1. Create a concrete plan you share with you child and set expectations before going on the vacation – If we know exactly what’s going on and can see a schedule beforehand it feels much less overwhelming to tackle new places and new experiences.

2. Make sure you’re staying in a place with enough space – when I was a kid, if we stayed in a place with plenty of space, my parents had no issues. For example, every year my parents would take us to Pawleys Island, SC. Generally that trip was fine because my parents rented a big enough house and I had my own space, which is something a lot of us on the spectrum need. One year, we moved to a much nicer but much smaller house. I had to share a bedroom with my brother and the house was very compact so we felt packed in and I had a lot of difficulties. Even though the house was nicer, renting the bigger, albeit more shabby, beach house was much better for our family.

3. Plan your vacation during the destination’s off-season and go to a place that’s less crowded in general  Autistic people can get overwhelmed in large crowds or places that have a lot of people. And when you go to tourist destinations, that can be even more overwhelming if it’s during a busy season.

4. Plan a lot of physical activities  Things that involve bike riding, walking, swimming, or even outdoor activities like the zoo, are good for helping to get rid of that excess nervous energy that can build up .

5. Doing more shorter vacations like day or weekend trips can be easier than going on a single longer vacation If a week long vacation is too much, try doing a few 3, 2 or 1 day trips. If your child hates the trip, you can leave without worrying about the fact that you paid for a whole week.

6. Since activities can be overwhelming, limit them in time and scope and plan them so that they work for your child - 

As an example, for a trip to a museum, create a plan of things to see and do and share it with your child before going in. Whatever you do, don’t just walk around looking at things. People, especially kids, on the spectrum don’t like uncertainty.

Also, call ahead and ask what the least busy time is – sometimes google has a graph that shows how many people are at a specific attraction for each hour of the day.

Also, plan mini tours that involve activities related to what you’re doing (like a scavenger hunt). Often times, places like a museum will offer guides for children.  Don’t be pedantic, the experience of new places and experiences should be enough. You don’t need to teach them everything about everything you see and don’t try too hard to make sure they’re learning. Children will remember activities related to what they saw, not  what was written on a plaque you made them read.  Be more hands off and your child’s curiosity will do the rest.

Plan an escape if it’s a new overwhelming experience. One time we went to a haunted house. My sister who is also on the spectrum was insistent upon going in so my mom talked with the people running it and they came up with an egress plan for her to go to a guide to take her out if she got overwhelmed and needed to leave.

7. Always have a plan of where your next meal is coming from – either bring your food or plan to eat at a specific place you research that is fun and not overwhelming from a sensory perspective

Plan rest times – While it can seem like it’d be better to make use of all the time you have and do as much as possible, if you do less things and have built-in breaks, the things you do will be much more rewarding and memorable. You don’t need to see the whole city or even the whole museum. A lot of parents

8. Be aware of your child’s needs and prioritize those over your own- If your kid likes rocket ships, go to the air and space museum. Even if you think you’d enjoy an art gallery more, you won’t if your kid is having a melt down the whole time. You can still go to the art gallery if you make it fun, but sometimes the path of least resistance is best.

9 Prepare staff in advance - Tell them you have a kid on the spectrum and explain that a meltdown is possible. That way, if a meltdown does happen they will be more patient and accommodating and you won’t get as many people judging you.

10. If you have multiple kids on the spectrum, consider one parent taking them each separately on different vacations based on their needs and interests. Or if you’re doing activities on the same trip, maybe split off so each child can do something that will work for them.

The post Planning a family vacation with Autism – 10 tips for success appeared first on Wrong Planet.

Noise canceling headphones are great at cutting out low frequency sounds like the hum of a jet engine but can be less effective at the higher frequencies. Because of this, if higher frequency sounds bother you, you may have better luck using cheap ear plugs and ear muffs that you can find on Amazon. But without active noise cancellation, cutting out bass sounds will be tough so if you’re sensitive to bass, you may need to shell out some money for headphones with active noise cancellation.

1 – Sony WH-1000XM2 $350
These do an incredible job of cutting out all frequencies. While they’re close to Bose in noise cancellation, I think they actually do a better job at higher frequencies and also have a lot more features, like disabling noise cancellation of voice so you can talk to people and still block out bass.

2 – Bose Quiet Comfort 35 / 20 $250 – $330  (QC25 – $130+)
Bose is the king of noise canceling headphones, but also the priciest. They were the first to popularize noise cancelling headphones and also create professional sets for pilots. Bose also make in-ear headphones that cancel noise even better than over the ear headphones, but they may be more or less comfortable depending on your preferences. Check out the QuietComfort 20. The wired version of Bose’s over the ear headphones (QC25) are still available and sometime can be found for as low as 130 dollars on Amazon, which is a steal, considering their noise canceling is just as good as the bluetooth headphones that cost at least a hundred more. These are what I use and they’re life changing.

