The 4 A’s of Autism

Productive lives are very possible for Autistic individuals. One way to frame these productive lives is through the four A's of Autism. It starts with Awareness and onto Acceptance, Appreciation and Action to make the whole thing work.

A good outcome for an autistic individual is when that person is leading a fulfilling and productive life and it's our goal to make fulfilling and productive lives the rule rather than the exception. We have the technology to do it. We have the know-how. It's just a matter of implementation.

Changing the mindset of when we consider Autism and when we think of Autism is vitally important. We need to turn away from the old school thinking of autism as being a series of deficits, disorders and disability, and turn towards a model of autism that is ability based, we need to be looking at what the autistic person can do. There are many situations where what is perceived as a weakness or a challenge can be used as a strength for Autistic individuals. You may have an Autistic individual who perseverates on things being the same and extreme need for order. But perhaps that person could be in charge of making sure that all the widgets that are built by a machine are built perfectly are the right color or the proper shape and every other aspect. And while most people might be bored out of their minds with such a job, the Autistic person would get a lot of pleasure from that. Other areas of the we can convert into strengths. We may have someone who has hearing sensitivities. I know many Autistic people who are sound engineers, and they use that sensitivity for a good purpose. You might have an Autistic person who may seem to be overly involved in routines. But as I think about the world of employment, those routines can be converted to making sure that you show up to work on time every single day.

Ever increasing numbers of Autistic individuals are graduating grade school, and moving on to college, we've seen greater numbers of colleges develop programs, especially for supporting Autistic people. At Adelphi university for example, we have a program called Bridges to Adelphi and to get involved in this program, the student applies and gets accepted, just like anybody else may or may not get accepted. And then they walk over to the Bridges Program, and they get involved in that. I remember on my first day in my job, I met the student assistant, and I just knew that he was autistic. Maybe it's a matter of it taking one to know one. On my second day, he disclosed to me that indeed he is Autistic. He had failed out of two universities. And now at Adelphi University he was getting the support that he needed, and now he was getting a 4.0.

The 4 A's of autism. Again, it begins with Awareness. We've been working on awareness for the past generation. For about 20 years, we've been educating people on recognizing Autism, whether it's in school, at home in the community, and even Autistic individuals themselves are better able to be aware of when they may be on the autism spectrum. This awareness builds a firm foundation for moving on to the next step, Acceptance. So accepting these Autistic characteristics. I see parents transitioning to acceptance more often during the transition years, or the teen years, where parents often realize, well, this Autism thing is here to stay. Maybe there is something that we can do to work with the characteristics. to work with the sensory differences and to work with the learning differences. We may have an Autistic person who is very visual in the way they learn. So let's use that visual ability, for example, to use picture exchange communication systems, or visually based assistive and augmentative communication devices. Really look at those differences or characteristics as strengths. We then move on to Appreciation. Appreciation is where Autistic individuals are valued for the contribution that we can give to society and we're seeing this more and more in employment. So for example, IT companies such as Microsoft, SAP, Google, Apple, they actively seek Autistic individuals, as their employees because they know a number of us can do things that maybe nobody else can do or we can do it much faster than other people can do. Now the question I have when it comes to appreciation and employment in this manner is, It's great to publicize and to promote what you might call Autistic geekery, my question always is, what about everybody else? What about the rest of us who have skills in other areas perhaps in writing, perhaps the arts, perhaps the sports? And what about those of us who maybe need more support, daily support in order to be gainfully employed. We can do this. There are organizations who are helping those who need more support to be fulfilled and productive in their employment. Now there's the fourth A and that is Action. Action is needed to glue the previous three A's together and to make it all work. We are seeing more and more action occurring as society begins to value individuals on the autism spectrum for who we are. So one way to look at it is that we can either try to make the Autistic person a Non Autistic person and have a very poor example of a Non Autistic person or we can help the Autistic person be the best Autistic person that they can be. I see these four A's occurring in the developmental process of people in organizations and even entire countries.