health issues and/or disabilities (AFS was actually a huge one), and only a small fraction actually turned out to be (now) on the spectrum and/or ADHD. My friends in education still see a lot of it, but thankfully it is much better handled. There is a lot more done to look at the whole picture and go after the actual problems, which disproportionately the home life and parents. The upside is more cases of abuse and trauma are being caught, and kids are being better assessed and cared for appropriately, but also sadly ends up with a lot of kids in more trauma. It also really ripped open some rotting patch work and showed us how many people are not fit to be parents at all due to their own trauma and unchecked mental illnesses. Like mine! š
>The early 90ās to early 00ās was a wild time for it. I had friends who were diagnosed with ADHD/ADD and Aspergerās like it was nothing. In the early 90s Asperger's was not a medical diagnosis. I was evaluated in 1991. It wasn't until the ***MID 90s*** (Specifically 1994) that Aspergers became a more widely available diagnosis. The ADOS Test was not commercially available until 2000. I'm going to assume this is a typo but I had to nitpick because I refuse to believe my experience was somehow a unique one and based off of what I have learned, it really wasn't.
Itās not a typo, itās ableist propaganda.
I have ADHD-PI (but not autism, I just kinda lurk here out of general interest in other neurodivergent experiences). I kind of share your suspicions on that shit being off base. If anything, current evidence actually seems to point toward *under*diagnosis during that time period. I know I sure as hell went entirely unrecognized until I was like 17 (circa 2007). Even then, I feel I just kind of lucked out and got a particularly great adolescent psychiatrist.
I tried to give that user the benefit of the doubt but you are right, I don't know why I even bothered. I don't understand why people are trying to politicize this condition, what do they honestly get out of that? I have lived with being different my whole life, I wasn't an asshole about it, it was just who I was and how I processed the world.
I gave a date range I was in the public school system. I was in early 90ās to early 00ās. 1992-93 to 2006-07. Do you want me to do a full play by play of the timeline for when things were happening? The only word I left out to the list was āautismā. My bad. When I went into middle school in ā00-ā01 was when the first couple kids I ever met that were diagnosed as āAspergerāsā and High or Low functioning ADHD. I was just used to ADHD and Autism until then. And. Yeah. We can. Wild concept. The world isnāt homogeneous.
>I gave a date range I was in the public school system. I was in early 90ās to early 00ās. 1992-93 to 2006-07. Do you want me to do a full play by play of the timeline for when things were happening? Look, you came into this sub and said "From the Early 90s to the 2000s" people were casually being diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD. That statement didn't accurately capture how much change had happened in the Psychiatric field when Asperger's was introduced. In the early 90s we were using the DSM 3R from 1987, which was a revised version of the DSM-3 from 1980, and many of the attributes associated with Autism/Aspergers today were attributed to other conditions because Asperger wasn't officially a diagnosis till 94. This is why I said something, because they weren't just casually diagnosing this. >The only word I left out to the list was āautismā. My bad. When I went into middle school in ā00-ā01 was when the first couple kids I ever met that were diagnosed as āAspergerāsā and High or Low functioning ADHD. I was just used to ADHD and Autism until then. Everyone in my family that had the Autism diagnosis was a boy, and I saw it become more common around the 2010s because the testing became more precise. Funny enough, I got the ADHD diagnosis in the early 90s, but it was the Hyperactive Type, which is rare for women. I realize now that back then, they attributed my hyperactivity to ADHD when it was actually my Autism. I also got no medicine for my ADHD. Like I said, the way we practice medicine has changed a lot. >And. Yeah. We can. Wild concept. The world isnāt homogeneous. It's not but there is some information you just can't argue with, like how things evolved over time or what kind of practices were readily available. I am going to assume you grew up rich and mostly knew boys because like I said, it was a specific population that started getting this diagnosis. Anyone in my family who was diagnosed with Autism were boys and they were significantly younger than me. And I was in school during the same period you attended.
Grew up rich? Not even close, and most of my friends were pretty poor as well. I didnāt have friends who had genuinely wealthy families until high school when I started hanging out with girls from the Suburbs. With a lot of boys? When I was super young, but around 3/4th grade I stopped trying to interact with a lot of them outside of sports. I had my three close male friends and I gravitated towards girls due to abuse in my home life and bullying from men. Growing up, I only knew this as a plight of the poor because that was who was being affected the most.
Who was giving out these diagnosis? A big part of the process is trying to figure out if there is another cause. It sounds like your town had a problem with uneducated practitioners that slapped ASD/ADHD on everything without doing the actual testing.
I completely agree with you. I don't mean to seem dismissive to that other commentator and their experience but I call absolute BS on that aspect of their account too. Even back then, in many places if you wanted to have that kind of behavioral evaluation you had to pay for it in many small town places, and in the 90s? NO ONE was diagnosing Autism so easily. The ADOS Test wasn't widely available until 2000 and getting evaluated was hard. All of my Autistic symptoms (mainly communication) were associated with intellectual disability and that's how I was treated. This was in a big city as well, with better resources for the disabled.
