Tag: Autistic

Welcome back to Autistic Advice, a semi-regular advice column where I respond to reader questions about neurodiversity, accessibility, disability justice, and self-advocacy from my perspective as an Autistic psychologist. You can submit questions or suggest future entries in the series via my T...

Listen up, fabulous humans navigating the kaleidoscope of parenting. Yes, I’m talking to you, standing there in your superhero cape, ready to leap buildings in a single bound for your child. It’s time we had a chat about the big, terrifying monster that is… insecurity. Our son,...

Recently I wrote a piece stating that we need to have more compassion for the parents of autistic kids, and I stand by that, but that doesn’t mean that parents don’t need to do some inner work and learn how to change some of their behaviors. When we act poorly as parents we need to ho...

Asa lifelong Miamian wearing the hats of a real estate agent and a happy autism dad, I’m always on the lookout for golden opportunities in my vibrant city. It’s a place where cultures mix, and it’s here that I dream big for my non-verbal daughter, envisioning a future where she and...

Miami, a city that knows adaptation like no other, is our home. Its skyline, a kaleidoscope of architectural styles, mirrors the ever-changing hues of the ocean it borders. It’s a city that dances to the rhythm of change, much like our family. In our family, we have a unique rhythm, a rhyth...

With its lush greenery and ocean breezes, Miami is a treasure trove of natural wonders. The palm trees sway as if dancing to a rhythm only they can hear. The sun kisses the earth, and the air is alive with possibilities. One fine morning, as the dampness of sea salt wafted through the air, I took...

This famous city goes by many names, but one thing is clear: it’s a huge city. And huge cities can be an autistic person’s worst nightmare. I firmly believe in testing all of my boundaries on a regular basis, so I interviewed my cousin Alex, who has lived in NYC on the Upper East Side fo...

As my 2023 came to a close and I reflected on the outgoing year, I saw some cars coming and going three days in a row for what appeared to be a shiva for a resident in my housing complex. It got me thinking about life, mortality, the closure of another year, and what being Jewish has meant...

Like many autistic people, I learned to mask at a young age. Masking refers to concealing one’s neurodivergent traits. Often, autistic individuals resort to masking to avoid rejection and social exclusion. Yet, this strategy comes at a high cost. Masking drains our energy, leav...

A little over two years ago, I had taken on my two teenage boys full-time. If you are a frequent reader of my work, then it is no secret that I am a full-time single parent. Both of my boys are on the autism spectrum, which makes them differently abled in many areas and are challenged in unique...

I’m about to turn 35, and I’ve spent my entire adult life being unemployed or underemployed. This is far from uncommon for autistic people. Roughly 85% of us are unemployed, and that’s only the diagnosed folks who are included in the studies. Before I knew about my autism, I used t...

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...

All of this slowly began to change in my late 20s, after I learned I was Autistic and began researching masked Autism. I came to understand that I didn’t dislike people as a matter of course, I just couldn’t handle unexpected plans, or erratic noise, and was not adept at following s...

When I was at university, writing essays was a special kind of struggle. I would eventually manage to complete them, and sometimes did quite well. But I always suspected that I laboured over them more than was necessary, or at least more than others did. I thought it was just my anxiety compellin...

My strong sense of justice is one of my favourite things about being autistic, and many autistics feel similarly. This is understandable, and many autistics are fantastic social justice advocates. But our appreciation for this trait sometimes leads people into ‘Aspie supremacy’ type thin...

While watching the film, I was once again struck by how much I related to the character. His odd mannerisms, his disregard for small talk and social niceties, and his fixation on a self-constructed world all reminded me of a lot of my own experiences growing up as a quiet, book-obsessed, undiagnosed...

I have always known that my friends, and seemingly literally everyone else around me, were more high energy than me. I’ve always felt tired, no matter how much I slept or how healthy I ate or how many vitamins I took. It has always been like this, for as long as I can remember. It was alway...

Toxic Positivity is a modern cultural plague. It just keeps you buying stuff. And working harder and harder… to buy more stuff. Religion for consumers. This kind of positivity is not spiritual. Or uplifting. Just one more yardstick measuring my failures. Inspiring movie by inspirin...

Sheldon Cooper loves trains. I mean, he really loves trains. He loves trains more than he loves his girlfriend. He calls his girlfriend “Amy Farrah-Fowler” when referring to her in everyday conversation. Why? Unclear. Many of the things Sheldon does are unclear. Why do...

In the old days, 1 in 16 kids diagnosed with autism was female. Twenty years ago, 1 in 4 children with autism was female. In a recent study funded by NIH, researchers concluded that a sample of 1711 participants revealed the ratio is actually 3:4: “The true male-to-female ratio...

Fifteen-year-old John Gallinaro is so traumatized he can’t sleep at night. He’s afraid to use the bathroom at home by himself. His mom says he often expresses fear of Nicole Nicolet, a Cinemark cinema manager in Hazlet, New Jersey who recently “accused” John of being transgen...

Autistics tend to be pretty honest folk. Most of us find it difficult to tell outright lies. We feel compelled to tell the truth even when we know full well that doing so could get us into trouble. Consequently, we get ourselves into the kind of bother that those more adept at lying easily avoid....

This is not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination. There are several lists just like this one floating around online and having read quite a few of them over the last two and a half years, I felt inspired to create one of my own. While my late diagnosis at the age of 29 in April 2016...

I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until age 41 in 2021. What I thought was autism was the stereotype you see in the media of the non-speaking rocking and hand-flapping white boy, or the incorrect stereotypes such as Rainman (actually a savant), and the stereotypes I didn’t relate to such as...

Here was this entire underworld of debauchery set to heavy bass, the kind that gets up in your rib cage and rattles all your insides. The songs all flowed into each other, pulling along a room roiling with bodies, all beholden to the beat. The DJ conducted an entire crowd full of strangers in the da...

Meet my awesome 14-year-old son, Niko. He’s not just someone with autism — he’s super smart, mega-talented, and totally into cooking. In fact, he dreams of becoming a chef. But, you know, life’s not always easy. There are hurdles, especially because people sometimes treat aut...

Next week we are having some work done on our kitchen. It is very much needed and will bring huge benefits. But it means that I am currently having to relocate the entire contents of the kitchen cupboards to elsewhere in the house. It is chaos, and I am finding it exhausting. I know that building...

We all have things about us that we would rather keep to ourselves. Whether it is guilty pleasures like cheesy music and films, or mistakes we have made that we would rather not think about, very few people are comfortable putting their whole lives out in the open. However, we also tend to have c...

Following my interview with Victoria about an ideal online experience for an autistic person, I immersed myself in research about designing for autistic people to find best practices. I have summarised my findings below into categories, with links to sources if you want to learn more. In a...

When I was a child, life was okay. It began to go downhill at the age of seven, when I had a prophetic vision. The vision centered on a new girl at the school. We’ll call her Emma. She moved to our school from another country and within a few days was crazy popular. I’d been going ...

When I was at university, writing essays was a special kind of struggle. I would eventually manage to complete them, and sometimes did quite well. But I always suspected that I laboured over them more than was necessary, or at least more than others did. I thought it was just my anxiety compellin...

Working as a behavior technician with autistic children has been a really special part of my life. I have only one client at the moment but have worked with many over the past year and a half. In my time working with kids with autism I’ve learned a lot about life. Whether they are autistic ...