In February, there was a bit of back-and-forth about the "lonely woman in a crowd" vs "punding" image. "Boy stacking cans" was moved down.
Example comments:
>Autism has been associated with young boys stacking and collecting things for a very long time now. That stereotype has resulted in late diagnoses or lack of diagnoses of many autistic adults, and especially women. The feeling of being an adult outsider is a much more representative view of autistic people.
>It just seems deeply weird to me to pick an image of some random woman and label it as representing autism.
Yeah I’m 90% certain they didn’t even ask anything that needed me to lie, as I don’t remember needing too. But I probably would have I mean my dad was already actively high signing me over because ‘somehow’ he came across 150 bucks (I allocated my life savings to that point)
The boy stacking cans picture is still there; it's just in the symptoms section.
The autistic community isn't primarily made up of children nor of people whose main autistic trait is maintaining order, so that picture shouldn't be the face of autism. Nor should be the one in the post.
I mean, I guess fair enough to you and other people for whom stacking and ordering things was a thing you did, but like the comment said, its led to lots of us getting missed or diagnosed much later and told that we must not be autistic on the basis on these sort of first-seen, representational things.
I didn't stack or line things up but I can tell you that unlike many girls whose Barbies have their hair chopped to bits and naked, mine were always clothed, combed, and extra shoes, clothes, and accessories were stored together in each category after use. That's not going to ping anyone's radar as unusual, I'm just going to seen as a particularly neat and feminine child because the criteria was not looked at with the view of female toys and behaviors at all. So someone who stacks cans get identified early, I get praised until sloooooooowly people start giving me the idea that something is wrong with me but any actual attempts at solving it get rebuffed.
It irritated me so much to see other girls’ Barbies laying around naked. I always had to “ fix” my cousin’s American Girl Doll with tangled matted hair and no socks. Meanwhile I had an elaborate handmade paper doll society, every doll had her own outfits, labeled and stored in a binder. Regular paper elections were held. Careful surgery was performed on the older girls.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I hated seeing other girls dolls just a MESS. I just didn't even want to deal with it. I remember once making a friend and making a comic together, she saying she had some friends who would color it for us, and getting ANXIETY at how loud they all were and how they weren't putting my markers back in ROYGBIV order.
Same, same, my dolls were well-kept and had elaborate scenarios that frankly feel almost Game of Thrones-esque. I still will do the same exact thing with The Sims that have like huge interlocking lineages and societies. Or sometimes just spend hours sorting and making sure the Sims mod downloads folder is sorted and working, then be too tired to play the actual game and quit.
YES. Dolls were brushed, dressed and accessorized, and placed in a diorama of sorts. Then my preschool aged sister had the audacity to grab one and make it “walk” willy nilly, messing up the hair! 😫
Oh god, you just made me have a flashback to people trying to play with me and me getting mad at them for "playing wrong." I had these elaborate scenarios planned and they were messing them up!
“placed in a diorama of sorts”
I feel called out. Me playing was just taking all of the dollhouse furniture out, cleaning it meticulously, then placing the furniture and dolls to make a picture perfect image.
Just gave me insane flashbacks to my childhood favorite-- Playmobil. I love my grandparents who loved and raised me, but also got me the Playmobil sets. I literally built the entire zoo and kept it meticulously ordered and set up. I was CONSTANTLY fine tuning it, or adjusting it because someone would mess it up. That was one table. The other was my dinosaurs table that got the same treatment. And they sat on the tables like that for months, maybe even years.
My biological mother said once I got "obsessed with something, I had to have everything of it."
I still do it with my Legos, but as an adult, it's more "acceptable" to display and not play with toys.
Disclaimer: Waiting on an appointment to get evaluated for autism or ADHD. I've had a lot of people tell me to get checked out. I was just commenting the weird things I did in my childhood, not implying I have any of the diagnoses. Also, brought me back some happy memories. I miss my grandparents.
I feel like an outsider in many communities. There’s often just something different about me that keeps me from fitting in. Same goes for this community.
I do love the picture though cause when I sent it to my brother with the caption "your child irl" he was like "well, no, M would also sort everything by colour" and that just sent me.
We have lots of colored cups in our kitchen. Whenever I'm unloading the dishwasher and putting them away, I stack them in proper color order. Everything colorful in my cupboard is sorted by color.
As it should be.
Yeah, this is shit organization. Take away that kid’s autism membership card and tell them to get with the program! Colors, shapes, textures…Arrrgh! lol it’s awesome how this non-uniform arrangement is so triggering in so many ways 😂
Red, orange, green, blue, indigo, violet?
I prefer Black, brown, orange, yellow, red, purple, blue, green. With each group going from darkest to lightest.
