Q: I read your blog and listen to the podcast, but you don’t mention any of the positives of being autistic? Where is your autistic pride? I don’t have any autistic pride. That should be evident, as I replied to the parent asking me the question. It isn’t that I…
Tag: social skills
Podcast 0020; Season 02, Episode 06; October 16, 2018 Joe Farrell discusses the Joey Travolta Film Camp, Arts for Autism, and Evolve coaching. Joe moved to Pittsburgh in 2008 to pursue his Master’s of Science in Education and Community Agency Counseling degree from Duquesne University and began working with children and young…
Podcast 0017; Season 02, Episode 03; September 18, 2018 Autistic visual artist and advocate Bobby Roma discusses the ways in which autistics are devalued by society because our thinking processes seem strange to others. We’re called “immature” and told we lack “depth,” yet sometimes our concrete clarity is exactly what’s needed to…
Podcast 0012; Season 01, Episode 12; June 12, 2018 During the summer months, I need to ease off some of my workload to better manage time with family. After this podcast was recorded, I found that I did need to take a break from our littlest one’s pre-K graduation because…
I’ve blogged many, many times over the last decade about my employment situation. Most recently, I posted a podcast episode and transcript on the topic of unemployment addressing my low morale and general sense of failure. The problem is, I don’t know how much of a factor my autistic traits are…
Podcast 0010; Season 01, Episode 10; May 22, 2018 This week, The Autistic Me Podcast features a discussion about college and dating, as Daniel Sansing and I discuss the challenges autistic young people face trying to establish relationships. We also discuss our experiences. Thankfully, we both found special wives who accept us…
Podcast 0005; Season 01, Episode 05; April 24, 2018 The “unwritten curriculum” of social interactions penalizes autistic students and others with differences in the classroom setting. Teachers are trained to foster active and engaged communities, valuing peer interactions, and class participation. The emphasis on social skills draws attention to the…
Required college composition courses often serve a gatekeeping function, ensuring that only the right sort of students advance towards degrees. Though anecdotal, every campus course-related hearing I’ve been involved in as an expert on autism and neurodiversity was a writing course. These were not always first-year composition, but they were…
The situation, which represents at least three or four emails I receive per school year: A student requests exemptions from collaborative assignments and participation grades. The professor declines. Disability studies office asks me what the right solution is to this conflict. More often than I would like, this occurs in…
Autistics make other people uncomfortable, and we do this almost instantly upon meeting. In my communications classes, I teach about the 50 to 500 milliseconds during which most people develop first impressions. These impressions are difficult, nearly impossible, to counteract with evidence and familiarity. Knowing us doesn’t undo the initial…