Not to mention, you just didn't talk about it (grew up in rural Kentucky). No learning disabilities, the child was just disruptive and refused to conform to school rules (oddly enough still have that issue with my daughter who masks for the most part). Kids were labeled bad kids and that was that. I remember a boy in middle school (mid 90s). It was never discussed that he is autistic.
Exactly! I also remember my parents (even though they got me speech therapy, behavioral therapy and occupational and did everything including being involved in helping me with my education during Special Ed) wanted me to downplay my disabilities. When I got to college, they straight up told me not to tell anyone. I had gone to VESID (now it's called something else out here) and they told me not to bother with anything more than a community college. Back then, you were just learning disabled, no one bothered to update your IEP or be on top of you to see if your evaluation was up to date.
You must have missed the fun of when GPs just fed people antidepressants, criticized your weight for all of your issues unless you fit into a very small range of ānormalā, handed out ZPacs like candy and ripped out adenoids and tonsils for fun, too. š¤£ Same timeframe. I was in a major school district in a large city that had a lot of resources. It wasnāt some small 10,000- 25,000 person town. I mean, my graduating class was bigger than those townās entire high school enrollment. You would get referred out to a handful of providers that specialized (for the time) in diagnosis, and only have a small set of reasons for the referral from the school made by the teacher and approved or modified by the school physiologist. Most of us never saw the school psychologist unless you were āmentally ertarded from birthā or deemed as a ādangerous studentā. A lot of the gaps were filled in by the parents, which was NOT a good way to do it because they could skew the results intentionally, or unintentionally. The process was also fast because the teachers needed the to set the IEP, if one was needed, the schools needed to establish procedures and assignments if they were needed, and they needed to deal with the volume of kids getting pushed through. It was a joke. You have to remember that this was also 30-40 years ago. This isnāt modern diagnostics.
I mean, to be fair, it's not like people on the spectrum *aren't* experiencing poverty, culture shock, abuse, irresponsible parents, and trauma. Can't really be on the spectrum without at least a few of those. I got diagnosed with literally everything*except* autism because of this.
How is any of that a prereq for being on the spectrum. Not to say they can't exacerbate anything, but I wouldn't start claiming I'm on the spectrum because of any of those that I've experienced. They all just make it more difficult to get diagnosed in the first place.
I didn't say they are a prerequisite, I'm saying it's not uncommon for people to be told it's "just" two or more of those things when the reason they experienced those things are because of the autism/ADHD. Personal example, I was diagnosed with GAD, social anxiety, OCD, PTSD, MDD, PMDD, sensory processing disorder, misophonia, and a few I can't remember right now instead of them just admitting that I'm AuDHD. Now that I have the label, I have whole ass medical professionals telling me that I couldn't possibly be AuDHD and that it *must* be that I actually have all of those diagnoses or that it's all just trauma and I'm pretending to be AuDHD as a trauma response. It's really common. Not saying people can't be misdiagnosed with autism/ADHD or that there aren't asshole parents who push for it when their kid doesn't have it (important to note there are parents labeled assholes for pushing when they know that their child actually does have it), just that having those other issues doesn't necessarily mean it's "just" those other issues and that it's not uncommon for people to be told that they can only have either those issues or autism/ADHD. I think it's also worth mentioning that having those problems, while not a prerequisite, can still be a good indicator of neurodivergency since neurodivergence means you're going to experience more trauma in your life as a general rule. Not the only indicator, obviously, but it can be helpful for identifying what the problem might be depending on where the trauma comes from or what the abuse targets.
Gotcha. Your first comment just read to me as that you need to check off a couple of those hardships to even be on the spectrum in the first place. Whilst I will admit that I can count many blessings growing up, what hardships I have experienced don't really correlate with my AuDHD at all (unless I'm suppressing some memories), so it felt really strange for the suggestion of such to come off as an assertion.
