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Financial Independence Starts With Daily Living Skills
When families think about financial independence, the conversation often begins with money—budgeting, saving, earning a paycheck, opening a bank account, and learning how to pay bills. These are important skills, but for many autistic individuals, the foundation for financial independence begins...
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Beyond Money Math: Using THINK to Teach Financial Literacy to Autistic Teens
Managing money well is an essential skill that influences independence and quality of life. As financial expert Dave Ramsey said, "You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you." Money management is essentially mathematical skills combined with self-control and...
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Beyond Money Management: A Behavioral Framework for Teaching Financial Independence
Financial independence encompasses far more than the ability to make purchases or count money. Although these are important foundational skills, financial independence may involve a broad repertoire of behaviors that enable individuals to make informed decisions, solve problems, make choices, and...
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Beyond the Card: When Visual Supports Stop Supporting
Everyone was arriving at once to begin the day. I was putting my things away when I heard someone across the classroom say, "No thank you, friend. We don't throw cards on the floor." I looked over and saw Zachary sitting at a table, dropping cards onto the floor one by one. I walked over and...
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Making Room: What Practical Classroom Support Looks Like
Imagine a ten-year-old being asked to put away a tablet and join the reading circle. They do not move. A teacher's aide repeats the instruction, a little louder and a little slower, as though volume were the missing ingredient. The student still does not move. In another classroom, a teacher...
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Why Swimming and Autism Fit Together: How Water Can Become a Sanctuary, a Skill Builder, and a Source of Strength for Autistic Teens
Brooks is a fictional composite based on experiences described by autistic swimmers and their families. For this thirteen-year-old, the moment he dives into the pool, the world above the surface seems to disappear. The noise, the confusion, the pressure — all replaced by rhythm and calm....
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Freeing the Mind: A Nonspeaking Autistic’s Case for Presuming Competence
Many nonspeakers are still locked in the prison of their own mind. Nonspeakers are underestimated because our bodies and brains are disconnected. Our minds work, but not with our body, so people conclude we are unintelligent. Apraxia is not well understood by parents, teachers, therapists, and the...
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The Right to Learn: One Nonspeaking Autistic Student’s Case for Educational Access and Dignity
Beginning as a small child, school is where you make friends and learn to process the world around you. Most of modern society is formed on the basis that people have received a formal education. Whether that education be from primary to high school, or onward to a college education, it is presumed...
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Very Great Sound: The Case for Teaching Poetry to Nonspeaking Autistic Students
Last April, I found myself in a Stockholm studio, sitting next to my college buddy Spencer Reece, with whom I'd taken my first creative writing course forty-three years ago—our teacher was the Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard. We had traveled to Sweden to teach our own creative writing...
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You Are the Expert on Your Preferred and Effective Communication – “Le Pape v. Lower Merion School District,” a Landmark Civil Rights Case
Alex Le Pape was in high school when he told Lower Merion School District that a letter board was his preferred and effective means of communication and asked to use it throughout the school day. At an age when most students are simply trying to navigate adolescence, with that request, Alex began...