3 – Sennheiser PXC 550 – $300
I have owned a few pairs of Sennheiser over the years and they’re my favorite headphones. I believe they sound better than both Bose and Sony in terms of audio reproduction. Sennheiser also make noise canceling headphones that cost less than this model, but they aren’t as good.

4 – Cheap ear muffs – $15
In terms of getting rid of sound, ear muffs provide the most protection. You’ll see airport workers on the runway wearing these for that reason. You can put earbuds under them and still listen to music. They can be uncomfortable if you’re wearing glasses with thick legs though and they can hurt your head because they press very firmly against the side of your head. Because of this, they can become irritating after being worn for a while.

5 – Ear plugs – a few cents
Ear plugs are good for getting outside noise levels to go down, but they don’t do as good a job of blocking out bass. You also can’t really listen to music unless you put over the ear headphones on and that doesn’t sound so good because the plugs block out some frequencies more than others.

The post 5 Noise Cancelling Headphones for Autism appeared first on Wrong Planet.

My criticisms of Atypical’s freshman season were certainly no secret, as I shared my feelings both publicly in various news outlets and privately with Robia Rashid, the show’s creator.  At the time, I mentioned that a lot of issues could be fixed, but my biggest problem with season one was the lack of autistic involvement.  To remedy this problem, I suggested that, at the very least, an autistic consultant needed to be hired for season two.  Fortunately my suggestion was taken to heart, and with the addition of autistic consultant David Finch many of the show’s major problems have been addressed.  From the moment I began watching season two, I felt freed from the brackish misrepresentations that distracted me in viewing the first season and I was consequently able to enjoy the show. I even laughed out loud during a few of its funniest moments.

I am very surprised that the show improved as much as it did and while I intend this review of season two to be very positive, I think I will need to go through some of the problems I had with season one in order to fully convey how big of a leap forward the creators took in the show’s sophomore year.

Alex Plank with cast members Keir Gilchrist & Michelle Farrah Huang

Another incident in the first season that I felt was not positive was the depiction of Sam breaking into his therapist’s house to leave her a box of chocolates. In season two, Sam continues talking with his therapist, who surprisingly takes his calls despite his behavior in season one.  I think that she seems accepting of this communication out of guilt over the way she handled things in the first season.

In general, Sam’s relationships in season two are much more realistic and, more importantly, are extremely positive from a standpoint of portraying autism in an accurate and constructive manner. For instance, instead of furthering the myth that those on the spectrum cannot have a romantic relationship, season two goes a step further and features multiple women vying for Sam’s affection. If anything, Sam treats these women with more respect and maturity than they show towards him which is one very enlightening commentary on how being autistic can actually make one more compassionate, not less. 

Season two further explores the one thing I liked most about Atypical in season one, its portrayal of family dynamics. I believe that the viewers who loved season one focused on that part of the show and either forgave the autistic representation issues or did not notice them. I think that’s why a lot of parents were excited about the show while autistic people, even those with a roseate view of the series, could readily point out specific issues that they felt should be fixed in the second season. 

I appreciate that season one resonated with many families who watched and were ecstatic to finally see a family like theirs being represented on television. Thankfully, season two improves even more on that front, as the way that Sam interacts with other characters indicates a positive shift towards his being treated more as a real person and less as simply a diagnosis.   Moreover, the way he is talked about is also more positive. 

Alex with actor Brigette Lundy-Paine (Casey)

Many reviews of Atypical have focused on the plot lines centered on autism. To me, these elements of the show seem like PSAs, and while I appreciate that Robia and her writers felt the need to include these important topics in an effort to teach the audience about things we face in the autism community,  I think the scenes that are designed to deliver exposition information about autism actually end telling us the least about autism. For instance, while I appreciate the intentions behind bringing up the issues of police being untrained when it comes to dealing with autistic people, that storyline seemed a bit forced. In contrast, I felt much more was conveyed about autism with much more depth in the storyline of Casey’s birthday involving a tradition of rituals that Sam adheres to as his way of expressing his love for her. This year, Casey brushes Sam off and expresses frustration due to a belief that Sam is obsessing over these birthday rituals from a place of selfishness when she clearly is trying to deal with other issues. However, the resolution of this conflict, and Casey’s realization regarding Sam’s true intentions, stands out as the most beautiful moment of season two. 

