Adults With Autism

When talking about autism in general, people usually focus on children with autism or its variants.  I have seldom heard about information about adults with autism or high functioning autism.   I was thrilled but still able to hold my tears in my eyes when I listened to a NPR talk show about this topic today during my lunch break.  In his show “Making The World Work For Adults With Autism”, the host and his guests, the authors of an article “Autism's First Child”, talked about the life of adults with autism and the social environment around them.  Many ardent parents of autistic children also called in to discuss and share their own experiences.

Families with autistic kids surely have more to be concerned about.  The cruel reality is that autism will not end when their kids gradually grow into adults.  Their disability will continue to affect them when they grow up.  The only difference is that they are going to face new types of challenges in their adult life.   The parents of those who need help on their day-to-day living willl have their greatest concern because they can't take care of them forever.  For those whose syndrome is less severe to be independent enough to support themselves, they still have a long and rough way ahead of them.  Studying in college, starting a career, making friends, dating, pursuing a family, along with many other unpreditable things ahead,  none of them is by no mean easy for them in our current social environment.

Unfortunately, our society seems more tolerant toward children with autism than adults with the same disability, and the public is more tolerant toward physical disability than neurological disability.  A blind person surely gets more help or understandings from the general public than a person with autism.  Part of the reason might be that the public really doesn’t fully understand the nature of this disability, and thus doesn't know how to interact with those who have it.  These people are absolutely not arrogant(曲高傲寡) as some other people have many misconceptions on them.  They simply just lack the ability to interact with others in a given social environment.  It is so sad that it is their disability that block in their way to get help from the outside world.  It is also so sad that it is the same disability that makes it difficult for the society as a whole just to make the world work for them.