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No Labels on My Clothes, No Labels on Me: Why Functioning Labels Need to Be Cut Off and Tossed
Autistic folk spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the torture of labels on our clothes. In a discussion about sensory issues, right after we discuss how much we loathe the grocery store, the hatred of tags on our clothes comes up. It’s amazing how something so small, can invisibly...
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“Profound Autism” Is the Term We Need to Provide Critical Specificity to a Broad Spectrum
“What is your disability, because I’m not seeing one?” a young man on a date asks during an episode of Love on the Spectrum, Netflix’s recent reality show hit. “What does autism look like to you?” the young woman sitting across from him retorts. For many families struggling with...
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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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Strategies to Teach Key Foundation Skills to Young Children with Autism
Children with autism have both strong and weak points when it comes to learning – like all children. A significant tendency to progress at different rates across developmental domains is generally the case. Further, there can exist an uneven performance within a single area. Since language is a...
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Uniquely Human Podcast #5 – The Harmful Myth of High-Functioning and Low-Functioning Autism; An Autism Fathers’ Group; Guest Dr. Robert Naseef
Episode 5 - The Harmful Myth of High-Functioning and Low-Functioning Autism; An Autism Fathers’ Group; Guest Dr. Robert Naseef Overview Re-thinking the commonly used language that has proven detrimental to understanding the autistic person. Barry and Dave examine the potentially...
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A Group-Format Parent Training Program to Improve Communication Skills in Young Children with ASD
The first few years of life are an important period for communication and language development. Even before the emergence of spoken language, typically-developing children engage in communicative interchanges with caregivers through gaze, directed facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations....
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There’s More to Communication than Language, Grammar, and Vocabulary
Autism, in the general sense, is often defined as a disorder involving deficits of communication. This is certainly true for nonverbal autistics, as well as for those who cannot be “reached” even though they are capable of expressing speech. What about those autistics who are fully verbal and...
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Building Communication Competence through Milieu Speech-Language Therapy
Speech and language therapy treatment is typically viewed in two ways: pull-out versus push-in. Pull-out therapy occurs outside of the student’s classroom for an allotted amount of time, typically without his or her peers, while push-in therapy, in the school setting, is when services are...
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Strategies to Support Communication and Address Challenging Behaviors
Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities who face the greatest challenges most often have failed to acquire strategies to support communication. Most adults and children alike without verbal behavior are likely to develop a strong repertoire of challenging behavior. The young...
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Language Intervention for School-Aged Children
Spoken language remains the most efficient means of communication. The ability to speak functionally with others consistently and robustly predicts positive life outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Howlin et al., 2004). Not surprisingly, most interventions have focused on...