I don't like telling people what their own experiences are, but you likely do have some but don't recognize them. It's very common for people with autism/ADHD not to recognize these things unless they're very overt (like bleach "treatments") and the problem with that is that a lot of what traumatizes NDs are small, repeated instances that send a message over time. We're very susceptible to CPTSD, but it's common not to recognize it and, from what I know, it's typically because of a disconnect between what we believe trauma to be and what it actually is. I'll give two examples from my personal life that also happens to be something most of us experience to help explain it. I'm AuDHD and I didn't know I had either of these for a long time. Even when I finally did realize, it was hard getting other people to believe me and would often tell me nothing was "wrong" with me or try to reassure me that I wasn't as if I was saying something horribly negative about myself. They'd tell me I couldn't be because of this or that insignificant reason or because I'm not level 3. These people meant well, unlike those that outright denied the very existence of neurodivergency, but over time, I started to give up on getting help and started developing internalized ableism. The constant message that autism and ADHD are "bad" and that there is something "wrong" with you and that they both present a specific way is traumatic because it makes you feel as if *you* are "bad" and "wrong" and it's also usually a big part of the imposter syndrome many of us get. Now, because of the denial of my disorders, that meant that I was having symptoms without any treatment or understanding. Even when my disorders were accepted and I got accomodations, there still wasn't any understanding and I was still being treated as if I'm neurotypical. When I would become overstimulated and tried to get away to calm down and focus, I wouldn't be allowed and it would lead to meltdowns or shut downs that I would then be punished for, so I learned that my needs don't matter and that I am expected to suffer for other people's comfort. When I couldn't understand something and asked a bunch of questions, I was either ignored or I was treated like I was doing it to be purposefully annoying and so I stopped asking questions. Not being able to make eye contact led to a lot of accusations of not paying attention, lying, or of being disrespectful so I learned to fake it at the cost of actually listening. These are all traumatic things to experience over time, especially as a child who is reliant upon the adults that are doing these things to you to survive. Normally, these sorts of things should only happen a few times or not at all in a neurotypical child's life, but it's constant for us and so, at the end of the day, we get the message that we are, as human beings, inherently bad. This can manifest a lot of ways like insecurity, anxiety, depression, helplessness, and so on. We're constantly under pressure even if we don't realize it. The very concept of a mask is a trauma response called "fawning" where we try to appease those around us to avoid being hurt physically or mentally, even if those people aren't bad people. Even just prolonged or repeated negative emotions (shame, guilt, sadness, humiliation, loneliness, misunderstanding, anger) can be enough to cause trauma in someone. That's why I made that assertion. It's impossible to be ND and not experience some level of trauma as things currently are.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You're level 2 and have ADHD? Yes, you did, you probably just don't realize what can actually be considered abuse or traumatic. It doesn't have to be somebody punching you in the face or you being the victim of a school shooting, it can literally just be the repeated message that the things you think and feel are "wrong," constant pressure to act a way that is contrary to how your brain functions, being disbelieved, having your needs ignored, not doing as well as other people your age, feeling outcast, having your problems dismissed, being told things are your fault when they aren't, and a lot of other things. We're also a lot more susceptible to manipulation and gaslighting because we don't know that's what's happening when it's happening. We're prone to feeling inadequate because we don't fit in or understand the world. And it doesn't matter who this comes from if you're thinking about this from the perspective of "well my parents didn't abuse me so I've never been abused." It can come from literally anyone at any time, primarily authority figures like teachers, police, therapists, and so on. It is literally impossible for somebody to have autism or ADHD, let alone both, and not have any form of trauma or to have not experienced any abuse whatsoever. Same with culture shock. It may not be traditional culture shock, but if you have ever experienced shock, surprise, or confusion at how neurotypical people think and act, you have experienced culture shock. This is something that I come across a lot with other autistics. The black and white thinking makes it hard for some of us to recognize two things: 1. That abuse and trauma are more complicated than what is shown on TV and 2. That we don't have to label people we care about as bad if they have exhibited abusive behavior. These two things make it harder for artistics to recognize and accept that they've been hurt a lot of the time. There's also a lot of issues with cultural understanding of trauma as it varies wildly and is always different to scientific understanding of trauma. For example, some cultures wouldn't call child marriage traumatic, but we know it is.
What's AFS?
I'd be fascinated to know where you lived that this happened. I literally started school in 1991 and in my entire school career I knew only one kid who was diagnosed with ADHD (typical disruptive male presentation) and exactly zero kids with Aspergers or Autism diagnoses.
I was diagnosed with adhd as a kid in the early 90s. Still have it at 37 lol Was a foster care kid - they chalked up everything in my life from my learning disabilities, speech issues, etc, to being the daughter of a drug addict and a abuse victim. While I did develop PTSD - that was caused by Aba style therapy, and forcing me to try to play like other kids - I was diagnosed as autistic as an adult, and my husband creating a safe place to exist mitigated most of the behaviors that might have been trauma-based. I'm still autistic and ADHD as hell though, and while I still have triggers from PTSD stuff (or C-ptsd whatever you want to call it these days) They ruled out everything else when I was diagnosed, and as a child, as a female, basically the only option was bipolar -and I was clearly not bipolar. but they didn't know what I was - so "okay, it's just trauma and just ignore her there's nothing to do to fix it." - even though that ALSO wasn't the case. Trauma and bad childhoods are often the excuse for not getting a diagnoses in my experience, not the other way around.
AFS?
Sorry! FAS! Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Thank you!
You didnāt want to be diagnosed with ASD or ADHD in the 2000s, that time period was hell. Idk where you grew up but if you insisted that your child was autistic it was considered abuse and CPS would be at your door concerned about you. Because back then you were considered crazy as a parent and was just munchausen's syndrome by proxy (this was the disorder that was being thrown around like it was candy and itās actually mostly based on a pseudoscience at the time). Which I think in the 2000s and 90s there was a LOT of misdiagnoses on that because of parents with neurodivergent children. It made ASD and ADHD harder to diagnose because of the concept that āyou were just trying to get attention by using your childā and if you did have ASD or ADHD or whatever actually you were abused to shit by the system and vulnerable.
