#The Autistic Teacher (Facebook) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brightlotusmoon · 2 years

Text

Diary Of A Mom:

A couple of days ago, Sora at Angry, Asian, and Autistic wrote, “Teach your autistic kids about consent. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating because I see evidence of it everywhere, that folks aren’t doing it. I don’t care if it’s a hard thing to teach, and/or you’re not 100% sure if your autistic child will ever fully understand what consent and boundaries are. Do it anyway. I promise it’s worth the effort. They are worth the effort.”

It’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. And by lately, I mean the last, oh, ten years or so?

The thing is, a lot of us roll our eyes when we’re told to teach something to our kids because we think that it means, “Sit down and talk to your child about this topic.”

For a lot of kids with developmental disabilities, that’s just not how they learn. For them, introducing a complex and highly nuanced topic through conversation is like trying to teach surgery while waterskiing.

So we get defensive. We think, “You know nothing about my kid. YOU try lecturing him about consent. Good luck,” and we pick up our ball and walk away.

I submit that we need to broaden our idea of what it means to teach our children.

Before we scoop a two year old out of their high chair, do we say, “May I pick you up?”

When we’re tickling our three year-old and, even through gales of laughter, she says, “No more!” do we stop or do we teach her that she didn’t really mean it?

When an uncle goes in for a hug and our kid recoils, do we insist that he hug him anyway?

When our third grader steps out of line, does the teacher casually take her by the shoulders and reposition her?

When our autistic ten year old is struggling to tie his shoes, do we guide him, hand-over-hand without waiting to see if that’s okay?

There are a thousands ways to teach consent that have nothing to do with talking.

Brooke has a script that long ago sprouted from Frosty the Snowman. She asks if we want some Summer Wheeze. The bit is that we’re supposed to taste it. If it’s summer, it’s delicious. Any other time of year, it’s terrible and we make a big show of how awful it is. (Listen, people, I don’t write this stuff, I’m just here to report it.)

Anyway, she offers the Summer Wheeze. If it’s not summer, I say no. She says, “Aw, c’mon, try it.” I resist. She insists. We go back and forth a few times until I inevitably give in and take a sip. It’s been a script for so long that I stopped really hearing it.

A couple of months ago, I heard it. And I didn’t like what I heard. So I told her that. I told her that it made me uncomfortable … and why. I told her that even though it was just a game, we needed to remember to respect each other’s boundaries.

Those words had no meaning for her, so I changed them. I told her that when someone says no, we need to stop what we’re doing. That nothing should happen to anyone’s body that they don’t want. So if she says no, I need to stop. If I say no, she needs to stop.

We’re still working on it. We’ll likely be working on it for a long time.

The reality is that many of our autistic kids have been trained to comply with whomever is in authority. No matter how we try to pretty it up, the crux of a whole lot of that therapy that everyone told us was the key to their futures was compliance. Want a reward? Do what the adult is telling you to do. Doesn’t matter what it is. Doesn’t matter why. Doesn’t matter if it’s uncomfortable or painful or makes no earthly sense to you, your job is simply to do what you’re being told to do.

Hand-over-hand instruction, physical guidance, palms on each side of the face to force focus … No one is asking for their consent. No one is showing them that it matters. In fact, we’re expressly teaching them that it doesn’t.

So we’re reframing the script. We’re talking about it in the way that we talk about things. A little bit at a time. Retracing our steps. Circling back. Doing it all again. And most importantly, modeling it. *Demonstrating* what it means.

So, yeah, I couldn’t agree more with Sora that we need to teach our autistic children about consent. And I submit that we need to broaden our idea of what it means to teach our children.

#diary of a mom #being autistic #disability advocacy #we need to change the conversation #ableism #being neurodivergent #this is very important

135 notes · View notes

countrynerddancer · 5 months

Text

hahahhaaa my cousin made a very "i'm a special education teacher so I know best" psa post on facebook about always using person first language. I commented about how it's not always true and here's some advocacy organizations nuanced stances on the question and I understand and I'm glad you care about the personhood of people. but also she said it could be applied to any disability and I was like, no the fuck it can't (but nicer) and talked about how it connected me to my humans rights and how they were earned. and she commented how glad she was people could have their own views. So I was like, exactly which is why i wanted to push back on your blanket statements. then she said fucking "i'm so thankful for freedom of speech".

Like. I said nothing that could be tied to any fucking politics besides the fight for disability rights. I am telling you about me. you've known me since I was a disabled child, when you were a teenager. So you're gonna give a dogwhistle that says "look at this woke snowflake" and then what. They say autistics are bad at communication but you don't want to fucking communicate you want people to conform to what you think. So I asked her a direct question, do you believe what I am telling you about my life, do you understand what I'm saying. And I told her that her freedom of speech mention sounded like a gotcha and if thats what it was, she hurt me. I called her cousin.

