A friend of mine who works with autistic and other ND kids in a school setting recently asked me for some advice. A teacher had asked her for help with a kid in her class who hates it when people get close to him and […]
We talk about “masking” a lot in the Autistic community – the strenuous process of pretending to be neurotypical. There’s a lot of discussion around whether masking is healthy or unhealthy, the toll it takes on our mental health, and whether it’s good, bad, or […]
One of the hallmarks of autism is asynchronous development – also known as the Spiky Profile or “islands of skill”. All this means is that some of our skills are very well-developed and others are much lower, so that a graph of our test scores […]
Recently, I ran across some kerfuffle in the Twitterverse surrounding the idea of “former gifted kid” trauma. You may have seen these posts from time to time, equating growing up with the “gifted” label with serious mental health issues in adulthood. Someone replied to these […]
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. […]
School is starting again, but nothing is normal this school year. Parents are facing choices between virtual classes, part-time school, or full homeschooling. Kids are looking at limited socialization, only being allowed to interact with a few of their classmates, if any. Everything is weird, […]
One of the common stereotypes of autistic people is the idea of the human calculator. I blame Rain Man for a lot of this, but characters like Sheldon Cooper haven’t helped. The truth is, we’re not all incredible at math. In fact, some of us […]
It’s that time again, folks – a new school year is upon us! For Ravenclaw/Hermione Granger types like myself, the back-to-school season is almost like an early Christmas (I LOVE school supplies)! Some autistic kids love going back to school, while others hate it – just […]
Autistic kids and teenagers benefit from structure, so a fully unstructured summer is less than ideal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that autistic kids should have every day of their summer completely planned out! Please, please allow them some time to just be kids and […]
I grew up in a time before “twice exceptional” was a thing. That term only came into the educational lexicon around 1997, which was too late for me, given that I graduated high school in 1999. When I was young, nobody understood that a gifted […]