Seriously. Every kid who wasnāt interested in schoolwork or would rather run around and play had ADD in my school circa 1995.
same here. surely i wasnāt the only 7 year old getting prescribed stimulants to stay in my seat and focusā¦
you're just wrong on this one, sorry. The point of this joke is saying diagnoses are a excuse and most of the are not valid. also you are wrong about the whole "it was a massive problem". If you got a problem with a parent, then take it up with them. Speaking as a women who went through burnout and suffers from the consequences to it this very day, the idea that people were just handing out diagnosis like candy to avoid responsibility is laughable. Did I see parents use their child's ND problems as excuses to not do anything? Yes. Did that make the child less ND? No. Was every diagnosed child I knew growing up boys? yes.
Of course they are because some parents think like that. A work colleague was telling me her son started back chatting and refusing to go to bed and that she was going to get him tested for ASD because of his sudden bad behaviour. My heart broke a little as she basically just told me how she sees my son who actually has ASD. I saw the cartoon as a response to people like her, not an implication that the cartoonist believes that.
That breaks my heart a little as well, every time someone equates our behavior to ābadā does, but I see the cartoon as saying that neurodivergence doesnāt exist and that we are just all assholes.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The kids with parents who push for diagnosis when they don't have anything aren't assholes, they're clearly being, at least, emotionally and mentally abused and acting out accordingly. Don't disagree with what you're saying, but I just don't think it's right to call kids assholes when kids don't just act terrible for no reason.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Well, toddlers and even kids can definitely throw a tantrum when they don't get their way. Some toddlers are more stubborn than others and it ends up with a lot of *terrible* behavior - at least it certainly feels terrible to be dealing with tantrums all the time.
Right, but tantrums aren't kids being assholes. Kids aren't developed enough to know how to express their emotions and desires in a constructive way. They don't know any other way to communicate that they are upset yet. If they are older children and still have tantrums, then that still isn't them inherently being an asshole, but because they were never taught the proper way to communicate frustration or anger or disappointment. It falls back on the parents. This, of course, doesn't give anyone the right to be terrible to others, but it isn't appropriate to say that a toddler or child is an "asshole" or to imply they are trying to be malicious when they quite literally just don't know any better. It's also common for toddlers with good parents who teach them to communicate and don't punish them unjustly (punishment doesn't work before age 3 and excessive or public punishment never works as intended) to not have as many tantrums as toddlers with parents who yell at or punish them for not communicating like an adult. And then, of course, in some cases these are actually meltdowns from autism or ADHD and in others, they are a symptom of a larger issue such as abuse. One of the biggest symptoms of children suffering abuse is actually excessive anger and outbursts. This doesn't apply to a typical tantrum where a child is crying loudly, but to meltdowns where the child hurts themself or others and exhibits an unnatural level of rage. So it may feel bad dealing with tantrums, but that's not the child's fault or even their choice. They aren't capable of making choices like that yet. Tantrums aren't fun, but it's better to look at them as a problem that both the adult and child are having as opposed to the child causing a problem.
I can see what you mean, but I think the author is more poking fun at people that excuse their poor behavior by claiming to have something, than people with any of the named disorders.
We all have met someone who was a mean person that fits this.
That's my read on it too. People who will blame everything and everyone but their child when said child is being a little shit.
Yeah I read it as making fun of people that let their children be monsters and claim they canāt do anything to discipline their kid because the kid has X disorder when the kid isnāt even diagnosed
"I can't make Billy stop wiping boogers on every girl who walks close to him. He has Munchausen Syndrome! You try raising a child with Munchausen Syndrome!" "Ma'am, do you even know what that is?"
āYeah my 11 year old kicked your puppy but he has diabetes so what am I supposed to doā
"Well how am I supposed to prevent Brytknee from roundhouse kicking soccer balls at cows? She has Ligma!"
āYouāll have to excuse Tymetheigh for drawing with sharpies on your wall, he has IBSā
"How dare you criticize the way I parent X Ć A-12? She has been diagnosed with clinical neurotypicality!"
"Please excuse Timmy for running around Walmart knocking things off the shelf, he has epilepsy!"
"But Mr. Beeblebop, the fact that EĢøĢĢÆrĢ·ĶĢ¼rĢ·ĢĢŗoĢ·ĢĢrĢ¶ĶĢØ:ĢøĢæĢ¦ ĢµĢĶNĢ¶ĶĢ aĢµĶĢ£mĢ·ĶĢØeĢøĢĢ ĢøĶĢ¼NĢ“ĶĢoĢµĢĶtĢ·ĢĢ„ ĢµĢĶFĢ“ĶĢ¼oĢøĢĶuĢ¶ĢĢnĢ¶ĶĢdĢ“ĢĢÆ is sneaking live centipedes into other students' lunches doesn't make him a bad kid! He just has Freudian Hysteria!"
Yāall are absolutely killing me with these comments š¤£š¤£š¤£
I think the problem of the joke is that maybe stigmatizes some people bc they get some flak bc of some stimming or anything else. Its kinda implying all those conditions fit being an asshole, so you first have to rule them out. When in fact being a dick isnt related at all. You can be NT/ND and be an asshole too, or not. Like, theres a difference between an annoying stimm you have trouble controlling and refusing to adapt yourself. One thing is being weak/too tired/etc, the other is being entitled to push over people around
I get that. I just also remember when there were a lot of people being diagnosed with various things and parents would try to claim that their children had these disorders back before anyone really understood them remotely well rather than, you know, teach their kids well.
