Heather

Listen to a record. Pet your cat. Have some tea. Do anything to remind yourself that other things exist outside of our current situation. It’ll keep.

Gorgeous early Spring walk with my teen, catching Pokémon in the park. I even found a legendary!

Here are some things I love, in no particular order:

Crochet
Films
Birdwatching
Lorde
Heated Rivalry
Dear Hank & John
Our Flag Means Death
Lego
Stardew Valley
The Mighty Boosh
Knitting
Pokémon Go
Iceland
Pedro Pascal
Gardening
Hannah Gadsby
Podcasts
Peep Show
Killing Eve
David Thewlis
Emma Stone

My daughter (Y9) also hates it when teachers use AI images. She has a strong moral compass and refuses to use AI at all.

Everyone needs to see my new squirrel feeder please 🐿️

A lovely Saturday planting seeds, birdwatching, candle making and binge-watching Gravity Falls with my daughter 💕

Now off to the park to play Pokémon Go

One of those I never got round to seeing before...

Get Out was absolutely superb! Would love some #FilmSky recommendations for similar films.

"The recent rise in ADHD diagnosis reflects a catch-up after many years of under recognition and under diagnosis. Hence, rather than ‘overdiagnosis’ the real concern should be the unacceptably long waiting times [...] for diagnosis, support and treatment."

www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/no-over...

Finished another very old #crochet WIP: Gir from Invader Zim! 🧶

Finally finished knitting Bill Cypher for my daughter #GravityFalls 🧶

We never mention is many who are #neurodivergent spend years being given inappropriate serious medication, anti depression, anti anxiety, even anti psychotic drugs. It really is horrific as it never works, years in and out of therapy.

So if your trying to save NHS budgets tbh. Diagnosis matters.

#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

An illustrative piece in that it says the quiet part out loud: When you ask *who* is "wrongly" included in the autism spectrum, the response is almost always "women".

In other fields, this phenomenon of women being immediately dismissed, overlooked and underdiagnosed is called medical misogyny.

Autistics on Autism What everyone — especially professionals — needs to learn from autistic communities

Uta Frith did her best work 30+ years ago - most of it before autism researchers started realising they needed to listen to what autistic people were saying about our own experiences.

I wish she'd caught up.

oolong.medium.com/autistics-on...

Recommended reading: everything by Professor Sara Ryan

The danger of the medical model lens is that the people who support children can view their distress as intrinsic to their disability & not seek to identify the environmental factors causing it.

This is especially important in institutional settings where children and young people die every year.

I would never try and tell you what is the right point of view for you to have on your son & his disability.

However, in this interview Frith is dismissive of sensory distress whilst also using the term "challenging behaviour" in reference to autistic children who are "intellectually impaired"...

I have just Googled "Private ASD Diagnosis" and all of the first 5 providers I looked at use ADOS-2 🤷‍♀️

Everyone seeking any diagnosis at all is entitled to seek a second opinion.

When people "sincerely believe" they are autistic they are very rarely wrong.

To be honest it hasn't moved on (though many wish it would)

However there is a growing area within autism research that focuses on the social model of disability and challenges the harmful impact of the medical model.

Understanding the impact of the environment is crucial.

Bound to be a lot of discussion today off the back of Uta Frith questioning whether the autism spectrum has become too broad

As someone who would surely be in the second "hypersensitive" (although I'm actually pretty hypo-sensitive!) group, I have some thoughts..

5. How on earth she has concluded that autistic women and girls are experiencing "hypersensitivity" and that schools need to work with them on "building resilience" is just beyond me.

4. She says "people are relying too much on detailed interviews that provide a lot of subjective experience, rather than on objective clinical observation."

This is literally what happens in the ADOS! My diagnostic report is full of observed examples of what they noticed during the assessment.

3. She says "I have heard from clinicians that they feel themselves to be under severe pressure to give the diagnosis" with no evidence whatsoever.

What exactly is this "severe pressure", who is placing it and where is it coming from?

This is anecdotal nonsense.

2. Being able to speak is not the same as being able to communicate "perfectly". It is so much more complex than that.

For starters, difficulties with pragmatic language, non-literal language and perspective taking. These things have a huge impact on communication and Frith is dismissing them all.

1. She refers to late-diagnosed autistic girls and women who are "perfectly able to communicate verbally and non-verbally"

Yet the first criterion in the DSM V is "persistent deficits in reciprocal social communication and social interaction"

You can't be diagnosed without this...

Just a few reasons why this article is deeply misleading about #autism diagnosis

I don't think it's at all helpful to describe autistic+LD children as having "very challenging behaviour" whilst at the same time being "sceptical" about the significance of sensory processing differences.

Autism research has moved on from the medical model for very good reasons.

I Swear is so, so good. Incredible insight into Tourette Syndrome with a top notch cast.