Writing Autistic Characters: The Do’s, Don’ts, and Maybes

Did you know that 1 in 59 children has autism (officially Autism Spectrum Disorder)? So, if you went to a high school with about 1,000 students (like my boyfriend), there were probably around sixteen autistic kids in your school. If you went to a school with less than 100 students (like I did), then there were probably only one or two. Hi! I’m — to my current knowledge — the token autistic kid from my high school. There’s a common misconception that being autistic makes your childhood hard. It actually doesn’t. What makes your childhood hard is being surrounded by people who aren’t autistic and who have no idea how to deal with autistic people. And I can kind of get that — 1 in 59 is pretty significant, but it’s not huge. You almost certainly have met autistic people before; but, with the pressure put on autistic people to act as allistic (non-autistic) as possible, it’s very likely the autistic people you’ve met haven’t felt comfortable advertising that they were autistic. So, yeah, allistic people don’t know how to deal with autistic people. But I think it’s largely because they’ve never gotten the chance to. <a href="https://cassjosephs.medium.com/writing-autistic-characters-the-dos-don-ts-and-maybes-ce51537fe17">Visit Now</a>