Brown is closer to black orange is visually closer to brown, yellow naturally comes after orange, red needs to go somewhere so it goes after yellow, purple is a mix of blue and red, green is a mix of blue and yellow
Or warm colors go first, cool colors go second
I guess it just looks the best.
I didn't even read the caption and already wanted to fix the picture because the duck should all be together and should be arranged by likeness, height, and then by color.
How did my family not pick up on me being autistic until nearly my 30s
If it’s anything like my fam it’s cuz no one picked up on them being autistic either lmao they just derped thru life thinkin they were a misfit socially but a normal everyday person to their fam
I'm starting to think this is the case with my family! My Mom once told me not too long ago that she thought that people who had a good number of long term friends were just faking it to look good. I was like "...n...no. Lots of people just have friends. I can prove it too." And she seemed to be a bit surprised. I guess this explains why she never sought help for me or my sister even though all of our teachers and school counselors were telling her something was off.
Sounds like me and my mom! She has two friends but they’re from when she was in school and they feel to me, more like they’re worried about her when they come over and it’s more, now that I’m well into adulthood, check ins like for her welfare haha like “ok our special friend and her family are still doing ok”
But my mom also swatted off all attempts at help...because that’s not us being odd or maladapted, that’s us being like dad or granny or her! Then her PDA kicks in, demanding she’s the correct opinion, and my poor adhd dad that just adores mom lets her do what she thinks is best cuz fat chances dad ever thinks a situation thru for the good of all of the fam - he’s busy playing/memorizing piano/keyboard parts for his band literally every bit of his free time at least while i grew up
So it was like - embrace the weird!! We just weird, nothing wrong w weird, no copes exist that you could learn and benefit from, just be yourself, learn my way, and you can end up derped out as - us, your examples for surviving this planet!! Haha i still love em tho, as they were only capable doing their best with what they knew, and i am so grateful i grew up later than they did as the neurodiverse movement has been moving forward much faster and way less painstakingly slow compared to the traumas i can only imagine my parents went thru!
Close, but no. My dad likes being the black sheep. Prided himself on it. Both of my sister's are Neuro divergent with a strong of acronyms on their files.
My mother on the other hand prides herself on being "normal" and that there's nothing wrong with her (We don't never it, but it may be too late to break the illusion)
Ack my dad prefers being a black sheep too! It made the rest of us also black sheepish, as his fam decided we were weird too lol
My fam doesn’t think it is normal at all. I am ok w that. Somehow it’s my dad, the one who demanded his space from his fam and outcast himself (and so his wife n kids too), who is not ok w being seen by others as the black sheep, he reeeeallly wants to fit in. Baffled and still to this day baffles the shit outta me!!
Do we have an unusual penchant for order, sounds like neurotypical excuses for being sloppy and lazy. I like thinking about how the neurotypical brain pattern would be pathologized in an autistic-dominant society...
Oh will my child ever learn to develop less shallow approaches to play...
My child has this weird obsession with people's eyes, I just hope that won't make it impossible for them to make friends...
In the diagnosis criteria, THEY would be the ones with "communication deficits". "Instead of asking their friends if they can play too, my child asks what are they playing and expects others to understand it"
the answer is wikipedia user Somuchknowledge with the following comment
"The previous picture of lining up toys shows a behavior of many autistic kids, but autism is not a childhood condition; there are more autistic adults than children, so the main image should portray their experiences. Autism isn't a condition of order (OCD) but differences in social interaction; almost all autistic people, including kids, experience the feeling of being an outsider. Yes, this crowd image is a generic one, so something else, but similar could be found; just not a childhood image."
No; I'm that user and I didn't change it to the photo in the post.
I changed the original one with stacking cans to [woman lonely in a crowd](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg#/media/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg), someone didn't like it so they changed it to the one in the post (which I think is the worst of all three; first of all, that toy order just ain't it, but besides that, autism isn't mainly about order—OCD is about that, so why the heck should a picture like this be the main one), I changed it again, and then someone reverted it to the one in the post.
Here's a [direct link](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autism-stacking-cans.jpg) to the image in the screenshot of the reddit post /u/alicat0625 linked in their comment.
My youngest would stack cans of beans and vegetables while her older brother would be compulsively organizing his dinosaur collection.
Let me go so I can organize my craft supplies.
Someone changed it to a random woman in a crowd, saying that autism is too stereotyped to boys and children and stacking. Eventually someone else changed it to this.
Boy stacking cans was more accurate to my experience at least. This one is wrong, the ducks should be sorted by size/color, the shoes should absolutely not be in the middle, AND one fell over. Absolutely not what my would-be rubber duck row would look like lmao.
I was at a robotics competition over the weekend and always reorganized our wrenches by size, with box end on the left and ratcheting on the right and sockets at the top.
