coolblue
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Posts posted by coolblue
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Just a comment on pictographic languages. Because Chinese is written in pictographs (a symbol represents a whole word) there isn't the same issue of decoding as there is in alphabetically written languages. So any reading difficulties are of a completely different nature. In other words 'dyslexia' can't exist in the same way as it does in alphabetically written languaes.
My daughter is learning Japanese, and says that the main problems Japanese children have with learning kanji (the Japanese pictograph system - they have syllabic systems as well) are distinguishing between similar symbols, and the number of symbols they can remember. Literacy levels in China are a completely different issue - there are a lot of people who don't read - but when they do learn, they are not dylexic!
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Thanks. Point taken.
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As regards the MP's remarks on phonics teaching being wonderful, I've got to say that I like phonics teaching (I'm not trying to show off, but my PhD was on how children acquire phonological skills and how they relate to reading and spelling), but I don't think that teaching by the opposing method is necessarily wrong in all cases, and I certainly severely doubt whether it would 'solve' the problem of dyslexia, since I can recall no studies that show a 100% success rate.Not at all boring Ian. I've been a bit concerned at what seems to be a trend to see dyslexia as the result of audiological rather than visual processing problems - as far as I can tell it can be caused by either, or both, depending on the individual child. Did your PhD shed any light on this?
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Can we get back to the original subject of this thread please?
K x
I understand what you mean Kathryn, but this is relevant and it's important other posters understand why certain services might be difficult to access and others might be readily available. My son's audiologist cannot test him for CAPD not because he doesn't know how to, but because the protocols haven't been finalised yet. Using the same protocols throughout the NHS is not just an attempt to iron out the postcode lottery but to eventually ensure standardised treatments across Europe, because the free movement of workers is a tenet of the EU. Just trying to give some background.
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I believe the World Trade Organisation is pushing for the privatisation of the NHS because it acts as a roadblock for establishing large scale private (and foreign owned) healthcare providers in Britain.Very few people know about the World Trade Organisation but it is a dangerous development that transfers power and authority from democratically(!) elected governments to unaccountable corporations and global finance houses.
I wrote to my Euro MP asking how I could find out more about the Lisbon Treaty and how it linked in with the WTO's agenda - didn't expect him to tell me, just to tell me where I could find out. He didn't know, and referred me to the relevant government department!!! You couldn't make it up. Maybe the credit crunch will make them stop and think about what they are doing - but frankly I doubt it.
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There's a comment after this article pointing out that Korea and Nicaragua both use spelling which is far more phonetically regular than English. And he clearly has no idea of the role of vision and hearing in reading. I'd expect an MP to do some homework before going public on this. Bet his inbox will be full in the morning.
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I know several adults with AS who are anti-EU but a high proportion of parents of kids with AS and people who run organisations supporting people with AS and ASD I have encountered are pro-EU (mostly without good reason IMO). This is the explanation for the consideration of using EU legislation to restrict prenatal screening.I suspect it's more complicated than that. The World Trade Organisation has an explicit agenda of liberalising global exchange of goods and services. This market-driven model (which the EU, and thus the UK has signed up to) would mean that if 'customers' wanted genetic screening for their unborn children, and someone was offering it, the genetic screening industry would be driven by customer demand. This puts governments into a quandary because they also want to be popular with voters and a lot of voters are uneasy about tinkering with genes. Personally, I think genetic testing will be inevitable, but that it should be regulated according to whether or not the outcomes are desirable for the whole population, now and in the future, not by 'customer demand'.
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I wasn't being ironic - no energy left for that! It was on QI that I originally heard that it was a myth and many seemingly reliable sources on the Internet seem to have suggested the same, but I could be wrong. They really should develop octahedral apples if they are concerned about stacking, as not only will these be (slightly) more apple shaped, they will also stack in such a way as not to slide about in the box, particularly when the boxes are put at an angle on the supermarket shelves (which currently results in all the apples rolling to the bottom, bumping into one another and becoming bruised.
