i think that… approximately 100% of the time, parents, teachers, etc… have this misconception that neurodivergent kids & teens don’t know anything about how to handle their neurodivergence.
for years, i suffered through people making suggestions of things that were things i had done, and either weren’t worth the effort or they actually made things worse. i told them this, and if i was still having any issues with the same problem they’d say something about “well if you’re not gonna listen to any suggestions…” when I did. they’re the one who didn’t listen when i told them that doesn’t work for me. They assume that because I didn’t try it in front of them (which is often impossible), I never tried it.
I tried doing my homework as soon as I got home. I tried doing my homework at the table, I tried working where I was comfortable. I tried listening to music, I tried working in silence. I tried using a planner, I tried setting reminders on my phone, I tried. I tell people that I have executive functioning issues and they say that I have to work on it like I haven’t been doing that as long as I’ve had to do things and it’s so much better than it was before. I’m as able as I am now because I’ve spent 18 years working on it.One of my friends has ADHD, and at one point when her grades dropped her parents took her phone, despite her telling them that the only way she can focus on her homework is to listen to music, for which she needs her phone.
I was in a study hall with another friend, who also has ADHD. Sometimes, they would be able to focus and do their work. Others, they would end up being entirely unable to and would do other stuff. The “instructional support” person would start bothering them about it, insist that they try. As if they hadn’t already done so.
I am tired of watching people assume that neurodivergent people aren’t trying, or we haven’t tried. We’re always trying.
Tag: neurodiversity
If you’re trying to figure out whether
someone has a fake smile, look at their
eyes. When you have a genuine smile,
the corners of your mouth upturn, your
cheeks raise, and the skin around your
eyes crinkles. Known as the ‘Duchenne
smile’, it happens involuntarily when
you’re truly happy about something- so
a smile without eye crinkles is a good
indicator that someone was forcing it. Source Source 2 Source 3ahahah oh boy science no.
i learned to fake that part of the smile when i was fuckin 14 and miserable, if i smile you ain’t knowin it’s fake unless i want you to.
Also, the info in the original post is super fucking ableist against people who have different expressions for whatever reasons. Autistic people, blind people, people with muscle or movement disorders or paralysis that affects the muscles of the face, etc., often have different patterns of expression. For example, autistic people often have smiles that look ‘fake’ to neurotypical people. It’s not that we’re not happy or genuine. Right now, my five year old nephew (moderate to severely deaf, probably autistic too) smiles with only one half of his face. The other eye and half of his mouth he screws up tightly like he’s wincing. That’s just how he smiles. Sure, there are times he expresses with his whole face like a quote normal person unquote, but nine times out of ten, it’s his quirky, atypical smile/grimace. And that’s fine. He’s a happy neurodiverse kid.
Also, tangentially, fuck all that noise about ‘eye contact means you’re not lying’. No, eye contact means nothing. There are a hundred different neurobiological, social and cultural reasons why people don’t do it. Body language and facial expressions can only tell you a small part of the story when you don’t know the person and their background. Just stop judging based on science invented by sadists who liked torturing homeless people in the name of ‘research’. (Google Duchenne, I’m not exaggerating.)
Also, if you’re autistic and got CRITICIZED a lot as a child about not smiling “correctly” or were coached into awkward “normal” facial expressions, that can totally lead to being an adult who really doesn’t know what a natural smile looks like FOR YOU.
I practice smiling with the eye crinkles and the lifted cheeks. It’s my customer service smile, usually with bonus teeth. Wide, cheerful, and according to the original post, absolutely genuine.
Whereas my smiles among friends are less likely to be with the eye crinkles and the lifted cheeks, and almost never have teeth (sometimes, but usually I’m still trying to cover them with my lips). Because showing of teeth is at best a “I don’t know you” and at worst is a “back off, I don’t trust you and you’re making me want to commit violence to defend my space/person/friend”.
So. Yeah. Fuck the idea that there’s only one way to do genuine smiles. (Although that being generally accepted as true does make it easy to get people to think I’m genuinely cheerful and happy when I’m working retail.)
15 people with Down syndrome tell a mom what kind of life her child will have.
France has banned this video and the smiles of people with Down Syndrome (x) so I’m reblogging this again.
“My feminism is actively inclusive of disabled women.”
Can someone provide some info//disscussion on what this looks like? like of course i want to actively include disabled women in my feminism but how do i actually do that?
1. Listen to disabled people/disabled women in particular. Follow disabled bloggers, disabled youtubers, etc.
1. Share posts, articles and other content written/made by disabled people/disabled women in particular.
2. Help spread awareness about the oppression, discrimination and other issues that disabled people/disabled women in particular face.
3. Confront the ableism which is still ingrained in feminist movements.
5. Study the basics of accessibility, and if you are on the planning committee for any feminist meeting, make sure the venue is accessible, so that disabled people with a variety of impairments can attend.
