This week is World Autism Acceptance Week. Like most of these sorts of events its purpose is to raise awareness. Everything starts with awareness. You cannot change anything unless you first acknowledge the problem. And here the problem is society. It seems to me that in the last 120 years or so, the world has been waking up to the idea that, western society at least, has been structured around white, heterosexual, neurotypical males. It’s not that there is something wrong with white, heterosexual, neurotypical males, it is that they are actually a minority in the world. Therefore, all of us having to live in a society that has been structured around them is what needs to change. This process is ongoing and incomplete. Recognising and adapting to neurodiversity is another, and more recent plank of this bridge to a new society. A society that reflects the fact that we are all the same and a bit different, and that different is okay. Women were the first to pick up the torch and lead the way. People of colour have followed, as have the LBGTQ+ community, and more recently neurodiverse people. This is what I will talk about here, but as you read this keep in mind that this sits within a broader and ongoing process of reshaping society.
Neurodiversity is a framework to understand human brain functionality. It includes Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and others. It is not uncommon for people to be diagnosed with more than one of these conditions. Autism is highly variable from one person to another and does cover a range of differences. These usually cluster around speech and language development, social skills, the ability to focus on topic or task, pattern recognition, and sensory sensitivity. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is associated with difficulties with planning, organising, initiating tasks, and regulating emotions. Dyslexia can make spelling, reading quickly, and writing more difficult. This then makes learning harder. Dyspraxia is when brain messages are not properly transmitted to the body. This then causes challenges with fine or gross motor skills.
In communication autistic people tend to be more literal than neurotypicals. They do not read body language, and facial expression as much as neurotypicals and can have an aversion to eye contact. Because of this neurotypical people will often label autistic people as unemotional. This is not the case, autistic people do have emotions, but they do struggle to identify and process them. These differences often mean autistic people and neurotypicals can find communicating more challenging, though autistic people find that communicating with each other is easy enough. Autistic people can be both hypersensitive and or under sensitive in one or more of their senses. Such as, they cannot be in the same room as particular smells, or finding certain internal lighting difficult, or being able to block out extraneous sounds whilst concentrating.
One way of thinking about neurodiverse people is that their abilities tend to be spikier than neurotypicals. This means that they can be either very good or not as good at certain things. Humanity generally, has found this useful. Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia have undisputed genetic origins. This means they have conveyed enough advantage, and not so much disadvantage to have been deselected by evolution. They are an important component of the rich tapestry of the human species. In the workplace there is now recognition that reasonable adjustments do need to be made to help neurodiverse people feel comfortable. Which in turn means they will be empowered to use more of their potential. I’m not close enough to the schooling system to assess how well neurodiverse children are being accommodated. But my guess would be that more can still be done to teach children in the way that they want to learn, rather than in the way adults want to teach them.
In a world where neurodiversity isn’t acknowledged and accommodated, neurodiverse people often attempt to mask their differences to fit in better. This causes them additional stress which can lead to further mental health challenges. If neurotypical people educate themselves and become accepting of difference, then the felt need for masking will diminish.
As I said at the start, we all need to recognise that we are fundamentally the same and different, across all aspects of the human experience. And different is okay. One of the ways to reduce your own prejudices is to appreciate the variations within peoples you have heretofore lumped together as one. On average men are taller than women, but there is a broad variety in both genders, and there are many women taller than me. We are all the same and we are all unique, we need to embrace this apparent paradox to help society evolve into something that works well for everyone.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein
