Emily Paige Ballou

I also think we've very much underestimated and under-researched the impact of temperament on an autistic child's trajectory.

Two kids with similar kinds of challenges but different temperaments are going to manage and compensate in different ways.

...I don't think we do have a lot of research about that.

Right, like the development of autism itself, we know is very highly heritable, with a high degree of the variance in the trait being caused by genetic factors.

But about the trajectory that an autistic person's life takes...someone correct me if I'm wrong, but...

There was some research a while back finding that girls had to be far more behaviorally affected than boys to be diagnosed--that girls showing the exact same characteristics as boys were far less likely to be getting diagnosed.

And whether or not a kid was dx'd early or late could be as arbitrary as whether a clinician they saw as a child was relatively well-informed about autism or not!

Well into the 2010s, I knew of people being told they couldn't be autistic b/c they had friends or were English majors.

The home, the parents, the educational opportunity, overall environment, exposure to other kids, how much a child was allowed to explore their own strengths & interests vs. just having their autistic tendencies quashed...there's just so many things that factor into developmental trajectory!

Like when SO MANY diagnosed autistic people report this experience, even going back to the research of Sukhareva and Asperger...wouldn't an interested person be at least a little curious about it?

I find it arrogant and willfully ignorant.

And yeah, there IS a shortage of research into reducing sensory overload and quality of life improvement.

That's why we should do that research. That's why the neurodiversity movement has been pleading for more autistic QOL research. Not why we should dismiss the hypothesis.

It is entirely confusing to me that so many researchers and "experts" are still not taking seriously the role of sensory overload (and the entangled effects of sensory and motor challenges) in the social communication aspects of autism.

It's just baffling.

Right, and there *may be* correlations between somebody's presentation of autism and the intensity of their innate challenges and when they were diagnosed.

But just to declare that this is different autism from that of early-dx'd kids...

Like is it crossing her mind that kids who are diagnosed later are more capable because they are OLDER and not because they have different autism...

Yes. She's ignoring (or ignorant of) a thousand arbitrary reasons that kids with very recognizable autism didn't get diagnosed with autism in the '70s and '80s.

Including just that the diagnosis wasn't on the books in the U.S. at all yet!

@tesmagazine.bsky.social I really think you should give some space for a response/rebuttal to Frith's interview to an autistic researcher or advocate, because this was bafflingly out of touch on a number of levels.

It *may* be that people diagnosed later on average have fundamentally different autism (I don't believe this, for the most part), but you have to PROVE THAT, and not just that they got diagnosed later.

Uta Frith: why I no longer think autism is a spectrum The autism spectrum has widened to the point of collapse, affecting how teachers should support autistic pupils in the classroom, researcher Uta Frith tells Helen Amass

(From this interview)

www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

People who are diagnosed later are going to be...older.

"I think at least we have two big subgroups: the people who are diagnosed in early childhood...and another group, diagnosed much later.

"This population is different. It is made up of a lot of adolescents..."

Uta, I have the weirdest news for you about the linear nature of time...

#autism

A new one: There sure is a resonance between "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and C.S. Lewis's "Till We Have Faces," isn't there?

Yeah, that's kind of her thing with autism now, too.

(And of course the brain is plastic! Autistic kids learn skills over time! You just...can't make an autistic kid into a non-autistic one.)

Oh, she's been spouting nonsense about autism for a little while now. I followed her avidly on Twitter...and then she got on a thing about how autism isn't actually neurological.

"The person who sets the precedent does not determine how it is used in the future."

Anyone ever built a website in Wordpress with no prior website-building experience? Anything I should watch out for or keep in mind?

(My personal blog has long been on Wordpress, so I'm familiar with the platform, in general.)

Yes, even if you're in a red state.
Yes, even if you think they don't care.

Reflect — rhizomag By Emily Paige Ballou

www.therhizomag.com/emerging-wri...

Hi, friends! I've got a new poem out in the Emerging Writers section of Rhizomag's new issue this week!

I cherish a suspicion that it was the fact that the Royals and the Cubs won in consecutive years.

Hey @schumer.senate.gov This is the behavior we wanted from you when Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped off the Columbia campus.

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

Ooh, what kind?

A slightly weird one, but "Familiaris" by David Wroblewski.

I have really complicated feelings about exhortations to tell girls they’re smart instead of beautiful, and also why I’m not a Ravenclaw {Moving image depicts Dr. Christina Yang from the show Grey’s Anatomy, gesturing dramatically and proclaiming “Oh, screw beautiful, I’m brilliant!  You wanna appease me, complimen…

chavisory.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/i...

I was just asked by a commenter on a 12-year-old blog post whether I even know who Cristina Yang is, and I'm so curious as to how old this person thinks I am.