Oh my.
There's a new paper out. Make yourselves comfy. Thread.
Top team who do many fine things.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32691993/  but there's a mystery.
"Many autistic yp exhibit..behavior difficulties, characterized by conduct problems & oppositional behavior"/

They quote two papers to allegedly prove there's conduct problems generally for autistic children & young people (CYP).
One is by Gjevik and pals, 2011. They took 71 autistic CYP from a special school, the majority with learning disabilities. Nearly all male. Avg age 11. But/

They actually relied on 'behaviour' stuff from a previous paper, by Brereton and team (2006). They considered 381 autistic CYP in Australia, avg age 7, mostly male again, and nearly all with intellectual disabilites, so not a test of autism, arguably. Now, brace yourselves/

...because this is the checklist they used to prove we were Misbehaving.
Wait...that's not a checklist for 'conduct problems'. That's a breathtakingly clueless and ableist list of ways to insult and humiliate standard autistic differences.
I'm baffled.

So, I thought, perhaps the data about us being badly behaved is in the other paper, by Simonoff & team, (2008). Theirs was 112 autistic children, almost all male, about 11 yrs old, and was a study of co-occurring conditions not autism itself. 70% had other conditions. 62% ADHD/

ODD etc, So that paper isn't about autistic young people generally behaving badly. That's looking at what other conditions may cause distress behaviour (which is what it is).

Perhaps I need more tea.

OK, back to that strange checklist, because I want to talk about those items.
Here it is again.
"Avoids eye contact". Yes, we do. We listen better that way. It's not 'bad behaviour' [paraphrasing)/

Aloof/in own world.
We communicate differently. See the DART project research. We're not 'in our own world', we're listening intently and demonstrating something you're not taking any notice of, because it's different to how you do it, non-autistic people. Next/

"Arranges objects in strict order".
Try going into any office and arranging files randomly.
See how you get on.
What about the library?
Want your car parts arranged randomly when it's next serviced?
Why is this a deficit? Next/

"Deliberately runs away".
Perhaps. A lot of the time, it's a flight response from extreme fear or extreme sensory/social overload that is risking triggering a brain event (meltdown, shutdown). Those are akin to a form of epilepsy and they are awful to go thru. Not 'behaviour'/

"Doesn't respond to others' feelings".
Oh my. See the Double Empathy work done by @milton_damian for how often non-autistic people don't respond to our feelings either. Both neurotypes misunderstand and mistime their responses to the other neurotype. Neither is 'behaviour'/

"Taps or twirls objects"
Woo, we're into heavyweight disruption here, eh?
Have you, dear reader, ever tapped a foot whilst thinking, or twirled a pencil? You naughty person!
Autistic people get microcontrolled.
I've no idea why.
Next/

"Obsessed with an idea or activity".
Yes, that's how specialists happen.
Want a Surgeon with only a vague idea what to do, because they had more interesting things to do with their time than study the human body for years?
One example of millions. Next/

"Has temper tantrums".
Every child has temper tantrums.
Autistic children *also* may go into a brain state called a meltdown, though more commonly they will enter a state of shutdown.
Meltdown isn't a tantrum of any kind. It is linked to epileptiform brain spikes, we believe/

"Hums...makes non-speech noises".
Cor, another epic disruptive behaviour, that, humming. We wouldn't want people humming, would we. Today, a hum. Tomorrow, a full on Opera. Slippery slope. Tsk.
Sigh.
Next.../

"Impatient".
Actually, for the first 18 yrs of my life, I was utterly compliant. I do mean utterly.
Nearly all the data is on a small subset of young boys with co-occurring conditions, in special schools. It tell us nothing about the patience of most autistic children/

"Laughs or giggles for no apparent reason".
Ever done that?
Ever recalled a funny thing that happened, or a joke someone said? A favourite comedy scene from a show?
Did you know you're committing a Bad Behaviour?
Me neither. On we plod/

"Likes to hold an..unusual object...e.g. string"
Very criminal behaviour that, yes indeed. I mean we can't have children Holding a Piece of String, can we? Who knows what might occur!
I am going to stop now, because I'm sure you've understood the point.
This is just nasty.

The reality is autistic children are so routinely bullied, ostracised, defrauded, pushed, punched, assaulted, stolen from and otherwise treated badly that many end up with trauma symptoms from it.
We don't need this checklist in our lives.
We would like love instead.
Thank you.

PS, oh yes, there's academic references to back that up.
Read and weep, re the assaults, trauma, etc. Scan down. Content warning of course.
https://annsautism.blogspot.com/2019/01/autism-some-vital-research-links.html