Recently I posted this picture to social media. I was thrilled to find two of these wreaths at my son’s high school on the entrance doors. I appreciated that someone in the school would care enough to make sure this message was displayed to the minority of students in the building who experience autism. But also to bring awareness to all the neurotypical students.
I asked my son if he had noticed the big wreaths on the doors. He doesn’t always notice things right in front of his face. He hadn’t. But he enthusiastically told me about posters he had seen on the hallway walls that were about autism that he really liked. It may not seem like a big thing to most people, but for him, and to me, it meant that he was being seen and heard.
When I posted this picture on my personal Facebook page, a friend asked what I thought about the puzzle piece debate with autism.
For those of you who aren’t aware, a puzzle piece has been used to represent autism. This puzzle piece was made into a logo by Autism Speaks, an organization that many people with autism have strong feelings against. A puzzle piece signifies that a piece of the puzzle to unlock the autism mystery is missing. A puzzle piece is also used for other brain-related diagnoses like Alzheimer’s. The autism puzzle piece is usually multi-colored, whereas the Alzheimer’s puzzle piece is blue.
Some in the autism community who have autism themselves, object to the use of a puzzle piece. They feel they have no pieces missing. They feel they are whole and complete. This also usually ties in with their objection to finding a “cure” for autism. This view of the puzzle piece it should be noted is not held by all of the autism community, however. I recently read a few posts of people with autism responding to this controversy. Some feel like getting the diagnosis of autism caused the last piece to fall into place. Others agreed with there being a missing piece. The opinions seemed to be pretty evenly divided.
Where do I stand on the subject of a puzzle piece representing autism?
My first thought, is that my life is consumed with so many other things, I’m not that worried about whether a puzzzle piece should or should not represent something.
But my real thoughts on the matter?
For those with severe autism, I think that a puzzle piece or a key makes an excellent representation of the issue. We want to find the missing piece. The world needs to unlock the mystery to figure out how to better help these individuals more fully participate in life, in whatever manner they choose. We want them to be able to communicate, stop self-harming, and enable them to live to their full potential. But right now, we don’t have these answers.
For those who have milder autism, those who would have been diagnosed as having Aspbergers in the previous DSM, I think that the puzzle piece doesn’t apply as well. There is nothing wrong with neurodiversity. People with autism, think and process things differently. Yet they have made amazing contributions to humankind. What more could we want from them?
Where do you stand on the puzzle piece debate? What are your thoughts?
I can personally say that having autism and seeing the whole thing around the puzzle piece. it’s honestly a stupid o Analogy of describing someone with autism. We aren’t missing anything, we are just different than everyone else. That’s the only way of putting it the only piece of the puzzle we are missing is the piece that makes us like other people without autism and in that same way we could say that people without it are missing the piece that make them like us.
Hi Dan, I can understand that. No one wants to be told they have a missing piece.