When autistic people aren’t centered in things about us, it creates an ecosystem where an autistic person like Sia who does not understand herself as autistic creates a film like “Music.”
Category: diagnosis
The new 1 in 36 autism rate means the CDC is getting better at finding and diagnosing existing autistic children, not that there is actually a higher rate of autism.
What if the headlines had read, “Autism doesn’t have to be a problem if children are understood and supported”?
After your loved one receives a diagnosis of Autism, people may bombard you with (possibly unsolicited) advice for next steps. One such step you may actually want to consider is to seek the services of a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP).
If your child has recently been diagnosed with autism, as my son was in 2003, here’s what I want you to know: Learn from me, don’t be me.
Since I didn’t know I was autistic, I just assumed there was something wrong with me and that I deserved what I got. I learned that intrinsically, I was less than a person, since I didn’t have a framework to tell me otherwise.
I started playing tuba at twelve, but passing for non-autistic is my longest running show. It takes more practice to fake facial expressions than make a forty-pound horn play sixteenth notes.
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.