I think my son must be autistic…

Reading the Ofsted publication, Local Authorities and Home Education, 090267,  2010; something rather curious strikes one. After mentioning that a quarter of the parents who spoke to the inspectors had children with special educational needs, the report continues;

There were also those whose parents, often supported by medical diagnosis, identified the children (many of whom were very able) as having some form of autistic spectrum disorder. 

I understand this to mean that among the parents who met the inspectors were those who had themselves diagnosed their own children as being on the autistic spectrum, without any clinical input by a doctor,  educational psychologist  or anybody else. This is not in the least surprising; claiming that their children are autistic, dyslectic or are  suffering from dyspraxia,  is something of a theme running through large swathes of the British home education scene. How many readers have either heard at groups or read on blogs and internet lists, statements such as;

I’m sure my son has Aspergers

I told his teacher that I thought she was dyslectic

I think he may be on the spectrum

Now it’s entirely possible that some of these children will go on to be diagnosed with such syndromes, but an awful lot won’t. In fact  some of these parents admit that their son or daughter has seen a psychologist who has found no signs of autism or dyslexia. This does not shake their conviction that there is a neurological reason for their child’s inability to learn to read or get on with other kids.

This seems to be a particularly home educating thing. Most of the parents that I have dealings with at schools,  commonly resist any suggestion that their children are different; let alone that they have some kind of learning difficulty.  Home educating parents, by contrast, often  embrace the idea with a strange fervor! I am not at all sure why this should be, but there is no doubt at all that it is something which crops often in  home education in this country.  Even more curious is the way in which some home educating parents then adopt autism as an identity for themselves. They suddenly  realise that the reason that they didn’t have many friends when they were at school was because they were autistic. Obviously, they were geniuses,  savants on the spectrum  who went unrecognised by their stupid teachers! This really is a home educating thing; in the sense that I have never encountered it in any other parents. This self-identification with people with Kanner’s and Asperger’s syndromes can be taken to weird extremes. The woman running the biggest face book group for home educators, she lives in Doncaster, even signed up to an Aspies’ dating site a couple of years back.

None of this is to suggest that many home educated children are not on the autistic spectrum.  I am merely observing that whereas in the schooled population there is often a reluctance to accept such a diagnosis, among home educators it seems almost to be a badge of honour; allowing them to join the club, as it were!

Non-professional diagnoses

I was interested to see yesterday a couple of people making diagnoses of mental disorders without even meeting the person upon whom they were passing judgement. This is not uncommon in some home educating circles. On Cheryl Moy’s blog, at which we looked yesterday, somebody left a comment about the psychologist whom her son saw. She said;



This guy sounds like he is on the autistic spectrum in a big way.



There is something stupendously offensive about this sort of casual use of ‘autistic’ being used just to indicate a person who seems to lack empathy! And of course on here, somebody commented, calling me;



a man who displays such obvious traits of serious personality disorder



Now of course when adults engage in name calling of this sort, it is a bit of harmless fun, although some people will obviously be offended at the idea of using ‘autistic’ as a catch-all phrase for people they don’t like the sound of, as we saw done on Cheryl’s blog yesterday. Doing it to children can be a little more serious.

I think that most of us have come across home educating parents who say that their children are on the spectrum or dyslectic, despite never having been properly diagnosed. It is pretty common and I am not of course the only one to remark upon it. What motive could any parent have for doing this?

Nobody likes to think that they have a stupid, lazy or unpopular child. Of course we all like to kid ourselves that our children are talented, well liked and creative. As long as they are at home with us, we can continue to believe this; it is when they go off to school that we find that others do not share our own unrealistic views of our children! It can be something of a shock to find that your gifted child is falling behind in reading or has no friends. Is it because your parenting skills were defective? Is the kid idle; is that why he is not achieving academically? Why has he no friends? Perhaps he is surly or spiteful and that is why nobody wants to play with him…

There is a far better explanation than this; one which lets us off the hook entirely! My kid has no friends because he has Asperger’s. Or he is struggling with reading because he is dyslectic. This sort of thing removes at a stroke the possibility that your parenting was at fault or that you have a slow witted or unpleasant child.

Middle class children of course tend to be informally diagnosed in this way more than working class kids, simply because their parents are more prone to anxiety and guilt. They are also more likely to be familiar with disorders like ASD and so are able to tailor the symptoms to fit their children. This is a fascinating topic and one of which I have had a good deal of experience from the quarter century that I was working in East London with children with special educational needs. I wonder if anybody has any particularly interesting examples of this syndrome which they would like to share?

Community leaders

One of the things which has amused me over the years is the way in which  individuals manage to portray themselves as the leaders of some community or other. It happens with Caribbeans, Muslims, Jews and various other minorities. All too often, these people are chancers who are really speaking only for themselves and a small group of like-minded friends. The same thing has happened with home education and the result is that the pushiest and most vociferous end up representing the majority of parents; at least in the eyes of the government, local authorities and so on. Why else would so many local authorities advise newly home educating parents to contact Education Otherwise?


In fact, a very small group of people make most of the noise about home education in this country. Talking to most ordinary parents, those who do not belong to so-called ‘support groups’, you will find, for example,  that almost all of them regard monitoring by their local authority in much the way that I did myself; that is to say as a necessary nuisance. If you ask any of those whom we might call the ‘community leaders’ though, you will find a very different view being put forward. This is the case with a number of other aspects of home education; a tiny group manages to make their own odd agenda appear to be the consensus view.