Alex with Atypical Creator Robia Rashid

In conclusion, the second season of Atypical far exceeded my expectations, and, if it continues going in such a positive direction, by the third season I think it could more than make up for the problematic representations from season one. Robia’s receptiveness to suggestions makes me excited to see how she further includes autistics in season three. 

In that vein I’ll end this piece with my biggest suggestions for season three. First, I think an openly autistic writer should be added to the writer’s room. David Finch, the show’s consultant, who I believe was instrumental in fomenting the major improvements of this season and penned a hilarious  New York Times best-selling memoir, would be a perfect candidate.  I personally served as a consultant on FX’s The Bridge, so I know how difficult a job it is to ensure that autism is fairly and accurately represented while concurrently serving the overall story and tone of a show. David did a remarkable job and I think those on the spectrum who’ve been critical of season two fail to acknowledge how difficult a job it was to improve the representation of a character who had already been developed for an entire season. Atypical accomplishes this with a character arc that fixed the issues gradually while not changing him drastically enough to betray the underlying character viewers had come to expect. 

Finally, I want to see even more autistic characters in season three and I want to see another autistic character with a bigger role. Autism is often thought of only in reference to kids or teens. If Atypical wrote in an adult autistic character, perhaps one Sam could see as a role model, I think that would be a powerful addition to a show that I’m actually really starting to dig. And if you’re looking for an autistic actor to play him, contact my agent. I think I have some availability.

The post Atypical’s 2nd Season is a Step Forward in Autism Representation appeared first on Wrong Planet.

For many autistics on the spectrum, moving out from your parents house and living independently can seem like a daunting task. We like routines and familiarity so any change can be hard to handle. But I think we need to embrace growth, even at the expense of comfort. Since college, I’ve lived in a variety of different places, but I’ve made a point of always living away from home.

Alex in his Dorm Room

Living in dorms is a great way to prepare you for living more independent after you graduate. But I would recommend getting a single room because sharing a room for an autistic person is the worst possible thing I can think of. I need my own space. Fortunately my University had accommodations for individuals with disabilities and I was able to get a single room.

Even with a single room, I quickly had to learn to deal with issues like noise that come with living in dorms (and apartments). I have a sound sensitivity so the bass from other people playing music was hard to deal with. I’ve written about the importance of noise canceling headphones, but I didn’t have those at the time. I’ve also developed simple strategies for improving sound over time like using foam to seal the door frame and even a jacket on the door to block sound, and having a white noise machine, fan, or AC to make it harder to hear outside sounds.

I moved from the original dorm into a four bedroom apartment style dorm I shared with three other people. This brought up new issues I had to deal with, such as keeping the common areas clean and sharing the space. An autistic friend of mine commented that the most important thing you can do with roommates is to keep things clean. If you can do that, there won’t be many other problems.

In the summer after my freshman year, I got an internship at AOL headquarters in northern Virginia. Since I could only live in the dorms during the school year, I lived at my grandparents’ house which was close to the metro. I could take a train some of the way and a bus the rest of the way. But the whole trip, including transfers, took an hour and a half (see my article on the benefits of driving & autism).

After a while, I decided to rent a room from an engineer at AOL who worked on my team. I was able to carpool with him every day or we could ride bikes along the bike trail from the house to our work. This was much better because driving with him cut out an hour an 15 minutes for me (saving 2.5 hours a day). Living with someone older taught me a lot of things that would help me in the future for living with roommates. I learned the importance of helping to clean (doing things like sweeping and vacuuming, for example). The next summer, I rented the basement of a house in Washington, DC. I picked a home a block from the subway so I could easily get to work. Living independently in a city is much easier if you don’t have a car so this experience was great for me.

I started dating a girl in college while I was living in DC. We eventually decided to move in together. Living with a significant other brings a whole new set of issues, some great, and some challenging. We decided to rent a house. While the relationship didn’t last, I learned a lot about living with a partner and the importance of having your own space. I do recommend making sure you have your own space if you’re going to live with a partner. A studio apartment might be challenging!

When I graduated from college, I lived with my grandfather again for a little bit and then moved to western Massachusetts where I lived with my friend John Elder Robison. After almost a year, I decided to move to Los Angeles. This was one of the scariest moves for me because I’d be leaving the east coast where I had my support system of friends and family. I went on Craigslist to find an apartment in Los Angeles and I still live there. Making the move to LA was one of the best decisions in my life. It gave me countless opportunities that I didn’t ever have on the east coast.

