Kaka
The title of this post is not meant to refer to what you might be thinking. Kakos is the ancient Greek word for “bad” and “evil.” The etymology of kakos can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European word kakka, “to defecate”: Kakos means nothing nice or good. Kaka means, specifically, “bad or evil things” (for those who have a bit of Greek or Latin, kaka is an adjective in the neuter nominative plural).
Nonetheless, I have had the word kaka on my mind for the past two days, with both the meaning of “bad things” and, inevitably, the other meaning when the k’s are replaced with c’s, as a result of reading David Kirby’s there-is-no-autism-epidemic-rivers-of-diarrhea piece on January 2nd, and then Kim Stagliano’s account on the various crapisodes of her three autistic daughters on January 3rd.
Stagliano distinguishes her daughters’ disability as not the autism the “Neurodiverse (ND)” are talking about when they “speak eloquently, write blogs, move out on their own, marry, have children and manage their autistic traits.” Like Kirby who suggests that there are “high functioning” autistic adults who have a disorder quite different from the “low functioning” children whose GI systems he writes of as feeling like “burning coal,” Stagliano is fine with her daughters getting “a new label” besides autism. She and Kirby both talk a great deal about kaka in their posts, in regard to the kaka that autism brings with it and in regard to the kaka that Stagliano is rightly pleased to see her children get into the toilet, and that the “E.N.D.” children in Kirby’s post are said to leave in swirls “on a favorite carpet or pet.”
Autism, in these bloggers’ views, is kaka, and thus they are fine with letting the “ND” have it all to themselves.
But perhaps a bit too much of this being thrown around here?
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POSTED IN: Classics, Diagnosis, Family, Health, Language, Parenting, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Stereotypes
21 opinions for Kaka
Lisa/Jedi
Jan 4, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I suppose it all boils down to what do we gain & what do we lose by trying to redifine or rigidly define a very diverse population of people. At essence, it seems to me that we are trying to figure out kinship- what do we have in common or not? My son’s official diagnosis is Aspergers (plus OCD, Tourettes, Non-verbal Learning Disorder…) & he does have a lot in common with other people we have met who have AS- but he there are dissimilarities, too. Kristina’s Charlie may seem at first to be very different from my Brendan, but I see some deep similarities as well. It does not bother me to think of, refer to, help my kid understand that he is autistic, like Charlie. I prefer to weigh-in in favour of kinship rather than fracturing people into factions in imprecise & ill-understood ways. In community there is strength…
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 4, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Kinship, consanguinity—-I see the same deep similarities too between Charlie and Brendan, and the same “surface” differences (Charlie has a lot less language and he can only read a few sight words). When you write about tics, I think of Charlie and some of his repetitive movements, the humming—the notion of “functioning” (high, low) seems to me get in the way of seeing those commonalities.
Yes, there is strength in community; I guess that is one reason why I am not sure about attempts to “divide and conquer” the autism spectrum.
Leila
Jan 4, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I think the main problem is miscommunication. Stagliano is a great mom who loves her daughters and wants to see them develop and get rid of the most unpleasant aspects of autism. She should not be criticized for that. However, she doesn’t seem to understand very well the concept of neurodiversity and that the parents that advocate for neurodiversity also seek therapy for their autistic children - although they tipically are not buying the mercury/thimerosal theory or the legitimacy of chelation and other similar treatments.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 4, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Accepting one’s child being “neurodiverse” or “different” or just plain old autistic need not, indeed, be counter wanting to help educate her or him, whatever one’s child’s diagnosis—mild, severe, classic, or whatever term.
Someone
Jan 4, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I don’t know if Kirby’s idea is a good one. It just seems like the people with AS are trying to take the autism label for themselves and trying to kick out everyone else who isn’t similar to them.
Leila
Jan 4, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I agree with you Kristina. But it seems the debate is so emotional that people are not listening to the other side, and therefore failing to realize how much they have in common. We all love our children no matter what; the main difference is that some people believe in the mercury connection and chelation, while others don’t.
