We have GOT to stop breaking our Neurodivergent babies trying to make them Neurotypical

Would you want to be subjected to uncompromising scrutiny of being continually judged for how well you are able to hide your neurotype (essentially, the essence of YOU) for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

Don't shrug this off... really sit with it.

Imagine what your quality of life would be like 24/7.

That is what it is like for autistic people, and it's no wonder then that that autistic people have higher-than-average rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation secondary to continually camouflaging their autistic social characteristics.

Surely we can do better.

Attempting to 'train' the autism out of an autistic person is neither ethical nor accepting of neurodiversity. As a society we continue to attribute any autistic social difference as “deficient” while flat out ignoring the fact that social communication reciprocity is supposed to be a two-way street.

For example, if your child was deaf, I would hope that you would not just leave the heavy lifting of communication on the shoulders of the child to learn to lip read only. I would hope that as a family and then an extended 'village' you would attempt to learn sign language so that the connection gap falls between both the hearing and non-hearing. So why do we not implore this same concept with our Autistic children and adults?

This types of thinking inhibits authenticity (regaining authenticity is the basis of our Organisation), leading to a lifetime of living with chronic anxiety, incessant self-consciousness, self-doubt, self-shaming, and hyper-vigilance in social interactions. It creates an “us vs them” mentality in homes, and in educational and work environments, ‘othering‘ an entire neurotype in the pursuit of conformity. This starts with the premise that autistic and other types of neurodivergent social skills are disordered, deficient, wrong, bad… and therefore must be corrected with “skilled therapy”.

Except autistic social skills and communication styles are just… different. So why are we setting our Autistic loved ones up for a lifetime of self-loathing by insisting they mimic neurotypical social communication through masking autistic traits? This is unrealistic at best, and disrespectful and ableist at worst.

This blatantly disregards - The Double Empathy Problem research - Diversity in Social Intelligence research - Autistic Masking and Camouflage research - Monotropism and monotropic styles of communication - Lived Autistic Experiences

Isn't your Autistic loved one WORTH their right to live an authentically happy life?

I know mine is. All of our clients are. That's why Neurodivergent Empowered is a safe space of neurodivergents to take off their masks and just be them.

Sending big love ♡

Thank you Julie Roberts for the inspiration from your work on Social Skills Training not being Neurodivergence-Affirming xx