Considering Neurodiversity in our TACPAC sessions
What does neuro-affirming mean?
Neuro-affirming means in line with the philosophies of the neurodiversity movement, e.g.
- Treats all people, regardless of their neurotype, as valuable and important.
- Does not seek to ‘fix’ neurodivergent people or try to make them appear more neurotypical. Accommodations, supports or therapies are designed to promote the individual’s self-advocacy skills, awareness and understanding of their own neurotype and often involve training others and making adjustments to the environment, rather than intrinsically trying to change the person’s behaviour.
- Any support offered should be led by the neurodivergent person’s needs and what they want to achieve.
- Gives consideration to how language is used and asks the neurodivergent individuals themselves what language they prefer, for example, many autistic people prefer identity first language rather than person first (autistic rather than person with autism) but some may not. Neurodivergences are not regarded as or called disorders but instead recognised as differences from the typical.
- Acknowledges that people can have different communication styles and seeks to build more understanding on both sides, rather than framing the neurodivergent person as the one that needs to alter their communication style to fit in with the norm. The double empathy problem on the National Autistic Society website explains this in more detail.
The rainbow infinity symbol has been adopted as the symbol for neurodiversity.
Want to know more?
Therapist Neurodiversity Collective https://therapistndc.org
Autism Level Up https://www.autismlevelup.com
The Autistic Advocate https://theautisticadvocate.com
The Autistic SLT www.autisticslt.com