I’m also skeptical and I support the neurodiversity movement. However I still see that parents who believe in the mercury poisoning and who publicly talk about the negative side of autism are just as good parents as I am. In one way or another, we are all fighting for our kids’ well being and one cause complements the other.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 4, 2007 at 1:41 pm
And how to get us all to talk to each other is something I hope can be fostered!
laurentius-rex
Jan 4, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Well interestingly cack handed is the slang for left handed, and being manually maladroit
(deconstruct manually maladroit, you have latin and norman french roots there and a sinister simile)
Well in some cultures the left hand is the hand one uses to wipe oneself after crapping, so you do not offer the left hand to anyone. Well the left hand path or sinister comes to mind aswell, trouble is the left hand path is also the one less travelled, and that makes all the difference.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 4, 2007 at 9:20 pm
And sinister is Latin for “left”……
Autism Vox » Diversity, Neurodiversity, and Dictee
Jan 5, 2007 at 4:00 am
[…] Strong, and indeed acrimonious, words were leveled at the “movement” of “the neurodiverse,” in the words of David Kirby and of autism mother Kim Stagliano this week, with responses from many a blogger. Among the points of contention is that the notion of the neurodiversity is all well and fine if you are an adult with (as another autism mother puts it) “very high functioning autism”—indeed with Asperger’s Syndrome, specifically—rather than “severe autism” which seems to mean a “low functioning” and non-verbal child (with numerous other challenges, messiest of which are kaka). […]
KPL,PhD
Jan 11, 2007 at 11:47 am
Kaka.Bullshit.Everywhere. Even here. Yes, here. Has it occurred to anyone that maybe, just maybe, some of these children presenting as autistic are not actually, autistic at all? They are ill. That type of diarrhea, when accompanied by pale skin, rings under the eys, failure to grow, etc…says that THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG INSIDE THE BODY. There is a lot of this. We have lived it. Twin boys, one fairly healthy, one sick all of the time…viral and bacterial, lots of antibitoics, meds, breathing problems, etc…Guess what? At two, he was diagnosed with autism. No, we did not do chelation, but we saw many professionals, No, not a DAN! But Doctors who tested and looked and discovered a little body, completely torn up. Interesting to watch twins, compare their medical histories. One, the one who was diagnosed, received Ativan in his IV at 4 pounds in the NICU, the other didn’t. One, received 15 rounds of antibiotics in 20 months, the other didn’t. I’ll spare you all the details…Slowly, gradually as we addressed the medical issues and he began to heal, he began to grow, develop properly and finally surpass all of his delays and issues. At four, at Johns Hopkins, he lost his diagnosis. Cured of autism? Misdiagnosed? Who cares? He is well, healthy…neurodiverse or neurotypical, it doesn’t matter to me. We love him, accept him, want him regardless of any label. But he is well. When you are well, you can become. Become…whoever that may be. A better question would be, why are so many sick children being diagnosed with autism? Newsweek recently called autism a disease (more than once). It is not, but the confusion on the symptoms is blurring the lines, damaging the cause. A better question…Why the confusion between biomedical or environmental illnesses and autism? Be a bit more compassionate, some of these parents have sick children and they aren’t trying to eradicate autism, they just want their children, well…autism or not. Hope for more accurate assessments. Work towards your goal, but realize it is not parents who are blurring the lines. (or even Kirby) Some are told AUTISM and what they see is sickness, constant sickness. Two different things? Perhaps. More than likely, many different things…ONE being who a person is…which should be celebrated. The others, illnesses, nameless illnesses, which should be treated.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 11, 2007 at 11:58 am
A better question would be, why are so many sick children being diagnosed with autism?
Why the confusion between biomedical or environmental illnesses and autism?
Thanks very much for commenting here and for writing about your children. I much appreciate your articulating so many questions that run through many parents’ minds—why, indeed, is “autism” the diagnosis on so many people’s, and indeed the general public’s, mind?
Autism Vox » What if there is no autism epidemic?
