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Category: Essentials

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Revisiting monotropism

Revisiting monotropism

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The monotropism account of autism – which was introduced by Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser, and Wenn Lawson in 2005 – is, within the autistic adult community, probably the dominant theoretical approach towards understanding what autism is.  Many autistic people – myself included – find monotropism to be quite a bit more consistent with our personal experiences than other theories of autism.  I suspect this might have something to do with the fact that the monotropism account was developed by autistic…

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Burnout and Expectations

Burnout and Expectations

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Today, the vast majority of researchers, clinicians, and professionals in the autism world don’t know about autistic burnout.  Autistic burnout is an idea that comes from autistic adults, and given how little contact there is between autistic adults and the community of researchers supposedly dedicated to learning more about autism, most researchers will never have had a chance to learn about it.  Indeed, as far as I’m aware, the only people investigating autistic burnout from a research perspective are Dora…

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On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

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Author’s Note: I no longer particularly like some of the ideas in the post, which I now think are a bit oversimplified. If you want an updated take on my view of neurodiversity, I wrote an article at https://doi.org/10.1159/000523723. In Part II of this series, I discussed a lot of the basic ideas that still motivate my approach to neurodiversity.  I argued that we presently lack a clear, consistent definition of neurodiversity, and I illustrated how this ambiguity hinders our…

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The Misrepresentation of Neurodiversity

The Misrepresentation of Neurodiversity

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I’ve previously argued that the pathology paradigm is in crisis and that the neurodiversity paradigm is ready to replace the obsolete pathology paradigm.  I’ve argued that we’re in a period of paradigm shift.  And I stand by those words.  However, there one more thing that we have to do before the paradigms can shift: we have to agree on what the pathology and neurodiversity paradigms are. Paradigms are grand theories that dictate the fundamental assumptions we use to approach some…

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Inclusion and Mainstreaming: What is To Be Done?

Inclusion and Mainstreaming: What is To Be Done?

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Over the last few months, I’ve written a lot of posts sharing my thoughts on inclusion and mainstreaming.  In those posts, I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about the way things are done today (especially in North America), but I’ve spent relatively little time describing the urgent changes I think we need. Probably the most complete description of my thoughts so far is found in this post, where I explain how I disagree with both of the major views…

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Independence: Preparation for Transition (Part I)

Independence: Preparation for Transition (Part I)

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Transition to adulthood is a daunting challenge.  In transition to adulthood, we fall off a cliff.  We suddenly find the predictable environments that have surrounded us changing, and we enter new and different environments.  In these new environments, we encounter new expectations, new demands.  In these new environments, our familiar support systems fall away, and we find ourselves struggling to advocate for ourselves within an unfamiliar and inadequate set of adult service systems. Seriously, if you have a group of…

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Independence: The Transition (Part II)

Independence: The Transition (Part II)

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In Part I of this post, I raised the concern that many young autistic people can become dependent on their parents or support systems, and that many young autistic people aren’t being expected to succeed in adulthood.  As a result, they are unprepared for the adult transition. In Part I, I recommended that we should do more to prepare young people for the demands of adulthood in the years before they pass that magical dividing line and become adults.  In…

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On Neurodiversity: Or, How to Help People without Calling Them Broken (Part II)

On Neurodiversity: Or, How to Help People without Calling Them Broken (Part II)

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The Neurodiversity Paradigm In Part I of this post, we discussed how the pathology paradigm (Walker, 2013) is failing under the weight of the anomalies that beset it.  We concluded that it was time to find a new paradigm.  The emerging rival to the pathology paradigm is the neurodiversity paradigm. Judy Singer (1998/2016), who is generally accepted to have coined the term “neurodiversity,” asked: “Why not appropriate metaphors based on biodiversity, for instance, to advance the causes of people with…

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On Neurodiversity: Or, How to Help People without Calling Them Broken (Part I)

On Neurodiversity: Or, How to Help People without Calling Them Broken (Part I)

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The Pathology Paradigm Most of us have a basic idea of how psychological interventions work.  The “disordered” person has a deficit, a deficiency.  We intervene to eliminate or reduce the deficit, improving the “disordered” person’s ability to function in the world.  Ultimately, we want to eliminate the “disorder” entirely if possible.  It’s neat and logical.  We can refer to this set of ideas and assumptions as the pathology paradigm (see Walker, 2013). There’s also a number of serious problems with…

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Some Thoughts on Early Intervention: Part II

Some Thoughts on Early Intervention: Part II

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Quick recap: in Part I, we discussed early intervention and how it could be improved.  I think we covered some important points (the need to be clear about our targets, whether the term “ABA” is no longer helpful), but we ended with an important question: How are we going to ensure that our best and hopefully-ever-improving practices actually get implemented at the community level?  Without a good answer to this question, any improvements we make to our best practices will…

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