#this day fucking sucks tbh #disability #ableism #ableism tw

2 notes · View notes

straycatboogie · 10 months

Text

2023/07/10 English

BGM: The Rolling Stones - Start Me Up

Today might be a "fatal day" in my life... Indeed, I'm using too big expression to describe this. But I don't want to hide this feeling inside myself. The day like today can happen in my/our life... It was raining a little so I went to the food court in AEON near my workplace by foot. There, I spent my time with doing nothing as usual. I couldn't do anything as the homework of my English conversation class, the paper I will show at the meeting about my contract of my job, the paper for the presentation I will do on the next Thursday... Suddenly I remembered the book "Two Billion Light Years of Solitude" by Shuntaro Tanikawa, and thought of writing my poem as the homework to show the teachers. At least, it will delete one of my task and also make my passion/activity calm again. I started writing my poem. I wanted to use rhymes seriously, and obey the rule of sonnet (the poems which have 14 lines). Caring the rhythm of that poem... I did write it like Jackson Pollock's action painting. Spreading my words honestly on a sheet of paper.

Ah, at last! The Muse came to me with her graceful smiling. The day came finally... "One day, a person starts writing all of a sudden" or "One day, he/she starts thinking writing to be a writer". For example, Haruki Murakami started writing his novel because he got an inspiration suddenly from somewhere when he had enjoyed watching a baseball game in his 29. That was the beginning of walking/traveling on the road to become a writer until now... Of course, this is a "too cool" story/episode. At least, it must be impossible to imagine that he had not done anything until the day he accepted the inspiration. He must do reading. Yes, he must enjoy Raymond Chandler, Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Brautigan, and Kurt Vonnegut... he must try to learn from them to make their spirits/groove as his. "Now" I can have this idea, but when I read that legend of Haruki Murakami, I was just an idiot so thought "Someday the inspiration can come to me like him, and that will make me write my own novel". Yes, I waited for the inspiration for a long time. I waited for the day I would/could start writing my own "Hear The Wind Sing". Someday... and I drank a lot. And days passed.

Today I shared the poem "A Bridge From A Fridge" to my friends. Soon, Victoria from Russia commented to me. "Share it with your signature!". It was really grateful for me so I wrote my signature "throbbing disco cat", and posted it on Facebook, Discord, MeWe. Indeed, it didn't become any "buzzed" one. But so what? I found that using/enjoying rhymes can be really difficult/profound. It also gives me a certain pleasure. It is interesting so I want to keep on writing my sonnets, free verse poems, and proses more. Then I want to be maniac because, as you know, I'm really autistic. I want to read Shuntaro Tanikawa more, and also learn from my favorite poets/novelists who influenced me again. Haruki Murakami, Genichiro Takahashi, Hiroshi Osada, and Ryuichi Tamura. I also want to learn a lot from female poets/novelists. My dreams/hopes increase on and on... Today was really the "genesis" day for me.

And also I remembered what had brought me to now/here. I had even learned English literature, but at that time I couldn't have imagined that I would write MY OWN sonnet like this. After that period, through the heavy drinker era, I started writing short articles by the event I experienced. A friend praised my English, and it brought/made me to decide to write in English... and I started this English journal too. And now, I start writing my sonnet. "Heaven helps those who help themselves", we say so. Can I say that I have helped me? Every day I have been trying living this life with writing a journal, reading books, meeting people, working... these events, the footsteps of my past life, would bring today's explosion of writing a sonnet. Of course, it might be just a lucky strike. But I don't want to deny the pleasure I have got by writing my first poem. Even though I stop my poem creation, today's memory/experience would last in myself. It was a really memorable/grate day for me (and I could meet my old friend again on Facebook. I want to write this not to forget completely). What would be the next poem's theme? God only knows...

"A Bridge From A Fridge"

It seems my mind is like a fridge At last, I've found a dream of becoming a bridge A bridge, where people can encounter each other They might call them as a sister or a brother

Yes, that must be too enormous to carry I can see, and TBH I feel really scary But why? It must bring me the life like a party All I need is just a certain will to start it

Today, lunchtime, I wanna have a lunchbox of sushi Will I be able to say as a rockstar, "Can't you see"? Or I'm just trying sewing seeds into the sea?

