"So You Want To Work With Autistic Kids" Primer
Hi everyone, so I made a post a few days ago about putting together a list of links for my lab partner, who wants to work with autistic children. This is what I’ve come up with. Admittedly it’s more of an “introduction to neurodiversity advocacy” primer, but I think that should come with the job, really. If you’ve got any suggestions, do let me know!
(And sorry for the odd formatting- I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make nesting bullets, even when I enter the html)
TW: mentions (but no discussion in this post) of ableism, neglect, assault, murder, abuse, ABA. All links come with their own warnings unless otherwise noted. If you find one that doesn’t, or is broken, please tell me.
About Autism Speaks:
General Autism:
1. About autism
2. What it really means when someone says they’re autistic
3. Diagnostic criteria suggested by autistic people (more on what it’s like to be autistic)
4. Yes, That Too’s tips for parents
5. What I Wish I’d Been Made Aware of When My Daughter Was Diagnosed With Autism
6. Tantrums vs meltdowns and shutdowns
7. Stimming
8. Not an epidemic
9. Empathy and the Empath Quotient Test
10. Functioning labels
11. Person-first language
12. Cures
13. Ableism
“Classics” and others widely circulated among autistic self-advocates:
1. The Obsessive Joy of Autism
2. Don’t Mourn For Us
3. Quiet Hands and Grabbers (TW: ableism, abuse, R-slur in Grabbers)
4. The Cost of Compliance is Unreasonable (TW for teachers forcing a child to do something they don’t want to do, huge TW for link within post)
- Similar, but not so widely spread, is The Influence of Others, a parent’s reaction to “Grabbers” (TW: ableism, abuse)
Therapy:
1. An Analogy (TW: trying to force someone out of autistic behavior)
2. On forcing eye contact
3. Doing “Nothing”
4. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: my Assessment of Our Experience with ABA
5. More of Rose’s thoughts
- The post linked in the above (she changed her blog title, so “caffeinatedaspie” URL links don’t work)
6. An Open Letter to Parents Considering Intensive Behavioral Therapy for Their Child With Autism (TW: detailed descriptions of ABA methods, child’s PTSD)
- And Part Two (the link kind of gets lost at the bottom, so I put it here too)
- As disgusting as it is, a lot of people dismiss autistic voices on the topic of harmful therapy in favor of parents’ and child development professionals’ voices. The writers of this are both, so it may be useful to convince people with that attitude
7. A list of posts by others (I haven’t read these)
8. And more
Ableism (important to understand the prejudice autistic people face): (TW for ableism, neglect, assault, murder on this entire section)
1. Murders by parents and caregivers
2. Commentary on other people’s dismissal of murders
3. Transplant discrimination
4. Medical discrimination
5. The Pillow Angel (not autism, cerebral palsy, but important to recognize what people will do out of “concern” to a non-speaking person)
Books:
1. Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking
- And the video for it
2. And Straight On Till Morning: Essays on Autism Acceptance
3. I Love Being My Own Autistic Self: a thAutoons Book
4. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism
5. Yes, That Too’s book list
Films:
Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN):
1. ASAN website
2. Their “Autism Acceptance Month” PSA
3. One of their videos (and amazing commentary about nonverbal communication at the bottom)
Good Blogs:
1. The Caffeinated Autistic (also goldenheartedrose on tumblr)
2. Yes, That Too (also yesthattoo on tumblr)
3. Autistic Hoya
4. Just Stimming
5. Radical Neurodivergence Speaking
6. Tiny Grace Notes (AKA Ask an Autistic)
7. ThAutcast
8. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism
Things recommended by people I follow (but that I haven’t really looked at personally):
1. Rose’s favorite blogs
2. Rose’s resource list
3. Yes, That Too’s list
Other resources:
1. The ‘askanautistic’ tag on tumblr- tag your post with this and autistic people who are willing to educate others will see your question
Very important: how to tell who is a real friend
I really, really wish that I’d discovered this list years ago:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~alistair/survival/finding.html
It tells you how to tell a real friend from a hoax one or an enemy.
If I’d read this list years ago, I would not have got married to my abusive husband. He fitted every single thing in the enemy list and several things in the hoax friend list, but told me he loved me and was my best friend. He lied.
99% of the people I thought of as friends in my life fitted the things in the hoax friend list.
Parents, please teach your autistic kids what friendship is meant to feel like, how friends are supposed to treat you and how to tell a real friend from a fake one. Please tell me these things too!
[Trigger Warning: Autism discrimination]
If you would rather put your children at (proven) risk of death via Measles than (unproven) risk of Autism via the MMR vaccine, you need to re-examine your attitudes to disability and neurodivergence because essentially you are saying you’d rather your child was dead than autistic.
Autism Speaks hurts autistic people
sulkylass.tumblr.com[rebloggable ask. further resources.]
Wait how does Autism Speaks hurt Autistic people?
– danmurphtord
I’m glad you asked.
Autism Speaks is an organization that talks over autistic people. They don’t have any autistic employees or head members. They are not concerned with the psychophysical wellbeing of autistic people, rather they are more concerned with autistic people’s allistic/neurotypical relatives’ wellbeing, often at the expense of autistic people’s.
Most of the money Autism Speaks receives through donations goes towards “autism research”, whose primary objective is to find the “cause” of autism in order to do some eugenics magic and eradicate us all in the long run.
Autism Speaks actively spreads misinformation about autism. They say that vaccines cause autism, although no compounds in vaccines are able to change brain structure in such a way. They also organize many “autism walks” and similar events to further fuel their agenda and attract more donators.
They have produced a number of promotional videos/interviews, including Autism Everyday, where an allistic mother discusses her thoughts of committing a homicide-suicide of her autistic child, right in front of said child.
There is another one, particularly revolting, called I Am Autism, where autism and autistic people are demonized and blamed for completely unrelated issues, such as economic failure and marriage failure in families.
You can look all of this up. But be warned, you are going to see really vicious things. Because that’s what Autism Speaks is. They are just as vicious, malevolent, evil and wretched as they make out autism and us autistic people to be. And I hate them with my entire being.
