 Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to The Forty Autie Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Today's podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Teemo, the award-winning app designed to support neurodivergent people just like yourself with routine and scheduling. Head to your app store and type T-W-I-M-O to learn more. Good afternoon listeners of The Forty Autie Podcast. How are you doing today? We're back at you with another episode, straight in your face or in your ears probably. Today we have a special episode of course, as usual, because every single guest that I have on is amazing and unique in their own way. Today I have Ali, or as you go by AlisonNV on Instagram. Realistically, it's AlisonNV, that was taken, so I added an extra N. Alison is a speech and language pathologist and she's also on the autistic spectrum. The speech and language pathology profession tends to be quite interlinked with autism if I'm right. I just thought that having you on would be a very good, rounded approach to how it works because I guess you'd have a lot more insight into kids that you would work with and stuff like that. So we're going to talk about that today. How are you doing anyway? I've got to ask you that. I'm doing good. I've had a nice walk today. I'm drinking my coffee, sitting outside. Yeah, it's a good day. How are you doing? I think, as we said, probably to the forecast, I am not doing well at all. Just to be brutally honest, I've had to take a couple of days off work recently. I'm kind of in the stage of slipping down, mental health-wise, so I'm trying to keep myself back up, keep myself fresh and happy, or at least okay. Yes. And of course, like I said, before we started recording, I'm also having a rough mental health day and I, in the last few hours, I remembered that we were doing this today, so that was a good turnaround. And then I went on a walk and I did some good grounding things, and I think this should be sufficient for my day to feel better, but I totally get the drag. It's nice to be productive and to do something that could possibly help people. Yeah, and myself, honestly, I think that that's been, like, I started this whole public discussion of autism and of my own life for education and advocacy, but an equal part of that, an equal third of that is definitely for my own benefit. Like, doing this and talking about this publicly has been the most liberating thing of my entire life. It's very kevetic and it sort of forces you to think about the intricacies of your mind and the way that you act and behave in life, you know. Just for the listeners, would you like to give a little bit of a background to who you are, what you do for work and online, of course. Yeah, so I'm Allison, of course. I grew up in Rochester, New York. I'm a triplet. We were born premature, about two months premature, spent some time in the NICU, but then otherwise I met my developmental milestones, no huge major health crises, all that. I did not receive any services or anything growing up because I did not get a diagnosis until I was 25 a few months ago. I played sports and worked a million jobs all through high school. I went away to college. I had a double major in linguistics and communication disorders. So I did my degree in three years so that I could save some money because college in the US is a money pit and I'm not going to go into that ramp. So I did that in three years. I was a college athlete. I played soccer, so that was really fun. It kept me nice and busy, gave me a really strong sense of community and a lot of resources along with that through the athletic department. And then I left undergrad, went to grad school in Salt Lake City, Utah at the University of Utah for two years. I graduated in 2018. At that point, I was just getting out of a super long relationship about 10 years and I decided, yeah, oh, yeah. So then I decided to take a month, go home after graduation, spent some time in New York and then I moved to Portland. I had never been here. I didn't know anyone here. And now I've been here for about two years. I love it. I'm recently engaged, so I have worked in a lot of different settings. Early intervention, early childhood, special education, school-aged children in public schools, school-aged children in like a graduate clinic, more of like a private practice type setting. Skilled nursing facilities, post-acute care rehab with like the older adults in geriatric. I've done kind of a little bit of everything, but that's kind of sounds like what I like. Yeah, that's like the benefit of being a speech path for sure. But right now I had to take a step back from work back in like February due to my health. It's it declined really, really abruptly and pretty severely. So they basically didn't believe that I was sick and kind of like picked me out in a really not great way. So I do a little bit of PRN, which is just like per request needed. So a lot of the facilities I've worked at in the past, the nursing homes and rehabs, they know me. And so if they need coverage, they'll reach out and I'll kind of pick up as I can. But I've only really done a few hours in the last few months between my health and just the insanity that is Portland right now. And how far is in like, I don't know. I don't know if you want to talk about it. Would you be able to? Yeah, kind of. So I have like back in the winter, I was experiencing a lot of just uncharacteristic health stuff. I lost 30 pounds in two weeks without trying. I was having really severe nausea, dizziness, headaches, joint pain, muscle pain, nerve pain, wasn't sleeping, wasn't really able to eat. I was getting a lot of rashes. I had to cut a lot of food on my diet. I had to cut out all hair, skin, beauty products that weren't completely natural. My partner was like, bathing me, feeding me, dressing me. Like I was not, not OK. Oh, God, it's it's been a long few months. I am healthy enough to function most of the time. But yeah, it's just kind of a roller coaster. Yeah, I can imagine. One thing that sort of pricked my ears up was some of your like life path and like the things that you've chosen to do were like eerily similar to what I've done by kids. It's crazy. I went to university to do biomedical sciences and sort of specialized in neuroscience and stuff. I