How to foster a positive autistic identity in children

How to foster a positive autistic identity in children

“As it stands, we are doing almost everything wrong as a society”. (Maxine Share, 2019)

Executive Functioning

🧠 Following multi-step directions can be genuinely difficult for many autistic children, not because of unwillingness, but because of how their nervous system processes sequential information. Use a multimodal approach: pair verbal instructions with visual aids, illustrations, physical demonstrations, or written cues. If you're using spoken instructions alone, break them into one step at a time, use clear and direct language, and focus only on what's essential. Verbal only instruction is typically the least accessible modality for autistic learners.
 

🧠 Many autistic children experience significant challenges communicating their needs, and unmet needs almost always show up in behaviour. Before interpreting a behaviour as a "problem," ask yourself: what might this child be trying to tell me? When you notice signs of frustration building, that's the moment to step in and teach. Model how to ask for help, and pair the action with a word, sign, or visual symbol. Communication is always the goal.

🧠 Visual supports are best practice, not a last resort. Most autistic children benefit from having verbal directions paired with a visual reference. This can be as simple as a handwritten note ("keys — purse") or as structured as Picture Communication Symbols. The visual doesn't replace language, it makes language more accessible.

🧠 Visual supports are especially valuable because they reduce the cognitive load that anxiety places on memory and executive functioning. Even children who communicate verbally may find that a visual reference helps them remember a sequence, manage transitions, or feel more in control of what's coming next.

🧠 Many autistic children have slower processing speeds, they are six-second kids in a three-second world. Building in wait time isn't passive; it's a form of active respect. Give them the space to receive, process, and respond before repeating or redirecting. Patience here isn't a nicety, it's a genuine accommodation.

🧠 When re-teaching a skill, do so without frustration, across different contexts, and without interrupting the child's processing mid task. Repetition in varied environments is how learning consolidates, so the calm with which you re-teach matters as much as the content itself.
 
🧠 Always address a child directly by name, at their eye level. This simple practice communicates respect and helps orient their attention without overwhelming them.

🧠 If a child doesn't respond to a direction, resist the impulse to interpret this as defiance. Consider instead: does the child actually know how to do what's being asked? Are they too anxious in this moment to access what they've learned? Is there a sensory factor making it harder to comply right now? Taking a moment to consider all the variables, and to genuinely step into the child's perspective, changes the entire dynamic.

🧠 Teach problem-solving by making your own thinking visible. Narrating your inner process out loud — "Oh, we're out of cheese. That's okay, let me think of another plan… I have pasta sauce, I'll make spaghetti instead" — gives the child a living model of flexible thinking, emotional regulation, and coping with the unexpected. This is far more powerful than any worksheet.

Emotions and Sensory Experience

💖 Be intentional about the messages that surround the child. Autistic children receive a disproportionate amount of correction, redirection, and feedback throughout their day, much of it well-meaning, but cumulative in its effect. Counter this by actively and specifically naming what you value about them: their curiosity, their humour, their way of noticing things others miss, their persistence.

💖 Many autistic children struggle with a sense of competence, often because the environments they move through are not designed for them and therefore produce frequent experiences of difficulty or failure. Recognize and name their strengths genuinely, not as compensation, but as a true reflection of who they are. Follow their lead in play. Let them be the expert.

💖 Take a moment to notice your own sensory experience right now: the pressure of the chair beneath you, the texture of your clothing against your skin, background sounds you'd stopped registering, the quality of the light in the room. Most of us learn to filter these sensations out. For many autistic individuals, this filtering doesn't happen in the same way, these inputs remain present and demanding, and the nervous system has to work harder to function within them. This is not hypersensitivity as a flaw; it is a different sensory architecture. When a child becomes dysregulated in a sensory environment, the most important first step is validation: their experience is real, it makes sense, and you are there to help them figure it out together. 

💖 Autism is a multidimensional experience that touches communication, sensory and motor processing, executive functioning, emotional regulation, and social interaction. Supporting an autistic child means holding all of these dimensions in mind simultaneously — not reducing their experience to any single one.

💖 The accumulation of daily corrections across home, school, therapy, and social settings shapes a child's self-concept profoundly. Even when offered with love, constant redirection sends a message: the way you are is not quite right. Over time, this erodes trust in one's own perceptions and abilities. Being mindful of how often and in what tone we intervene is not permissiveness, it is protection of the child's developing sense of self.

💖 Actively resist the "correction" model of autism support, the one in which the child is always too slow, too loud, too intense, too much. Reframe your lens: look for the moments of genuine competence, connection, and creativity. There are more of them than a correction-focused approach allows us to see.

Communication and Behaviour

😌 Use purposeful, affirmative language. Frame directions around what the child can do rather than what they can't. This isn't just a tone adjustment, it gives the child something actionable to move toward.
 

