The title of the article is poor. Children are called adults when they have grown up and that's what the subject of the article is, an adult.
I'm not on some political correctness bender. Thinking about adults with autism as "grown up children" is at best neutral. Most likely it just feeds the misconception that adults with autism have the minds of children. At worst it suggests that children with autism growing up is problematic - and this is an idea that has long currency as the predominate attitude among western cultures.
Nobody is writing articles the "When Children with Dyslexia Grow Up" or "When Gifted Children Grow Up" because we implicitly accept that people with these identifying traits are adults when they have grown up. Why not just call the article "Adults with Autism"?
Because the article is largely about how bad being around an an adult with autism made the author feel. There's more about how hard it was to go into work than about his antagonist’s suffering childhood sexual abuse - and in narrative form the autistic adult is the author's antagonist no two ways about it. The arc is of the author disconnecting himself from the relationship.
Now don't get me wrong, the freeing is a rational choice. But this is a story about the normal person and Scooter is always "the other." Casting him as "a child grown up" rather than an adult makes the ultimate "He aint my kid" decision palatable because it denies normal adult bonds - the author can't be held to the standards of an adult relationship: friendship and just plain good manners of saying goodbye because it is the right thing todo are off the table.
It's really fucking hard to sort through and classifying adults with autism as grown children doesn't make it easier to get it right.
I think the title structure would work for any domain where most reporting/writing focuses on the condition in children, rather than their later development as adults.
The "What happens" that precedes the "when gifted children grow up" is about what happens to the individuals who were gifted as children. The book doesn't appear to focus on some burden they impose on the rest of society as the result of growing up or how that growing up makes the author feel badly about theirself.
It is the stories of twenty gifted people, not our story about encountering them.
I think the point of the name is that public perception of autism is usually related to children - autistic kids. But those children grow up and become adults. A lot of this article is about how that transition is difficult, and there is a lot less support for autistic adults than children.
I did not interpret the antagonism you did. The author was grappling with his own feelings of being attached to Scooter but also having to deal with the fact that Scooter could get violent very easily. The decision to not say goodbye was justified in the article. This is not a normal adult relationship, because the author is a paid caregiver of an autistic adult.
I'm not on some political correctness bender. Thinking about adults with autism as "grown up children" is at best neutral. Most likely it just feeds the misconception that adults with autism have the minds of children. At worst it suggests that children with autism growing up is problematic - and this is an idea that has long currency as the predominate attitude among western cultures.
Nobody is writing articles the "When Children with Dyslexia Grow Up" or "When Gifted Children Grow Up" because we implicitly accept that people with these identifying traits are adults when they have grown up. Why not just call the article "Adults with Autism"?
Because the article is largely about how bad being around an an adult with autism made the author feel. There's more about how hard it was to go into work than about his antagonist’s suffering childhood sexual abuse - and in narrative form the autistic adult is the author's antagonist no two ways about it. The arc is of the author disconnecting himself from the relationship.
Now don't get me wrong, the freeing is a rational choice. But this is a story about the normal person and Scooter is always "the other." Casting him as "a child grown up" rather than an adult makes the ultimate "He aint my kid" decision palatable because it denies normal adult bonds - the author can't be held to the standards of an adult relationship: friendship and just plain good manners of saying goodbye because it is the right thing todo are off the table.
It's really fucking hard to sort through and classifying adults with autism as grown children doesn't make it easier to get it right.