Speaking and Silence

There are probably a hundred things I love about the sisterly relationship between Bluey and Bingo. The show does such an incredible job at honoring their different personalities as well as their different stages of development (since they’re supposed to be 4 and 6 years old). The one I’m thinking about today, though, is the … Read more

Say What You See

[Image description: There is a title at the top of the meme that reads “Verbal Referencing: Say What You See”. Three images of toddlers are shown, with captions beneath them. The first child is smiling with an open-mouthed smile. The caption says, “I see your big smile! I think you LIKE that.” The second child … Read more

Because Cats Aren’t Dogs [AA23]

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

Compliance isn’t Respect

“Compliance isn’t respect, and noncompliance isn’t a lack of respect” is a big lesson for adults to learn. One thing that has continually blown me away as I’ve learned and grown on this journey of coming to understand child development is how much language plays a role in this. I took completely for granted how … Read more

Bo-ring…

I have a child on my caseload who is Autistic and a “gestalt language learner” — a descriptive term for children who learn to speak in phrases or scripts (as opposed to learning to speak one word at a time). There’s many categories of gestalt language learning, and this isn’t meant to be a whole … Read more