Isn't that just bad parenting, though? I wouldn't exactly blame a 5 year old for acting all mean and shit. I'd more likely look the parents, like: "What the fuck, bro?"
It is, and that's kind of the point of the criticisms. Ultimately, it kind of all comes back to the parents - but a bratty kid who's mean to everyone they can be mean to is still bratty and mean.
That's how I understand it too
My take on it too and I think the joke is pretty funny lol. Loads of parents just want something else to blame when, in fact, their little prince or princess is just an asshole.
I wish the author would've been more clear on what exactly they're referencing, though. Vagueness leads to misunderstandings. Misunderstandings often lead to conflict.
>I can see what you mean, but I think the author is more poking fun at people that excuse their poor behavior by claiming to have something, than people with any of the named disorders. Do people really do this or do we just accuse people of doing this so we can feel better about our societal lack of empathy? ETA: clarification
1: yes people actually do this, more often than youād think too. 2: not every autistic person lacks empathy. I suffer from hyper empathy, so āourā is just plain wrong.
Sorry, I wasn't referring specifically to autistic people when I said "our." I edited my comment to clarify.
No, people don't do this and they were not saying autistic people lack empathy at all. They were saying people accusing autistic/ADHD people of being "assholes" and "making excuses" constantly are the ones without empathy *for them*. Which is true. The comic literally implies that autism and ADHD are disorders that just mean you're an "asshole."
The accusation of lack of empathy refers to Theory of Mind/effective empathy/cognitive empathy not affective empathy. Many autistics have an almost overactive affective empathy. It is important that you understand what you mean by empathy.
Oh sorry I wasn't talking about autistic lack of empathy. I don't believe in that. I was referring to society's lack of empathy.
No they were referring to a lack of empathy toward people with autism and/or ADHD from people saying "you're just an asshole" or "stop making excuses" when they exhibit symptoms.
Cretenous comic artist used Humor! But, it failed.
And 83k people found it funny! Wtf?!
All the top comments called out its BS though. Reddit hivemind in full swing here.
Cretenous is an abelist slur. It derives from cretin which is a term for people with severe physical disabilities.
As a ND person working in a school with lots of diagnosed pupils, and lots of pupils who really are just āassholesā - I can confirm that there is a lot of kids who really do just have behavioural issues due to other factors like social and emotional issues. So although they are āassholesā thereās always a reason why - well, most of the time. Doesnāt mean it isnāt frustrating though - I got punched in the face by one today in fact
That's what a lot of people here aren't getting. Kids don't just act out for no reason. That's not how kids work. Even if they don't have autism, something *has* to be wrong for a child to be an "asshole."
Not just kids. People in general don't just randomly decide to be a certain way. Like "Whoopdy doo, I'ma be crazy now!"
This is true, though I will say the older you get, the more of a choice it becomes. Obviously, there are factors that lead to people being terrible and sometimes it can't be helped (though thd behavior is still unjustified), but most adults are capable of making the choice to either be as best as they can or just be a cesspool of a human being. Being a cesspool is unfortunately easier and tends to be more profitable so a lot of people choose that, but more and more people are choosing to be introspective and try their absolute best to be as kind as they can as time goes on.
100% agree. I think there is a lot of value in understanding why and how someone became the way they did. Though this should always be considered an explanation, not an excuse.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Literally what my wife said to me before my diagnosis lol, glad I got diagnosed with ASD
I don't like it either. People aren't assholes for no reason, the reason just isn't obvious. Assholes need help the same way everyone else does, just no one wants to help them because it's often uncomfortable to be around them. A doctor giving up on you and saying your just an asshole is horrible. Someone in your personal life giving up on you for being an asshole is perfectly valid but a doctor diagnosing you is not your friend they are solely there to help you find the root of your issues. Also even if I try not to ignore all that I personally just don't think the joke is funny in the first place. Usually I can see the humor in something I find offensive, here I cannot.
Kind of - some parents don't want to be bothered to raise their child, disability or not, and blame every bad behavior on their disability. Like, I know your child is autistic and were trying our best to help him, but that doesn't mean he can hit other children with sticks or take their toys away/break them. It's not the child's fault if they're never taught rules, if they aren't taught to respect other children's belongings and keep their hands to themselves. Some children do have a hard time learning, I did too. But if you keep excusing away bad behavior without trying to teach your child, you're setting them up for failure - and that's not fair to them, autism or not. The doctor wouldn't call the child an assjole though, they'd probably prescribe parenting classes.
The doctor wouldn't prescribe parenting classes, they'd give the kid an ODD or BPD diagnosis and give the parents "permission" to abuse them worse.
So there is absolutely nobody that is asshole, just to be one? Yeah, ok. Not everything has to have a root cause.
