Bringing Aspergers Back

With a less shitty name

Controversial opinion: The grading system of autism is hurting autistic people — and not the ones you think.

I have three children. Two are on the autism spectrum.
One has a high GPA, a rich social life, and holds down a job. The other has a life‑impairing, high‑risk, life‑threatening disability, and the Level 1/2/3 system may one day get him killed.

For those unfamiliar: what is now called Autism Level 1 used to be known as Asperger’s syndrome, after the notorious war criminal who used to starve children to death. Yes, the name was rightly abandoned. But the functional distinction mattered.

Aspergers became autism 1. You might recognise this is the portrayal of all your favourite quirky characters. This is your “Young Sheldon” / oddball savant stereotype - reductive, sure, and often dismissive of internal struggle - but not wildly inaccurate in terms of external functioning. Crucially, it is not typically life‑threatening. It creates challenges, not chasms. Impairments, not constant mortal risk.

When political rhetoric recently turned ugly toward autistic people, many rushed to defend autism by highlighting how high‑functioning, capable, and valuable autistic people are.

But do you know who was mostly absent from that conversation? The ones who cannot speak for themselves, or at all. The ones whose problem isn’t stigma or ego, but survival. Those who are actively and constantly endangered by being flattened into a single, sanitised “spectrum.”

A relative recently said to me, “Why not just send him on the bus?”

And I said “Because he would die”. Because at age 8, he would jump up and down, run the aisle, interfere with the driver and cause a crash. Because to travel safely he requires constant physical containment, restraint, or specialised supervision.Because without that, he could kill himself or someone else on the road.

It wasn’t so long ago that he was getting out of his carseat - despite the self proclaimed ‘Houdini’ restraint (HAH!) - and leaping into the front seat of the car when we were charging along at 100km on the highway. It got to the point our other children had to miss school on important medical trips, just so somebody was prepared to hold him down if he got out of his seat.

My youngest child is a savant. His savant skill is escape.
He can pick pockets. Memorise passcodes. Manipulate locks. Slip supervision in seconds. And has done, on multiple occasions. His kindy, his school, his disability provider, his parents. The police have his face on file so they can respond immediately, that’s how infamously good he is at thwarting security systems.

Unfortunately, the thing he cannot conceive of is death. He cannot understand what a car will do if it hits him, or how strong and deep the river runs. He understands only the now, now that there can be an end.

This is not a quirk. This is not a “different way of thinking.” This is a life‑threatening impairment of understanding.

And because our grading system prioritises sensitivity over accuracy, people - including some disability providers - genuinely fail to grasp what that means.

There is a romanticised version of autism circulating right now. And it is actively harming people with profound, dangerous disabilities.

It also grossly misrepresents the strain placed on caregivers to those with these severe expressions. Their child isn’t a little bit different. Their child is in a state of constant mortal danger. And that is a different life which needs drastically different supports.

I’ll say something that makes people uncomfortable: if I could change this, I would.

Not because I don’t love my child as he is. But because his life depends on every adult around him being 100% switched on, every second of every day. If you look away. If you get distracted. If you sneeze, he’s gone. And he’s fast. Boy is he fast. One moment of inattention and he’s in front of a bus.

Boom. Dead. That’s it. Every day, every second matters.

This isn’t about protecting the ego of high‑functioning autistic people, of who I am also married to and a mother to. Of whom strongly, aggressively agree with me because they themselves live in constant fear of the day to day proposition that is our youngest child’s disability. It’s about accurately recognising severity so that children who cannot defend themselves — who don’t even know what ego is — receive the level of protection their lives require.

Pretending these differences don’t exist is not inclusive.

It’s dangerous. It’s deadly.