Telling people I'm autistic is something that I've definitely gotten better at doing since last August when I received my official diagnosis. I've been extremely open about being autistic in my local writing community and haven't hesitated to tell people who know me well in real life aside from a few family members whom I … Continue reading Autistic Disclosure
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Parenting While Autistic – Kids’ Sports
I was reminded, while catching up with The Silent Wave's blog today, that I will soon be gearing up for a new sports-season with one of my children, whom I will refer to as "sporty-child" for this post, which is primarily about me, not them. I'm going to be extremely vague about said sport in … Continue reading Parenting While Autistic – Kids’ Sports
Words & What They Mean – Perseverate vs Rhapsodize
I've been thinking a fair amount about the meanings of words since last night's #AutBurnout chat. One of the questions was about whether we use the term "special interests" or a different one. My response was: I prefer "focused" to "special" = focused interest, current focus, or current topic(s) of interest are all terms I … Continue reading Words & What They Mean – Perseverate vs Rhapsodize
Flashback Friday – Evaluation Result Day
The morning of my final appointment, the one at which I would get my evaluation results, was a Friday morning very similar to this one. Ten weeks ago. Beforehand I wrote this (some strong and self-deprecating language) in my paper journal: What the fuck was I thinking? Today is the day. I don't see how there … Continue reading Flashback Friday – Evaluation Result Day
Preparing for My Evaluation
I've been somewhat putting off writing about my evaluation and the process of getting diagnosed. This is partly because I wanted to give some background about myself to start with and I've now done that. Also, the evaluation process ended up being much more difficult for me than I had anticipated and I needed to recover … Continue reading Preparing for My Evaluation
Flashback Friday – Inflection
I remember reading out loud to my parents when I was a toddler and preschooler. I remember being taught how to change my intonation depending on the punctuation and meaning of the sentence. I was specifically told to do this because it was boring to listen to words that all sounded the same in monotone. … Continue reading Flashback Friday – Inflection
Body Language – When the Knowledge Doesn’t Transfer
Sometimes I say, rather hyperbolically, that I didn't know about non-verbal communication until I was nearly 29 years old. It's a nice sound-bite, but like most nice sound-bites, it's not strictly true. I did know about some types of non-verbal communication before then. I knew that shrugging meant "I don't know." I knew that nodding meant … Continue reading Body Language – When the Knowledge Doesn’t Transfer
My Children’s Role
Content warning: pregnancy loss/miscarriage, no explicit details given Having children played an instrumental role in my awareness of autism. Many parents discover that they're Autistic after a child or children are diagnosed, but in my case, the reverse was true. It was brought to my attention and I suspected it of myself before my child was diagnosed. … Continue reading My Children’s Role
Briefly, Regarding Labels
There have been some excellent posts lately on the issue of labels in general and the label "Autistic" specifically. You can find my two current favorites here and here, as well as my previous post where I discuss labels. Then, this morning I was reminded by this Tumblr post (I'm not sure how to embed it here, … Continue reading Briefly, Regarding Labels
Controlling?
Moving on to elaborate about the "controlling person" bit that was briefly introduced in last Saturday's post, from my journaling ~4 years ago: The accusation that I was controlling has always baffled me. More than a couple of people have had that opinion and yet... in order to be controlling, one would actually need to … Continue reading Controlling?
Mamautistic 