While I had to go out of my comfort zone in order to become increasingly independent, doing so has given me many opportunities and has increased my quality of life. I’ve also gained confidence knowing that I’m living on my own, supporting myself. While some people may think living at home is the best option, I urge you to at least give living on your own a shot. After all, if it doesn’t work out, you can always move back home and you’ll merely be back to where you were. After all, life is about experimenting, trying new things, sometimes failing, and sometimes succeeding. But without trying, you’ll never grow.

The post Leaving Home & Living Independently on the Autism Spectrum appeared first on Wrong Planet.

When I was growing up, I developed much of my interpretation of the world from the television, films, and books I read. But when I got diagnosed at the age of 9, the only mainstream representation of autism was Rain Man.

While many people are quick to criticize Rain Man, it came at a time when very few people had even heard the term autism, and even less knew what it was. The movie brought autism to the mainstream and I think we underestimate how important it was for so many people to finally have something they could point to in the media (especially parents who were growing tired of explaining it to everyone they encountered in public). A lot has changed since then and we’ve seen more representation, both good and bad.

We’re certainly in a better place in 2018 than we were when I was diagnosed in 1995. Shows like The Bridge and The Good Doctor show autistic characters as more than just a stereotype and their autistic protagonists even hold jobs that audiences may envy.

The show Atypical centers around a family raising a teen on the spectrum. The show even portrayed the autistic character dating and eventually getting a girlfriend. While many people were critical of the first season, the showrunners made an effort to change things and season two will feature autistic actors playing autistic characters on screen. With that said, I hope to see more shows being sensitive to the realities from the start instead of reacting to criticism after damage is already done.

Negative stories that hurt those of us on the spectrum are not limited to TV series and films. Some of the worst offenders are news organizations. For instance, when an act of violence occurs in our society (like a shooting), reporters and commentators on cable news are quick to look for an explanation. Often times, they point to an autism diagnosis, despite the fact that autism has absolutely no link to violence. Even bringing up autism in these stories, serves no purpose, and confuses audiences into thinking it must be related.

But this is all gradually improving over time. Every time something negative is released in the media, I am relieved to see voices of those on the spectrum speaking out and many allies echoing these voices.

I can’t wait for the day where we don’t need to speak out against negative portrayals, but it’s important to understand that things won’t change overnight and patience and understanding is key to convincing others to listen to our stories. Autistic people have the responsibility to advocate respectfully and understand that parents also have stories to tell. But parents also have to realize that their children grow up and don’t always share the same opinions. If we can all work on listening to each other more, I think the world will be a better place and the media landscape will be more inclusive.

The post Autism in the Media appeared first on Wrong Planet.

“That’s really incredible,” said a well-meaning educator who had called in April about our Autism Advantage program, which runs six-week training cohorts for autistic individuals around specific talent sets. “I’m searching for a program which can teach autistic people acceptable behavior for the workplace. Yours is like that, correct?”

We now love conversations like these. They give us an opportunity to explain what we’ve helped dozens of leading companies understand. Our Autism Advantage program doesn’t make autistic people ‘acceptable’. We bring out and strengthen their talents to improve their careers.

Our programs provide training and structure to help individuals understand and accept who they are as autistic people, identify and master their skills long overlooked by others, and employ those skills in order to find career success. We provide understanding of neurotypical behavior in order for autistic individuals to better navigate integrated workplaces, coach companies in building neurodiverse workplaces, match autistic candidates with employment opportunities, and provide coaching and assistance once hired.

We do this because we’re located in Silicon Valley and realized that many autistic talents are well-suited for hard-to-fill technology roles. We started our training from this point and our current series focuses on autistic individuals with data analytical skills (if you are interested in these programs, we encourage you to sign-up). However, it would be ridiculous to think that autistic talent is limited to tech. That’s why we don’t just place candidates within tech roles and why we’re structuring future training opportunities around additional talent sets. Our six-week training acts as a deep dive into developing the talents of autistic individuals from the autistic frame. We go over many things, but at the core of our trainings are four key components we’ve realized are applicable to anyone looking for work.

1. Self Awareness. When autistic people hear the term “self awareness” it’s often in being reprimanded for not mirroring neurotypical behavior. In Autism Advantage, we emphasize the actual meaning of the term: understanding who you are and how you operate in this world. Some of our program participants are deeply ashamed of their autistic traits at the beginning of each of our trainings. We help them see that autistic traits can used to their advantage. If the X-men has taught us anything, it is that unique traits are needed and necessary. Accepting and understanding who you are as an autistic person allows you to find ways to leverage your autistic traits as an advantage throughout your career.

