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Category: Self-Determination

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Building Self-Determination in Childhood

Building Self-Determination in Childhood

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I’ve previously written about the importance of giving neurodivergent people more self-determination in childhood.  Indeed, I think all children, including the neurotypicals, could probably benefit from increased self-determination and autonomy.  Isn’t it rather strange that entering adulthood in our society, legally speaking, gives one full rights to autonomy overnight where previously one’s autonomy was legally minimal?  An abrupt transition, for sure!  Why not give people more practice exercising autonomy in childhood? It certainly seems like giving more opportunities for self-determination…

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A busy office with people sitting in front of computer monitors. Work areas are not separated by cubicles. Illumination is provided by exposed light bulbs hanging overhead.
Post-COVID Transition Anxiety and Autistic Burnout

Post-COVID Transition Anxiety and Autistic Burnout

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For more than a year now, we’ve been dealing with the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic.  This has had a devastating impact, both in general and in particular on many disabled people. Most obviously, COVID-19 has killed millions of people worldwide, and neurodivergent communities have been disproportionately impacted.  The death toll among people with intellectual disabilities in residential group homes and institutional settings has been catastrophically high.  Unfortunately, discrimination against neurodivergent people – again, particularly people with intellectual disabilities…

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Two hands meeting, with one above and the other below.
Supports, Burdensomeness, and Dependence

Supports, Burdensomeness, and Dependence

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Research suggests that volunteering and helping others can be beneficial for the mental health of the helper.  This effect is believed to stand above and beyond any tendency for those with better mental health to be more likely to volunteer for things in the first place. Conversely, dependence on others and being a recipient of help can be bad for mental health.  Indeed, a major component of the dominant interpersonal theory of suicide suggests that those who perceive themselves as…

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A photograph depicting a large crowd of young people at an event featuring displays by different vendors at tables.
Networking and Planning Careers

Networking and Planning Careers

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Have you heard the term “hidden curriculum” before?  It refers to everything that is not explicitly taught in a place of learning. One important part of the hidden curriculum in a university – the setting where people are getting an education in preparation for undertaking a professional career – is how to actually go about getting a career.  Universities teach people academic information – facts, theories, and so forth.  Information about how the world works.  We don’t really discuss how…

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A wooden puppet, controlled by strings, resting on a surface.
Self-Determination, Control, and Mental Health

Self-Determination, Control, and Mental Health

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I seem to have a bit of a self-determination theme running through this blog now.  I’ve written about self-determination a fair bit, and most particularly in the context of childhood, because I feel like children in general have relatively little freedom to exercise control over their lives and those with disabilities even less. Today, I thought I might take our discussion of the importance of self-determination in another direction – mental health (which I suppose is another thing I do…

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An Air Canada twin-engine jet aircraft flying in front of a cloudy background.
A Tale of Discrimination

A Tale of Discrimination

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This is a bit of a departure from what I usually do with this blog, but I was contacted recently by an autistic person who was forbidden from pursuing an interest in aviation because of an autism diagnosis. I find this to be an outrageous case of discrimination. Now, obviously not everyone is going to be suited to flying planes. I certainly don’t think it would be my cup of tea. But a blanket ban on anyone from a particular…

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Photograph depicting serried rows of empty desks and chairs in a school classroom.
Self-Determination in Childhood

Self-Determination in Childhood

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One of the most interesting discussions I’ve ever had in the autism world was at a conference I was involved in organizing back when I was an undergraduate student.  We had organized some panels on different stages of autistic people’s experiences in life and we found that numerous people had particularly negative thoughts about their childhoods.  In particular, they were talking about how relieved they were to be out of school.  To provide a little background, this was not necessarily…

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Man wearing a hoodie covering face with both hands while sitting on couch
Burnout and Expectations

Burnout and Expectations

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Today, the vast majority of researchers, clinicians, and professionals in the autism world don’t know about autistic burnout.  Autistic burnout is an idea that comes from autistic adults, and given how little contact there is between autistic adults and the community of researchers supposedly dedicated to learning more about autism, most researchers will never have had a chance to learn about it.  Indeed, as far as I’m aware, the only people investigating autistic burnout from a research perspective are Dora…

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Pathology and Motivation to Access Supports

Pathology and Motivation to Access Supports

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In previous posts, I’ve criticized the “pathology paradigm” of autism.  I believe that there are a number of problems with this paradigm, but I always find myself returning to one that I find especially glaring: when we describe autism as pathology, when we use the language of deficit and disorder, we’re very openly suggesting to autistic people – a marginalized population with high vulnerability to mental health challenges – that there is something fundamentally wrong with them.  Autistic people are…

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An illustration of a multicoloured brain, outlined using nodes and edges, with a question mark and musing figure in the corner.
On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

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Author’s Note: I no longer particularly like some of the ideas in the post, which I now think are a bit oversimplified. If you want an updated take on my view of neurodiversity, I wrote an article at https://doi.org/10.1159/000523723. In Part II of this series, I discussed a lot of the basic ideas that still motivate my approach to neurodiversity.  I argued that we presently lack a clear, consistent definition of neurodiversity, and I illustrated how this ambiguity hinders our…

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