THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents
Autistic people want to work as caregivers, but the system makes it difficult for them to stay in their jobs. This is a loss for the clients, who lose an autistic mentor, and for the autistic support worker, who can be both traumatized and unemployed.
Working with a physical therapist to find out ways to feel better, and also to support your health, can be an amazing and empowering experience for an autistic person.
Autistic people are usually left to our own devices when it comes to navigating a social world defined by non-autistic rules. And when we make social errors, it’s very common to wish to retreat. Here are some (hopefully) comforting guidelines for such situations.
Joseph Krauter is an autistic writer and tech worker who was diagnosed as an adult, while serving time at San Quentin Prison in California. We talked with Joseph about how his life could have been different with earlier diagnosis and supports, the difficulty of receiving an autism diagnosis while incarcerated, and how his life has changed since both his autism diagnosis and his re-integration into society.
The new movie Ezra shows that when autistic people are creatively involved in telling autistic stories, it strengthens not only representation, but the very quality of a film itself.
Autistic brains can be in danger of overload while grocery shopping. When that happens autistics needs a quiet space—fast. But there are usually none in big stores.
Even though the Netflix series Heartbreak High looks like purely soapy fun, Sarah Kapit says it has “the best on-screen depiction of being autistic that I’ve ever seen.”
Hannah Gadsby’s rightful success gives me hope that we’ll be seeing more (openly) autistic people out there in the world, and with that, hopefully, there will be more understanding from the allistic people around us.
I had poured so much of myself into my protagonist. When my agent called my character childish, naive, and vulnerable, I couldn’t help but feel she was calling me childish, naive, and vulnerable.
We spoke with writer, public speaker, and autism self-advocate Gyasi Burks-Abbott about growing up Black and autistic in a much less autism-aware era, and how he was able to thrive thanks to the guidance of his intuitive and supportive mother.