This is the first sonnet poem I've done in my life. I wrote this one by myself. I'm now actually alive! Yes, this one is also coming from my mind's archive

#diary #english #journal #online diary #tumblr diary #personal diary #poetry

2 notes · View notes

tr0ubl3d-tr4n53nd3r · 1 year

Text

I spend my life working up to something grand. I hope and dream of the future I'm going to have. Beautiful suburban, pretty wife, two adorable kids... But really I know it's going to amount to nothing. I'm probably going to die young, hated by people who used to call me friends. My dream job of being a teacher is almost impossible for me because I'm autistic. And truly the most amazing thing I've ever done is get a participation award. I hung it on my wall as if it was a reward for solving world hunger. Really what's gonna happen is Im gonna go to college and either burn out or work really hard. For a few years I'm gonna live with my parents, but they can't keep me there forever. I'm going to apply for jobs near my hometown, then my state, then my region, then my country. Nobody wants me. Nobody will ever fall in love with me and I'll spend my life slowly dying from health issues I can't pay off because I'm jobless and paying off thousands of dollars of bills. The economy is probably going to crash again, and I'll die sad and alone. If not from that than from global warming. Truthfully doing my homework and trying to get straight A's won't help me to avoid getting shot in a parking lot. Following all the rules in the hypothetical book won't help me pay medical bills. All I'll ever amount to is being that weird kid that nobody wanted to hang out with in school. People will see my death on gen z Facebook and just shrug. Maybe cheer. Maybe they'll think about that one time in first grade when I called them dumb for not knowing how to do a problem in math. I don't regret saying it but I shouldn't of. I know that. But I didn't back then. A select few might say they were friends with me. They'll remember a large fallout of our friendship, even though we said we'd be friends forever and ever and live in a mansion together until we die. Maybe it could've happened. I don't know. I'm just a teenager. A hopeless teenager who knows I'm going to die early. Dying at 40 doesn't feel scary until you're 20... Then 30... Then you hit 40. You live in fear. True 40 is years from now. But not enough. Why can't I live until I'm 90? Why isn't that possible for me? What about 60? Is that reasonable? Even 50. That would be splendid. Due to the American education system though it might be shortened even more due to stress, and maybe cut short by an intruder. I don't know. I'm just gonna cry into my pillow and forget I posted this so I can write "girl what- um.. anyways" on it tomorrow to dismiss my feelings because I shouldn't worry about this because I have a good life rn.

3 notes · View notes

albinoratman2200 · 1 year

Text

2 notes · View notes

an-sceal · 1 year

Text

My doctor is in the news right now, at least locally. Not because he's running the first LGBTQ+ primary care clinic in the area (that was not first affiliated with an AIDS Project.) No. Because a right-wing school board candidate joined a small Facebook group for LGBTQ+ teachers, parents, and parents of queer students in the local school district, pretending to be the parent of a trans kid. School board guy asked for recommendations for a doctor their fake child could work with, and the clinic was mentioned.

School board guy called the clinic, taped the receptionist, and then went on the warpath saying the clinic and FB group were grooming children.

My doctor doesn't treat any patient under the age of 12. He doesn't treat any patient under the age of 18 without a parent or guardian's permission- he can't. If you listen to the tape this jerkwad released, you can hear him badgering the receptionist, getting in what he seems to think are these "gotcha" questions, and saying he was referred to the clinic by school staff and teachers. That this imaginary child would be brought to the clinic BY a teacher. Another thing that wouldn't happen.

SBG rushes to assure people that he's not anti LGB. And yes, he left the T off. He's pro-charter schools (aka, pro-taking money from public schools and offering it to religious institutions), and is recorded at a prior school board meeting laughing at an autistic student who was singing the national anthem for the meeting.

This guy's big "gotcha" is that a transgender teenage might have access to medical care that affirmed their identity. Not medical PROCEDURES-- medical CARE. A doctor who refers to them by the correct name and pronouns. A doctor who, with parental consent and insight, might be able to make things slightly easier for a teenager faced with going through puberty that doesn't align with their identity.

SBG is, notably, running against the first out gay member of the school board. And he's trying to make it seem like the FB group is affiliated with the school system, which it clearly states it isn't.

Meanwhile, when I called for an appointment last week, they said they would send me a confirmation the day before with the current security code so I could get in the building from the back entrance, because they've had threats and don't want patients going through the main lobby in case. In case.

This is why every. single. little. election. counts. Because a man who got an unaffiliated medical clinic to run in lockdown mode over a tape made while he lied about a fake child and a set of events that would never take place wants to make decisions about what kids can learn, who can teach it to them, and who they are allowed to be while they learn it. I'm sure someone just like him will run for county clerk, or head of the recreation department, or county council.

I don't have a conclusion. Just a security code so I can scuttle up the back stairs to see my doctor. In case.

