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Understanding Dietary Distress, Forced Eating, and Food Deserts While Autistic
My name is Sylvia, and I’m an Autistic adult with sensory hypersensitivities that mainly affect my eating, which I’m choosing to call dietary hypersensitivities, or, more simply, food/drink hypersensitivities. For me, these hypersensitivities are oversensitivities based on any combination of...
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What I Hope People Will Get Out of My Autism Memoir
I tried to “write” my first book (or more accurately, dictate a story to parents who wrote it down on the bottom third of blank sheets of paper, leaving room for me to add illustrations later) when I was four years old. I started discussing what would become I Overcame My Autism and All I Got...
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Balancing Dignity of Risk and Embracing Opportunity During COVID-19
The United States and much of the world is currently dealing with a nightmarish pandemic. This has presented many challenges for people with developmental disabilities and those who support us to live our best lives. As we live together through this difficult time, we need to keep our eye on the...
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Call Me Autistic: A Soft Correction for Those Still Using Person-First Language
I want to tell you about the woman I am named after, my Great Aunt Betty. I never met Betty, but I got to hear about her whenever I asked where my name came from. Betty was apparently a sassy lady who, like me, despised her full name and went by her nickname, Betty. The “big” family secret...
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#DisabilityStillTooWhite: A White Autist Examines Representation in the Disability Movement
I identify as White, non-binary, neuro-queer, autistic, and disabled. I believe it is crucial to be transparent as soon as possible about (my) positionality when discussing intricate and delicate concepts (and always starting with my Whiteness to highlight how my White privilege directly and...
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Supporting Autistic Children: Much Has Been Learned Since My Childhood
Having been diagnosed on the autism spectrum as an older adult, I was certainly not aware of this condition during my childhood, nor was anyone else in my life including family, school officials, or healthcare professionals. At the time there was no public awareness about autism to speak of (it was...
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Neurodiversity and Sibling Relationships
Having a child with an autism spectrum disorder has a transformative effect on the entire family. Typically, when a child is diagnosed with autism, parents embark on a mission to find effective treatments and support systems. However, during treatment planning neurotypical siblings are often...
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My First Employment Experience Working for Autism Spectrum News
I graduated from Marist College in May of 2018. While I was on hiatus as I enjoyed free time for the summer, I was thinking about getting a job, but I needed help with planning my next steps. When January came, I started out at Shrub Oak International School, where I would receive help with career...
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The Tyranny of Typicality
There is an old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain but apparently of unknown origin, that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The problem with the latter, as I have always seen it, is that it seeks to find norms in populations within which there can be considerable...
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How We’ve Always Done It
I remember the day exactly. It was an unspectacular Sunday and I was headed to the last job I would ever take working for somebody else. It was a low-paying, hourly, management position for an animal nonprofit and just about the only benefit of the job was that I was in charge of making the...