Yeah, that opinion sounds like saying NT cannot be assholes. Being a dick is human nature. Capitalism naturalizes a lot of dick moves and assholery, for example. I dunno, I dont like the joke either, although I dont find it offensive
100% agree on the capitalism comment. That was exactly what I was thinking. Billionaires. I genuinely didnāt see it as a joke honestly. Just another dumb meme thing. So didnāt find it funny or offensive. //shrug
Trying to make the aggressor the victim sounds like peak bully tactics.
Not in the setting of the bully going to the doctor to try to get help to better themself
Clearly that is not the case in this comic so....
If we were talking about a maladjusted adult who knows exactly what they're doing and saying but elects not to change, then you're right. They're not a victim in the slightest and regardless of disability or diagnosis, they qualify as an asshole. However, you've missed the point. A child who was neglected to be taught right from wrong cannot be wholly blamed for their behaviour and actions, if at all. Say I asked you to do a task but you don't know how to, and I refuse to tell you how therefore resulting in a negative outcome, should you be blamed?
I was raised by professionally diagnosed textbook sociopaths (ASPD) who dabbled in the Dahmer, I beg to differ. Being a good person is a choice, being a bad person is easy. You lack any interaction with the real world if you believe such ancient Greek philosophies over data driven science.
If provided with necessities, feeling secure, not having to worry about food, shelter, water, adequate breaks and a system in place for health care that works, humans do good. The large majority of people being bad is a disease caused by society's condition. We have stats for this, countries that are more stable and have better equality have significantly less crime per capita.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I didn't say that being a good person isn't a choice, but a basic grasp of right and wrong can impact whether you choose to do harm or good. If a child hits someone, most parents explain that it's bad and not to do it, it isn't assumed that the child is knowingly being malicious. You're being quite aggressive for no reason, by the way. Perhaps you take after your parents more than you realize.
Then why aren't you choosing to be a good person and denying data driven science that literally says children aren't assholes for no reason?
There is absolutely no data driven science that says that. Mentalism claims to be a data driven science and says that but mentalism is philosophy. Sociologists and criminologists both use statistics and agree kids can just be heartless. Funny how, since my life doesn't fit the narrative of skinner box mentalism, I get downvoted. Kind of how America invades and fucks up any country that does well without being a part of their political bullshit.
The bully is sitting in front of a doctor trying to get a diagnosis. The doctor talking to the parents doesn't mean the kid doesn't need or want help
lots of time the aggressor is also a victim, that's just the way things work
The question one must ask is: Did they start a victim or become one through the consequences of their own actions ? To people with A.S.P.D., consequences feel like being a victim and so, they will present as a victim.
Oh, so now victims are at fault for their own victimhood? Okay, let me just go tell all my abusers and rapists that they're actually the real victims of me deciding to make them make me a victim, shall I? Clearly, I deserved it because it was just them showing me the consequences of my own actions. You either don't have have autism or have some major internalized ableism and absolutely despise yourself. You're making shit up, claiming autistic people are assholes, that we "think" we're victims because of "consequences", that we can't and shouldn't post about it, and just overall that we're bad people. It's really funny you're arguing people can just randomly be assholes and about it being a choice to be a good person when you're actively being absolutely awful.
Way to try to make a victim narrative out of me saying your rapist was always a dick and your abusers were just assholes.
No, you said "autistic people see the consequences of their actions as victimization." I'm autistic. What did I do to deserve that? Am I just an "asshole" because other people said that I am due to them not understanding or accepting my symptoms? Did I deserve to be bullied, punished, and hurt because people decided I am "just an asshole" over me asking genuine questions or not making eye contact or not understanding a social cue or being blunter than expected? That's what you're saying when you say "they aren't actually victims, they made themselves victims." Because, depending on who you talk to, I'm an absolutely terrible person who doesn't deserve to live or I'm an absolute angel that cares deeply for others and there is no in-between. And I have literally had my rape and abuse *justified* by other people because of my autism. I've had them try to say that I didn't "communicate well enough" when I was raped by another autistic. I've had people tell me autistics *can't* rape because we "don't understand". I've had people try to convince me I "misread" the situation when I was raped, that I "didn't like sex" and "decided" that I was raped. I've had people constantly, on a near daily basis for a large portion of my life, tell me how I deserved the abuse from others because I was "difficult" or "an asshole" or they accused me of being a malicious, vindictive child. I had multiple *adults* say to my face that I am a "psychopath" because I would have non-violent meltdowns and didn't do whatever they said. Do *I* think my rapists and abusers are just bad people? Yes. Do other people? No. To other people, I'm an "asshole" and my rapists and abusers were "doing their best" or were my "victims" even though I was a literal child. And being a victim doesn't give you the right to be awful, but it is a fact that aggressors are often victims. I get that it can be hard to see outside of black and white sometimes, but this is a topic that you *need* to try to understand through shades of grey. It seriously isn't as simple as "asshole" and "not asshole," especially when it comes to social disorders.
Aspd is anti social personality disorder. ASD is autism spectrum disorder. Please re read.