2.Master Your Skills. Cal Newport is a computer scientist who does deep thinking on workplace success. In his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You he examines the repeating patterns of success found in individuals from blues musician Jordan Tice to Apple founder Steve Jobs. Newport discovered that the most successful people are the ones who take an existing skill set and practice it over-and-over again to mastery. What inspired Newport to first research this pattern was seeing an interview with comedian Steve Martin on the Charlie Rose show where he discussed giving advice to aspiring comedians:

Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is “Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,”. . . but I always say, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

It wasn’t an exceptional talent that distinguished Steve Martin from his peers. Like other new comics, he was good but not great. While other new comics focused half of their attention on finding better and better gigs, Martin tried a different approach. He focused all of his attention on practicing his own skills over and over again. He worked clubs whose audiences would boo him but would also laugh three weeks later when he finally got the joke he had tried before just right. In mastering his skills, Martin began to distinguish himself. It was in learning how to be obsessively good at what he did that found Steve Martin success.

There is a dwindling number of educators who deride “narrow autistic interests” as a bad thing, an antithetical attitude to Newport and Martin’s advice to apply rigid structure and obsessive focus on a subject in order to master it (“If I stay with it,” said Martin in the same interview discussing the advice he gave himself when he decided to learn how to play the banjo “then one day I will have been playing it for 40 years and anyone who sticks with something for 40 years will be pretty good at it.”). If the key to skill success among neurotypicals is adopting autistic traits, then we should encourage those traits in autistic individuals themselves.

Whether it be city bus schedules or complex data systems, autistic people build expertise on the subjects they love by rigorously acquiring knowledge. If you are on the spectrum, you’ve most likely done this by becoming proficient at a key group of skills that you may not have even realized that you were practicing over-and-over again to perfection – skills like research, observation, analysis, evaluation, and communication. Think about the things you love, then think about the skills you used to build your knowledge of them. These are all skills you can apply to other aspects of your life, including work. Neurotypicals spend millions of dollars each year on books and seminars to get them to this place. Recognize your skills, lean into them, and practice them over-and-over again.

3. Market Your Skills. No one likes a shameless self-promoter, but almost all hiring managers love when someone can demonstrate how their skills can fit their company’s needs. That’s a big thing we work on in Autism Advantage. Here is what Daniel, one of our recent graduates shared with us after we placed him in a position with professional services firm EY.

What the Autism Advantage program gave us was a space to relax and dig deeper into our personal strengths. I discovered that I’m actually a great presenter and I’m good at public speaking. Understanding that means that I now know how to personally pitch myself.

When Daniel started our program, he hadn’t yet discovered that he had those skills. By graduation, he was able to confidently talk about them with others. You most likely have a different skill set than Daniel. As you discover yours and practice your skills to mastery, they will become much easier to talk about. Many autistic people have difficulty talking about themselves, but discussing your skills and how they apply to others is one way to accommodate our strengths.  The interview process if filled with people who love to talk about how great they are. There’s no need to copy that. Talking about how your skills can provide solutions to the job you seek will be valued by the the person hiring for the position.  Once hired, offering your skills as solutions to your managers and teammates will help you advance throughout your career.

4. Network. There’s a misconception that autistic people aren’t good at networking. Most of the internet would collapse if that were true. People just network differently. Neurotypical people tend to highly engage interpersonal networking while autistic people often more easily navigate networking online. Our team has also noticed that many autistic people tend to be great (and better than neurotypical peers) at interpersonal networking if allowed to use it to exchange information on subjects they love. Academia and the arts are filled with autistic people skilled in networking this way. Networking is absolutely essential to your career. The more connections that an individual makes through networks, the more opportunities for success there will be. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to network the same way.

We heavily emphasize networking in Autism Advantage, but we do so from an autistic frame. We recently took our program participants to a strategy session at the San Francisco offices of LinkedInto discuss networking from the autistic point of view. Connecting with others is key to career success. Think through how you best network and then use those channels as you look for work. Let people know you are looking for employment and what your skills are. Other people know of opportunities and connections that you don’t. Everyone networks differently. Figure out how you best network and use those networks to increase opportunities throughout your career.

At the end of each of our Autism Advantage training programs, we increase the opportunities for our attendees by connecting them with leading companies who need their individual skills. We help companies realize why they need autistic talent and how building support for neurodiversity within the office is not only good for the individual employee but for the entire team. On the candidate side, our trainings dive into many things, but these four concepts our participants deeply examine will also prove key concepts to you: develop your self awareness, master your skills, market your skills, and then network. We don’t make autistic talent ‘acceptable’. We help autistic individuals strengthen their talents to improve their careers. The world needs autistic talent. Focus on developing each of these things and you’ll be able to confidently show everyone why.

