In the News: Adopted Pit Bull Helps Autistic Teenager Hug and Kiss His Mom For the First Time

[chaoticidealism]

Adopted Pit Bull Helps Autistic Teenager Hug And Kiss His Mom For The First TimeIt's not uncommon for autistic people to learn things from animals when humans are too complex to understand. Learning to cuddle with a dog is just so much less complicated than learning how, when, and when it's appropriate to hug a human. I can't help but wonder

Comments

[timeprojectile]

Nice to see a positive story, but yeah, the notion of miracles vs. tragedies could be taken as insulting...a miracle implies a prior assumed state of tragedy. I remember seeing a documentary about autists learning to communicate with tablets, and there was this one Kanner's pre-teen who was assumed not to have a significant inner life until he picked up a tablet and revealed himself to be an opera nerd. No miracles after, no tragedies before. He'd always been engaged and aware in his own way and just needed the right time and technology to be able to tell the NTs in his life about it all.

[nightengalesknd]

It's also from the unexamined perspective of neurotypical superiority, that is that hugging one's mother is inherently better than not-hugging one's mother. It's portrayed in the article as a matter of fact for the mother, the reporter, the presumed audience.

Dog helps person do something they wanted to do but previously couldn't!

is a very different headline and message from

Dog helps person do something that non-disabled people think is important for them to do and so they are now better/less disabled!

[shehasathree]

Personally I find animals much scarier than people (plus they smell funny).

[chaoticidealism]

LOL, fair enough! Not everybody has to be a stereotypical autistic animal whisperer, right? Ever since Temple Grandin, they've assumed; but in reality, it's not like that. For one thing, I don't know a thing about how to communicate with cows...