Accessibility is really key. You can’t be in a position to listen to disabled women (Item #1 on the list started by @autisticliving) if they cannot even enter the spaces that you create for dialogue, or if they can’t even access the dialogue itself. Videos need to have captions so deaf people can understand what is said, and should also have audio description so blind people know what the visual content is. Your web site needs to be easy to navigate for a person who cannot use a mouse and relies exclusively on keyboard shortcuts, and it also needs to be accessible for people who use text to voice (or text to braille output reader) screen reading software because they cannot see the computer screen. Events need to have sign interpreters and CART (real time transcription) so deaf and hard of hearing people and people with auditory processing disorder can understand what’s happening and have a chance to participate. Print materials should be available in electronic format (e.g., via cheap flash drives) for blind people, so they can use the text to speech or text to braille screen reader software in their computer to read the content. At larger, crowded events, especially if they are long, have a quiet space somewhere for people who really need to take an occasional break from all the chaos and noise in order to get themselves through the day without collapsing. This can be critical for autistic people and others who may be easily overstimulated.
For info on how to caption videos, check this for a range of options, some that involve paying others to do it for you (often cheaper than you might think) and others that involve doing it yourself at no cost (except for the time investment involved): http://captionedwebtv.blogspot.com/p/producer-information.html
*hugs you, and brings tasty drinks* ADHD is entertaining in a very horrible way, especially if you can’t get anyone to diagnose it properly, and I hope you’re able to get the doctors to listen to you and get access to treatment that works for you. And honestly, surviving with it is an achievement. Managing to art and write while trying to cope with it untreated? Is fucking fantastic, and you are that. You are *awesome*.
If I do end up having it (which at this point, with input not only from people that have ADHD but also close family, I’m 90% sure that I do) part of me will be extremely pissed.
You mean I went 12+ years in school with nobody catching this? That all the time I spent blaming myself for not being able to study or pay attention or finish things wasn’t because I was lazy? That the depression and the anxiety have a root cause? That I have been trying my best?
There will definitely be a fury factor in that. Definitely. But also relief.
Relief that now I know what I need to treat. I’ll have resources that can help, people to talk to that will understand, medication (maybe) that will make me *waves hand* not normal (I’m my own normal, dammit) but the best me that I can be.
I appreciate you saying that, about the writing and the art and junk. I really really do. I need to hear it. Been a bummy couple of days in terms of how I feel about my creative endeavors.
(Imagine what I’ll be able to do with proper treatment, right? Boy oh boy *hugs* thanks, morgyn.)
*hugs you back* You’re welcome. And you are awesome.
As for them missing it while you were in school? My youngest brother is 28, and he didn’t get a diagnosis until sometime in the last five years (my memory is too fuzzy about a lot of things to be more exact). I still don’t have one, and I should have had one since I was in third grade.
School systems in this country fucking suck when it comes to kids that fall outside a narrow range of “normal”, and don’t do great for the kids inside that range, either. And too often, the inability of a kid to learn within those narrow parameters is ascribed to the child being lazy, incompetent, not making an effort, or just plain unintelligent. The system doesn’t want to pay to find out why the kid is having trouble, parents can’t afford the time or money far too often, and the staff are too overworked and underpaid to be able to catch everyone.
I hope to hell that they listen to you, and don’t fuck it up this time, like they clearly have for the last too many years.
Because you’re not lazy, you’re doing the best you can, and it’s the adults who never noticed, and a system that doesn’t care about anyone in it – students or teachers or parents – that failed you.
… and now I’m going to actually hit post instead of deleting this and rewriting it for the fourth or fifth time. I have some loud and cranky opinions on US school systems and support for neurodiversity, and medical shit that goes with it.
PSA from the actual coiner of “neurodivergent”
Yo. Many of you need to take an entire stadium of seats. Like a football arena in Texas number.
I coined neurodivergent before tumblr was even a thing, like a decade or more ago, because people were using ‘neurodiverse’ and ‘neurodiversity’ to just mean autistic, & possibly LDs. But there’s more, like way more, ways a person can have a different yet fucking perfect dammit brain.
Neurodivergent refers to neurologically divergent from typical. That’s ALL.
I am multiply neurodivergent: I’m Autistic, epileptic, have PTSD, have cluster headaches, have a chiari malformation.
Neurodivergent just means a brain that diverges.
Autistic people. ADHD people. People with learning disabilities. Epileptic people. People with mental illnesses. People with MS or Parkinsons or apraxia or cerebral palsy or dyspraxia or no specific diagnosis but wonky lateralization or something.
That is all it means. It is not another damn tool of exclusion. It is specifically a tool of inclusion. If you don’t want to be associated with Those People, then YOU are the one who needs another word. Neurodivergent is for all of us.
Annoyedly yours,
Neurodivergent K of Radical Neurodivergence Speaking
The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.
I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.
Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.
I needed this so much.
SO IMPORTANT
THANK YOU FOR WRITE
friendly reminder to any of my neurodivergent/disabled buds that feel frustrated, that feel stuck where you are because you can’t go to school or pursue that job you want: you are not a failure. you are not weak. and you are not a burden. your needs are different from nt or able bodied needs, and having to scale back from what you want to do because they aren’t being accommodated or because you physically/mentally cannot do it does not mean that i or anyone should think less of you, including yourself.
i am so proud of you, even if the only thing you did today was wake up or brush your teeth. you have value beyond what our ableist capitalist society demands, and your being here every day, your mere existence, is a battle cry. and i will be here with you every step of the way to carry that torch with you
There's a Mirror on the Wall 