I run a community on Facebook where autistic adults and parents of autistic children come together. The focus of the community is on education — that is, autistics are educating parents of autistic children. But often I see a pattern in posts with questions from parents. They seem to start the same way… “I’m scared […]
When your child is diagnosed with autism, there are really two routes you can go. First, the most popular route is the “autism mom™” route. You think autism is a tragedy that steals your child from you, but you are a superhero that has overcome. Thankfully, there’s another option! Instead of donning the puzzle-piece laden […]
“Neurodiversity excludes ‘severe’ children like my son…” “Neurodiversity is only for ‘high functioning autistics, and it ignores the needs of others…” “You can’t speak for my child because you can’t possibly know what they go through…” This is 100% the most common argument against the neurodiversity movement. That the movement supports the interests of the […]
When we were first told that my son might be autistic, I dove head-first into research. And I’ll be honest, I was really disappointed with what I found… The majority of posts made it seem like my son’s life was now completely over, I should be “grieving”, and we needed to get him in hours […]
(Inside: When autistics speak out against ABA, many people say that “new ABA” is different, but here are 5 important reasons even “New ABA” is problematic…) Every time I speak out against ABA therapy, without fail, a well-meaning parent or therapist chimes in with the same thing… “New ABA is different!” “ABA therapists haven’t done that […]
(Inside: When we think of harmful autism therapies, we may think about ABA, but there are a lot of autism therapy red flags to watch for no matter what type of therapy your autistic child is getting.) In our Facebook community, Embracing Autism, we have a rule that the moderators will delete any posts or comments […]