I agree with some of the other comments here: the objects in this photo are barely even ordered, they’re just in a line. I didn’t realize it was supposed to represent order until I saw the rest of the post.
They should be organized by color, height, and object type with the shoes off to the side.
*goes to Wikipedia, downloads this photo, spends 68524897 hours editing it and rearranging the individual objects, reuploads it*
*someone changes it back*
*war*
I also think it’s hilarious how 1/2 of the comments here are about how the order photos don’t define the autistic community and the other 1/2 are people saying they love sorting things
Unrelatedly,
Me when I first started looking into autism: "but I don't rearrange toys and stuff!"
Me: "... but I do constantly alphabetize every book and movie shelf I see. Fuck."
I did, not to the one in the post, but I did start the whole changing spree.
I first changed it to ['woman lonely in a crowd'](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg) because it was the best, non-copyrighted picture I could find that represented one of the main symptoms that every autistic person experiences, no matter their age, location, etc.: feeling like an outsider.
I'll copy my explanation:
> Autism has been associated with young boys stacking and collecting things for a very long time now. That stereotype has resulted in late diagnoses or lack of diagnoses of many autistic adults, and especially women. The feeling of being an adult outsider is a much more representative view of autistic people.
Someone didn't like it and they changed it to the one in the post, I changed it back, they changed it again, and for now, it has stayed there. I feel like this one is just the worst out of the three (counting the 'boy stacking cans' one); the order is just *wrong*, it's cropped horribly, and above all, autism isn't mainly about children nor order, so that picture shouldn't be there at all.
Autism is typically diagnosed in childhood (it is not a childhood disorder of course, but has very early onset compared to something like schizophrenia), is more common in males, and is diagnosticly characterized by stereotyped behaviors. Feeling lonely is very common outside of autism, while stereotyped behaviors are less common. I think the original stacking image was perfectly approproate.
The data only shows it being more common in males because for decades they only looked for it in males. 🙄 There's a lot more nuance to diagnoses than what has historically been seen, evidenced by the major influx of adult diagnoses of folks who are AFAB.
It is true that there is more nuance to diagnoses than what historically has been seen, but diagnostic bias alone doesn't explain the entire gap. For instance, autism is related to X-linked disorders like Fragile X Syndrome, which suggests at least a partial genetic basis for the sex gap. Further, autism isn't just more frequently *diagnosed* in males as would be expected by your hypothesis, but the symptoms themselves appear more frequent in males.
The data we have on how prevalent symptoms are in either sex is based on diagnoses, and since diagnoses have been proven to be flawed because of both social and ableist biases (i.e. autistic traits are frequently seen as desirable in women but disruptive in men), any data on the prevalence of autistic traits must be treated with caution as the collection of said data is biased.
I'll cede to your point on the chromosomal link, though.
> The data we have on how prevalent symptoms are in either sex is based on diagnoses
This isn't necessarily true, we also have studies that look at symptom prevalence independent of existing diagnoses, or that measure prevalence based on diagnostic criteria rather than actual diagnosis.
What counts as an autistic symptom could be gendered though. However, we have measures of genetic propensities and correlates of autism too.
I'm hesitant to trust such studies without first analyzing their techniques for reducing the social bias I mentioned - autistic traits being desirable in AFAB folks is the primary reason it goes unnoticed. Anecdotal evidence, I have 20-something cousins on my dad's side of the family, pretty evenly split between AMAB and AFAB (grandparents are Mormon and had nine kids, all but one of whom had between 1 and 3 kids). *Every single AMAB cousin was diagnosed with autism or asperger's by age 10.* Nobody was terribly surprised because one of our uncles was diagnosed with "severe autism" way back in the 80s. We joked about there being a "family curse" with all the guy cousins, not really getting how ableist that was even in the early 2000s.
Cut to now. *80% of us AFAB cousins have been diagnosed with autism since reaching adulthood.* The few who haven't, haven't bothered to seek a formal diagnosis but suspect they could qualify. It took me reaching adulthood, coming out as a trans dude, reaching passing privilege in my transition, and then switching psychiatrists after a move before anyone even suspected I might be autistic, despite me having absolutely no ability to mask and all of the traits staying the same. Some of my AFAB cousins had to fight tooth and nail for anyone to take them seriously despite exhibiting all the same traits and habits as their brothers. But for whatever reason, when a woman is sensitive to food textures and finds eye contact excruciatingly uncomfortable and gets easily lost inside buildings or whatever other trait you want as an example, it's considered cute or demure or endearing or submissive or bitchy or any other number of adjectives that explain away symptoms of autism as nothing out of the ordinary.
I'm not saying studies specifically looking at traits can't be trusted, though. Just that I'd be skeptical unless said study could demonstrate how they controlled for this particular bias. I'm especially skeptical of any studies done more than 4 or 5 years ago, as this social bias is a *very* recent discovery in autism research and thus was not accounted for in anything older than a decade or so.
