About two years ago, we sat our then nine-year-old son down to review test results from the child psychologist he’d visited a few weeks earlier. “Did she say I’m autistic?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “You are Autistic.” He was silent momentarily and finally replied, “But I don’t want to be Autistic. The kids at…
Facial expressions are a form of non-verbal communication that accompanies a verbal message and can help convey the intent behind the message and the speaker’s emotional state. In short, it rounds out the complete picture for the receiver. And for neurotypicals, a conflict between a person’s words and facial expressions can lead to misunderstandings. For…
The natural communication style for autistics tends to take a straightforward approach. We know what we want to say, and we say it. But there’s more to communicating than words for non-autistics. Words are just one piece of the puzzle, and the non-verbal communication accompanying a verbal message can significantly influence how others interpret the…
If everyone is a little autistic, then wouldn’t it be the norm?
My mom often related my childhood reading habits to devouring food. From my mother’s perspective, I was speeding through books as though my eyes were a machine with a conveyer belt tongue feeding me one after another. Convinced I wasn’t actually reading them, she required me to write book reports to prove I retained the…
Along with my autism diagnosis, I received another diagnosis: depression. I don’t remember when I started my personal battle with depression. It always seemed to be there – like those memory balls on Inside Out tinged with the color of emotion. Most of my memories are tinged with blue. It was a constant companion. Since…
As an autistic person, I hate the question, “How are you doing?” When I say that I hate the question, think Grinch-loathes-Whoville-and-Christmas level hate. Seriously, it’s a horrible question. Why haven’t neurotypicals figured this out yet? As most autistics do, I learned about the insanity of this question the hard way. People may ask this…
We all know that interrupting someone is rude. Our parents taught us that. Our teachers taught us that. It’s frustrating to be engrossed in a task or conversation and be interrupted. Just about anyone, neurotypical or neurodivergent, is irritated on some level. I envy the person that can pick up a conversation with, “Now where…
Is LinkedIn promoting its polling feature? I must have missed the memo. All I see as I scroll through LinkedIn these days are polls. Polls about leadership and jobs and benefits. Polls about inclusion and interviews and, well, it turns out you can make a poll about any topic. Just scroll through your LinkedIn feed;…
Just like most things in our society, we’ve structured the employment process around neurotypical social skills. Unfortunately, autistic social skills do not align with these expectations. It’s disheartening to read in Forbes that “a staggering 50-75% of the 5.6 million autistic adults in the U.S. are unemployed or underemployed.” As an autistic, I know how…