Jan 11, 2007 at 8:53 pm
[…] There is No Autism Epidemic was the title of a post in the Huffington Post last week in which Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic - A Medical Controversy author, journalist David Kirby, proclaimed with heavy irony that there is indeed “no autism epidemic” and then went on to suggest that the many children now called “autistic” with various severe symptoms do not have autism, but some other disorder caused by environmental toxins. The deeply sarcastic tone of his article was underscored by his closing sentence in which he refuted the thesis of his his own book, “Columbus was not in the Indies, mercury doesn’t cause autism, and there is no autism epidemic.” […]
Autism Vox » The Cause of the Autism Mother
Jan 30, 2007 at 6:49 pm
[…] Stagliano implicitly contrasts these autistic men whose abilities have been trumpeted in the media with her own three daughters, whose crapisodes she has previously recounted. It is all very nice to see an “autistic boy” shooting some baskets” or to see a “soft spoken, quirky man” carefully weighing out his 45 grams of oatmeal for breakfast everyday. But the real autism reality show—what it is really like to live with autism every day; to be the materfamilias of a family of autistic children—is rather a continuous narrative of kaka upon kaka, of bad moments upon tough moments to the point that said materfamilias has “a lot of late (and sleepless) nights,” in the face of such stupidity. […]
Autism Vox » J-Mac is Back
Feb 15, 2007 at 6:02 pm
[…] It has been exactly a year since Jason McElwain scored his 20 points in the final four minutes of a Greece Athena High School basketball game. J-Mac’s four minutes of fame were seen over and over by many on the Internet and—after an initial “wow“—his achievement has become a touch point for some in the autism community: It was great, some say, that J-Mac made those baskets, but this is not autism every day. This is not what autism really looks like; this is something very specific to one high-functioning—able to attend high school with his peers—autistic teenager. The true face of autism is not J-Mac shooting the ball, but the screaming, tantrumming, still-in-diapers-at-6-years-old lives of so many “severely autistic” children who, along with their parents, endure one kaka moment after the next. […]
Autism Vox » Aversive Stimulation, Improper Behavior, and the JRC
Feb 20, 2007 at 6:07 pm
[…] This story, which began by showing the awfulness of autism—the kaka of such a “devastating” disorder—can then introduce the JRC as providing a solution, and a solution that works, when none could be found. After noting that “[t]he Dohertys said they were willing to try aversive stimulation to save their son from self-destruction,” the ABC News story describes the electric shock device used by the JRC, the Graduated Electronic Decelerator. A student wears a backpack containing the transmitter that administers the sock via electrodes attached to the student’s arms, legs and torso. The ABC News story continues: Though many people object to this type of punishment, Dr. Matthew Israel, the founder and director of the J.R.C., said “the device is simply a device that administers a two-second shock to the surface of the skin that has absolutely no side effects, [and] is extremely effective as a corrective procedure to encourage children not to show violent behavior, not to show self-abusive behavior.” […]
Autism Vox » Play Date with a Friend; or, What We Need
Apr 19, 2007 at 1:51 am
[…] A fate worse than death? (No, it is not, as if that needed to be said.) A tragedy? “Kaka” (the ancient Greek word for “bad […]
Autism Vox » I Had to Learn to See Who He Is: An autism mother’s continuing education
Apr 29, 2007 at 7:19 pm
[…] few years as the story of Autismland; in that story is mention of nearly every horrible or “kaka” moment that one might experience in raising an autisitc child: Thanks to all the good […]
Upstairs, Downstairs
Jun 26, 2007 at 1:27 am
[…] Actually, quite efficient. (Or maybe after years of motherhood, this sort of things is nothing bad, just what needs to be done; seeing that my child is cozily settled in his bed, I go back to work […]
athina
Jul 26, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Kristina,
Thank you for paying such a great attribute to the Greek language. As a Greek I can’t help but feeling proud about it. As a mother of an autistic boy, I find myself many times wondering what life would be like if my child wasn’t autistic. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to catch his eyes or to get him dressed. Maybe it wouldn’t take so much effort to feed him (his only food for six whole months was yogurt). Maybe my husband and I wouldn’t be so tensed all the time by his misbehavior and tantrums. Maybe we would be able to go to other kids’ birthday parties without worrying about our son withdrawing from other children or, worse, getting bit up by other children. Maybe we would have known him better. We would have got rid of all the ‘kaka’ of autism and have our baby back. And then I come back to reality as it is, awful and frustrating.
I also spend a lot of time thinking of the word ‘autism’ and wondering why they named this condition like that. As you have already noted, the word autism comes from the Greek word ‘auto’ which means ‘it’. Why ‘it’? Does my child consider himself as ‘it’? So, maybe that’s why he doesn’t use the word ‘I’ when he talks about himself (he started using the word ‘I’ recently but I’m not sure if he understands the meaning or he just complies to his speech therapist’s directions).
I don’t know the cause of autism and I don’t know if there is any cure. All I know is that it’s the one thing I have never though that would cross my path in life and yet it did. And I resent it!
Let the Healing Start
Dec 14, 2007 at 2:50 pm
[…] many. To emphasize the daily horrors of life with autism, some often list the stereotypical “kaka” (”bad things in ancient Greek) of life with a child who self-injures or who is my […]
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