I mentioned “intersectionality” briefly a few days ago when I was describing disability, and I think many people have some understanding of what it means: two factors converging — like race and gender, or gender and class — to make factors for the individual that are more difficult than either of them would have been … Read more
This is going to be very long. And this was the hardest post to write this month. I sat down to write it three or four times before I was actually able to make myself do so. I’m going to do my absolute best to write it with grace and empathy; I hope you will … Read more
Interoception may not even be a word you’ve ever heard before, let alone know what it means. At its most basic, interoception is “inner body sense”. On top of the five senses that we all know and learned about, there are other senses as well. Interoception is the one that, for example, can tell you … Read more
Remember that I had a post a few days ago about classifications of autism — i.e., “mild” vs “severe”, or “high functioning” vs “low functioning”. Well, for some people, Asperger’s goes into those types of categories. Some quick facts about Asperger’s: -It’s usually utilized as a quick shorthand for “mild autism”. -It’s sometimes even utilized … Read more
There is a common misconception that people with autism don’t show empathy, or don’t feel empathy, or cannot take on the perspective of someone else. The three categories given in the DSM-5 definition of autism, all of which are required to be met in order for a person to receive that diagnosis, cover (1) social-emotional … Read more
You may have heard someone say, “He has severe autism” or “They have mild autism”. You might have heard “She has high-functioning autism” or “He is very low-functioning”. In response to some backlash against these terms, there has even been a newer push towards classifying autism into “level 1, 2, and 3”. And, as I … Read more
“Sensory” is one of those buzzwords these days in parenting groups, on Pinterest, and in relation to different diagnoses. I’ve seen people use it to mean pretty much everything. When I talk about sensory processing, I am not talking about kids playing with rice or shaving cream in a bin. 😊 There are a few … Read more
“What about the DSM definition of autism?” This is the kind of question that I’m more likely to get from experts who are maybe trying to wrap their head around a neurodiversity paradigm but having trouble letting go of what they’ve been taught in schools or other institutions. The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistic … Read more
Describing autism as a spectrum sometimes leads people to conceptualize it as though it is a single axis with “more autistic” and “less autistic” at the two polar ends of it, and each autistic person placed along this axis somewhere. I’m going to go more in depth about autism classification later this month, but what … Read more
I remember when I first started being exposed to the idea that disability could be largely, if not entirely, a social construct. I thought of it as kind of a nice, “politically correct” idea, and I could understand the framework that it was taking and was happy to accept it and espouse it externally. It … Read more