Vividly Autistic

My first experience working with autistic children was in 2017, at a summer camp here in Canada run by an ABA centre. Because it was a recreational setting — taking kids to different places around the city — the context felt freer, and my impression of the approach wasn't particularly negative at the time. What began to shift that was something simpler: listening. The more I sought out the voices of autistic people themselves, the more my understanding changed. That process accelerated sharply when I took a position as a Behavioural Therapist at an ABA/IBI centre. The format was as follows: On my first day of training, I walked into two rooms, each with four to six therapists seated alongside a child at a desk. On the tables: materials, and thick folders of instructions. The format was precise. Each skill — say, responding to one's name — came with a standardized code, a list of mastery criteria (the child had to demonstrate the skill in over 80% of trials, including on the fir...

The Emotional Landscape of Autism One of the most important things to understand about the autistic experience is the intensity with which emotions are felt. As autistic neurodiversity advocate Janae Elisabeth describes it: sensory and emotional experience operate on a different scale: happiness can arrive as elation, sadness as devastation, grief as something that feels like the end of the world. The same intensity that applies to sound, light, touch, taste, and smell applies equally to the emotional world. Because the connection between emotions and the body is so immediate and so strong, movement becomes a primary tool for processing and self-regulation. Stimming — tapping, rocking, spinning, flapping, bouncing, dancing — is not a behavioural quirk to be eliminated. It is, as Elisabeth puts it, how many autistic people "stay in touch with their inner selves and their intense emotional world." Motion is emotional processing. Any approach that attempts to suppress stimming i...

This post was originally written during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and updated in 2026. Some references reflect that original moment in time and have been kept intentionally, as they are part of the history of this blog and the community it was written for. The book and film recommendations have been updated to reflect my current thinking.  What is stress? Stress is part of our natural response to the demands and challenges the environment places on us, it is a universal human experience. In many ways it is essential to our survival, preparing us to react quickly to stimuli we perceive as threatening. It is one of our most important adaptive resources. That said, chronic stress — sustained periods of exhaustion and overwhelm — can take a serious long-term toll, not only psychologically but physically as well. Autism and stress As I've mentioned in previous posts, autistic individuals navigate differences in social interaction and communication, as well as differences in sleep,...

*A note on language: the term "meltdown" is used throughout this post as it comes from and is widely used within the autistic community itself to describe experiences of neurological overwhelm. Meltdowns can look very different from person to person — some are quiet and internal, others involve crying, and some may include aggressive behavior or self-injury. These are not separate phenomena, but different expressions of the same underlying experience: a nervous system that has reached its limit. This post addresses the full spectrum of what a meltdown can look like, including its most intense manifestations, so that caregivers and educators feel equipped to respond with empathy rather than fear.   When we encounter these behaviors, we must remember that they come from an inability to self-regulate. The child is overwhelmed by cognitive and sensory overload, or they are in pain — they are in survival mode.   In the case of aggressive or self-injurious behavior, always hold ...

Picture yourself at the grocery store with your child. You pass the toy section and your child starts asking for an expensive toy. You say no and try to explain that it costs too much. The child starts yelling, and when you hold firm with a clear "no," they begin crying and throw themselves on the floor. Now picture a different scene. You're at home cooking, and your child is in the living room playing on their tablet. Suddenly you hear a loud noise. You check on them and find them rocking — increased self-stimulatory behavior — and repeating words or phrases over and over (echolalia). The tablet is on the floor. This has happened before; you know your child gets dysregulated when the tablet shuts down unexpectedly. You pick it up and notice that now the screen is cracked. You approach your child and ask what happened, if they're okay, and then begin explaining how expensive the tablet was and lecturing them about what to do when the battery dies. The child starts ban...

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 ...

En el primer post de este blog hable respecto a mi postura respecto al ABA y la necesidad de abrirnos a nuevas formas de hacer terapia que apuesten a la ne u ro d iv e rs id ad , esto es aceptando que todas las formas de desarrollo neurológico son válidas. No hay nada defectuoso ni nada que "tratar" en el individuo, sino más bien aceptar que existen diferencias y no deficiencias en el desarrollo. Ahora, esto involucra un cambio de paradigma que nos interpela sobre como entendemos y nos relacionamos con las personas neuro diversas. Vivimos en una cultura que está acostumbrada a discapacitar a las personas que tienen un desarrollo neurológico diferente, priorizando el ruido y la cantidad indiscriminada de luces dentro de locales, sean tanto tiendas comerciales como centros médicos, no teniendo ninguna consideración con sujetos con déficit socio integrativo. En Chile particularmente estas dificultades son dramáticas para quienes tienen discapacidad física, ya que la mayoría d...