[appletrotter]

I think your ideas around ‘tradeoffs’ here are very confusing.

Tradeoff is such an intrinsically correct term to use here. People with autism/adhd are worse at some tasks, and better at others. That’s what a tradeoff is.

There are similar discussions around deafness. Deaf people often don’t like to see their deafness as a disability, but as something that defines their culture and experience. That’s still a tradeoff. You can decide to give your child cochlear implants, and integrate them into mainstream schooling - or you can opt out of that, and integrate them into the deaf community. That’s the very definition of a trade off, and it’s a very valid and difficult question.

The issue I have with your take is that its adoption can reduce people’s feelings of agency around their way of life. What works for you isn’t necessarily universal. The idea of a tradeoff is that the same decision can have different meaning to people in varying contexts. You might suggest that people have been conditioned to want to be ‘normal,’ but that is an oversimplification that ignores individuals’ agency, and again, unique contexts.

[smeej]

It's so hard too because the people tasked with making the tradeoff decision are almost always the parents of the child, because the most effective interventions have to take place before the child can make her own decisions. They love and desperately want the best for their child, but likely have little direct experience with either side of the set of tradeoffs.

The main exception seems to be deaf parents of deaf children, but I don't know what the data says about what they usually choose.

[throwaway2037]

    > You can decide to give your child cochlear implants, and integrate them into mainstream schooling - or you can opt out of that, and integrate them into the deaf community.

The use of "or" here reads as exclusive: one or the other, but not both. In the last 15 years, since child cochlear implants became mainstream, many children have taken both routes, simultaneously. This is most frequent when one or both of their parents are also deaf. They are full members of their deaf community (learn to sign, plus all of the associated culture), and they are full member of the mainstream, non-deaf community (learn to listen and speak, plus all of the associated culture).

[appletrotter]

Great point