#queer stuff #us pol

3 notes · View notes

my-autism-adhd-blog · 12 days

Text

Stimming…

The Autistic Teacher

#autism #actually autistic #autism awareness month #autism acceptence month #stimming #stimming explained #both ND & NT individuals stim #examples of stimming #neurodivergence #neurodiversity #actually neurodivergent #feel free to share/reblog #The Autistic Teacher (Facebook)

749 notes · View notes

sarahali199x · 2 years

Text

The Weirdos and Normals I Loved Chapter 16-18

16./42 Kelly and The USB Stick Warning: Sexual Text, Stalking I was about 16 and in 4th grade, and as I've said over and over, I felt lonely. My last girlfriend was in 12 year old elementary. In addition, I wanted to experience love and lose my virginity. I cursed my school for autists that only had boys. Guys who weren't exactly looking for girlfriends, strangely enough. There was also S. a counsellor from my school, she always helped me and always motivated me. She had a beautiful smile and broad hips, she was also flat chested, but that's what I liked about her. I just know one day I said to her "I'm in love with you." she said 'Oh, Billy, jeez!' (Billy is my old name.) She was shocked and of course nothing had happened between us.

So instead of loving a love I watched hentai, weird hentai. Nothing wrong with that, they were drawings and drawings don't hurt anyone. Besides that, I did something terrible. Of the few girls whom were in my school, and of the pretty teachers, I secretly took pictures. I took pictures of women and girls without permission with my Ipod. I was sick, I wanted to preserve their beauty, to keep them with me.

Meanwhile I had fallen in love with a girl I had met through facebook, Kelly was her name. She was a friend of Y., Y. who was in my class. I think I confessed my love to her online. We agreed to meet in Roeslare, I went there by train. We drank together, we cuddled in the park. We loved each other, we went to the toilet together to cuddle but the toilet lady saw this and chased us away. We went to the station to go back home. And from her… I got my first french kiss. We chatted a lot via skype. She went to visit me at home. We were in bed together, we didn't have sex but we did experiment. They were sexual acts. I stuck my penis between her breasts. Then she masturbated me, I almost came, and for some reason she let go. Because I almost came, I continued, and I came a second later. So on the one hand I had lost my virginity and on the other hand I hadn't, it depends how you looked at it. Since the end of 201X I know that this doesn't matter, but back then I thought it was important. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door, and I said, out of habit, "Yes?". F*cking fool I was then! My mother opened the door and saw us lying there and quickly closed the door. I apologized to Kelly and explained that I was doing it out of habit. For her birthday, I went to visit her home. She loved wolves so I had bought a book about wolves bought for her. We went to her room, I wanted to finger her but she had her period so she said we could not have sex. She went to the bathroom, and I wanted to see her pee, but she didn't want me to see it.

In any case, even though I finally had a girlfriend, I still secretly took pictures of girls. I saved them on my computer and also on a USB stick as a backup. I was afraid of losing the beauty of the girls in my class and in this sickly way I kept their beauty with me. Anyway, Y. had downloaded the anime Elfen lied and promised to put it on my USB stick, I don't remember if the whole series would fit on it , but a few episodes was good too. Y. told me this at a time when we had to take the bus so I had to decide quickly, I told him he could put the episodes in my USB drive as long as he didn't look on my USB folders.

This seems normal, maybe there were beach photos of me in my swimming trunks? You can say that I made a wrong decision by giving my USB stick, but in hindsight I'm glad it happened.

The next day, sh!t hit the fan. Everyone called me a pervert, and S. wanted to see me. Y. saw me and said that what he had found on my USB stick was really, utterly disgusting. Y. immediately called my school and gave my USB stick to a supervisor. After that I had to visit supervisor S. I had to show her the pictures and my weird hentai. She was very disappointed in me and I was crying. They explained to me that this was completely unacceptable and that I had to delete the photos and hentai. I did this as well. I was also no longer allowed to take my iPod Touch with me. I did that, until my old mp3 player broke, then I took my Ipod Touch back after two years, but only to listen to music. There was one snobbish boy who said "You can't take it anymore with you!".

My parents took me to the psychologist as any responsible parent would. You don't want your child to become a rapist or murderer, do you? I confessed it all to the psychologist and explained everything. He told me I had made a big mistake, but learned from it. He asked me if 'I felt like a slave to my penis'. and I said no. He said I didn't have a sex addiction. He also said that I was not a psychopath because I was not focused on pain. I didn't want to hurt others. I was full of guilt. One day Y. was taking pictures of me on the bus and he said "You brought this on yourself." I came home crying.

Meanwhile, I was still in a relationship with Kelly. She knew what had happened through Y. and I tried to deny it, but she knew well enough what I had done wrong and didn't send anything for a while. Finally she sent that she had broken up, I said in a moronic way "That's smart, you didn't send anything for a while." Even though it was my fault, I was still mad at Y.

I've been hiding my weird sexual side ever since. No more unwanted photos, I still looked at weird hentai, there's nothing wrong with drawings and tentacles, but I kept this side of me a secret until ….201X (see later at the chapters about Myrtile).

