Category: Blog Posts
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How the UK government’s attendance policy is harmful: a neurodivergent perspective
School attendance policies have always been a sticking point with many neurodivergent people, as lots of us could not attend school for reasons beyond our control. Some of us (and our parents) would have faced unfair consequences as a result of low attendance during school. However, often it’s not due to us “skiving”. Fresh after…
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I’ve published my first academic paper!
Hello everyone, My post will be rather brief today, but that’s because I have more of an update rather than a longer blog post. This week, a paper I co-authored on was published in a journal! It’s a true pinch me moment. Growing up, I was not considered academic and instead received the backhanded complement…
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How I wrote a book while being neurodivergent
2023 has been a bit of a rollercoaster year to say the least! (Although most of the chaos stemmed from 2022, and rolled over into this year). During all the chaos I finally finished writing my first book! It is currently being fine tuned by the editors, ready for publication in 2024! Once the publication…
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I’m available for hire! Need help with improving your understanding of autism and neurodiversity?
Hello, me again! Many of you reading this will know me from either my writing on this blog or my various posts about being an autistic ADHDer on social media. Alongside my writing and social media posts, I have provided support for fellow neurodivergent people and their families, and designed and delivered training related to…
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What being autistic taught me about people’s obsession with resilience
Something we see a lot of in today’s society is an obsession of resilience and demands from people to ‘be more resilience’; particularly so from people with power over others. E.g. a school teacher telling a child’s parents that ‘they need more resilience in the classroom’ without considering why a child may be struggling at…
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Weird Barbie and Autism, Let’s Talk.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of autistic masking, I would recommend my previous blog post about autistic masking before reading this one ‘Autism and Masking’ A few weeks ago I posted a meme after watching the Barbie film, comparing Stereotypical Barbie’s character as representing autistic people masking with Weird Barbie representing autistic people…
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Why Subgrouping Autism is Dangerous
It’s a debate that has been going on for decades, more or less since autism has been described as a spectrum. This debate has recently come up again since a recent article was posted about the Autism Europe conference earlier this month ‘It’s time to embrace ‘profound autism’ However, subgrouping can lead down a dangerous…
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BBC Panorama and autism: identifying the dots, but who is connecting them?
I don’t often watch BBC Panorama, however recently a few of their documentaries caught my eye ,as they either relate to my work, my lived experience or both. The 3 Panorama documentaries in particular I’m referring to here are Autistic people (or close to someone who is autistic) are unlikely to be surprised that young…
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Autism day/week/month. What’s the point?
April has always been a difficult time for the autistic community because of autism awareness and acceptance days, weeks or Month (referred to as ‘autism month’ going forward). To the average person this may seem like a confusing statement, as they assume that this month is for us and “raising awareness” of the issues we…
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A Brief Overview Of Simon Baron-Cohen’s Autism Research
*Please note this is a critique of Simon’s research and published work and not personal character defamation. As I have never met Simon, I cannot comment on his character* Simon Baron-Cohen is arguably one of the biggest names in autism research. Unfortunately, his research has negatively impacted autistic people for several reasons. However, this can…
Sarah Boon 