moved to a completely different place to Thailand to stay for a year for a research placement. And I used to be a Taekwondo athlete. We've got a lot of similarities. And we both work in schools as well. Right. Yeah, that's so funny. Oh, and then the other thing I was going to I didn't include is kind of like the social media aspect of it and like how I've been branching out online. I obviously have turned my Instagram into more of a, I guess, educational platform. You could call it. It's been maybe almost two months now. And I love it. I in the past would just, you know, use Instagram for my personal life and my dogs and my cat and fun things. And I'm realizing now that instead of, you know, trying to fit that social media of like, hey, look how cool my life is and everyone follow me like, woo, I'm really trying to stay as far away from that as possible and be authentic with it, but also kind of keep myself out of that social media comparison spiral of bad. There's a lot of dangerous. It sets you up to have unrealistic expectations for your life because you see everybody posting the best top parts of their life for the moments where they look the best. And it's sort of, I guess, so eats at you a little bit. Yeah, I think it's time on it. It's hard for everyone and especially during covid and quarantining. And I know a lot of chronically ill people like myself, like who are pretty much homebound most of the time, like it can be really detrimental. So I've really cultivated like who I'm following and what I interact with to kind of give the algorithm a clue that like, I want positivity. Yeah, I can fully understand that. Yeah. So I usually ask sort of about like the diagnosis story, but I guess it's it's quite fresh for you at the moment. Yes. What was that sort of getting that diagnosis like? And, you know, the kind of lead up to getting it and how do you feel about it now? Yeah, so the lead up, a solid 25 year lead up. There's a lot I could go into with that. It's it's hard to talk about the autism diagnosis story without not also disgusting the queer aspect of things and coming out. I at this point, I've really come out three separate times. I have always, you know, growing up had this a handful of feelings and experiences that seem to be pretty common with neurodiversity and, you know, with being queer, just like, OK, something's kind of off. I don't know those types of things. Nothing ever really came much of it. I was just like, I'm going to do whatever it else is doing. I'm going to ignore this stuff. Like I just need to try hard to do those things that don't feel like they're natural, you know, like kind of fitting in, blending in survival. And so I really started to notice some things. I think when I started dating my current partner, my fiance, she is the first person I've been with who has, who really is aware of and has like mental health things, you know, with anxiety, depression, trauma and neurodiversity. Like she has ADHD. She has dyslexia and her and I living together. And, you know, when we were dating early on, like having that open acceptance or just that model of how she would talk to me about trauma or anxiety, mental health, it like all of those things and explained to me like, oh, this is because my ADHD and all of that. Like she really just kind of modeled to me like, oh, I can look through these things and sort through these things with a partner. So that really started it along with my first job when I moved to Portland in early childhood special ed. I would see these kids and, you know, the majority of my 60 kid caseload was three to four year old autistic children. Yeah. Primarily nonverbal, mostly because developmentally, they just haven't approached that yet, not necessarily like long term nonverbal or like it's kind of a difference. But I understand that I have a kid that I'm so doing one to one work. And oh, yeah, you get it. They are they are going to they are developing. They are developing a language right at the moment. They're pretty nonverbal. Yes. Yeah. So being around all of that, I would, you know, see behaviors or see things or interact with them in certain ways. And I would observe my coworkers and either the things I was doing was like, wow, that's a weird idea. I never thought of that. Or like, I'd be like, oh, that makes sense. They're doing it because they want this and, you know, the aides or the other teachers and staff would be like, what? And I'm like, yeah, everyone does that. So that really opened my eyes. And then when I got my job at the pediatric hospital, November of 2019, up and up through February, kind of ish through June, when I was dealing with my health stuff, I really was like, OK, something might be up with me because speech paths in earlier, early intervention really tend to be one of the first professionals who are greeting a family with, hey, this might be going on because they go to their two month well child check, their pediatrician does their communication checklist. And if they're not meeting their developmental milestones or their communication or parents have concerns about development, you know, we as speech paths have a large expertise in that. And so we're usually the first to be referred out to because a lot of two year olds are communicating verbally in a more like neurotypical type way that we expect. And so when children aren't, we don't know what's going on. So if they're not communicating, I think the idea is, hey, let's get them communicating, we can figure it out, which is totally valid. But what that often leads to is I'm the very first person who's noticing the characteristics of autism and the developmental kind of like differences or potential red flags for development. And I hate the word red flag, but by red flag, I mean, like, this is not what research has categorized as typical. This is not something like this is something we want to pay attention to. That's a really hard discussion to have with parents. And it's just so hard because you don't know those parents. You don't have a therapeutic relationship with them on your first evaluation, your first 45 minutes of trying to introduce yourself, introduce the rules of the clinic, how we work, get to know the child, build rapport, play with them, make them feel comfortable, get to know the parent, ask their