Tag: autism
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Why Social Skills Training Fails Autistic People
For several decades now, many have sold the idea that autistic people need “social skills training” in order to “overcome” social “deficits”. While there is no denying that as autistic people, we have differences in social communication which often creates additional challenges in our daily lives, I don’t believe that social skills training is the…
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Avoiding Ableism Towards Your Autistic Family Members This Christmas
Christmas is supposed to be a happy and joyful time for all at the end of each calendar years. However, when you’re autistic this can be more challenging as Christmas is often filled with social norms that are not accessible for us. Personally, I enjoy Christmas overall, but there are certainly parts of Christmas I…
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Opinion: Is Elphaba in Wicked autistic?
CW: Spoilers Wicked seems to be dominating the conversation online. Rightly so, I saw the film yesterday and it’s truly a masterpiece (I don’t say that lightly either). One conversation I have seen in several places on the internet is if Elphaba is autistic? I had been aware of people asking this question for a…
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AuDHD and why is decision making so hard!
I consider myself an autonomous person, and it’s something I value greatly and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I wouldn’t want anybody else making my decisions for me. However, that doesn’t automatically translate to decision making being a straightforward process for myself as my neurodivergence can make this more complicated. Let me give you an…
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My experience of autistic burnout
Increasingly over the past few years, there have been more conversations about autistic burnout which is great to see, as still can be easily misunderstood. I experienced my worst autistic burnout before I even knew I was autistic, and ultimately this burnout was one of the factors that led to the discovery I was autistic…
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How childhood masking affects me today as a neurodivergent adult
I have always been neurodivergent, so naturally it’s had a big influence on my life. However, something I’ve learnt through self reflection recently is how masking as a child has very much informed my life as an adult. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of masking, it’s a term used…
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Young, Autistic and ADHD: 4 Days to go until publication!
If you have been following me on social media, then you would have been well aware that I have been posting about the publication of my first book ‘Young, Autistic and ADHD: Moving into adulthood when you’re multiply-neurodivergent’ A LOT. However, it not every day you have a book published and I am just so…
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9 things I’d like my younger neurodivergent self to know.
For those of us who have always been neurodivergent, but discover that we are when we are adults, we can have a lot of feelings about how things could have been. Although this is something I have made peace with now, there are still things I wish my younger self knew about being neurodivergent. Yes…
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Autism training by non-autistic people? What is that all about!
Every now, and then I’ll be browsing on social media and a conversation that comes up among autistic people is when autism training is delivered by non-autistic people. Historically, autism training was always delivered by professionals with no autistic involvement. Although this is starting to change, I still suspect that a lot (if not the…
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Does neuro-affirming always live up to what it’s cracked up to be?
Having been in neurodivergent spaces for a while now, I’ve been noticing a new term ‘neuro-affirming’ is increasingly being used in the last year or so. Although I am not aware of a formal definition of neuro-affirming that exists – the general consensus seems to be that neuro-affirming is an approach used in professional practice…
Sarah Boon 