——-

By Jack Hogan and John Marble, Autism Advantage

Jack Hogan is a technology expert and co-founder of Autism Advantage, a program which trains autistic talent and matches them with leading companies. John Marble is the program’s senior advisor and is a former presidential appointee in the administration of President Barack Obama. He is autistic.

Autism Advantage operates in partnership with Expandability, a non-profit initially established in Silicon Valley to aid disabled programmers. Autism Advantage was developed out of Expandability’s highly successful Autism at Work program it first pioneered with software company SAP. Those interested in the program can sign-up here. Additionally, Autism Advantage continuously seeks input from autistic individuals as they build programs and welcomes the input of suggestions and new ideas.

This is a sponsored article. 

The post Before You Look for Work Here Are Four Things You Should Absolutely Know appeared first on Wrong Planet.

For me, autism means that my mind is a vast open space where all my knowledge runs free with my hyper-connected brain. Most people are born with instructions to function on this planet – not me. I can’t think within parameters that I can’t see. It is like being asked to think outside of a box you didn’t know you were inside of. Free-range thinking translates into free-range behavior.

Not seeing borders can manifest itself in difficulties understanding boundaries, and this has been prominent throughout my life beginning at an early age. For instance, I never knew how far to stand from people. To cope, I would stand a little farther away than what I thought was acceptable just to be sure. But not all coping mechanisms and assumed boundaries are perfect – my method failed me once when I was in kindergarten. All of my classmates were sitting in a circle and I happened to be right next to my teacher, who was on a chair reading a book to our class. The top of her foot distracted me; it was flesh-colored, but it appeared to have a textured pattern. I figured she was wearing stockings. I lost my restraint while in some sort of trance and impulsively – but gently – pulled on the top of her foot. It was like my brain had to find out for itself whether my assumption was correct about the stockings. My teacher flinched. She didn’t seem upset, but she was surprised.

My fourth grade teacher was always frustrated that I would never write my assignments within the margins. My print handwriting would spill over the borders of the paper, and my calligraphy was minuscule because I thought it was the only way that I could perfectly align the size and spacing.

My mind’s boundaries followed me outside of school too. One day, I was filing out a form one day and the woman working at the front of the office seemed puzzled. She commented, “You’re the first person ever to start filling out the form at the bottom and working your way up. Why did you do it that way?” I explained that I wanted to get the meatier parts out of the way first so that towards the end of filling out the sheet, my mind can rest as the name/address/date of birth part is a no-brainer.

In grade 11, I did a coop placement at a parliament member’s office: the Hill location and the constituency office. I enjoyed it immensely. I learned so much to the point that I realized I didn’t know anything at all. I had chosen the most progressive and liberal politician I knew. Still, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the thought of restricting myself to one idea. A political party is a way of thinking, yet there are 7 billion ways of thinking. On my last day,I asked the parliament member for one piece of advice which has stuck with me to this day, “Don’t get into politics just to get into politics. Do it because there’s a particular cause you truly believe in and follow it.”

I didn’t know who I was back then. I didn’t know what I was passionate about. I do now, but I still can’t reconcile the thought of belonging to a dividing entity.

But something I learned is that there is always a side: us against them. Rarely is there impartiality. I couldn’t understand that you had to take a side to stand for something.

I did learn what I was passionate about after my time in the co-op: poetry. There is a reflection of nature in all human experience and this is my inspiration for metaphors. I see the synchronicity in everything. Nature is cruel. We are animals that don’t follow the natural order of the environment because we coexist. Autistic children often report other children as being mean. It didn’t occur to me until I grew up that meanness is really just what animals do to one another to survive. My “niceness” was a lack of survival instinct. As we mature, we learn to develop our intellect and compassion. Lions and lambs don’t live peacefully together in the wild. My curiosity for human relationships lead me to my next big passion in life: spirituality. What is it exactly that sets us apart from our non-human counterparts?

Every behavioral manifestation of an autistic trait reveals something deeper about how we perceive the world. The reason autistics need order and routine is because their minds are chaotic and unusual. Lack of awareness for boundaries also means they don’t see borders between people. They don’t see faces, color, or race –   only character. I never saw others as “other.” This is why autistics are known to befriend people of all ethnicities, religion, and age. The older I got, the more I realized that people categorized others to determine whether or not to accept or reject them.

In my mind, I developed artificially constructed dividers to classify people, which helps me predict how certain people will act based on past experiences.

