Not long ago, I had a book stall at an event unrelated to autism – a rare occasion for me as an autistic author and speaker. And I think it’s fair to say there are misconceptions among the general public about the value of representation. Take, for example, the man who approached my stall and asked about the Underdogs series (all links open in new tabs): a four-book neurodivergent dystopia saga, where heroes from a special school become the last hope for the freedom of the British people. “Ooh, sounds interesting,” he replied. “Is it for charity?”   No, sir. No it is not.   Over ..read more

When I was a teacher in a school for autistic students, it was well-noted that my biggest strength was my ability to build strong teacher-student relationships. My students engaged well in my classes, opened up to me about their problems, and even teenagers who had never trusted a teacher in their lives seemed to feel surprisingly comfortable around me. It was often assumed this was because I was autistic too. And I won’t lie, my own autism was a large part of it. (But if that were the only factor, how come I had the exact same strength when I was teaching in mainstream primary schools?) Hones ..read more

Is it ‘autistic person’ or ‘person with autism’? How many autistic people are also LGBT+? Has ABA improved in recent years? Do parents of autistic people wish for a cure? Do autistic people feel empathy or not?   With a subject as broad (and historically misunderstood) as autism, it’s important to build an accurate and meaningful consensus about important topics. With this in mind, I ran a survey which intended to establish current attitudes towards a variety of autism-related issues, gathering opinions and experiences from a wide range of people – autistic people, parents/caregivers of a ..read more

In order to provide for people with disabilities, learning difficulties or neurological conditions, sometimes we need to treat them differently. This can be done well, and it can be done catastrophically.   I could write another whole article about what goes into positive, meaningful provision, but here’s the short version: If it helps make opportunities accessible, benefits their wellbeing and enables communication and self-advocacy, it’s good. If it withholds opportunities, is apathetic to their wellbeing and demands compliance, it’s bad. You’d think this would be obvious, right? But ..read more

For this year’s World Autism Acceptance Day, I made these fifty pictures and shared them to Autistic Not Weird’s Facebook page [all links open in new tabs]. For those who don’t already follow it, or want to share them all from one easy place, here are all fifty of them in the same place! Enjoy.   ..read more

Ever since adolescence, I’ve wanted to spend my life building people. Whether in terms of confidence, intellect, life skills, or all the other ways a person can be built up, I’ve wanted to be the kind of person who makes others stronger. Teaching hasn’t always felt like the right place for me to do that, but it’s probably where I’ve done the most good. I’ve enjoyed plenty of opportunities to help and guide young people to become their best selves, although sometimes I’ve had to reconcile my idealism with a system that assesses us solely on how well we can put facts into students’ brains – pref ..read more

One commonality I’ve found among autistic people is that many of us love creating our own universes. The real world often functions without autistic people in mind. To many of us, it seems that the non-autistic population seems to be entirely in control – often, even in control of our world and our futures. So it can help enormously for us to escape into a universe where we choose the rules, we can influence events, and nobody gets to cast our wishes aside. This was me, when I wrote the Underdogs series.  Way back in 2010 I wrote a series of novels about an almost mathematically unwinnabl ..read more

We see them far too often. Videos of an autistic child (or adult) in extreme distress, shared across the internet in the glorious name of “autism awareness”, perhaps even with a divisive or gatekeeping comment such as “this is what real autism looks like”. The motivation, of course, is to display the problems that all too often kept behind closed doors. And whereas the issues do need discussing and addressing, perhaps there’s a better way to do so than uploading a publicly viewable video of a vulnerable person experiencing levels of anxiety most humans can barely empathise with. But aside from ..read more

There’s something falsely positive about the word “perfectionist”, isn’t there? The first time I remember hearing the word, I was being taught how to answer job interview questions. I was told that when the interviewer asks me what my biggest weakness is, I should say “oh, I’m a perfectionist, I can’t leave things alone until I know they’re right”. Because apparently, it’s like answering a question about weaknesses by continuing to show off my strengths. (I never did this, by the way. Partly because it was a lie, and partly because I knew the interviewer would be experienced enough to have hea ..read more

It doesn’t seem quite right, does it? That a month designated for raising public knowledge of autism would be so widely disliked by the autistic people it claims to support. But just to clarify: the phrase “widely disliked” doesn’t do justice to the feelings of some of those negatively impacted by Autism Awareness Month. The autistic people I’m referring to don’t “dislike” it. They don’t even “hate” it. They fear it. For every autistic person like me who spends April in full advocacy mode, there’s another autistic person who spends April doing their best to stay offline. I’m in a fairly privil ..read more