Category: Neurodiversity-Affirming
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Neurodiversity in Schools: Progress Since I Was a Student?
Before touching on my professional experiences, I want to give a quick summary of what I recall from my school days. I went through the public school system in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I specify not to age myself but to remind readers that our knowledge of neurodiversity has made great progress since…
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What If We Presumed Need in Addition to Presuming Competence?
You may or may not have heard the edict “presume competence.” It is a crucial part of creating neuro-affirming spaces. I was first introduced to it through the world of supporting non-speaking or minimally-speaking Autistics in the film “This is Not About Me,” featuring Jordyn Zimmerman. In the movie, Jordyn shares her experiences as a…
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Children are Humans First
I was sitting on the floor with some preschoolers, playing cars. It was time to clean up. “I don’t want to clean up,” one cried. I had two choices. I could take the typical approach, double down, and make sure he knew the expectation (a ridiculous concept — he clearly knew it, enough to be…
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What PBIS Got Wrong About My Echolalia
Internalized echolalia is one of those things people rarely talk about because they rarely know it exists. For me, it’s not some quirky feature of being autistic. It’s my brain’s operating system. It’s the language I speak in silence. While the world pushes me to say things out loud and to follow the scripts they…
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Have You Heard of the Tendril Theory?
Have you heard of the Tendril Theory? I came across it online a few years ago, and understanding it has helped me to support my neurodivergent sons. The graphic I have seen shows a Medusa-like cartoon character. The person is engrossed in an activity with multiple swirling lines connecting from their head to the activity.
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Misunderstood: How Communication Differences Lead to Social Seclusion in Higher Education
At one point during my college experience, I was called into a meeting with several of my professors. They informed me that some of my classmates had told them they were scared of me. I was stunned. I couldn’t understand how I had come across as frightening.
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Change is Needed in Higher Education to Support Neurodivergent Students
My college experience was shaped by the challenges of navigating an environment that often did not fully understand or accommodate my needs as an autistic student. As someone who had been non-verbal until age 5, I still faced difficulties in social interactions, communication, and adapting to the expectations placed on students. Although I had made…
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Challenging Outdated Practices in Behavioral Assessment: A Call for Change
In an era where education must rise to meet the needs of all learners, the recently released guidance titled “Using Functional Behavioral Assessments to Create Supportive Learning Environments” (November 2024) fails to reflect approaches grounded in trauma-sensitive care, neuroscience, and neurodiversity-affirming practices. The guidance reinforces outdated frameworks that prioritize managing behavior over fostering safety, connection,…
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Accommodations Prepare Children for The Real World
October 2023 was very different from October 2024. My children were enrolled in public school in a small town in Connecticut, and we were all feeling miserable. My oldest son, Frankie, was in second grade and struggling tremendously. We had yet to have an IEP meeting after nearly two months of school. His anxiety was…
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Be Curious and Dig Deeper
Struggles with non-preferred tasks. How many of us have read this sentence about our child? How many have written this sentence about a child we work with, or had it written about you? I heard this sentence in my son’s annual IEP (Individualized Education Plan) review meeting and am still kicking myself for not addressing…