In the end I'm glad it got out. It was like a cold shower, I was going in the wrong direction and I was shaken awake. Nevertheless, the stench of what had happened would haunt me for the rest of my school career. I was very sorry, I cried a lot and I remember my counsellor saying 'Hey, you didn't commit murder'. In addition, because I was shunned by most students for a while, I had become emotionally stronger. I had a problem, and this became the problem of others. But if I stopped giving a shit about what others thought it was just the problem of others. Even though I deleted the photos, the beauty of the women are still in my head, in my memories. I remember when one of the girls I had a crush on got really mean. She said bad things about a friend of mine for no reason.

She has also become ugly. But in my memory, I see her when she was still beautiful, when I was still in love with her.

17./42 Beppy Warning: Sexual text, suicide, slut shaming A new girl had arrived at school; Beppy. I was in 5th grade (+-17yo) at the time and thought she was a teacher at first. She was long, and had big, well, big breasts. Her clothes also seemed mature, the first time I saw her she was wearing a black vest and black pants. She had a relationship with Herman for a while. He was extremely autistic, but because of that his strength was that he knew a lot. He was like a walking encyclopedia. He knew a lot about extinct creatures. Also dinosaurs? I wonder. He knew by heart which country had which capitals and learned several languages. He was a good guy. That's why I was surprised that he was in a relationship with Beppy who apparently got into a lot of trouble yet was hugely popular. Many boys loved her. She gave the boys lots of hugs and the boys sometimes touched her behind. I thought that was cool of her, she was a free-spirited girl who didn't care what others thought. The narrow-minded teachers spoke of "inappropriate behaviour" and "that this was not normal for a girl her age". There is already so little love in the world and then they start acting so old-fashioned…. My classmates were not much better either, they were jealous and called her "a slut". The boys from the school were virgins who wanted to lose their virginity, but if a girl says or does something she is immediately "a whore", such a BS logic. Beppy and Herman did have one thing in common, they both liked to learn languages, namely Arabic. This fact will be important later in this story. One day Beppy and Herman broke up.

Later, something happened. Beppy and Jay got on well. At one point she and Jay went to the toilet, Jay fingered Beppy. Meanwhile, Miss K. had seen that they had gone to the toilet. Instead of letting two teens gain experience in a consensual way, she took a fcking coin and opened the door like the inquisitive Karen she was. But yes, we have to take into account what she thought, maybe she wanted to check that everything was indeed happening consensually. She swung the door and caught Beppy and Jay right in the act. Beppy and Jay each had to go to the supervisors separately. Beppy understood that what she was doing was wrong according to the school. Jay, on the other hand, got angry and started shouting that Beppy had "framed him" and that Beppy was "a dirty b!tch". That's why my school decided to expel Jay from school…. forever. I thought that was an exaggerated punishment, simply because he was experimenting a bit. I mean our school was in a small village, in the middle of nowhere, and everyone lived quite far away from our school, so it was difficult to meet after school. In addition, where can you find a private space as a minor? You still live with your parents so it's a lot of work, not only to gather your courage and talk to a girl, but you still have to convince their parents or your own parents to let that person come to visit. Anyway, it was over, between Beppy and Herman and I had the feeling that I had to act quickly, or she would run off with someone else. In addition, she waved at me and even blew kisses towards me. In the meantime I had turned 17. As soon as I could I found her on facebook, and, like a moron, I said "I'm in love with you." She said she was in love with me as well. I asked, "Are we in a relationship now?" and she said 'Yes'. I asked how old she was, and her answer exploded in my face like a bomb. 'THIRTEEN YEARS'. SHT! She didn't look that young at all! I got to know her better. She had a pale skin, but identified as a Muslim, much to her parents' dismay. Her father worked for the police. She said she had bought headscarves but her parents hid them. Because her father couldn't find a babysitter, she had to go to her father's work where she saw a cloth with blood. She had a younger sister about eight years old. She said that she was on skype with her sister and often encountered men who masturbated in front of the camera, she had to laugh about it. I had never experienced that before, so I was shocked that she was only 13 AND that her 8 year old sister saw those things, 8 YEARS! I wanted to keep our relationship a secret at first since our age difference. But the first day of our relationship she came to me and my classmates winking and pushing her elbows against me, making it clear to everyone that we were in a relationship. sigh. Our relationship was nice though. We could only see each other during the lunch break, because she was in BSO and I was in ASO, and only then was there a shared square for both groups. Kind of stupid to keep people separated like that, but it was what it was. We hugged long. I gave her kisses and licked her neck. When we hugged she rocked her crotch against mine, that was…. nice actually. She learned to work in the gardens which made her smell like sweat and made her neck taste salty. I wanted to French kiss her, but she kept her mouth shut. She said she wasn't ready yet. So I apologized.

