How and why we should change the world around neurodivergent kids, NOT ask them to change

In my podcast episode ‘Crafting a Genuinely Supportive World for Neurodivergent Children – A Remedy to the Double Empathy Problem!‘ I went through some practical approaches to changing the WORLD rather than asking neurodivergent to change to fit the world.

WHY do we want to think about changing the world around a child? Well,  the double empathy problem essentially tells us that it’s not the fault of autistic people having missing social skills that cause communication breakdown between autistic and non-autistic people.

Autistic social skills, communication patterns, social preferences can look different to non-autistic preferences, communication patterns, and skills. The key word here is different, not wrong.

Non-autistic people need to also understand the communication, social preferences, needs, interests, perspectives of autistic people just as much or perhaps even more than it being up to autistic people to do all the compensating and adapting and changing.

If we’re constantly trying to change autistic people, we’re asking autistic folks to mask – to hide our true selves. This is effortful at best and psychologically harmful at worst.

If you want some ideas about HOW you can be part of this ‘changing the world’ to be most accepting and accomodating, you can listen in to my Podcast and you’re also welcome to download my free PDF ideas cheatsheet where I share a bunch of ideas of what this can look like in practice.

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And if this topic tickles your brain and you want to learn more with me about what Neurodiversity Affirming social supports look like for neurodivergent children, check out my on-demand webinars below!