All systems must address the need of how to properly communicate sensitve information to not only the autistic community but all communities with communication challenges.
Category: Education
Adulting: Personal Safety
Anymore, at least in my world anyway, it has been imperative to be vigilant of my personal safety when out and about in public, as it should be of anyone. However, for many autistic people, this can be a struggle to have understood and know one’s boundaries when it comes to your own safety.
What Everyone Else Does
In recent weeks, I have been accepting the need for free time where I am not engaged in an object or item at hand. For most of my life, until I chose not to have Cable TV in my own home at 35, when it has been all I know, I am realizing that I can choose and limit the content I watch in order to keep me entertained and not so much engaged in something.
Reflections: We Change and Grow
As human beings we are often creatures of habit. We cannot often see beyond what we know. Change is often reluctant, being autistic further hinders it. But what if there is a chance to grow and change for the better. We have to sometimes have to lessen our dependence on the things that hold us together because we know it works, there’s a time we have to look beyond what works.
Reflections: Accepting Autism
For the month of April and Autism Awareness / Acceptance Month, I have been writing on how the acceptance of the autistic community has increased in the 23 years since I received my diagnosis under the autism spectrum. This past week, I learned that even more acceptance has been seen, but yet we still have a ways to go.
Adulting: Connection
As I continue down the journey of my personal self-discovery. One of the things that has helped me refrain myself from the process is the ability to make connections with others with similar challenges so the world that I was living in didn’t seem so small although it was physically, it made me be more of a friend that I ever have been.
Don’t Doubt The Possibilities
Many times when anyone is given a lifelong diagnosis, they or those that care for them think of all the things they will miss out on in life and if they will have the same lives as others. They may want to give up hope and the possibilities or continually live in a sense of doubt or fear. I am here to tell you that while in a minimal sense that I can be there, I can also tell you that if you reach out of your comfort zone.
Schools Use Off-Book Suspensions To Push Out Students In Special Ed, Report Finds
In a new report, the National Disability Rights Network says that schools are using a wide range of tactics to keep children with disabilities out of classes. (Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News/TNS)
Family and Ally Voices DO Matter
In the past few years the hashtag and theme of #actuallyautustic have been more present than ever. While for decades the voices of autistics have been dialed down. We must remember that autistics come from many walks of life and sometimes need the voice and support of their family and/or related allies in one’s journey. Therefore, I feel it is important that all voices in one’s journey may need to be heard.
Adulting: Breaking Points
All human beings have breaking points when becoming irritated. However, autistics have certain triggering and breaking points that because of sensory or other overload or triggers of information that may be empathetic of how their day is that it becomes the point that they reach their breaking point.
Adutling: How Important is Time
Last week, I had one of my providers that visits home arrive for our weekly appointment breathing heavily because he ran up the steps to my house for fear, I would be upset he did not arrive at the scheduled time. While as a child I did get upset if someone coming to my home to see me was a more than a minute late, that is no longer the case as I have built up the flexibility to understand that things don’t happen as they are planned.
It’s OK in Your Space
This week, I have shared a few Tik Tok’s about being diagnosed in the 1990s and not knowing some autism behaviors that are common today. We just did them, we didn’t know the jargon that is used for them today. One must also understand that given one’s space it needs to be their safe space and they are free to express themselves in the way they wish.
There was a time I thought I would be in a Group Home for Life
Twenty years ago, this week, I celebrated “graduating” from a residential treatment facility, or RTF. It felt like a group home, but if my parents didn’t want the best care for me, it could have resulted in me being placed in a group home for life because of my behaviors.
Putting It In Perspective
Writing this on Easter Sunday because I am bored really puts things into perspective how fortunate I am. We are over a year into the pandemic, when work and my day program shut their doors for almost three months. While some of the activity during that initial time was completed virtually and I along with the majority of the world was introduced to virtual platforms like Zoom, Nothing replaces the old-fashioned way of meeting person to person in methods such as day programs and part-time employment like I do.
Building Confidence
We have to sometimes have the encouragement that we have to set our own standards of what that needs to be and ourselves have the inner confidence that it is indeed what can be acceptable and what you can accomplish.
A Video Game Makes Math And English Classes A Full-Body Experience
Dance parties, movement breaks and jumping around are a typical part of many pre-K classrooms. But jumping about isn’t just a way to get the wiggles out in Greenburgh Central School District, in a suburb of New York City.
Wired for Executive Functioning
This week I want to write to you about something I’ve known for some time, but didn’t put all the pieces together until last night. It’s about being Autistic and being wired differently. Sometimes people think we don’t do something because we’re lazy or don’t care when in reality we don’t put two and two together.
Concentrating on COVID: Faith in the Return to School (K-12)
This is definitely a world of unknowns no doubt about it Nobody knows the future , there is a great deal anxiety among all autists, no matter if you're in a child adolescent or adult it's a great deal anxiety for anybody let alone a person with autism. Yes, I can guarantee you call there will be a lot of unknown uncertainties and unexpected events this year, no doubt about it.
My Position on Sharing Meltdowns with others (Vlog)
Concentrating on COVID: Back In School
Four and a half months ago, COVID-19, schools (and many other services) servicing autistics were for the most part modified. This included the ability of service providers being allowed to enter the home and sessions being conducted online or via telephone.
Dustin's Dynasty 