Autism News Direct is reporting that Lowe’s is the first company to pull advertisements from Big Brother in light of Adam Jasinksi’s foot-in-mouth comment calling the autistic children he works with retards. In the entry Lowe’s Pulls Advertisements From Big Brother After Jasinski Comment, a press release from Autism United announces that Lowe’s has pulled out and that plans are underway to work on other big name advertisers like Taco Bell, Saturn, and Geico.
It is nice to see some action on the part of the advertisers, it would certainly be nice for CBS to come out with more than a simple statement about this. A lot of people are comparing Jasinski’s comment to Don Imus’ “nappy-headed hos” comment that ended with his termination. It will be interesting to see how the rest of this plays out in the media.
My daughter has made tremendous growth since she was diagnosed the day before her third birthday. In the past 18 months or so, she has gone from one word echolalia to 4-5 word spontaneous sentences. She’s gone from no clue about when bodily functions occur to potty-trained during the day with only a few accidents a week. She can drink from an open cup now and she can even write her first name. Her expressive communication has gone through a big jump and her receptive has increased a bit as well. If, however, you spend a bit of time with her you’ll quickly realize that there is more than meets the eye (no she’s not a Transformer hehe).
Her sentence structure is just all screwy. Verb tense is off, pronouns are hokey, and sometimes the words she puts together just don’t mean anything. Her understanding of what we say is also just way off. She was discharged from occupational therapy in January and the therapist wrote that yes she could follow three-step commands with “minimal prompting.” Over the last week I’ve probably tried 20 times to get her to follow a three-step command and without massive amounts of prompting, she didn’t get a single three-step command done. The test example was “clap your hands, go to the door, and sit down”. She’ll clap her hands and sit down or she’ll clap her hands then go to the door then forget what comes next.
My parents even worked with her on it and out of about six requests she completed zero. No way does my sweet little girl follow three-step commands with minimal prompting. She’s also likely to test out of speech therapy as well. This is where I get concerned - she’s a “fall through the cracks” kind of kid; thankfully she’s in the kind of family that won’t allow that to happen.
She’s going to test out of speech therapy but her speech is still going to be completely wrong. In my family we have bets as to whether she’ll test back in to speech in kindergarten or 1st grade; I’m guessing 1st grade and my mom has her money on kindergarten. However in some families if parents were told “hey your kid’s speech is age appropriate and she can follow three-step commands” then they might leave it at that. Fast forward a few years when the child is failing 1st or 2nd grade the parent might not realize that her child is actually delayed. I think in education circles these children are called “slow-lows”. My baby girl will NOT fall between the cracks.
