The Autism Awareness, Care, and Training (AACT) school in Accra, Ghana is a place of peace, calm, and competence—plus the occasional whoop, shout, or “eeeee”—while students and staff radiate not just positivity but confidence. This is because students are encouraged to learn to the best of their abilities, and are appreciated for exactly who they are. AACT is a remarkable place.
I bring a bag of things to do—a book, a journal and pen, a music player and headphones—for when I need to chill out. If I get too overwhelmed, I take a walk in the cold air. When I take enough breaks to disengage, I can enjoy spending time together with large groups of relatives!
Autism acceptance, for the author, means recognizing that her autistic daughter “already is happy; she has a good life. So do a lot of people who go with their humanity unrecognized and unacknowledged.”
So what’s going on here? Does my autistic son lack social skills or does he not? The answer is that context matters. Socializing costs a lot of tokens. When he is in a situation that is already difficult for him, he won’t have those tokens to spare.
I recommend having a Santa Claus talk with any autistic kid over ten who hasn’t figured it out yet. It’s better to get the whole thing over with.
On Chanukah accommodations: “All those candles A had carefully placed and lit, he blew them out. Technically that’s a no-no in Jewish rituals. But we march to the beat of our own little yiddishe drummer boy around here, and eternal or not a flame is still a flame.”
Our society needs to more honest about parenting realities, needs to better prepare parents-to-be how to accept, support, and respect children with autism and other disabilities.
How the right accommodations helped one autistic student instantly go “from being a misunderstood, odd child with behavior problems to being a supported autistic child.”
There really are no good articles on how to help an autistic person process grief. It is with this hole in mind that I create this article.
I am very grateful to have this new piece of information about myself. I don’t consider my diagnosis to be an answer to all my life’s problems, nor do I consider it to be a deficit. What I see it as is a new lens to see my behavior through.