Have you missed your vocation, perhaps?
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That is a myth. 'Straight' fruit came about as a result of supermarket demands on growers in response to customer preferences.Not so sure about that (or were you being ironic, Mumble?). A friend of mine, employed in horticulture, was once working on a project to develop a cubical apple (takes up less space for transport). Long experience suggests that 'customer demand' is actually a euphemism for 'increased profit'. [And in case any one is wondering, this is directly relevant to genetic screening in response to alleged customer demand.]
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Hi coolblue - I had some trouble understanding what you were getting at here because of your use of metaphor (
). Having picked it apart a bit, I think you mean that we should all temper what we say rather than phrasing opinion as fact and that equally when reading other posts (unless specifically linked to the research literature) we should bear in mind that they are often opinion based, that people will have different opinions based on their life experiences and that provided these opinions don't hurt others, difference is a positive thing. That sounds like a very sound perspective to me.My apologies Mumble, I should have thought of that. You've understood my meaning perfectly.
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Maybe the wheels of social interaction may be oiled by the use of phrases like 'I feel...' or 'IMO...' or 'To me it appears that...' when making comments about other posters. There is no way anyone can be sure of another poster's motivation and I know from long experience how unpleasant it can be when others accuse me of being I am things I'm not or of I'm doing things I'm not doing. (I'm planning to take my own advice, incidentally.) Hth.
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So yes, the forum has changed. I think the moderating team have responded brilliantly to those changes, while simultaneously coming under increased scrutiny, suspicion and attack when they do respond. I wish that wouldn't happen, but only today we have seen a situation where mods closed a thread only to have that decision 'challenged' in another thread started specifically for that purpose by the same poster. As you said 'It ain't easy'.L&P
BD
I thought the discussion of that thread was supposed to be closed.
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Where did you come across this concept, Mumble?
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Forgive me bid, I've only been using this forum actively for a couple of weeks, and I'm still feeling my way with conventions.
Firstly, I'm not sure that making generalised comments about professions is necessarily demonising them, is it? Saying that social services were underfunded and understaffed implies no criticism of social workers, quite the opposite.
Secondly, it sounds very much as if what you are suggesting is that any discussion of SS, health and education is best avoided on the forum. This could be counterproductive, because it's inadequacies in those systems which often cause problems for people with ASDs. Discussion of the problems could result in their being addressed - no discussion means we just have to put up with them. Having problems with the SS, health or education system doesn't mean that the people who work within the system are at fault - the inadequacies could be caused by solely under-resourcing - as is often the case.
Would you advise me to avoid commenting on social services, health and education altogether?
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A few comments:
On balance, I would say it's reasonable to assume that any news item is more likely to be true than false, although I am aware of the issues around 'truth' and 'falsehood' in news reports.
Assuming the news item OCG posted is a reasonably accurate account of the incident, I think it's also reasonable to assume that the mother in question did not have a high opinion of the SW's conduct.
Given OCG's comment tagged to the news item, it's clear her experience of SWs hasn't been very positive either.
Given the circumstances in the news item, it's quite likely that the 'social worker' was fulfilling the role of an educational welfare officer - whose job is essentially to ensure school attendance.
In my experience, our local EWS has given inadequate, and sometimes inaccurate information to parents. Our EWO has shown a lack of knowledge in areas where I would expect her to have expertise. One local mum, with years of relevant experience, was thinking of applying for an EWO post and was given the opportunity to accompany an EWO for a morning. She was shocked at what she saw and didn't apply for the job.
