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Category: School-Age Kids

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Building Self-Determination in Childhood

Building Self-Determination in Childhood

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I’ve previously written about the importance of giving neurodivergent people more self-determination in childhood.  Indeed, I think all children, including the neurotypicals, could probably benefit from increased self-determination and autonomy.  Isn’t it rather strange that entering adulthood in our society, legally speaking, gives one full rights to autonomy overnight where previously one’s autonomy was legally minimal?  An abrupt transition, for sure!  Why not give people more practice exercising autonomy in childhood? It certainly seems like giving more opportunities for self-determination…

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Children sitting at tables eating prepackaged lunches.
Sensory Sensitivities and “Picky Eating”

Sensory Sensitivities and “Picky Eating”

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I’m a so-called “picky eater,” like many autistic people. Nowadays, as an adult, this is no problem.  I have a system that works for me.  I buy foods I like, prepare them, and eat them.  I do try to cover a variety of food groups and so on, but I am not going to agonize over not being able to stomach some particular food or another – I’ll just avoid it. This is a bit different from the situation early…

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A busy office with people sitting in front of computer monitors. Work areas are not separated by cubicles. Illumination is provided by exposed light bulbs hanging overhead.
Post-COVID Transition Anxiety and Autistic Burnout

Post-COVID Transition Anxiety and Autistic Burnout

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For more than a year now, we’ve been dealing with the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic.  This has had a devastating impact, both in general and in particular on many disabled people. Most obviously, COVID-19 has killed millions of people worldwide, and neurodivergent communities have been disproportionately impacted.  The death toll among people with intellectual disabilities in residential group homes and institutional settings has been catastrophically high.  Unfortunately, discrimination against neurodivergent people – again, particularly people with intellectual disabilities…

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A young child in a green shirt
Behaviour Intervention: Some Key Terms

Behaviour Intervention: Some Key Terms

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Hopefully the fact this post has “behaviour intervention” in the title should act as a content warning to anyone who might find a discussion about ABA triggering, but just to be sure, here’s one now. – – Not long ago, I was complaining about the way advocates and researchers/professionals often talk past one another in the field of ABA.  I grumbled that terms like “ABA” were constantly being understood in different ways, so that even if these groups could get…

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Photograph depicting serried rows of empty desks and chairs in a school classroom.
Self-Determination in Childhood

Self-Determination in Childhood

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One of the most interesting discussions I’ve ever had in the autism world was at a conference I was involved in organizing back when I was an undergraduate student.  We had organized some panels on different stages of autistic people’s experiences in life and we found that numerous people had particularly negative thoughts about their childhoods.  In particular, they were talking about how relieved they were to be out of school.  To provide a little background, this was not necessarily…

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Practical Executive Functions

Practical Executive Functions

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Lately, I’ve been devoting a lot of thought to the question of how we can best conceptualize executive functions with an eye towards the real world: towards practical concerns like strategies and interventions that can help us to improve our time management skills. I’ve heard some autistic people arguing that we shouldn’t be trying to force anyone who struggles with executive functions and organization to improve through effort and force of will.  Instead, the argument goes, we should provide accommodations…

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Exclusion Diets

Exclusion Diets

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Warning: I write this post with a minimal and superficial knowledge of the science of diet and nutrition.  I am obviously not in any way, shape, or form, qualified to give medical or dietary advice. You may have heard claims that autistic people need to exclude particular foods from our diets.  These exclusion diets are one of the most popular types of complementary & alternative medicine intervention in the autism world (Perrin et al., 2012).  Special diets may indeed be…

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Stages of Social Practice

Stages of Social Practice

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I’ve previously written a post about the need to learn social skills through practice until they become automatic.  I recently had some very interesting conversations with two other autistic graduate students, both of whom research autism, in which I was able to refine some of my thinking about this topic. Furthermore, I’ve realized that my previous post didn’t address the important concern that deliberate attempts to look more neurotypical – to “camouflage” our autistic selves – might adversely affect our…

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Revealing the Diagnosis to an Autistic Child

Revealing the Diagnosis to an Autistic Child

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Parents, I know that learning about your child’s autism can be a stressful experience, to say the least.  Maybe you’ve told doctors and professionals about your concerns, only to have them dismissed.  Or maybe your doctor sent you straight along the correct path to a diagnosis, but still you found yourself having to sit through a series of questions and assessments you didn’t understand, before being briefly issued a label with only a little bit of explanation – leaving you…

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The Social Model and the Mainstream School

The Social Model and the Mainstream School

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Anyone who reads this blog regularly has probably noticed by now that I spend a lot of time talking about educational placement.  It is a very important topic, because the suitability of an educational placement is going to have a major influence on an individual’s future.  I certainly believe that my successful placement in a distance-learning high school program is responsible for many of my own achievements in adulthood. Basically, my opinion about educational placement is that we need choices. …

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