I need regular doses of solitude to recover from sensory onslaught. This doesn’t mean I am anti-social. I’m deeply social, but I do need a fair amount of downtime.
Tag: sensory processing
Pro tip: it’s fine to want to understand your autistic friends’ sensory and accommodations issues, etc., but please don’t frame it as a “Gotcha.”
Created by Ezra Katz, Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons [image: Simplified all-black figures of an adult holding the hand of a child while they stand side-by-side, on a yellow background.] Autistic Science Person twitter.com/AutSciPerson I am exhausted by non-autistic parents who: Ignore the experience of autistic people who went through ABA Say ABA “was never like that” for their child Assume their child cannot be traumatized long-term because they “seem happy” Think we’re saying they’re trash parents You can’t speak for your kid. You can’t know what they think, what they feel, and what may have caused them long-term trauma that they’ll have to work through. You. Can’t. Know. That. Right. Now. That’s not how mental health effects from masking and from sensory invalidation work. And then I try to remember that when I’m talking to one parent who is speaking over their kid and their experience, five or ten…
For instance, autistic inertia means that it’s harder for autistic people than it is for other people to stop, start, and change activities.
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.
Sara M. Acevedo [image: Book cover of The Out-of-Sync Child Grows Up: Title in teal text, on background photo of five older kids running across a field, from behind.] The Out-of-Sync Child Grows Up is the newest book from Carol Stock Kranowitz in her “Out-of-Sync” Child series. Subtitled “Coping With Sensory Processing Disorder in the Adolescent and Young Adult Years,” the book focuses on the everyday experiences of parents, caregivers, and medical professionals who support adolescents and young adults marked oppressively by diagnoses like Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). Although a significant number of the concepts and practices included in this book are discredited and marked as abusive by autistic and other neurodivergent people ourselves, the book has received substantial praise from non-neurodivergent authorities in the therapeutic professions, as well as from clinicians, parents, and educators. The book has also been praised by The Children’s Hospital in Boston, and contributors of…
TPGA is observing Autism Acceptance Month by featuring accounts from autistic people about the differences accommodations (or lack thereof) make in their lives. Today’s story is from M. Kelter, about how listening — really listening — to autistic people about their experiences is a crucial accommodation, even when it’s a work in progress. M. Kelter theinvisiblestrings.com In 2005, after a long period of social isolation and depression, I began therapy and received an autism spectrum diagnosis. I discovered early in this process that describing my internal experiences was easier if I wrote them down. After each session with the psychologist, I would go home and write out everything I could remember from our discussion. I would then read that “transcript” to myself several times, so that I could go into the next session with a sense of what to elaborate upon. Basically, writing out our discussion functioned as a thought…
Tony and Mary Brandenburg theebrandenburgs.blogspot.com Taking a shower feels like needles stabbing my head! The sound of that fan is making my ears hurt. I feel like I’m suffocating when you hug me. Image source: TVTropes.com Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are, was amazingly astute in his observation of children for a person who had none of his own. During his acceptance speech for the Caldecott Medal in 1964 Sendak stated that: “… from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.” When an outsider is simply observing a child’s public behavior — especially the challenging ones — it may be difficult…