Since the development of iPads, many functionally non verbal people with autism have shown themselves able to express themselves independently. Others, however, have shown little interest in using an isolated finger to type or even point out icons or swipe pages on an iPad. When the same person sits stimming on their finger waggling, it is easy for some people to presume or imagine that person is to intellectually impaired they just don’t have the IQ to understand what the device is for, how to use it for themselves or why they might want to. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend once told me “people believe what they want to believe”. I have generally found this true. Most people have ‘confirmation bias‘… they tune out what doesn’t fit their expectation, agenda or interests so the see what they want to see, believe what they want to believe. And the leaders, icons and idols we vote into place and do their PR for in terms of kudos and invaluable word of mouth may well ‘play to the gallery’, feeding their followers with exactly what they’d like to hear. But is this really a reflection of their actual character? What motivated each to rise or allow themselves to be voted up to their pedestals? How might each behave once they had ‘reached the top’ or in a state of chronic stress? And what does our choice of leaders say about us? It’s all there in the ‘fine print’. Read the rest of this entry »

I presently have around 11,000 people a month visit my blog and website, another 5000 on my FB page, then there’s Twitter and You Tube. I have 10 published books, videos and artworks all around the world. Yet in 1991 when my first book, Nobody Nowhere, became the first international bestseller by any person diagnosed with autism, I rejected the TV appearances and the offer to be followed for a week by a photographer from Time Magazine. I soon also rejected the ‘autism circus’ atmosphere of ‘Meet The Speaker‘ sessions at major autism conferences and failed to embrace the ‘it girl’ thing.

The result was Read the rest of this entry »

If you believe that Autism is NOT a ‘Fruit Salad’ of a range of other conditions presenting ‘as the autism’, then look through this list of ‘Autism Fruit Salad’ at all the things that can be taken as ‘just parts of The Autism’. Read the rest of this entry »

So far we have been through the Medical Model of disability, then moved to the Social Model of disability and more recently the ‘pride movement’ moved on from the social model of disability to an Affirmation Model of disability. But in addition to the medical, social and affirmation models of disability, from this day forth I’d like to propose a new model… THE EMPOWERMENT MODEL Read the rest of this entry »

How do we each perceive our own disability/ies? How do our communities perceive them? Our families? Our society? Our support workers, therapists, doctors? There are a variety of models of disability and each has levels of validity and equally associated pitfalls in over application. What is a model of disability? Read the rest of this entry »

In the 60s autistic was the adjective to describe children with Kanner’s Syndrome which was then a form of ‘Infantile Psychosis’, psychotic children. As such it was psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who diagnosed autism. These ‘autistic’ children were rare, only 1 in 10,000 children were diagnosed with ‘infantile psychosis’ (the autism of its day). Read the rest of this entry »

He wrote the introduction to the diaries of Donald Friend, diaries detailing 10 years of Donald Friend’s sex with Balinese boys as young as 9 years old. In the introduction Barry Humphries referred to his friend as a “Benevolent Pedophile”, suggesting that as his friend had up to 20 of these ‘houseboys’ and gave accommodation and schooling in exchange for sex, that this was somehow benevolent, and Humphries certainly visited and stayed with Donald Friend during the 10 years, enjoying his ‘hospitality’. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Hinkle wrote to me saying “I am writing a book about the social challenges of having autism. I was curious if I could interview you about your hidden curriculum experience”. It became a very interesting interview. Here’s how it went. Read the rest of this entry »

I was wheat/rye free in 1990, then returned to wheat on and off until 2001, then was dx’d as gluten intolerant Read the rest of this entry »