This last line made me cry when I wrote it. I’ve literally had to teach myself to divide people in my mind to survive. It feels like I have built a fence in my mind, but my thoughts and feelings rebelled and grew in between each metal wiring hiding any evidence of it. Our future can’t be kept locked up behind archaic traditions, cultural norms, or even widely-accepted beliefs and opinions. With limits, our vision cannot be world-embracing. Without limits, our vision is one of freedom. Minds without borders will help create a world without borders.

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Asperger’s Are Us dispels the commonly held misconceptions that autistics lack a sense of humor and that we’re more focused on math and science. Besides being insightful and revelatory, the film is also incredibly entertaining. The guys in this comedy troupe are charming and constantly cracking jokes. Even by the end of the movie (which runs 82 minutes) I was left wanting to see much more of the troupe. I did fortunately have the opportunity to watch them perform live when they were in Los Angeles and the audience was laughing the entire show. If you have a chance to watch them live, it’s definitely worth it. They are opening for Imo Phillips at the Boston Comedy Festival on the 19th of November and have other shows planned as well.

I sat down with director Alex Lehmann and executive producer Mark Duplass and we had an exhaustive conversation about the film and the issues it brings up related to comedy, performance, and autism.

Check out the troupe’s official website, their Facebook group, and Twitter account.

Here’s the official trailer:

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Jim Sinclair became one of the first openly autistic adults online, joining a digital mailing list run out of St. John’s University in New York frequented primarily by parents and professionals. Its founder, Ray Kopp, was the father of a legally blind girl named Shawna who had sought unsuccessfully for years to get a more specific diagnosis for her than “developmentally delayed.” Kopp launched the list in 1992 with a dyslexia expert at St. John’s named Robert Zenhausern. On the threshold of the addition of Asperger’s syndrome to the DSM, one of the most frequently asked questions on the list was whether Kanner’s syndrome could persist into adulthood.

With Donna Williams and Kathy Lissner, Sinclair also launched the first autistic-run organization in history, calling it Autism Network International. Early on, its founders decided that ANI would stand up for the civil rights and self-determination of people all across the spectrum, not just those considered high-functioning like the members of the MAAP list. All of ANI’s original founders had been branded low-functioning as children and had gone on to earn university degrees. They understood that functioning levels change not only in the course of the life span but also day to day. Even a chatty “more able” adult could temporarily lose speech, and the term low-functioning often obscured talents and skills that could be brought out by providing a more suitable environment or an alternate means of communication.

Like any nascent subculture, this emerging community gave birth to its own in-group slang. The most enduring ANI neologism was the term neurotypical, used as a label for nonautistic people for the first time in the group’s newsletter. With its distinctly clinical air, the term (sometimes shortened to NT) turned the diagnostic gaze back on the psychiatric establishment and registered the fact that people on the spectrum were fully capable of irony and sarcasm at a time when it was widely assumed that they didn’t “get” humor.

Carrying the meme to its logical extreme, an autistic woman named Laura Tisoncik launched an official-looking website in 1998 credited to the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical. “Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity,” the site’s FAQ declared. “There is no known cure.”

Taking a cue from the radical Deaf community, ANI members began to refer to themselves as “Autistic” instead of saying that they were people with autism. “Saying ‘person with autism’ suggests that autism is some- thing bad—so bad that it isn’t even consistent with being a person,” Sinclair observed. “We talk about left-handed people, not ‘people with left-handed- ness,’ and about athletic or musical people, not about ‘people with athleticism’ or ‘people with musicality’ . . . It is only when someone has decided that the characteristic being referred to is negative that suddenly people want to separate it from the person.”

The emergence of e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, Usenet news- groups, Internet Relay Chat, America Online, and ultimately the World Wide Web provided a natural home for the growing community of newly diagnosed teenagers and adults, where they could interact at their own pace in a language that often felt more native to them than the spoken word. Carolyn Baird, a mother of four who took over management of the St. John’s list, spoke for many of her peers when she told a Dutch journalist:

Autistic people seem to have an affinity with computers and many of them were already working in computer-related fields prior to the advent of the Internet. The appeal of a computer is that there is only one right way to tell it to do something—it doesn’t misinterpret what you tell it and do something else as people do.

For many of us, this medium has given us the opportunity to be accepted for the first time in our lives as being just like everyone else, and gives us our first hint at what it feels like to be accepted on the quality of our thoughts rather than the quality of our speech.

