I am all about helping parents learn from my mistakes, so they don’t repeat my mistakes. Here are five bonks I made during the early years of parenting my autistic son, and how you can avoid repeating my fails.
This is a mini-guide for parents to think about autistic matters and perspectives they may not know about, and which may help them and their kids live the Best Lives Possible.
It’s time for non-autistics to accept their share of the burden of social reciprocity. It’s time to admit that the world has not been meeting us half-way. It’s time for people to learn to be more willing to accept others who are different from them.
Finding gifts autistic kids and adults appreciate isn’t that hard—if you actually find out what individual people like, and you remember that everyone has their own interests and preferences (and that they’re sometimes the exact opposite of other autistic people’s interests and preferences).
I, an adult person, do not use a phone even though I can speak orally. In fact—and I’m really letting the team down here, according to a certain kind of motivational speaker—I can’t use a phone.
For people with sensory access needs (like reactions to scented products), accommodations are not acts of good faith or favors, they are our rights!
For someone like me—so sensitive to noise that I can actually perceive the bio-mechanical sounds of my own ears ringing aloud—my headphones are an incredible blessing.
“It’s hard a lot of the time to know what I’m supposed to be paying attention to, what’s relevant to that particular conversation. I have to sift through all of the data and consciously keep track of what matters, and what doesn’t.”
Part of my imposter syndrome probably has to do with the fact that, in the ’80s, an autism diagnosis didn’t exist for kids like me: I was considered merely an academically gifted, artistic, shy little girl. My autistic traits were explained away or overlooked.
I wish people would stop saying things that pin autistic traits to a wall and imply they are permanent. They’re not. Autistics can have nuanced, complicated relationships with humor, empathy, social needs and so on.