I was a little surprised though. Everyone called her a "whore and slut" but she was a virgin, didn't French kiss and was only 13! She chatted a lot of Arabic with other men online. On her profile they asked how I was, and she just replied. That was rather peculiar, she told strangers everything about our relationship. In addition, my class was angry that I was dating a 13-year-old girl. They always said "Ooh, how is your jail-bait?" I pretended I didn't know what this meant, but when you're on the internet you hear a lot, and I knew it was a term for attractive underage girls. As if they lured grown men into jail. At one point, Beppy was angry with me. I wondered what was going on and she told me that Joris had said all kinds of things about me, so much so that she didn't even want to repeat it. I knew that Joris often gossiped and lied, so I said it probably wasn't true. And like that, our relationship was healed.

There was one night when she suddenly sent something. She said "I'm going to kill myself" or rather "I'm going to KMS" as she called it. I was concerned and tried to call her, I sent numerous messages. I called the school and sent an email. But got no answer. I got a message back from her. She was still alive, she had gone out and said she couldn't kill herself because she didn't find any rope. The next day at school, she was mad at me for telling the teachers. I had to keep it a secret that she had suicidal thoughts. I had to go to the supervisors and they told me "sometimes people say things that you should not believe". Sounded like bad advice when it comes to, well, suicide. All this time my parents knew nothing, nothing at all. The counsellor knew about our relationship and apparently didn't mind, our relationship was consensual and not sexual. Our relationship got a little better, but there was a problem, I had a lot, a lot of schoolwork. Beppy kept, and kept texting and with my homework I couldn't always answer. I also didn't have a smartphone, did that even exist then? So our relationship suffered as a result.

One day she made a proposal, she was going to "break up" but "not really break up." I didn't understand what she meant and I had a bad feeling about it, so I said "let's break up completely". I was sad. My class was rude to Beppy, but not to me, as if I couldn't defend myself. I don't thing she deserved all the hate and rudeness she got from my classmates. Okay, I never said anything, but Beppy didn't deserve hate. Beppy had a typical laugh, which was so loud you could hear them from a long distance, something many hated about her, but when I heard that laugh I got a lump in my throat and tears came to my eyes, I missed her. My class talked about how she cuddled with other boys and "grinded her crotch against them" as she did with me. It seemed like a shard went through my heart. They also said that she met a 21-year-old guy through the internet, he picked her up from the boarding school so they could have a drink together. 13 is indeed quite young to go out for a drink alone; plus 21 is quite… old to have a drink with a 13 year old. Yikes! She hadn't told anyone whom she was going with and where she was going, and the counsellors at the boarding school, who were in their 20s themselves, thought we were all a bunch of disabled people with the minds of 6-year-olds. So they immediately called the police, the police did a whole search and brought Beppy back, and the boy was suddenly suspected of kidnapping. I still remember, in the refectory, the dining room, when Beppy looked at me, she looked at me in a way I felt the world spinning around me. How she did that I did not know, but women, what a power they have! Eventually, Beppy was back together with Herman. With all this stuff it sounds like those relationships I had with Kelly and Beppy lasted a year, but no, both relationships lasted one month each. It's high school and adolescence. It's teen drama, a lot of teen drama.

18./42 J. Unrequited Love, Part 2 Warning: Sexual Text Life went on. A beautiful boy had arrived at school, he looked like a girl, he had long red hair, thick lips, and big cheeks. He was a little plump, but definitely not fat. I was in love with him, but never told him that. Maybe this was another 'gay phase', he looked very feminine and I accepted my feelings for him.

I had fallen in love with a girl named Jolonde. I wanted to talk to her, but every time I went to her she went away. As the moronic autist that I was, I didn't realize at all she didn't want anything to do with me. I didn't give up. It was valentine and I had drawn a valentine heart for her, it was a heart with a lot of doodles on it, and I gave it to her on valentine. The next day she came to me, she had an answer for me. We walked for a while to where it was a bit quieter, near a tree. Her answer was 'no' and she gave my heart back. Of course I accepted it. Anyway, I was angry at home, like the fool I was then. I tore the heart into pieces and flushed it down the toilet.

Then I fell in love with Liesje. We often met, but when I confessed my emotions she said 'I never know what to say in moments like this' and neither did I. So nothing happened. I do remember when she was with another boy. That boy suddenly said to her, "I've forgotten why I'm in love with you." 'Damn it' I thought, 'I can think of a thousand reasons why I'm in love with her!' "Oh, now I remember!" said the boy suddenly.

In the meantime J. had contacted me again. We went to see the movie Brave together, I remember it well, because I was nervous during the movie. It was 201X, the last month of 5th grade and I was about 18. I thought, "Well J. is older now, and maybe the hormones have kicked in now and we can finally be in a relationship."

