If you’re the parent of autistic child or adult, and you are also horrified by the blatant misinformation being peddled and swallowed by MAGA truthers, you should be just as concerned about grievance-based autism parents and organizations.
You can listen and understand and believe and respect autistic adults every bit as much as you do those things with autistic children. If you don’t, you’re being ageist.
We talked with several autistic people about how non-autistic people can be good friends to autistic people. This is their advice.
This post is about the hundreds and thousands of autistic people who are misdiagnosed everyday by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professionals.
My brother died because of ableism. Because people—including very close family—were terrified to face his neurodivergence, and his disability.
“I have to be realistic about the community that I am nurturing in, and the community for my children and for the parents that I help, as a Black autistic woman.”
I want to help my patients discover what strategies they as individuals can use in order to accomplish what they want and need to do, and I think I’m more likely to be open to supporting my patients in using “atypical” strategies. I’m less likely to suggest goals that are trying to fit a patient to a “reference norm”.
“It’s really important to us that we be a resource for autistic and neurodivergent people directly in a market that’s so inundated with parent-focused resources.”
Why parents of autistic kids need to be cautious and thoughtful about the therapies they consider for their children.
Jenny Mai Phan is an Asian American autistic autism researcher, an Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) member, and the mother of four children, two of whom are autistic.