Tag: understanding

[[image description & transcription: A full-color hand-drawn comic strip. The first row contains two panels. The left hand panel has a green background. A blond white person on the left is talking and maintaining eye contact with the olive-skinned person with long dark hair on the right. Black all-caps hand-lettered text on a white background above their heads reads: “For allistic people (non-autistic) eye contact is a way of connecting with others in conversation.” The right hand panel has a blue background. On the left A black person with a natural hairstyle is looking down, with an uncomfortable expression on their face while on the right a white person with long straight hot pink hair and bangs has their eyes closed tightly. Black all-caps hand-lettered text on a white background above their heads reads: “For autistic people, it’s different. Eye contact is uncomfortable and invasive.” The second row is a black rectangle with white hand-lettered all-caps text reading: “When we look away, it doesn’t mean that we are not listening. We are not disrespecting you.” The third row is one large panel. It is a close up of the eyes and nose of a white person with straight long purple hair and bangs, with eyes wide open. Black all-caps hand-lettered text on a white background at the top of the panel reads: “If we try and make eye contact with people, it can totally distract us from what is being said because of how horrible it can feel and the effort involved.” Red-outlined word bubbles around the edge of the panel, in black all-caps hand-lettered text on a white background, read: “Keep looking” “Having I looked too much?” “This hurts” “Am I doing this right?” “I have no idea what they’re saying” “Can’t do this” and “I feel so vulnerable” All caps hand-lettered black text under the panel reads: “© Beth Wilson 2017”]
Autism

Eye Contact

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There are good reasons why many autistic people avoid eye contact. And “when we look away, it doesn’t mean that we are not listening. We are not disrespecting you.”

The third row is one large panel. It is a close up of the eyes and nose of a white person with straight long purple hair and bangs, with eyes wide open. Black all-caps hand-lettered text on a white background at the top of the panel reads:

“If we try and make eye contact with people, it can totally distract us from what is being said because of how horrible it can feel and the effort involved.”

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Disability

Under a Double Rainbow: Autism and LGBTQIA+

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Photo © Ted Eytan | Creative Commons/Flickr [image: Multiracial crowd rallying with flags and signs behind a banner reading “Trans Solidarity against transphobia for justice”.] Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com Ten years ago, I wanted to write a paper about autism and gender issues for a gender and sexuality conference at which I had previously presented. I started the research, then dropped into a depression after realizing how little material was available, and that the existing research about autism and gender was both dismal, and erasing. The medical journals talked about transgender autistic children as if their gender issues were delusions, mere symptoms of their autism. I never wrote that paper. Today, not only is there good autism information available, but the “double rainbow” of being both autistic and LGBTQIA+* is just beginning to be more accepted and understood. We have a long way to go, but people are beginning to understand…

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Disability

Helping Autistic Children Understand Death and Dying

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Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com Photo © Benedic Belen | Flickr/Creative Commons [Image: Black-and-white photo of an Asian woman comforting a small crying child who is wearing a tiara, and has their hands over their face.] The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism asked Autistic adults to fill out a survey about death and dying to create a resource for people who need to explain death to Autistic children. The response was tremendous—in less than a week the survey had 50 responses, mostly from Autistic adults. What follows is a summary and analysis of the responses. We hope it is useful to you, your child, your family, your clients, and your students. Please note that some of the responses discuss difficult material, including suicide, and suicidal ideation/threats. Bullet Point Summary Autistic adults were surveyed about death and dying. Most learned about death through observation of people, animals, and plants. Learning about death was…

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Disability

Why Everyone Should Read The ABCs of Autism Acceptance

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Patricia George www.persnicketypatricia.ca The ABCs of Autism Acceptance [image: Book cover, with white text reading “The ABCs of Autism Acceptance” on a background of multicolored representations of letters of the Roman alphabet, above black text on a white background, reading, “by Sparrow Rose Jones.”] I’ve been an avid reader my whole life, so when I was asked to review The ABCs of Autism Acceptance by Maxfield Sparrow, and saw that it was “only” 152 pages, I thought, “this won’t take long to read, so sure, I’d love to!” 

I was wrong. This is the largest 152-page book I’ve ever read. In fact, I wrote more notes for this book than I did for a 500-plus page book I reviewed in 2015.

 The book’s title is straight-forward: Maxfield uses the Roman alphabet as a way to educate the reader about autism acceptance from an autistic person’s point of view, while interlacing…

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Disability

Electroconvulsive Therapy and Autism: Caution Advised

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Shannon Des Roches Rosa  Photo © Skyseeker, on Flickr. Creative Commons license. [image: lightning striking a cityscape, at night.] Spectrum News recently published How ‘Shock Therapy’ is Saving Some Children with Autism. The article was also published in The Atlantic. Like many of you, my initial reaction was “WTF.” Which, to be fair, was in part primed by the the misinformation spread by existing autism and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) proponents. But I am always worried about articles about “treatments” for autistic people who self-injure, because of the focus on treatments rather than sourcing out causes. So here’s what I think you should know about reading articles like this, and about ECT and autism in general. Spectrum is dedicated to covering developing autism science, and articles of interest to the autism science and research communities. Ideally, those readers already understand that there is very little research into autism and ECT, that…

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Disability

Five Ways to A Brighter Future for Autistic People

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TPGA is observing Autism Acceptance Month by featuring accounts from autistic people about the differences accommodations (or lack thereof) make in their lives. Today, British autistic filmmaker and author Carly Jones outlines her “Top five understandings previous Autistic generations did not have, that the next Autistic generation must have as standard.” Carly Jones www.facebook.com/olley.edwards Carly and her family [image: A laughing white woman with long dark hair, lying on a striped blanket with her three children.]  1) See autism as a real disability Disability is not a dirty word, though it feels that way to some — we are all too often encouraged to see disability as “less than” “inferior,” or “disadvantaged.” I see disability as someone having a different experience of the world than is “typical.” Although Theory of Mind (lack of pre-installed knowledge that other people’s thoughts, wants, and agendas may differ from one’s own) is noted as…

Disability

Disability: Considering Insider vs. Outsider Perspectives

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Amanda Forest Vivian adeepercountry.blogspot.com This post was originally included in our 2011 Dialogues series. But we think it deserves separate attention, and are republishing it with the author’s permission.  —- This is just a theory, so be gentle. But I think a lot of problems between non-disabled people and disabled people might have to do with the fact that for most born-disabled people, their disability is ego-syntonic (integrated with their self-image). One! Ego-dystonic is an psych term for an aspect of a person that doesn’t fit their self-image. For example, if someone lost their legs in an accident, they would probably wake up the next day and see a body that didn’t seem to them like their real body. On the other hand, if someone is born without legs their disability is usually ego-syntonic, so they feel as attached to their body as anyone else.  They don’t feel the same…