Recent events like the backlash to a trailer for a film I won’t mention here have brought up that perennial blister of the autistic community – why Autism Speaks is such a problem. For many people outside the autistic community or those new to the […]
Autistic people stim in lots of ways – we jump, rock, use weighted blankets, touch favorite textures, etc. One of my favorite ways to stim is verbally. I like playing with words, with the sounds of them and the feel of them in my mouth, […]
One of my biggest challenges in school was my handwriting. *Checks barely legible notes* It still is. I got flat F’s all through elementary school and once they stopped grading that, I got points marked off for “neatness” on any handwritten work I turned in. […]
I don’t use functioning labels. They only serve to withhold support from those designated “high-functioning” and limit the possibilities available to those deemed “low-functioning”. They’re crap, so I don’t use them here. I prefer using support needs if the distinction is necessary: low support needs […]
In pretty much everything I write, on the blog and on social media, you’ll find that I say “autistic” or talk about “being autistic” instead of saying “person with autism” or talking about “having autism”. The language I use is called identity-first language, while the […]
Every now and then, I run across a piece of film or other media that hits really close to home in depicting parts of my autistic experience. One of those is the episode “Mute” from season four of The Twilight Zone. You can find it […]
Happy Pride Month and Happy Autistic Pride Day! Well…it’s kind of a weird time for all of that isn’t it? It’s definitely a weird time to be autistic and LGBTQIA+. There is a disproportionate overlap between the autistic and LGBTQIA+ populations, that’s a fact. But […]
Following on from last week’s post, today I want to talk about boundaries. Boundaries are magical things. They keep us safe, they determine what treatment we will and won’t tolerate, and they give us a clear way to know when someone does not have our […]
Some very dear friends of mine have a daughter in elementary school who has recently been diagnosed with autism. It took them several years of dealing with emotional dysregulation, anxiety, outbursts, and fighting to get to this point and now they’re adjusting and trying to […]
Recently, I saw yet another social media post where some uninformed person said that autistic people can’t date, can’t marry, don’t have feelings, etc., etc., etc. This annoys me to no end, so I’m saying it again. We. Have. Feelings. We. Have. Relationships. We are […]