I have had many years of experience of working in a range of organisations. Bullying in the workplace is not uncommon and is well-documented. Sometimes organisations or management systems are set up in such a way that they result in bullying in spite of the good intentions of the people involved. I would maintain that the government's approach to public sector organisations does just this, by poor implementation of management by objectives (MBO). This is a very effective management system if implemented properly. The objectives (targets) are supposed to be set in consultation with the person expected to meet the target. Resources adequate for meeting the objective are then made available. What tends to happen with public sector targets is that the consultation is a highly constrained formality, the input from the person expected to meet the target is often ignored, and resources are inadequate. If the person with the target fails to meet it, they are then sanctioned, even if the reasons for failing to meet the target are not under their control.
I am aware that it is easy to make sweeping generalisations based on a few personal experiences, and admit that I am guilty as charged. However, public online discussion forums are not courts of law, or research conferences, and hyperbola is a commonly used way of emphasising a point. I find it difficult to believe that anyone assumed from OCG's post that she believes, or was implying, that all social workers manhandle children. She was making a point, and inviting discussion. I feel there are some very serious issues around social work at present; social services departments have been underfunded and understaffed for years, and their role appears to be increasingly one of policing, rather than support. What interested me about the original post was why the social worker behaved as he did. Presumably he had no personal interest in whether or not the boy attended school - it's the parent's legal responsibility, not his - so I wondered whether he was under pressure from some other source. The obvious candidate is his employer. I thought this might be an interesting avenue to explore. I was clearly wrong.
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Hope that clears things upL&P
BD
Errr.... no, it doesn't.
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Baddad, I have come across a number of instances where employees have, purely because of inappropriate pressure from those above them in an organisational hierarchy, behaved in a way which has been unpleasant and unfair to people below them in the hierarchy. I was making the point that this may have been why Mr Dent behaved as he did.
We all know (don't we?) that news items can be speculative, biased and sometimes completely fabricated (see "Flat Earth News"). That doesn't mean they are all speculative, biased or fabricated, nor that people shouldn't post them for other people to comment on, nor that other people's comments are inappropriate because they don't know what really happened.
The OP could equally well have said "Imagine this scenario..." and we could have commented on it. I can't see what's wrong with that. Surely a discussion of what might have happened can be very useful, as the situation described in the news item is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility and it behoves us all to be prepared for all contingencies.
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No it isn't evidence or a 'good example of...institutional bullying'. It is a newspaper report about a single social worker overstepping the boundaries of what is/isn't acceptable, and apparantly with the best of intentions. Personally, I think there are far more children harmed by the actions of their parents - (with or without the best of intentions) - than there are by professionals. That kind of harm can go on for a lifetime and never reach the attention of the criminal system because parents are not subject to the same kind of scrutiny as professionals, and when their motives are challenged there are millions of people who have never met them who are willing to leap to their defence purely on the assumption that 'mum knows best', while professionals are increasingly demonised as a matter of course.L&P
BD
So, baddad, how would you describe a situation in which a worker who has unreasonable demands being made of them by their boss takes it out on people lower down the pecking order? I was simply identifying a phenomenon which many people have experienced whereby systems pressures can result in the people at the bottom of the heap suffering most. I was actually making an argument in the guy's defence.
Another factor is that this man was professionally trained and paid to do a job in a professional way. I don't doubt that more parents than professionals physically abuse their children - but they are not trained professionals paid by taxpayers to do a job. Would you justify physical violence on the part of the police by saying that criminals are worse?
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This is a good example of what I'd call the 'institutional bullying' endemic in our society. The social worker's job was to get the kid back to school - if he didn't he would have failed to do his job and the LA may have failed to meet its attendance target. No excuses would have been tolerated by his bosses, I suspect. So he resorts to physical violence.
Teachers are in a similar position. They are expected to 'deliver the curriculum' in a way which results in children obtaining certain scores in SATs. If they fail to do this, they have failed to do their job (the fact that they haven't been properly trained, and are being asked to do the impossible is conveniently overlooked. ) They are being bullied, so what happens? They bully the children, who in turn bully each other, and children and parents end up getting the blame.
