Mastodawn

Found it very interesting. Thank you. 😊🙌

Sent it to my friend who's an EdPsych. Known her for many years and whilst in many ways is one of my heroes, thinks ND is overdiagnosed and calls it 'the medicalisation of the human condition'. When I told her about my journey her response was that because I don't present with the classic characterisation of communication problems, I can't be. Bit disappointed in her response and that she's disregarded 3 years of professional assessments. That was my first exposure to someone being 'not being totally cool' about autism Dx. I sort of wanted to explain how I view social interaction and how I prepare for it, but just don't think there's any point.

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Morten 4d ago

@TheBreadmonkey @alexpsmith Haha, exactly which disorder is required? Dyslexia, "selective" mutism, dysgraphia, dyscalculia?
Just tell her she's right because a lot of issues go away with alcohol. It can't be real then.

To be fair, I agree that some parents (maybe teachers) are pathologising rather than helping kids. Telling kids that they are "doing it wrong" in a non-specific way is abuse, especially to ND kids. Maybe your Ed Psych friend actually agrees with this article.

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Morten

@TheBreadmonkey @alexpsmith Like, I wasn't particularly close with the kids at school as a kid (many, many other ways I also was an outlier) but I had friendships with neighbour kids and interactions with adults that mattered to me. I can't imagine how unhappy it would have made me if I had been told that everything I was doing was wrong. I really, really wanted to do what you're supposed to.
I was slow at learning to read and then took of like a rocket. Handwriting... I got there. Still slow.