question or answer their questions. Let them ask questions like it's so much. So doing that for about 10 hours a day and working in the treatment with so many families of children at different ages really just it got to me. Like I was getting really angry towards the end of that because I started to think, wow, OK, I think this is me. Like these are me, these kids are me, these parents. I'm like, I'm like, this is a bunch of me. And I'm like talking to these parents like, look, I did those things. And look, I'm fine. And like, I was like, OK, I feel like I'm going to start crossing some professional boundaries here. Like this isn't good for my own health. Like I don't know. And then I started to pursue mental health and, you know, scheduled some evaluations with a psychiatrist and a therapist. And, you know, at the end of that job, I was just getting really angry. Like, why did my teachers not notice these things? Why did my parents not know this? Why didn't my doctor notice? Like, what about me and, you know, that like not selfish, but that internal child of just like, man, what about me? Like, why did I have to figure it out by myself? Like, come on. So I noticed like that was really toxic for me. And yeah, I went into my first tele-therapy initial intake appointment with my psychiatrist in March right after COVID and we were talking, just going through the case history and just kind of off the cuff. I was in the middle of talking because I I just talk, talk, talk, especially when I'm talking about myself. It's really hard to stop, obviously. And my psychiatrist was she just like blurted. She's like, has anyone ever thought about autism? And I like perked up and I was like, yeah, me. It's like, yeah, I've been thinking about that internally for a few months now. That's so validating. Oh, my God, please tell me more. Why you think that? And so that kind of started the whole rolling. Yeah. And well, how do you feel about it now? Because a lot of the things that I hear about people getting diagnosed a bit later or getting diagnosed early and reading about it later in life say that it allows you to sort of view your life in a different lens and sort of process different things that have happened. Yeah. Have you ever you got to that point? Or are you just kind of still fresh and excited to learn? I don't think I'll ever not be over excited. Honestly, that's just my my natural state. But no, I think that that's super valid. I am happy, honestly, that I didn't get a diagnosis earlier. I think that where early intervention and special education and resources and advocacy were back in 95 when I was born or, you know, early 2000s when I was going through the public school system. I think that this maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is like me being I'm over speculating. But I think it would have been extremely detrimental to me to have been identified then and get those services because I feel like part of my job as an SLP is advocating that, you know, there's so much more that kids can do and people can do like we should always be assuming the highest cognitive level. And if that's not met or not clear that they're meeting it, take a tiny step down and just work through it because we just we think, oh, let's start at the basics. Let's start at the bottom and work our way up and teach them things. And it's like, no, you're, you know, you're risking the loss of those connections in the brain that are forming naturally. And that could be challenged. And so I think that it's great that I wasn't identified for that reason. I think that there are a lot of things in my life that didn't need to be so difficult. Honestly, I think that if I had more support in that sense, I might have made some things difficult for myself either way. Like I think I agree with you. Like whether an early diagnosis happens or not, it's very dependent on the country that you're in or the the low the local kind of like the ideas around it. Yeah, like what is the like social kind of like status quo of like, how do we treat this? How do we perceive it? Like what do we do about it? Yeah, like that attitude is not obviously the same like that very so much. I think there's there's a lot of differences in funding. And I've talked to people who are happy that they're like they were diagnosed late and then I've talked to people who are not. I think it's very dependent on the person, isn't it? Some people gain a lot from being diagnosed daily because they, you know, especially the ones who are a bit more sort of reclusive and don't particularly communicate a lot and particularly emotional, you know, I think sometimes that sort of work prior to teenagers can help deal with teenagers. If that makes sense. Yeah, being a teenager is the worst. It's all the worst. That's one thing that everybody can integrate with. Oh, for sure. And the other thing is like being 25 is honestly like kind of an early diagnosis for a woman. Like I am in a lot of groups on Facebook and I'm seeing, you know, 45, 50 year old, 60 year old adults of all kind of genders and gender expression. Just wow, I just got this today or yesterday and oh my god, like this makes so much sense. And you know, when I reach out in those groups and talk about my story, they're like, oh my god, I'm so happy for you. It's so early. I like so, you know, I am really lucky. Like, yeah, I didn't get that diagnosis at two, three, seven, eight, 10, whatever. But it's really early in the sense of my adult life. And I think that a lot of being queer, so part of something that I've heard that really resonated me in the past about growing up being queer. And I think very well applies to being on the spectrum is that you grow up with all these protective mechanisms, right? All this masking, all this internal stuff. And you develop personality traits and preferences and things that don't necessarily reflect how you would have developed those on your own. And they reflect a lot of your environment and your protective mechanisms. And not to say that we're not authentic people, but, you know, there are aspects that we are very in tune to for our own protection and preservation and coming out and realizing that I was gay and realizing that I was on the spectrum. Like, both processes gave me that opportunity to strip those. And even though I'm 