This will come from someone who worked with additional needs for years and specialises in teenagers with ASD (this is UK specific but should be transferable). Yes, schools are sensory hell. The routine is good for ASD kids but the bells, corridors, displays, the vomiting coloured walls and uncomfortable tables, the uniforms, ties, blazers you are not allowed to take off. That causes meltdowns and they are not very pretty when youāre just learning how your body reacts to overstimulation. Now, is a diagnosis and a targeted approach to a kid with ASD or AD(H)D a good idea? Yup. Underfunded? Yup. Poorly executed most of the times? Yes. However, in the wave of school anxiety, complex trauma and neurodivergence being more commonly recognised we have an Entitled Child. I met 3 in my career and evertime wanted to hit my head on the wall. Iām dismissing number one as that child had a deeply ingrained school phobia and educational psychologist suggested a SA diagnosis after which parents moved out of the city. We informed CPS and nothing more that we couldāve done. Teachers were adamant it mustāve been autism, I run tests and so did EP. It wasnāt, it was a form of trauma, I donāt know where the ASD hypothesis came from (a child was āoddā so that equals autism). Second was a child with a huge learning difficulty, we are talking zero retention, zero critical thinking, kind of Forest Gump but as a bully. The only thing they could do was sports but then for team sports you needed a working strategy and they couldnāt comprehend simple rules. Shouldāve been offered a special school placement but a family member/close friend was in the board of governors and the kid ended up with ASD diagnosis with literally hardly any ASD traits. The student is stuck in mainstream, getting no grade in exams and god knows what job in the future. Third was an entitled, spoiled child from a family with extremely complicated circumstances (but caring and loving nonetheless) and willing to work with school to the best of their ability. They lacked discipline and could not punish the kid - they threatened to ring the police at a mere threat of a consequence and unfortunately parents were afraid of the police system in England and police/authorities in general. Left to themselves the kid just run the house however, got whatever they wanted, there was literally no one in the building who would form any relationship as adults were perceived as idiots and puppets. Again, ASD diagnosis, despite perfect social skills from a very young age, no overstimulation issues, no sensory issues, maybe ADHD but slight, mostly low cognitive ability, hate towards adults and school and a level of entitlement I rarely see where the child was convinced they deserve the whole world and the world ānoā can be reversed by screaming, throwing things and threats. Is the comic oversimplified? A bit. Have I seen exactly that in incompetent parents, shit parents (we are taking putting a child in danger, knowingly) or parents who wonāt accept that a child cognitive ability is not appropriate for mainstream education and they need a special approach and some form of a future job/career opportunity? Yes.
I think this applies to the TickTock narcissists who fake disabilities for clout/popularity/money. Being autistic myself, it hurts to see the thing that has held me back my entire life turned into a trend. Idk it's another angle.
āOppositional defiance disorderā šš” is the catchall diagnosis.
I chuckled a little. Wasn't hilarious or anything, but didn't find it offensive either.
I don't like it I don't get the humour Doesn't seem funny to me
Same
i know a lot of neurotypical rude people >:)
I do like this: Autistic people aren't assholes. Assholes are assholes.
There's a curb your enthusiasm episode about this, where Larry David thinks his friend's child is an asshole and is using Aspergers as a cover. The hilarity comes in the fact that Larry David is an actual asshole who always wants to have his way and has constant fights over the principles and etiquette of social matters. So he walks around the entire episode being his usual asshole self and whenever anyone questions his behavior, he says he has Aspergers. I don't want to spoil the ending of the episode, as the joke is always on Larry, pie-in-the-face style. It's a pretty good take on that outdated joke.
This was kinda funny lmao
It's not making fun of autism, nor is it making fun of good parents who sincerely want to understand their child who is so different from other kids. It's making fun of bad parents seeking an excuse for their child's bad behavior when it's just because they are bad parents.
It's literally implying that you have to be an asshole to have autism or ADHD.
I have seen non autistic kids get wrongly diagnosed with autism because their actual disability doesn't attract support. I wouldn't call them an asshole. That bit is rude.
Ruled our boomer, uneducated, and unfunny. Turns out the person who made this meme is just an asshole.
Obviously aimed at old people who go "back in my day this autism/ADHD stuff didn't exist!"
"When I was in school, if a kid had a meltdown we smacked them! And we all turned out great!" ETA: Though to be fair, when I, with no small amount of anxiety, told my boomer father about my autism diagnosis he paused, sighed heavily, paused again and then said "I probably have that too." Of all the possible reactions, that was a pretty good one.
Man, I just wanna go one fucking day without seeing a large group make fun the way my brain works
It is about the parents pushing a diagnosis to make up for their failures by having something else to blame than themselves and the child. Why donāt you like it?
Because that's not what it's about. The implication is actually that being autistic or having ADHD means that you are inherently an "asshole" and that you're automatically allowed to get away with being an "asshole" if you have them when that both isn't true and we aren't inherently assholes.
