One of my absolute favorite things about our new life in Australia is that we’ve made best friends with the neighbours, who have several kids close in age to both of my children. All of our kids are neurodivergent and watching these gorgeous ND friendships flourish is giving me life every day. (All of this … Read more
The sensory weight of disability. It’s the way it feels like I had barely learned how to take care of myself without self invalidation. It’s the way that all of my feel-good strategies involve making myself feel worse first, and immediately after. So what’s the point? It’s asking someone if they could hand me a … Read more
If you are pursuing diagnosis for your neurodivergent child, it’s okay to take your neuro-affirming lens back “off” in order to talk to the doctor about your child. What I mean is that you are not a bad parent or you don’t love your child less if you play the system by its own rules. … Read more
A few years ago, I was working as an occupational therapist for a group institution/foster home for older children with disabilities. I could basically come once a week and do a group activity that anyone could participate in if they wanted to. It needed to be accessible to a wide range of ability levels. This … Read more
Many neurodivergent people (not just Autistic people, but including Autistic people) have skills that fluctuate from day to day. This comes up so often in IEP meetings that I’m sitting in. People will say of the child in their class, or of the child that they’re the parent of: “I know he knows how to … 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
One way that I sometimes explain the concept of neurodivergence — that autism, or ADHD* are different wirings of the brain, without being something “wrong” with the brain — to children (or sometimes to their adults!) is by making an analogy to operating systems: for example, an iPhone versus an Android. Many kids above a … 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
A small thought (from my time in studying for my UK driver’s license)… I got this practice question on a practice test and it made me pause. Can you read it and think of why? Do you see how it automatically assumes that the person reading this must not be a disabled driver? But in … Read more