Now although there is only a small core of very militant home educators or former home educators involved in this business, they are very well organised and work constantly to ensure that their extreme views are accepted as being the norm. I have explained before how this is done and I do not want to go into it again now. It is enough to say that perhaps fifty or a hundred people at most manage to create the illusion that they speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of home educating parents in Britain. This is a very small and self-selected group and what I have noticed is that almost all of those whom I have learned anything about, share certain characteristics. I do not think that they are typical of home educators in general. One of the things which I have observed is that almost without exception, the high profile home educators have certain difficulties. I shall go into this in detail either tomorrow or the next day, but for now I will say that nearly all the people one sees representing themselves as speaking on behalf of home educators either have, or claim to have, some kind of learning difficulty or mental illness. These range from dyslexia and attention deficit disorder to being bipolar and autistic. In many cases, these problems have been self-diagnosed, but that in itself is interesting.

I shall not be naming names, but talking in general terms. Mind, the way that some of these people boast of their problems through the medium of blogs and so on, there is no real need for secrecy! I want to explore the possibility that much of what is being done by the leaders, or apparent leaders, of home education in this country is actually counter productive and causes more trouble than it is worth for ordinary parents. I also want to look at the extent to which their activities might be influenced by, or even a direct consequence of, their own disorders.

The terminology of disability

I was faintly taken aback yesterday to find somebody here asking me if I was on the autistic spectrum simply because I had not found something she said offensive. She had written a pastiche of my profile on here which was apparently intended to offend me but which I found mildly amusing and finished off by saying, 'Offensive, isn't it?' I responded in a humorous vein by asking innocently,
'Offensive to whom?'
To which she replied,
'Really? Are you sure you are not on the autistic spectrum? '
I think, although it is difficult to be sure, that she was the same person who said that she thought that I had Asperger's syndrome because I can be a little forthright in expressing my opinions. I have to say, this is a pretty bizarre idea; that somebody who responds good naturedly to something deliberately offensive, should then be diagnosed as having a disability! It really makes me wonder about the mental processes of anyone who could use such peculiar logic.

It is funny how the use of expressions like these changes over the years. We routinely use the word 'idiot' as an insult, but barely a century ago it was a precise clinical diagnosis, being the term used for somebody with an IQ of less than 30. The same applied to the word 'imbecile', (IQ 26 -50) and of course 'moron' (IQ 51-70). These were once very useful words, although few of us would dream of employing them today to describe somebody with learning difficulties! Because people began using them as insults, they became devalued and professionals abandoned them. This is a shame, because of course it is very useful to have exact terms for levels of learning disability like this. Spastic is another clinical description which we rarely use these days. We tend to refer instead to those with cerebral palsy. This is of course because 'spastic' has gone the same way as the words 'idiot' and 'imbecile'; that is to say they have all degenerated into mere abuse. Still, children are usually a step ahead of us when we try to deprive themselves of such handy ways of being rude. Since the Spastics' Society re-branded itself as Scope a few years ago, children in the playground now call each other 'scopers' rather than 'spastics'!

There are two problems with the use of euphemism like this. The first is that the euphemisms quickly become offensive themselves. 'Retarded' went out a few years ago to be replaced with 'mentally handicapped'. We now talk of special needs and learning difficulties. If I referred here to some kid being retarded, I suspect that it might cause offence and yet only a few years ago it would have been perfectly correct and unobjectionable. My daughter tells me that 'retard' is a popular term of abuse at her college. There is a very high turnover in euphemisms in the field of special educational needs and if you use an outdated one then you immediately reveal yourself as at best out of touch and at worst insensitive. How shall we describe that blind kid? Differently abled? Visually impaired? Having seeing difficulties? Fortunately, because I work in Hackney and Haringey I am always on the ball in this respect! The other problem is that useful words and phrases are avoided and everybody gets muddled up. 'Learning difficulties' is used with slightly different meanings by teachers, nurses and social workers and can mean anything from mild dyslexia to catastrophic brain damage. Somebody who is hearing impaired might be a little hard of hearing in one ear or he could be completely deaf.

This is why I object to the use of 'autistic' or 'Asperger's' to describe somebody who appears to be rude or insensitive. There are plenty of rude and insensitive people in the world and very few of them have Asperger's Syndrome. And of course not all those who have Asperger's Syndrome are rude and insensitive. Using the expression in a pejorative way simply has the effect of reinforcing sterotypes. If we sling words like autistic and Asperger's about too freely then they will soon become debased and meaningless. There are any number of ways to describe me without resorting to the terminology of disability. Self-opinionated, arrogant, snobbish, blunt; all these are probably quite adequate! Asperger's Syndrome is a very clear diagnosis and if we are not careful it will go the same way as 'idiot' or 'moron' and we will get up one morning and find that it is no longer in polite usage. In fact, I have heard kids using 'autistic' in the same way that they once used 'spastic', so I suspect that this process might already have begun. Saloon bar pundits regularly suggested that Gordon Brown displayed the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome and I have heard this said of other politicians who lack charm or charisma. It is becoming quite fashionable to dismiss somebody whom you find aloof as probably having Asperger's. To this extent, I am fighting a losing battle here and ten years down the line both 'Asperger's' and 'autistic' will have slipped into the same category as 'spastic' and 'imbecile'. It is just slightly depressing to see the parents of children on the autistic spectrum hastening this process along!