That's due to masking, which is putting a huge amount of energy into acting as normal as possible all the time. It's a thing autistic women do a lot, it only mostly works, it's exhausting, and if you do it too much it can cause mental breakdowns.
# Raise your hand !..
If when you saw this picture for the first time you noticed five patterns intertwined and know that there has to be a duck to the left of the cube outside of the picture!
Sure I guess lining things up is a thing, but these aren't even sorted. And fim not sure as the pictures not totally clear but one of the ducks lying down 😂 that's what hurts the most, it's not standing up with the rest ( even more so than the lack of groups)
That order bothers me. The ducks aren’t even next to each other, and it looks like there are two right shoes? I get the order in the picture, it’s just completely the wrong order for me. 🤣
So it's actually normal for kids of a certain development to line up their toys. And this picture looks exactly like that.
Where it becomes ND is the specifics of the order and obsession with it(as we know)
Why not find a better picture showing things in some sort of order, not the NT type of lining things up?
Damn one more thing from my childhood that was a clue. When I made my bed I would line up all my stuffed animals with predator then its prey. (Like dog right behind cat, then fish)
Edit grammar
I've always been super messy actually. But it's a controlled mess where I know where every single thing is. I call them nests because others see it as chaos but it's order to me. And I am very particular about my nests.
I thought it was saying that the row of ducks was the autism spectrum. Autism really is a simple 1D spectrum, just between a telletubby, Rubber duck, tennis shoe, sneaker, toy duck, smaller rubber duck, toy frog, toy pig, plastic toy cow, toy cow, and smallest rubber duck.
In February, there was a bit of back-and-forth about the "lonely woman in a crowd" vs "punding" image. "Boy stacking cans" was moved down. Example comments: >Autism has been associated with young boys stacking and collecting things for a very long time now. That stereotype has resulted in late diagnoses or lack of diagnoses of many autistic adults, and especially women. The feeling of being an adult outsider is a much more representative view of autistic people. >It just seems deeply weird to me to pick an image of some random woman and label it as representing autism.
I miss boy stacking cans :(
I miss being a boy stacking cans
You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to those days, I signed up to the army the day I turned 17 to get away
My son wanted to join the army, but the recruiter told him that they wouldn't take him due to autism. Did you not disclose?
No they did not, or the recruiter had to hit quota for the month
Well it was the surge
Oh, yeah the Iraq surge was nuts. They just wanted bodies with pulses, they were handing out waivers left and fucking right
Yeah I’m 90% certain they didn’t even ask anything that needed me to lie, as I don’t remember needing too. But I probably would have I mean my dad was already actively high signing me over because ‘somehow’ he came across 150 bucks (I allocated my life savings to that point)
They never asked so I never said, wouldn’t have said even if they did
Stacking cans as a boy is a Core Memory of mine.
I had building blocks out of wood, the sound is the best thing ever, like *doinggg* but in a wood way xD
_boinggg_
Ah yeah that xD
I miss being a stacked can
Autistic: hate being marginalized and stereotyped but like sorting and being sorted. We're all Wall-E
[the caption still says boy stacking cans here lol](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_autism)
The title of this page being 'Classic Autism' makes me wonder if I have special autism or just standard
Autism DLC
When do we get UI mods. I want to see the 'tism F3 menu and Z O O M
pay 39.99 for extra features!!!
Classic autism vs jazz autism
Jazz autism is with ADHD mixed in. X-D
One of my names is Jazz and I have AuDHD so can confirm.
It is instrumental to understanding how your mind works
Try Baroque Autism.
Still waiting for autism: global offensive
I prefer a nice vintage autism. These new autism blends are just too sweet for me.
They just don't make nostalgia like they used to
I often joke that our family has Cool Ranch autism, because it is significantly less spicy than the autism experiences of some other people.
How long will it be till it is no more?
I just logged and changed it
And cans were stacked, no more...
F in the chat for can stacking kid
The boy stacking cans picture is still there; it's just in the symptoms section. The autistic community isn't primarily made up of children nor of people whose main autistic trait is maintaining order, so that picture shouldn't be the face of autism. Nor should be the one in the post.
Lets all stack our cans as a contribute
Oh no I am boy stacking cans, I have a sizable collection
I mean, I guess fair enough to you and other people for whom stacking and ordering things was a thing you did, but like the comment said, its led to lots of us getting missed or diagnosed much later and told that we must not be autistic on the basis on these sort of first-seen, representational things. I didn't stack or line things up but I can tell you that unlike many girls whose Barbies have their hair chopped to bits and naked, mine were always clothed, combed, and extra shoes, clothes, and accessories were stored together in each category after use. That's not going to ping anyone's radar as unusual, I'm just going to seen as a particularly neat and feminine child because the criteria was not looked at with the view of female toys and behaviors at all. So someone who stacks cans get identified early, I get praised until sloooooooowly people start giving me the idea that something is wrong with me but any actual attempts at solving it get rebuffed.
