My son huffed at a puddle that he didn’t want to be there the other day and said, “The rain is making bad choices!” It made me laugh, because it was cute and funny. And then it made me think, because most of the adults I know who say, “___ is making bad choices,” are … Read more
Continuing discussion of Autistic intersectionality… In studies examining the relationship between two things, it’s important to understand the directionality of the relationship. Just because all A are B, doesn’t mean that all B are A. That being said, there *is* actually a correlation in both directions when it comes to autism and gender diversity: people … Read more
“Did you know,” he tells me, his feet kicking off the ground to push the swing again, “that if you wake up before 3 AM, there’s a 1 in 3 chance it’s because you heard somebody breaking into your house?” “Hmmm,” I answer reflexively. I’m sitting on the floor with my knees up, facing in … Read more
In continuing discussing about intersectionality, today’s discussion is about Autism and sex. Note that I am using the term “sex” here because I will be doing a separate post about autism and gender, which is its own complicated subject. What this post is about is not autistic people having sex or autistic people’s sexuality (although … Read more
Autism does not just affect white boys. But historically, the diagnostic criteria has been focused around how it presents in white children (especially boys — but that will be the topic tomorrow). Some good news is that recently, and looking at trends over the years, this seems to be changing. For the first time in … Read more
It can be really tricky to teach children how to understand the emotions inside of their bodies. It feels obvious after you already know all the emotion words — maybe, depending on how in tune you actually feel with your ability to interpret your own emotions! — but it’s much harder to do from the … Read more
One thing that’s really challenging for adults in all contexts—parenting, or professional contexts—is balancing between how much autonomy and how much protection to provide to their child. That’s why when I was writing this reminder to go on the board in my therapy gym, for the adults who work with kids who use it to … Read more
The transcription of the whiteboard can be found at my intro post for this series: What the Therapy Gym Is. When I set out to write this as a helpful reminder for the adults who take children to use my therapy gym to self-regulate throughout the day, I spent a lot of time thinking about … Read more
Last year, I had the opportunity to train some of the staff at one of the schools I work at about how to use the therapy gym as a place for some of the children to use regularly to self-regulate throughout the day — i.e., as opposed to only coming in there with me during … Read more
A fine motor, pre-writing activity offer in my therapy gym today: dot-to-dots to make the “flight paths” of different airplanes, rocketships, and helicopters. You can customize this whichever way matches the child’s level of drawing/tracing right now…to work on horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonals, curves, loops, etc. All of these things are skills that children … Read more