Posted By Dan Swearingen on August 1, 2009

As a parent of an autistic child you find that you read reporting on autism at several levels.

On July 6, the LA Times reported on the case of Joshua Fry: Case of autistic Marine brings recruiting problems to the forefront

Lots of info and questions raised a relatively short story:

1. Are the Marine recruiters under such pressure that they’ll accept anyone?

2. Should autistics try living in the military?

3. The staff at the Recruit Depot worked with Joshua and he PASSED boot camp (no small accomplishment!).

4. Joshua completely failed subsequent training — ending up in the brig on various charges.

Nearly 30 years ago I passed through Marine Corps recruit training. I hated the structure (near as I can tell you’re supposed to) but I appreciated its predictability and the clear direction it allowed. Follow orders — you succeed. Do otherwise — you fail.

After boot camp, I was not a very successful Marine. People often ask what rank I attained. I usually answer “I made Lance Corporal a couple times.” People with service experience laugh and get it immediately: I was a f#@k-up who got rank but was busted to private for infractions and had to re-earn my rank.

I learned lots of useful skills in the Marines. The most important were that a group is more powerful than an individual, success comes from dogged persistence, and you are capable of far more than you can imagine if you just keep pushing (or are being pushed!).

Another lesson the article about Joshua reminded me of was that in highly structured situations, people with ASD do very well. Often indistinguishably from “normal” people.

The Marine Corps is able to impose structure on their recruits through a spectrum of incentives and controls: Group cohesion, logical argument, yelling, “incentive training” (punitive exercises like 100 push-ups), and the nearby brig.

Usually the recruit finally learns “I will do what they tell me because I do not want to spend a week in the brig.” In my time something like 10-15% of recruits washed out. We had two suicide attempts in my platoon alone.

If ASD kids and people can succeed with the help of structure, how can we best add that to their civilian lives? What do we do when the “recruit” says “no?”

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This entry was posted by Dan Swearingen on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.