Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Set up structure in your day and week. Executive function is such a challenging area, that structure is critical to time management. Within that, make sure you email or meet with your professors every week in order to make sure you understand their intentions, so you know you are on the right track.
Hi, Sara. I live near you in a school district that you would THINK would have this area covered, but I can tell you it has been the greatest struggle in my son’s life to get appropriate accommodations in his high school. The concept of meeting students where they are and being flexible in the demonstration of learning runs smack into teacher inflexibility (and at the core, a lack of professional development time.) The lower grades do such a better job, and then I do believe, it appears everyone forgets that autistic kids become teens. The high school expects that autistic students will self-select into “less-rigorous” courses, and so have never provided teacher training for upper level, honors, and AP class teachers.
I strongly prefer to say I am an autistic person. I am gifted. I am ambidextrous. I am Scots-Irish. These are personal attributes that are integral to my personhood. I can identify autistic traits in not just my kids, but my mother and my grandmother before her. If one of those attributes are taken away, then I am no longer Sheila as I have known her for 52 years. That being said, in the moment, I will use whatever phrasing fits, and I would not be offended by someone who “used the wrong terminology”, but I might correct them. Typically I will launch into a brief (for me) explanation… “I am on the the autism spectrum.” “I am autistic, I am what you would consider Aspie or Asperger.” “Think of me as a female Bill Gates.” I would never say I am a person with autism. It isn’t a cold.