Edited by author 05-20-2005 12:08 AM
Hi Stacy, I'm not sure where to start. There's a long ongoing discussion hooked up to a different article on this website (the Misbehaviour of Behaviourists; at the bottom there are links to the archives as well as the current board which is here http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7 ).

I could also suggest joining the Yahoo group AutAdvo if you want privately to ask questions about the issues you are concerned about. There are other websites such as http://neurodiversity.com and http://www.autistics.org , Jim Sinclair's site http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/ and the Autism Network International site which includes a history of this organization http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html .

I'm very glad your family is refusing to medicate and institutionalize your brother.

On the comment board I referred to above (and in the archives), there is a lot of discussion of communication in "non-verbal" autistics; and of "aggression" and what behaviour that is labeled "aggressive" might mean. There are pretty good discussions of last straw behaviours, self-defence behaviours (two overlapping categories I put forward to more accurately explain what is going on when you are autistic and your communication fails), self-injury, etc (there may also be a lot of stuff you find irrelevant).

I'm not sure what you want exactly for feedback, but you're very welcome to ask questions here or (I suggest) on the Misbehaviour board; it might then be possible to give you useful information or anyway things to consider.