NY NY - Jacob Pritchette, 11, autistic, not seen several weeks, mother arrested, Brownsville/Brooklyn, Sept 2025

[AuDHD]

Glad to know I am not only one around. And that you come worth saying about it too. It helps to clear more of the misconceptions around and point out, that something is wrong with her - and that it isn't necessarily the easiest (and highly stigmatized) issue of ASD.

but seriously, for the allistic (non-autistic) group members, unless she had a very specific autism presentation, one that mimics stereotypes seen in films like Rainman, she wouldn’t have been diagnosed in childhood. Adult diagnosis is even less likely.

All JMO and i’m not offended nor do i think anything malicious was said by anyone on this thread. But I really want to stress that violence towards others isn’t part of the autism experience. As evidenced by the numerous missing children cases in here, it would seem that autism makes us targets for violence.

I think that it’s important to correct these misconceptions about autistic folks in here bc it’s not a huge leap from “Autistic ppl can’t connect with other human beings” to “autistic ppl are so ‘disconnected’ from other people that they could murder them and not feel bad.”

It’s actually the other way around: bc we connect differently than expected, people can justify killing us. They see us as ‘too needy’ while simultaneously ‘ungrateful’ bc we don’t perform gratitude the way ppl expect.

As for this lil guy, i don’t have much hope for him being found alive and well somewhere, sadly. I guess I’m hopeful that the mom is more forthcoming with info in the psych evaluation and they can at least figure out what happened to him and hold her accountable (if she indeed is culpable).

 

[ChatteringBirds]

unless she had a very specific autism presentation, one that mimics stereotypes seen in films like Rainman, she wouldn’t have been diagnosed in childhood.

It does seem like many girls and women on the spectrum are never diagnosed, which is terrible. But I've noticed some adults do finally end up being diagnosed after their child is diagnosed. Hopefully they check her for it when they're evaluating her...not that it matters much now.

 

[AuDHD]

It does seem like many girls and women on the spectrum are never diagnosed, which is terrible. But I've noticed some adults do finally end up being diagnosed after their child is diagnosed. Hopefully they check her for it when they're evaluating her...not that it matters much now.

yes, it’s getting a little better. I was diagnosed as an adult but I had to seek out a provider that screens adults (which is no easy feat, most simply refuse to screen you) and it wasn’t covered by insurance so I had to pay cash for it (6 sessions and the report for my other clinicians was at least $1500) So, there are a lot of barriers to adult diagnosis.

I did it for 2 reasons. First, bc I wanted to advocate as an autistic person and speak to my own experience with it to distinguish myself from the “autism mom” trope common in our community. Second, because I started having meltdowns in public places during a period of burnout. I worried that the meltdowns put me at risk of being classified as some other scarlet letter that I didn’t want and didn’t feel fits me. So, for me personally, it was a race to get autism & adhd diagnosed before some chucklehead put one of those others on my chart without even considering autism/adhd or because they were unfamiliar with autism and adhd. all JMO