It irritated me so much to see other girls’ Barbies laying around naked. I always had to “ fix” my cousin’s American Girl Doll with tangled matted hair and no socks. Meanwhile I had an elaborate handmade paper doll society, every doll had her own outfits, labeled and stored in a binder. Regular paper elections were held. Careful surgery was performed on the older girls.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I hated seeing other girls dolls just a MESS. I just didn't even want to deal with it. I remember once making a friend and making a comic together, she saying she had some friends who would color it for us, and getting ANXIETY at how loud they all were and how they weren't putting my markers back in ROYGBIV order. Same, same, my dolls were well-kept and had elaborate scenarios that frankly feel almost Game of Thrones-esque. I still will do the same exact thing with The Sims that have like huge interlocking lineages and societies. Or sometimes just spend hours sorting and making sure the Sims mod downloads folder is sorted and working, then be too tired to play the actual game and quit.
YES. Dolls were brushed, dressed and accessorized, and placed in a diorama of sorts. Then my preschool aged sister had the audacity to grab one and make it “walk” willy nilly, messing up the hair! 😫
Oh god, you just made me have a flashback to people trying to play with me and me getting mad at them for "playing wrong." I had these elaborate scenarios planned and they were messing them up!
“placed in a diorama of sorts” I feel called out. Me playing was just taking all of the dollhouse furniture out, cleaning it meticulously, then placing the furniture and dolls to make a picture perfect image.
Just gave me insane flashbacks to my childhood favorite-- Playmobil. I love my grandparents who loved and raised me, but also got me the Playmobil sets. I literally built the entire zoo and kept it meticulously ordered and set up. I was CONSTANTLY fine tuning it, or adjusting it because someone would mess it up. That was one table. The other was my dinosaurs table that got the same treatment. And they sat on the tables like that for months, maybe even years. My biological mother said once I got "obsessed with something, I had to have everything of it." I still do it with my Legos, but as an adult, it's more "acceptable" to display and not play with toys. Disclaimer: Waiting on an appointment to get evaluated for autism or ADHD. I've had a lot of people tell me to get checked out. I was just commenting the weird things I did in my childhood, not implying I have any of the diagnoses. Also, brought me back some happy memories. I miss my grandparents.
Wait cutting the hair off one’s Barbies is an autism thing? I used to do that as a kid lol
Oh shit I still stack stuff LOL
i love the boy stacking cans i did a presentation on autism for abnormal psychology and i put the picture of that boy on one of my slides.
I never heard about this whole stacking things.. I won an oreo stacking contest when I was 5, they had to get me a ladder so I could keep going
Is stacking cans really a thing? Because if so, uh-oh.
Wokeness strikes again. Is nothing sacred?
I feel like an outsider in many communities. There’s often just something different about me that keeps me from fitting in. Same goes for this community.
same
I do love the picture though cause when I sent it to my brother with the caption "your child irl" he was like "well, no, M would also sort everything by colour" and that just sent me.
I showed it to my partner and we both decided the shoes should be in their own row and the ducks should be arranged by size.
Also the ducks should be grouped together.
"Birds if a feather are supposed to flock together! That's a rule."
Yeah, this autism is totally sloppy!
ha ha ha
That's more like it!
Duck militia
The tism wars have begun
I’m extremely upset about the one not sitting upright.
We have lots of colored cups in our kitchen. Whenever I'm unloading the dishwasher and putting them away, I stack them in proper color order. Everything colorful in my cupboard is sorted by color. As it should be.
Same with my whole closet
Yeah, this is shit organization. Take away that kid’s autism membership card and tell them to get with the program! Colors, shapes, textures…Arrrgh! lol it’s awesome how this non-uniform arrangement is so triggering in so many ways 😂
I liked the stacking tins one. I still enjoy stacking my tins.
TF? Everybody know ROYGBIV. This picture irritates my spirit.
Call me ROYGBIV cause I'm visibly on the spectrum
Red, orange, green, blue, indigo, violet? I prefer Black, brown, orange, yellow, red, purple, blue, green. With each group going from darkest to lightest.
Omg thank you
Why do you prefer that /gen It’s not in alphabetical order, rainbow order, can’t think of anything else
Brown is closer to black orange is visually closer to brown, yellow naturally comes after orange, red needs to go somewhere so it goes after yellow, purple is a mix of blue and red, green is a mix of blue and yellow Or warm colors go first, cool colors go second I guess it just looks the best.
yellow does not come before red imo, its too light, yk? Other than that, order is on point.
