“I want you to build a tower,” I say. You agree, and you stand up to go get the bucket of blocks off the shelf. I shake my head sternly. “No. Did I tell you you could get up? Sit down. Build a tower.” You look confused. You point over at the bucket of blocks. … Read more
I want you to imagine for a moment that…everything is really good right now. Imagine that all the things on your to-do list that feel like “have to”s (instead of “get to”s) are taken care of. Someone is going to bring you dinner and it’s food you love and your body is hungry for it. … Read more
This post by NeuroWild does an incredibly concise job of showing the harm that the “medical model” can perpetuate in describing autism — specifically, in the way that it describes Autistic people solely by comparing them to non-Autistic people and then calling those things deficits or dysfunction, instead of by recognising and describing the unique … Read more
Let’s talk about euphemisms. When non-disabled people dodge around the word “disabled” because they think it’s an uncomfortable word, that’s a euphemism. When they say someone has “special needs” or is “differently-abled” or is “challenged”, those are euphemisms. Most of the disabled community do not like being spoken of euphemistically. It’s a whole other conversational … Read more
This is what it means to say that autism is a neurodivergence (as opposed to, i.e., a disease). I think, if I were writing this quote, I would probably put quotes around the word ‘normal’ — I think it’s likely that the author is not really using his own language but rather the language that people … Read more