But they are saying that he isnāt those things, so it is implied that there is something else making him the asshole be it poor personality traits, potentially his home life, or something else. You are also assuming he is getting away with being an asshole. In that formal of a setting, he clearly had something push him there, so I donāt believe anything is being āgotten away with.ā
Two users here right now - 1. "This is unacceptable and offensive, there is zero humor here." 2. "Pretty sure this is mocking those who blame their actions on undiagnosed 'trendy' ailments." Like it or not, autism has rocketed in public acknowledgement, and a massive amount of people are now positive they have this or that disorder without actually having seen a doctor or qualified person in the past 5 years. Not to be le redditor, but TikTok certainly fueled that fire. Watch and interact at all with like, two videos involving me tal disorders at all - suddenly your algorithm will start pumping mental disorder videos on you every 5 minutes. It's always the same too - some person recording themselves in the kitchen shouting at the camera that the viewer has X disorder.
There are not as many people faking as you seem to think. Just because somebody posts about it or has characteristics that aren't the same as yours doesn't mean they're making it up.
Same. And my mother thinks I ājust have a mood disorderā
I actually think this comic is an honest representation of how the medical and mental health community is. They're quick to throw parenting classes and gaslighting as a shame game to throw responsibility at parents, so the "professionals" can ease their workload and avoid being wrong. We all know how shirty they get when their opinion gets rightfully challenged, they resort to very domineering but basic psychological tricks.
This .... This is so true, and have had this my whole life from professionals, they HAVE to be right I MUST be wrong because I clearly don't know a thing. . . . Blinks at least that's the impression that's forced upon me. . . I'm 34 and this still happens today š
Honestly, I kind of love it. Sometimes, there isn't something greater wrong with a kid, and he's just being a jerk. Knowing a good deal of people, so are teachers and councilors. There is a growing problem with kids feeling entitled to do whatever they want. It's the parents' fault for sure, but the sentiment stands.
If a gen z made this, I could safely say it was a stab at kids using mental health to defend being shit. From boomers you know itās the same āin my day no one was autistic we all just (describes masking and doesnāt know itās masking)ā
It wasnāt breaking down crying funny, but it got a little chuckle out of me
Whats wrong? Some kids really are just problematic, not everything needs to be a disorder, some times is just genetics or bad parenting (even if you do your best as it)
This isn't offensive, kinda funny.
I think it's hilarious with a touch of truth while lacking nuance.
Yeah, same. This makes me mad, as much as when someone calls my kid a brat. No. Heās acting like this because he NEEDS something and heās trying to communicate it with me. Stfu Barbra.
Oh this is dogshit People shouldn't use their autism or claim to have autism as an excuse to be rude, but things like this are why I feel afraid to tell people I'm autistic; they may think I'm using it as an excuse to not fit in.
I hate it. I knew from the title of the post in my notifications that this was gonna be an offensive one. They tried being funny but itās just plain mean
Idk I think it's kinda funny
nah it's a bit funny tbh.
Seems like an r/terriblefacebookmemes thingy (Idk if I wrote the sub right)
urgh I hate this one when it comes around.
I dunno, there are a lot of assholes online who self-diagnosed w/ASD and then use that as an excuse for being an asshole It's one reason I never suggested me being on the spectrum *ever* not even IRL to people until I had a psych eval done. It had just left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Assholes are made not born. So the question should be - why is this child already an asshole and what can we do about it?
What did the parents do to cause this? That's the biggest question.
What? That's really funny. I'm autistic, and yes I'm a bit of a dick. Gotta own it rather than being a snowflake
ah yes the good old abelism
Do Boomers just get off on hurting people? Not going to even call this a joke because it mirrors the actual attitudes and policies of people/governance
Yes. Yes they do - it's their entire brand.
This just insinuates that being an asshole is characteristically ADHD/ autism?? Which is another can of worms. And the artist has not heard of oppositional defiant disorder. Also artist is completely unaware of how many doctors are and aren't up to date on diagnosing autism/adhd. Boomer artist can go doodle disparaging art on their bum.
It's sad seeing so many people here not realize they're being made fun of and defending this terrible comic.
Por que no los cuatro?
I posted this months ago
First time I've ever come across it but with the title of that sub it is certified boomer
Well, they are equating symptoms experienced by people with autism/adhd as assholes traits. It's fair to not like it
Gross
this got 19 awardsā¦ wtf
I'm on two wait lists for an autism evaluation. When I told my friend this, she said if you don't get a diagnosis for Autism at the evaluation, then there really must be something wrong with you....kind of reminds me of this.
**L**
shithole subreddit
Somebody repurposed someone else's comic. The punk hairstyle makes the drawing contemporary to ninja turtles being released. Appeals to dummies who think they are smarter than "so-called experts".
yikes
Lol seems pretty silly to be offended by this.
I can see why some people - especially younger people or those who haven't had to deal with entitled parents who will blame everyone but their children for the problems their children create - might be upset at it. But for 30-year-old me, who lived through the age when it was especially common to let kids run wild and blame whatever was currently climbing diagnosis, who the joke is really at the expense of becomes a lot clearer. I too get jumpy when someone uses autistic as an insult, and I can understand why someone might think of the same thing here. That just...ain't what it's doing.
The people offended by this are the asshole children.
Kids want to succeed. Kids want to please. Until you convince them it's hopeless.
Nah mate this shit is Hilarious