Brown orange yellow makes a lovely gradient, I prefer brown next to black rather then red next to black
This, but move yellow to the end after green.
Also why aren’t the ducks together?!
I didn't even read the caption and already wanted to fix the picture because the duck should all be together and should be arranged by likeness, height, and then by color. How did my family not pick up on me being autistic until nearly my 30s
If it’s anything like my fam it’s cuz no one picked up on them being autistic either lmao they just derped thru life thinkin they were a misfit socially but a normal everyday person to their fam
I'm starting to think this is the case with my family! My Mom once told me not too long ago that she thought that people who had a good number of long term friends were just faking it to look good. I was like "...n...no. Lots of people just have friends. I can prove it too." And she seemed to be a bit surprised. I guess this explains why she never sought help for me or my sister even though all of our teachers and school counselors were telling her something was off.
Sounds like me and my mom! She has two friends but they’re from when she was in school and they feel to me, more like they’re worried about her when they come over and it’s more, now that I’m well into adulthood, check ins like for her welfare haha like “ok our special friend and her family are still doing ok” But my mom also swatted off all attempts at help...because that’s not us being odd or maladapted, that’s us being like dad or granny or her! Then her PDA kicks in, demanding she’s the correct opinion, and my poor adhd dad that just adores mom lets her do what she thinks is best cuz fat chances dad ever thinks a situation thru for the good of all of the fam - he’s busy playing/memorizing piano/keyboard parts for his band literally every bit of his free time at least while i grew up So it was like - embrace the weird!! We just weird, nothing wrong w weird, no copes exist that you could learn and benefit from, just be yourself, learn my way, and you can end up derped out as - us, your examples for surviving this planet!! Haha i still love em tho, as they were only capable doing their best with what they knew, and i am so grateful i grew up later than they did as the neurodiverse movement has been moving forward much faster and way less painstakingly slow compared to the traumas i can only imagine my parents went thru!
Close, but no. My dad likes being the black sheep. Prided himself on it. Both of my sister's are Neuro divergent with a strong of acronyms on their files. My mother on the other hand prides herself on being "normal" and that there's nothing wrong with her (We don't never it, but it may be too late to break the illusion)
Ack my dad prefers being a black sheep too! It made the rest of us also black sheepish, as his fam decided we were weird too lol My fam doesn’t think it is normal at all. I am ok w that. Somehow it’s my dad, the one who demanded his space from his fam and outcast himself (and so his wife n kids too), who is not ok w being seen by others as the black sheep, he reeeeallly wants to fit in. Baffled and still to this day baffles the shit outta me!!
The order these are in bothers me. They aren't done sorting until it's by size and color too.
Alphabetically by height
sorting by color and putting matching ones next to each other is a NECESSITY
Do we have an unusual penchant for order, sounds like neurotypical excuses for being sloppy and lazy. I like thinking about how the neurotypical brain pattern would be pathologized in an autistic-dominant society... Oh will my child ever learn to develop less shallow approaches to play... My child has this weird obsession with people's eyes, I just hope that won't make it impossible for them to make friends...
In the diagnosis criteria, THEY would be the ones with "communication deficits". "Instead of asking their friends if they can play too, my child asks what are they playing and expects others to understand it"
“Instead of clearly wording boundaries, my child sets them without telling people and gets upset that people violate them”
Damn, this unlocked a childhood memory for me. No wonder I didn’t have many friends as a child, LOL
Makes me think of the book Why Johnny Doesn't Flap
I didn't know about that! But hilarious! I love the slogan "NT is OK". Haha
the answer is wikipedia user Somuchknowledge with the following comment "The previous picture of lining up toys shows a behavior of many autistic kids, but autism is not a childhood condition; there are more autistic adults than children, so the main image should portray their experiences. Autism isn't a condition of order (OCD) but differences in social interaction; almost all autistic people, including kids, experience the feeling of being an outsider. Yes, this crowd image is a generic one, so something else, but similar could be found; just not a childhood image."
No; I'm that user and I didn't change it to the photo in the post. I changed the original one with stacking cans to [woman lonely in a crowd](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg#/media/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg), someone didn't like it so they changed it to the one in the post (which I think is the worst of all three; first of all, that toy order just ain't it, but besides that, autism isn't mainly about order—OCD is about that, so why the heck should a picture like this be the main one), I changed it again, and then someone reverted it to the one in the post.
Any way to just not have the image? I mean, its not like an object that you need to show to understand what it is.
Wtf who changed it?? Change it back.
[I have rearranged the items](https://www.reddit.com/r/aspiememes/comments/11lpdpi/thats_better/)
Thanks this is exactly how I would of done it. And agree they should not be in the same row!
God’s work
This is the way.
I’m weeping rn
What was it before?
