And this means banning ABA!
Why are we still trying to force neurodivergent children into social skills and strategies that are created by neurotypical brains based on neurotypical beliefs and expectations? What impact is this having on young minds when continually told that they are not ok as they are.
All over the world, including the UK, Universities are offering courses in Applied Behavioural Analysis, a practice that involves forcing young people to hide and deny their needs and personalities in order to appear more neurotypical. In the USA there are hundreds of clinics claiming to offer ‘hope’ to the parents of autistic children. Hope of what? Hope that they can deny their child their human right to be themselves, and all so that they will gain approval from the neighbours?
What is it about neurotypical brains that makes them crave similarity and conformity. If you don’t fit in to the tribe, then you are immediately ostracised or exiled. The unfamiliar outsider may have a myriad of different skills to add value to the community, but this seems irrelevant if they don’t look, and sound, and think, and behave in the same way as everyone else.
Some of the greatest minds, and greatest achievements, and changes, throughout history and now today, are being created by neurodivergent minds who are able to see the world differently and are not afraid to say so. Why would anyone not want to encourage children to be their own kind of different, whatever it looks like?
In a speech to the United Nations, Professor Baron-Cohen suggested that many neurodivergent people do not even have access to basic human rights such as dignity and education. Autistic adults are the largest group of unemployed people with a label of disability and suicide rates are staggeringly high. Is any of this a surprise when we still allow ABA and the institutionalisation of young people and often exclude them from education entirely.
The long term mental health effects are devastating and debilitating. I intend to do follow-up research on the links between autism and abuse, which seem to be widespread.
So what is to be done. What can be done? Well to begin with we need more neurodivergent people speaking up and out so that the truth about how we feel and see and hear the world becomes mainstream. But whilst there is the fear of being judged by stereotypes and stigma many don’t recognise themselves and more are afraid to admit it. Even as adults we are expected to pretend, to fake it in order to fit in. Or, exile it usually is.
I teach all children but often find that my students have autistic brains, like me, and that like me they need specific and different systems, strategies, and scripts to be able to navigate the hidden mysteries of analysing English. The fact that I could never see the hidden meanings ,but after stumbling into an English degree I had to teach myself, has enabled me to be able to approach teaching English from a different perspective allowing the student’s way of learning to take precedent.
We need more teachers who are proud to say they think in an autistic way, and we need to congratulate the students who think in their own different way. We need to teach in ways that the person wants to receive. It is not a gift if selfishly given based only on the needs and decisions of the giver, no matter how much they tell you to appreciate what they have done for you.
I want more of us to talk about the ways that we feel the world differently; I want autism to be something that one day is congratulated and never commiserated.
I have created an autism recognition and identification programme for anyone who wants to learn more. Discussing autism without lists of deficits and impairments. Discussing our strengths and skills. I have a short guide to some of the traits which parents’ groups asked me to compile. Even well meaning teachers and parents say and do things that are inadvertently reinforcing the idea that the child needs to be more NT and as such they are denying them their needs and it could even lead to discrimination. I made my short guide the cheapest it can be to cover publishing and it is free on Kindle Unlimited. If anyone really cannot afford it but would like to read it, I will send one to you. I don’t want fame and fortune. I want to change the way that autism is understood so that society is lots more autism and neurodivergent friendly than it is now.
Feeling The World Differently. An autistic way of seeing things.: An autistic way of feeling and hearing and seeing the world.
Autism ADHD and so much more. 
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