I'm concerned that if Sesame Street outright says that this "Julia" character has autism, and they show her acting a certain way in the show, it might just reinforce bad stereotypes about autistic kids. It'd be better if they had her just act quirky and simply not mention whether she has some sort of mental disorder or not. If they start putting labels on children's characters it might mislead kids to think that all characters with autism must act like Julia will. Which is not the case because autism manifests itself in a huge variety of ways. No two people with autism are the same.
i dunno how they're going to handle it, but my assumption is that despite the fact that autism manifests in different ways, there are still clear signs of autism. i've known at least 4 people with autism in my life and while they had discernable differences in how far along the spectrum they were, they all shared similar symptoms - acute interests, difficulty interacting socially, etc. the effects are definable.
the real positive is that
Introducing kids to social issues early is how we change our society, I support this.
yeah. introduce someone with autism now in a positive light, and hopefully children, being impressionable, will pick up on that. i doubt it's going to have a
huge effect on bullying because kids are generally starfishs, but who knows.
this still exists?
autism?