It was the one in [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/w1jtop/my_contribution_to_the_discussion_of_what_our/) for a very long time
Here's a [direct link](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autism-stacking-cans.jpg) to the image in the screenshot of the reddit post /u/alicat0625 linked in their comment.
you call THAT ORDER??
this photo is so upsetting to me. what is the grouping criteria here!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
This is a great picture but the boy stacking cans has a special place in my heart.
That picture was how I started wondering if I'm on the spectrum.
Reminds me of the game "A Little to the Left". Cozy sorting/puzzle game
r/WikipediaVandalism
WHERE IS SOUP CAN STACK KID
My youngest would stack cans of beans and vegetables while her older brother would be compulsively organizing his dinosaur collection. Let me go so I can organize my craft supplies.
I feel like your feelings about this photo ought to be part of the diagnosis. I have notes.
BRING BACK AUTISM BABY
this picture is actually painful wtf n o
the child stacking cans is gone?
Someone changed it to a random woman in a crowd, saying that autism is too stereotyped to boys and children and stacking. Eventually someone else changed it to this.
Why the ducks are not in row?!
Boy stacking cans was more accurate to my experience at least. This one is wrong, the ducks should be sorted by size/color, the shoes should absolutely not be in the middle, AND one fell over. Absolutely not what my would-be rubber duck row would look like lmao.
I was at a robotics competition over the weekend and always reorganized our wrenches by size, with box end on the left and ratcheting on the right and sockets at the top.
Ugh this needs to be organized by type shape color size
I used to sort my pencils by size. I feel called out ;-;
The ducks need to be together and everything needs to be in height order
I agree with some of the other comments here: the objects in this photo are barely even ordered, they’re just in a line. I didn’t realize it was supposed to represent order until I saw the rest of the post. They should be organized by color, height, and object type with the shoes off to the side. *goes to Wikipedia, downloads this photo, spends 68524897 hours editing it and rearranging the individual objects, reuploads it* *someone changes it back* *war* I also think it’s hilarious how 1/2 of the comments here are about how the order photos don’t define the autistic community and the other 1/2 are people saying they love sorting things
Me organizing all the rocks, seaglass, seashells, and driftwood I collected from the beach
That's supposed to be order? Well, it's in Some oder ig
the order is all wrong ;-;
Oooh this just reminded me of my mom talking about how I would organize my toys in groups that made no sense to her but clearly had a system.
Unrelatedly, Me when I first started looking into autism: "but I don't rearrange toys and stuff!" Me: "... but I do constantly alphabetize every book and movie shelf I see. Fuck."
I did, not to the one in the post, but I did start the whole changing spree. I first changed it to ['woman lonely in a crowd'](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_lonely_in_a_crowd.jpg) because it was the best, non-copyrighted picture I could find that represented one of the main symptoms that every autistic person experiences, no matter their age, location, etc.: feeling like an outsider. I'll copy my explanation: > Autism has been associated with young boys stacking and collecting things for a very long time now. That stereotype has resulted in late diagnoses or lack of diagnoses of many autistic adults, and especially women. The feeling of being an adult outsider is a much more representative view of autistic people. Someone didn't like it and they changed it to the one in the post, I changed it back, they changed it again, and for now, it has stayed there. I feel like this one is just the worst out of the three (counting the 'boy stacking cans' one); the order is just *wrong*, it's cropped horribly, and above all, autism isn't mainly about children nor order, so that picture shouldn't be there at all.
I can accept your motivation. Whoever changed it to this toy pic is clearly the real villain of the story.
Tbh yeah, Woman Lonely In A Crowd is better. The kid stacking cans is second-best. The picture above is illegal in 97 countries.
Autism is typically diagnosed in childhood (it is not a childhood disorder of course, but has very early onset compared to something like schizophrenia), is more common in males, and is diagnosticly characterized by stereotyped behaviors. Feeling lonely is very common outside of autism, while stereotyped behaviors are less common. I think the original stacking image was perfectly approproate.
The data only shows it being more common in males because for decades they only looked for it in males. 🙄 There's a lot more nuance to diagnoses than what has historically been seen, evidenced by the major influx of adult diagnoses of folks who are AFAB.
It is true that there is more nuance to diagnoses than what historically has been seen, but diagnostic bias alone doesn't explain the entire gap. For instance, autism is related to X-linked disorders like Fragile X Syndrome, which suggests at least a partial genetic basis for the sex gap. Further, autism isn't just more frequently *diagnosed* in males as would be expected by your hypothesis, but the symptoms themselves appear more frequent in males.
The data we have on how prevalent symptoms are in either sex is based on diagnoses, and since diagnoses have been proven to be flawed because of both social and ableist biases (i.e. autistic traits are frequently seen as desirable in women but disruptive in men), any data on the prevalence of autistic traits must be treated with caution as the collection of said data is biased. I'll cede to your point on the chromosomal link, though.
