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
The Theory of Monotropism is one explanation of the origin and definition of autism as a natural, neurological wiring. It’s absolutely fascinating, compelling, and makes sense of a whole lot of things, and it stopped me in my tracks the first time I read about it. Here’s my favorite article on the whole thing — … Read more
I thought it would be helpful to have some definitions of some terms that I might use this month (and also throughout my writing). *** Autism/Autistic: I will be posting several definitions, one tomorrow and more throughout the month, of autism from a strengths-based reframe. At very least, it is worth thinking about and reconsidering … Read more
On this site, you will always see me saying “Autistic person” (or its variants, Autistic adult, Autistic child, etc) instead of “person with autism”. But you might have heard (just like I did in school) that it ought to be the opposite! What is the story there? Person-first language is a movement that rose up … Read more
Happy April! You may or may not know this as Autism Awareness Month. There have been campaigns for decades, but growing to prominence with social media culture, about “light it up blue”, the puzzle piece symbol, etc, to make people, well, I guess aware of autism. I have no doubt that on a person to … 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