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Interesting thread. I think the whole question hinges on whether AS and other ASDs are discrete conditions caused by distinct genetic and/or environmental factors, or if they are the emergent properties of a range of different factors, where those factors vary within a normal (in the statistical sense) population.
The diagnostic criteria for ASD's (impaired social interaction & communication, plus restricted or repetitive behaviours) are each so broad that there could be many causes for them (different causes in different people). Personally, I'm increasingly convinced that sensory abnormalities produce a lot of autistic characteristics, certainly those of AS. If this is the case, you could have one group of people who share the same cause for their sensory impairments who clearly fit the profile for AS, and another group with similar symptoms, whose sensory impairments have arisen from a different cause or causes and who sort-of fit the profile for AS.
What is desperately needed is a bottom-up, fine-grained analysis of the patterns of impairments shown by individuals, so any clustering can be identified, rather than the current top-down approach of forcing people into pre-defined and probably inaccurate diagnostic categories.
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Incidentally you don't need to subscribe. For only $32 dollars you can download it and print it off. I believe they have some very nice pictures - everyone was using them at the ARC conference!
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Just wanted to add an extra complication or two.
The same gene A could produce different phenotypes. Different genes (singly or in combination) can give rise to the same phenotype. And that's before using the extra terminology!I followed your link for the Nature article,but I'm not a subscriber and the abstract is a bit skimp, do you know whether it's published elsewhere? I'd really like to know the 20 genes mapped, I'll be happy with just their names (but chromosomal location would be a bonus). Thank you.
There's a fuller abstract at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17322880
Well, it's glutamate, who'da thought it? (Implicated in sensory processing).
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It's because breast cancer is relatively easy to diagnose, and it's therefore relatively easy to identify the gene(s) which carry a predisposition for breast cancer.
Autism is not a 'condition' in the same way; take ten people with a diagnosis of autism and you could have ten different causes (different for each person) for their autistic symptoms. We haven't even begun to identify autistic phenotypes clearly, so we've nothing to match with possible genotypes. Add to this people who would meet the diagnostic criteria if anyone got round to assessing them, people who wouldn't have autistic symptoms if their sensory processing problems could be addressed, the lack of longitudinal research about the developmental paths of toddlers showing early autistic symptoms etc, etc. and you have a huge muddle.
What we need to do is to identify the specific 'abnormalities' in each person showing autistic symptoms and track those back to possible causes. The current diagnostic criteria are so broad as to be almost meaningless - they are certainly no use in trying to work out phenotypic sub-groups. There will be sub-groups, because a variant of gene A in one person will produce similar symptoms in another person with the same variant of gene A, but we need to do some serious categorisation on our phenotypes before we can work at that level.
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Blimey, if their research said that my personal opinion is it's completely flawed! Social responses to all forms of disability do cause huge problems (it's that 'medical model of excellence' thing again), but it's dangerous territory to 'blame' social responses to that degree... Autism isn't a social 'problem' and responding to autistic people as if it is isn't going to be enabling in any way - it's just going to create an artificial reality in which they are 'comfortably numb'.L&P
BD
I didn't actually say their research said that, baddad. Nor did I say it was 'social responses' to autism which were the problem, but the 'lack of awareness' of neurotypical people. My son has many sensory and cognitive problems which he finds frustrating and difficult, but he could cope with life much, much better if people treated him in a civilised manner and were aware of his problems. I was redressing the balance caused by the implication that autism was a 'problem'. I don't expect human nature to change overnight - I was simply questioning the assumption that anyone could say what was normal or abnormal.
prenatal screening for autism
in General Discussion
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I have a lot of respect for SBC; he has done some interesting work and has worked tirelessly to keep autism research on the public agenda. However, research by Kate Plaisted and Laurent Mottron (referred to in LizK's link) is far more rigorous, IMO, and consequently is much less likely to catch the eye of the news media, because it doesn't translate well into sound-bites. Well worth looking at via Google scholar, if you're interested.