I feel like, by now, autistic sensory issues are pretty well known. If you are autistic, you’re intimately familiar with GoodFeel/BadFeel, food textures, etc. If you’re a parent of an autistic kid, you know certain sounds, smells, and textures are great and others Must Not […]
When I got my Covid jabs recently (please, everyone, get your vaccine as soon as it’s available and your health allows it), I had some pretty unpleasant side effects, like a lot of people. They weren’t especially bad, but they did make me realize that […]
One of the most common questions I get from parents who read this blog is how to deal with their children’s picky eating or limited palate and I always say that I wish I had good answers for that. Well, lo and behold, I found […]
It’s the most common piece of parenting advice, passed around new mom circles and down through generations as a way of dealing with picky eaters: “They’ll eat when they’re hungry”. And it probably works well enough with neurotypical kids. If refusing to eat what’s in […]
Today it’s time for some real talk for parents of autistic kids. I know – because I lived the child’s side of the experience – that there are times when your autistic child asks for help and you offer very reasonable solutions, only to have […]
One of the questions I’m asked most often by parents of autistic teenagers and young adults is how to get their kids to maintain proper hygiene. It’s not that autistic people are dirtier than others, but teens and young adults may refuse some aspects of […]
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 […]
It’s the holidays, and if you think you’re stressed out with all the extra activity, imagine how the autistic kids in your life are feeling! All kids, NT or otherwise, go a little crazy this time of year, what with toys and parties and all […]
I LOVE Halloween. It is absolutely my favorite holiday. I love dressing up, watching old horror movies, and decorating my house with macabre details (if I’m honest, that’s year-round, but I digress). But when I was a kid, sometimes Halloween was a swirl of brightly […]