The ANI posse began making regular appearances at conferences, where they set up booths and handed out newsletters and buttons emblazoned with slogans like “I’m not just WEIRD, I’m AUTISTIC” and “I survived behavior modification.” Their information tables became little oases of autistic space where people could take a break from the probing stares, the swirl of perfumes, the press of flesh, the unpredictable outbreaks of applause, and the constant reminders that their existence was a tragic puzzle. While the NT attendees lined up for lavish banquets and celebrity-studded comedy showcases, the Autistics would pair off to chat and stim in quiet hallways and coatrooms, camping out on the floors of each other’s hotel rooms at night, or sleeping in their cars like impoverished science fiction fans crashing worldcons in the 1940s.

At a conference in St. Louis, one parent-ally of the group managed to get access to the whole vacant upper floor of an office building under renovation near the convention center. Amid dusty heaps of plaster and drywall, the Autistics unfurled their mats and sleeping bags, brought in a couple of floor lamps, and set up empty refrigerator cartons for anyone who needed to retreat to an enclosed space for a while. After fielding questions from parents and psychologists all day, it was a relief to return to a place with the fellow members of their tribe that felt like an enchanted cave after dark. When someone pointed out the window at an old radio tower and said that it was for sale, Sinclair replied that, since the aliens were all gathered in one place now, they could transmit the request to the mothership to come take them home at last.

Reprinted from NeuroTribes by financial arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2015, Steve Silberman

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I’m autistic and work as a consultant for autistic characters in Hollywood. I’m best known for my work on FX’s The Bridge, in which the main character was a female autistic detective, played by Diane Kruger. The Peabody-award-winning show was widely praised for its accurate and nuanced portrayal of an autistic character, a departure from the unfortunately common autistic hollywood stereotype. I worked closely with the writers, producers, directors, and Ms. Kruger to develop the character. Additionally, I was on set, ensuring that her portrayal was always authentic. The Bridge’s commitment to diversity could also be seen in its writer’s room, which included writers who were female, gay, and Hispanic. The room even included writers whose identity had an intersectionality of those three Hollywood minority groups.

But the character was not played by an autistic actor. FX wanted a celebrity to star in the show and unfortunately, there were no autistic actors with enough star-power to play the part. To the credit of The Bridge’s commitment to diversity, I was actually cast in one minor recurring role, a newspaper employee, which ironically was written as a neurotypical character. But I don’t know of any other openly disabled actors who worked on the show.

Ben Affleck is the next major star to take on autism. He will be playing an autistic accountant in the upcoming film, The Accountant.

But even autistic roles for which star-power isn’t important are usually given to neurotypical actors. For example, NBC’s Parenthood cast Max Burkholder, an unknown neurotypical actor at the time, to play a major autistic role in the series. The show didn’t even hire an autistic consultant and Burkholder regrettably commented that he didn’t think one was necessary. Fox’s show Touch also cast a non-autistic actor to play an autistic child. Unlike Parenthood, however, Touch did hire an autism consultant, but she was not autistic and only worked on the pilot. Even Sesame Street’s new autistic Muppet, Julia, is played by a neurotypical in a suit.

And in the recent independent film, Jane Wants a Boyfriend, Louisa Krause played an autistic woman opposite Eliza Dushku. The filmmakers certainly could have cast an autistic actor instead of Krause because she is relatively unknown and Eliza Dushku is enough of a star to secure financing and attract an audience. The same was true with the independent film, The Story of Luke, in which neurotypical actor Lou Taylor Pucci played an autistic character opposite Seth Green. And there are many more examples of minor autistic characters being played by neurotypical actors, where star-power has absolutely no influence on casting.

The only example I could find of an autistic actor playing an autistic character was in this season of BBC’s Holby City, where Jules Robertson was cast as a recurring character in eight episodes. I was excited to see the show but upon watching it, I became a bit disappointed by the writing, which was stereotypical. In the first moments the character is introduced, he takes a few things literally, unknowingly makes an offensive comment about an older woman’s age, and states “If I’m direct, it’s because I have Asperger’s Syndrome.” While Holby City should be commended for casting an autistic actor, the writers room didn’t write a nuanced character. Despite this, Robertson did a great job playing the role and he seemed authentic even when the writing was over the top (which was most of the time). I can’t imagine a neurotypical actor handling that character as well as Robertson did, which underlines the importance of authentic casting but also highlights the importance of autistic input behind the camera.

Diversity has become a hot-button issue in Hollywood, where discussions focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and even gender identity. Disability and autism, however, are left out of the discussion. At this month’s Television Critics Association presentations, CBS was criticized for its schedule of shows in which there are no non-white leads. But no one ever thought to criticize CBS (or every other network, for that matter) for having no disabled leads, despite the fact that individuals with disabilities are the largest minority group in America.  If Hollywood wants to represent true diversity, it needs to make a much better effort to be inclusive of autistics and people with disabilities.

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