We were waiting for the movie to start, a corny love song was playing, when it was over I tried to kiss her but she pushed her head away, I tried again and she nodded no. I stopped and was anxious, had I scared her? Once at home we texted, she asked 'are you mad at me?' and I said, "No, I just thought you were mad at me." I was glad we weren't arguing, we chatted for a bit and then she said 'I'm going to stop sending now to save my cell phone.' This was the last thing she said to me.

I was always in love with someone, maybe this was the sign that I was Polyamorous, or rather Ethically Non-monogamous. But I will come back to this later. I used to be a lonely loser, but I got tired of breaking my heart over and over again, so I thought I'd stop looking for love for a while.

Meanwhile, Q., a good friend of mine, fell in love with J. He was quite a nerdy boy, he wore glasses and had quite a weird way of talking. He had no idea that I was in love with J., but he sought advice and help from me. He called her "The Creature" so people wouldn't notice we were talking about her, wow, totally not creepy at all. He wanted me to go with him to her and talk to her and stuff, which was hard because J. wanted to keep a distance with that I was in love with her. Later Q. came up to me and said: "My counsellor went to me and said I had to stop obsessing over J!" I was completely confused, I tried to help my friend to find a girlfriend, but instead I was helping him Stalk someone! Q. said: "They want me to stop, but how can I stop thinking about someone? How do I stop being in love with someone? I'm not a robot whose emotions you can just remove!" I immediately told the counsellors, and they said they would talk quietly with Q. about it.

Beppy, J. and Jolonde will be back! But first it's time for the next chapter.

#life #love #relation #writing #written #blog #personal #irl #drama #real #weird

8 notes · View notes

vivianseda · 6 months

Text

Thank you The Autistic Teacher

“A classroom should be an environment where all neurotypes can learn. There are lots of things we can do to create an inclusive neurodiverse classroom. These are just a few!”

18 notes · View notes

mydissociativediaries · 2 years

Text

8/8/2022: Kin

One of my former teachers has an autistic daughter who's 18. I've got about 11 years on her, but I see myself in her so much. Her mother posts pictures of her on Facebook pretty regularly. She always looks unhappy even when she's smiling for the camera. She wears leggings and the same jacket every day, and has the slightly greasy, unhealthy look of someone who's constantly stressed.

Yep...I relate to all of that. Seeing pictures of her is like looking into a mirror.

Her mom talks a lot about how raising her was a struggle, but she and her husband (the girl's dad) celebrate her differences and realized that special education wasn't for her--it was for them.

I don't know what her upbringing was like. Maybe she was abused--which would shock me, but you never know. But as similar as we are, I'm assuming that our upbringings were totally different.

And yeah, my parents didn't know I was autistic, but still. When I imagine this girl in my position, my life takes on a totally new perspective.

I'm sure her parents made mistakes like all parents do. And like I said, I didn't grow up in this household, so I could be totally wrong. But I bet that her dad didn't roar at her to terrify her. Her parents probably didn't let her siblings shit on her (I have one, she has two) and either feed into it or moan and groan some bullshit when she complained because they didn't want to deal with it.

Her parents probably didn't compare her to animals and monsters. I doubt that they mocked her and agreed with her siblings when they made fun of her. They probably didn't say things like "Get the hell away from me" and "I'm about to strangle [name]." I bet they didn't scream directly into her ear, spank her when she was way too old for that to humiliate her, or aggravate her anxiety with fear and abuse until she started to break from reality.

And they probably didn't do all those things and then wonder why she doesn't like them. I doubt that they made half-assed attempts to be nice when she was older and then wondered why it wasn't enough. They probably didn't let her siblings feed into the abuse and then go "God, what is WITH you two?" like they somehow weren't there for ten years of that bullshit.

Admittedly, I get the impression that all three of their kids are kind of distant from each other (I could be totally wrong, but that's the vibe that I get), and maybe she had a similar dynamic with her siblings being the "normal" ones. In fact, a dynamic like that might be inevitable. But her parents probably wouldn't have let her siblings get away with bullying her, making mocking faces and spewing out insults, to name a few.

Her mom jokingly said recently "We probably drive her crazy," like they don't quite understand her and make a lot of mistakes, but they love her anyway. My parents have said similar things, but they sure as shit didn't mean it like that. It was more like "She's a crazy brat who can't stand being around normal people doing normal things."

And like this girl, I look happy in pictures from my childhood (before the preteen years.) She does, too. But she looks unhappy in pictures now. What's going on with her? Are all autistic people inherently stressed even if they came from loving homes?

I guess I'll never know because I sure as hell didn't.

