THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents
When you have a meltdown it’s as if the world is ending. Everything is too much, and you feel like an overwhelming darkness has engulfed your very being. Irrepressible anger that may seem completely irrational to an outsider can be inwardly devastating us internally.
For instance, autistic inertia means that it’s harder for autistic people than it is for other people to stop, start, and change activities.
If parents can try to figure out why autistic children have the urges to break things, and then accommodate them as much as they can, everyone can have a much easier time. Not always, but in many cases.
Bullying is a very serious subject, and every school needs to be very serious about understanding, investigating, and handling bullying situations with thoughtfulness, care, and compassion.
Research indicates autistic people are more likely to be LGBTQ than the general population. Autistic LGBTQ people deserve the same rights, opportunities, love, and support as those who are not autistic or LGBTQ.
Autistic people process our senses differently, and that’s okay! Autism makes us who we are, and sensory processing is an important part of being autistic. People should try and understand autism and how it makes us different, instead of trying to change us.
How is joy usually characterized? The absence of sadness? Unbridled gladness and glee? That is Knox, every. single. day.
When we deny the validity of self diagnosis, we fail to recognize how broken health care systems can be. We effectively restrict our support to those privileged to afford a formal diagnosis.
I believe that the best way to understand autistic minds is in terms of a thinking style which tends to concentrate resources in a few interests and concerns at any time, rather than distributing them widely.
“We miss something here. Developmental delay means that much life development happens in adult life for autistics, after age 18 or 21—maybe even more so than it does for us the rest of us.”