😌 "No" without context is one of the least informative things we can say to a child who is still learning to make sense of the world. A brief, honest explanation ("that road has cars that go fast, let's use the sidewalk where it's safer") respects the child's intelligence and gives them the reasoning they need to generalize the rule to new situations.

😌 The more rigid and demand-avoidant a child appears, the more likely it is that anxiety is driving the behaviour, not opposition. The antidote is not firmer demands but greater flexibility and collaborative problem-solving. Offering choices ("do you want to tidy your room before or after lunch?") returns a sense of agency to the child, which reduces the anxiety that made demands feel threatening in the first place.

😌 Reflect regularly on your own approach: is it actually working for this child, or are you repeating a strategy because it's familiar? Effective support is individualized, responsive, and always willing to adapt.

😌 It's worth distinguishing between a meltdown rooted in sensory or neurological overwhelm and other types of distress, as the underlying needs and most helpful responses can differ. That said, both call for calm presence, not consequence. Staying in close communication with the child's support team can help you identify patterns and respond more precisely over time.

Social Connection

💬 Get to know the child's interests genuinely, not instrumentally. When you enter their world joining their game, asking real questions about the things they love, showing up as a participant rather than a facilitator, you build the relational trust that makes all other learning possible. This also models exactly what you're hoping to teach: listening, genuine interest, and emotional presence.

💬 Social differences are a core part of the autistic experience, and social missteps will happen especially in environments not designed with neurodivergent people in mind. Your role is not to train these away, but to be a steady, non-shaming presence. If someone tries to embarrass or single out the child for a social difference, name it clearly: there is nothing wrong with how this child moves through the world.

💬 Social interaction is genuinely effortful for many autistic children and can produce real neurological fatigue. The need for solitude and downtime is not avoidance, it is regulation. Respect it. Forcing social engagement when a child needs to decompress will not build social skills; it will build dread.

💬 When navigating social situations that feel confusing to the child, approach them together with curiosity and respect, helping them understand context, not correcting them for getting it wrong.

Transitions and Predictability

🚗 Transitions, moving between activities, locations, routines, or expectations are a genuine source of difficulty for many autistic children, because they require tolerating uncertainty. Predictable structure reduces that uncertainty. Visual schedules, planners, and consistent routines aren't rigidity, they're scaffolding that allows the child to direct their energy toward engagement rather than toward managing the unknown.


🚗 Alongside routine, actively teach flexibility by building "Plan B" thinking into daily life. When you make a plan, make a backup plan too and put both on the calendar. "We're going to the park Saturday morning. And just in case it rains, what should our Plan B be?" This isn't preparing them for disappointment; it's giving them a tool for navigating an unpredictable world with more confidence and less dysregulation.
  
🚗 Wherever possible, include the child in planning. Use whatever communication system works best for them (visual, verbal, written, AAC) to let them express preferences and participate in decisions about their own life. Agency is not a reward for compliance; it is a right.

🚗 Sleep differences are common in autistic individuals, and there is growing evidence that circadian rhythms in autistic people can run two to three hours later than average. If your child isn't falling asleep at a conventional bedtime, this is likely neurobiological, not behavioural. Adjust expectations accordingly and consult with their support team about strategies that work with their biology rather than against it.

Neurodiversity and Identity

🌈 Read books, follow accounts, and seek out the voices of autistic adults and young people. Their perspective is the most direct route to understanding what your child's experience might actually be like from the inside, and to understanding what genuinely helps. This knowledge will shape how you show up in ways no professional manual can replicate.

🌈 Help the child build a sense of pride in who they are. Seek out autistic role models including contemporary figures who are openly autistic and speak about their own experience so the child can see themselves reflected in people living full, creative, and meaningful lives. Focus especially on those who speak in their own voice about what being autistic means to them.

🌈 You are not a passive observer in this process. As a parent or caregiver, your day to day observations, your knowledge of this specific child, and your commitment to understanding them are irreplaceable. Professional support matters, but the professionals working with your child should be learning from you as much as you are learning from them. A good team works collaboratively, not hierarchically.

🌈 Equity is not sameness. Autistic children may need more support, different support, and support for longer than their neurotypical peers, and that is not a problem to be managed, but a need to be met. 

As a psychologist, what I want to offer is a different kind of attention, one that questions when and why we choose to intervene, and whether those interventions serve the child's flourishing or simply our own comfort. We need to stop measuring autistic children against a neurotypical benchmark and start seeing them as they are: children with their own personalities, preferences, humour, and dreams. Children who deserve to have their voice heard, their experience respected, and their dignity treated as non-negotiable.

List based on interview with Maxine Share, Canadian autistic writer, advocate, workshop creator and counselor who works hard to try to change the understanding and actions of those who work and live with people on the spectrum. 

💡 You can contact and find more information on their Facebook page Autism Goggles

💡You can find the full interview along with other autistic individuals here LearnFromAutistics