Thanks for reading,

👧

#autistic girls #autistic women #autistic community #actually autistic #autistic experiences #entry

3 notes · View notes

brightlotusmoon · 2 years

Text

From The Autistic Activist on Facebook:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02TG9it5M39PejwbxHoFvnZVkvrpViBx6AacqVMExyo42fh8QpqUgLsgYm5VkoaLuRl&id=100057358603530

I was asked yesterday about how to make classrooms friendlier for neurodivergent students and there’s sooo much but I will try to squeeze some thoughts on here:

Fostering an environment for learning and fostering an environment for compliance are two different things.

Not all neurodivergent students have access to being diagnosed, so let’s make these ideas the default for all students since with accessibility, nobody loses.

1. Do not ever expect students to make eye contact with you. I hated being forced to make eye contact and that teachers assumed I wasn’t listening if I wasn’t looking at them. I learn best when I DONT look at you so I can actually focus and process your words. And this is very common for Neurodivergent people. Autistic listening is still listening!

2. Do not expect the class to give verbal responses if you need students to respond to something! If you need a response from the class (like to know if they are listening or ready for the next steps), you can ask them to do a gesture like a thumbs up, touching their nose etc..

3. If possible make a designated space in your classroom as a mini sensory area. If it’s in your budget and affordable to you as an educator, please try to Have a variety of fidget tools that cater to different sensory needs (squishy, soft, rough, buttons to press, spinny etc.) and noise canceling headphones, and light sensitivity glasses available in that spot.

If those aren’t in your budget, maybe try cheap coloring books from the dollar store or have some books there (maybe you can get some from a library) that they can read.

Allow them to go to that spot at any time, but set boundaries of fidget tools though! (Such as use these just for yourself, don’t fling them at other people to be silly or they will have to choose another fidget tool.) I call them fidget tools instead of fidget toys if I’m intentionally using them around kids who are learning that it helps disabled people and it’s not just a cool toy. It also helps when kids may be getting a bit silly with it to the point where it is distracting and you can politely redirect them by asking is the fidget TOOL helping or distracting?

If it’s distracting, don’t punish them! We don’t want them to associate shame with those. Just say that it’s great that you like them but let’s wait until break to play with it since we are working right now. (When working with children, but especially neurodivergent children, it’s much better to focus on what they CAN do instead of what they shouldn’t do. It creates a positive environment while still setting healthy boundaries. It’s better than an adult barking “no don’t do that.” And autistic kids hear that so much. 😞

4. Be really flexible with assignments. No, not just with deadlines. Be flexible with how the layout of your assignment is! For example, if a student is having a really hard time writing an essay about the assigned topic due to their disability, ask them if they would like to instead record a voice audio/video with them explaining the assigned topic and you would grade their response based on the CONTENT that they said.

If that sounds “easy” I really need you to pause and think about why that bothers you. If the goal is for students to LEARN rather than comply with traditional education standards, wouldn’t the goal of the assignment be to make sure they understand the content and material that’s being taught? I think students can explain content and material in voice recordings OR in writing. And don’t grade their voice Audio based on their speech. Only focus on WHAT they are talking about and if it’s correct and what you were looking for in the goal of assigning this in the first place.

5. Make peer group projects OPTIONAL. If they can’t do the peer group project option, have another option for them to choose.

6. Allow students to stim. And if you do allow them to stim, do so without making them feel embarrassed or bad about it. If the students stimming is genuinely disruptive, find out if the stimming is caused by some sensory distress in the classroom and try to alter it (example: dimming lights) or tell them in private you are glad they feel comfortable stimming AND lets explore alternative stims that can make you comfortable while you’re in a room with other people who have sensory needs too. It could be a chance to direct them to the sensory area in the class too.

7. Let them slouch. Or even lay down while listening and working. Or even walk around a bit in the back of the class (so it’s less distracting to others) while you teach. You don’t need to sit up or sit still to be able to learn.

8. If you know in advance that you were going to have an autistic student, find out from their support team what their interests are and what ways they learn best. Find out if transitions are hard for them and what makes it easier for them. Take time to learn about their special interest so you can try to bond with them to establish trust that you are a safe person to present as their authentic self.

9. For the love of G-d, please let them use the restroom (ALL kids, not just neurodivergent) when needed. Autistic kids actually statistically struggle more with GI issues and also statistically struggle more with urgency urgency or incontinence. We cannot control this. Forcing us to suffer by refusing our request to go to the restroom so you can finish your lecture is really,harmful. Physically and emotionally. I promise you we are not hearing a word of your lecture if we need to go but you say no.

10. Timed tests often induce a lot of anxiety for those of us who have slower processing. Timed tests doesn’t actually show what we’ve learned. So please stop doing those. If you have tests, maybe have a few different formats of the tests and each student can choose which format. (Open response, multiple choice, voice recording etc.)

Autistic listening is STILL listening.

Autistic learning is STILL learning.

I’ll scream it from the mountains.

8 notes · View notes