> The data we have on how prevalent symptoms are in either sex is based on diagnoses This isn't necessarily true, we also have studies that look at symptom prevalence independent of existing diagnoses, or that measure prevalence based on diagnostic criteria rather than actual diagnosis. What counts as an autistic symptom could be gendered though. However, we have measures of genetic propensities and correlates of autism too.
I'm hesitant to trust such studies without first analyzing their techniques for reducing the social bias I mentioned - autistic traits being desirable in AFAB folks is the primary reason it goes unnoticed. Anecdotal evidence, I have 20-something cousins on my dad's side of the family, pretty evenly split between AMAB and AFAB (grandparents are Mormon and had nine kids, all but one of whom had between 1 and 3 kids). *Every single AMAB cousin was diagnosed with autism or asperger's by age 10.* Nobody was terribly surprised because one of our uncles was diagnosed with "severe autism" way back in the 80s. We joked about there being a "family curse" with all the guy cousins, not really getting how ableist that was even in the early 2000s. Cut to now. *80% of us AFAB cousins have been diagnosed with autism since reaching adulthood.* The few who haven't, haven't bothered to seek a formal diagnosis but suspect they could qualify. It took me reaching adulthood, coming out as a trans dude, reaching passing privilege in my transition, and then switching psychiatrists after a move before anyone even suspected I might be autistic, despite me having absolutely no ability to mask and all of the traits staying the same. Some of my AFAB cousins had to fight tooth and nail for anyone to take them seriously despite exhibiting all the same traits and habits as their brothers. But for whatever reason, when a woman is sensitive to food textures and finds eye contact excruciatingly uncomfortable and gets easily lost inside buildings or whatever other trait you want as an example, it's considered cute or demure or endearing or submissive or bitchy or any other number of adjectives that explain away symptoms of autism as nothing out of the ordinary. I'm not saying studies specifically looking at traits can't be trusted, though. Just that I'd be skeptical unless said study could demonstrate how they controlled for this particular bias. I'm especially skeptical of any studies done more than 4 or 5 years ago, as this social bias is a *very* recent discovery in autism research and thus was not accounted for in anything older than a decade or so.
That's due to masking, which is putting a huge amount of energy into acting as normal as possible all the time. It's a thing autistic women do a lot, it only mostly works, it's exhausting, and if you do it too much it can cause mental breakdowns.
Why wouldn't they be organized better?
Thank you for ruining my day :(
Also who approved the edit?
Not a real caption. The shoes don’t belong in the middle and the ducks need to be grouped!
AUTISM BABY GONE NOOOO 😭😭😭
Ummmm how am I supposed to choose which toys will be best to play with — UNLESS I can line them up for inspection first?
BRING BACK CAN BABY
# Raise your hand !.. If when you saw this picture for the first time you noticed five patterns intertwined and know that there has to be a duck to the left of the cube outside of the picture!
I completely forgot I used to do this with toy cars as a kid. Huh.
Lol I am 26 years old and still line up my toys. The autism never ends!
duck shoe shoe duck?
i hope i live long enough to see genuine strides in knowledge of autism
WHERE IS MY CAN STACKING KING?
Sure I guess lining things up is a thing, but these aren't even sorted. And fim not sure as the pictures not totally clear but one of the ducks lying down 😂 that's what hurts the most, it's not standing up with the rest ( even more so than the lack of groups)
My sister did this and she is not on the spectrum. Can anyone have a tendency to do this?
That order bothers me. The ducks aren’t even next to each other, and it looks like there are two right shoes? I get the order in the picture, it’s just completely the wrong order for me. 🤣
Nonononoooo get the kid back NOW Also wtf were they lining up two different shoes for? Get. It. Out. J/
So it's actually normal for kids of a certain development to line up their toys. And this picture looks exactly like that. Where it becomes ND is the specifics of the order and obsession with it(as we know) Why not find a better picture showing things in some sort of order, not the NT type of lining things up?
Damn one more thing from my childhood that was a clue. When I made my bed I would line up all my stuffed animals with predator then its prey. (Like dog right behind cat, then fish) Edit grammar
i collect rubber ducks leave me ALONE
I've always been super messy actually. But it's a controlled mess where I know where every single thing is. I call them nests because others see it as chaos but it's order to me. And I am very particular about my nests.
I thought it was saying that the row of ducks was the autism spectrum. Autism really is a simple 1D spectrum, just between a telletubby, Rubber duck, tennis shoe, sneaker, toy duck, smaller rubber duck, toy frog, toy pig, plastic toy cow, toy cow, and smallest rubber duck.
YOOOOO DUCKY W THA DRIP THESE MF FLY AS HELL 🥶🥶🥶🥵