I wrote this in 1998 for Muskie's Website, ISNT, Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. It has since disappeared from the internet, but has fortunately been conserved by one Eric Engdahl.
This does not reflect my current views.
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| Facsimile of original article |
What to do if you suspect your child has NT
First, don't panic!
Nowadays due to diagnostic advances, early intervention and carefully tailored behavioural management techniques, there is no reason why your child can not grow into an independent social being, develop a TOOM (Theory of Other Minds), and in time, even develop some special interests and abilities to contribute to society.
While Medical Science currently holds out little hope for any great improvements in perceptual abilities such as hearing acuity, touch sensitivity, etc, it is still possible for NT children to enjoy the limited senses that they do have.
Rote drills such as Applied Behaviour Analysis with their easily understood regimen of repetitiveness and punishment will do wonders with common NT behaviours such as lying, teasing and faddishness.
AS scientists are currently working on a new range of wonder-drugs - Swarming Inhibitors (SI's) which it is hoped will prevent some of the more anti-social manifestations of NT such as a tendency to congregate in mobs, engage in vicious group character assassinations of outsiders, and in the extreme case to actually incite each other to mass acts of violence and destruction such as wars, pogroms, lynch mobs and the like.
-Judy Singer, jsinger @ acs.itd.uts.edu.au
NB:
- while the ISNT website appears to be defunct, the facsimile can be viewed here.
- The claim that ISNT owns the copyright to my piece is erroneous. As the author, I am the copyright holder.
- the above email address has long disappeared. It was my original email in 1998 while I was writing my sociology honours thesis
BTW, my understanding of copyright law is that the copyright is mine as the author, not ISNT's
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