25, I still feel like I have my whole adult life to redevelop who I am as an adult and who I want to be as like a queer autistic person rather than like who I thought I was developing to be as just like an internally chaotic human, I don't know. Yeah, I do definitely think that sort of reading about autism and people's experiences and then reflecting on your own experiences in life and your own thoughts and behaviors is a very kind of it's a very good way to work towards a place that you want to be like a personal development. I think that and being able to sort of take a step back and not compare yourself to neurotypical people is also quite a good thing. Because, you know, you can put a lot of pressure on yourself to be able to manage your executive functioning and all the socializing and all that kind of stuff and it can all get too much sometimes. So having that sort of idea of where you need to be that's more realistic is I think is a good thing. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, why did you get into your profession? Because you said that you were sort of diagnosed, you know, a few months ago. So what was your initial want to be a speech and language pathologist? I originally in high school really wanted to major in linguistics and Spanish. I was in AP Spanish. I was really good at it. I loved languages, linguistics, all of that. So I wanted to get fluent and a handful of languages. I was really interested in learning Arabic Spanish and then, you know, maybe some other stuff and right before must have been towards the end of my senior year in high school, I was in a class and we had to do a project where you research three careers similar to what you think you want to do. And that's when I found out about speech pathology because I had no idea it existed. Honestly, like, you know, kind of of those speech therapists in the schools, like my brother had some speech therapy when we were little, like, to fix this. Or is like, you know, you kind of know what that is. But that's like the tiniest piece of speech pathology as a whole profession. And I just had no idea what it was. So I did that project and I just fell in love with it. I was like, this is everything I want. It has psychology. It has health care. It has linguistics. It has language. It has critical thinking. You know, everything was there for me. So I ran with it. Yeah, it was great. And I was luckily able the college I wanted to go to had communication disorders, which is the typical major you do for undergrad. And then they also had, well, they didn't technically have a linguistics program. I had to do a contract major where I laid out like, these are the courses I'm going to take. This is why I want it. This is why I need it, blah, blah, blah. And then they approved it. So it all just worked out. I was able to start my major courses for linguistics my very first semester as a freshman and it helped me get enough credits to do the double major. And then I still graduated early because I did a bunch of summer classes and I took like five to six courses every semester. So I just like got it done as soon as possible. But yeah, that's what brought me to it. Just, A, talking all the time, B, helping people, you know, working with kids, having that flexibility. All my professors in undergrad, when they would introduce themselves, they would give, you know, the succession of where they went to grad school, where they went to undergrad, where they worked, blah, blah, blah, blah. And most of them had a different job like every year or every few years and they could move all over the country and our license is reciprocated in just about every country that speaks English. So like there's just so much that can be done. And I like to do a different thing every day. I like to change things up and I like to have that flexibility. And I knew that financially it would be solid for the mountains of student debt that I'm in and that there's, you know, a hundred percent employment rate. There's always going to be humans that need help and kids that need help. And, you know, that is a great thing about our job. Sounds like a good life path to go down. I definitely am empathise with like wanting to add a bit of variety to your day, day to day. I guess we both go against that stigma of sort of wanting the same routine every day, you know, that kind of stigma. I want my routine to be every day with like variation in it. It's funny, like I like so much routine in that, OK, I'm going to get up and I'm going to have my coffee and my apartment is clean and this is what I do and whatever, but also I'm like, OK, for work or for what whatever I'm doing to entertain myself, if I do the same thing every day, I will go insane. Yeah, I agree. It's like it's it's a combination of giving yourself time like a specific chunk of time for like relaxing and you can do anything you want in that. Right. It's like I know this part of my routine so I can let my brain relax because I know there's nothing I'm forgetting. This is routine. This is what I'm doing. This is my time. And then I have that chunk of the day where I'm, you know, regulated and ready and excited for unpredictability and flexible. Like I'm in that zone where I've taken care of myself and I'm like, cool. It's almost like I, you know, shut my mask down and I'm like, cool, ready to go. I'm going to just go do all the things I need because I already took care of myself. Yeah, I get that. So could you talk a little bit about the history of speech and language pathology and like how it ties in with autism? Yes. So I had some thoughts about, you know, going back through some of my textbooks and the research stuff that I have in my notes and getting some like facts, facts about it, but I decided that that was going to be annoying and I don't want to do that. So a little more like anecdotally anecdotally from just like my experience in education. Yeah, that's that's fun. Yeah, autism for speech pathology, the bulk of the research has always been done on young boys. And that's, you know, that's like a pretty common, well-known thing in the autism community and outside of the autism community is that, you know, this is something that affects boys. Realistically, historically, most of the research is done on boys and that excludes other people obviously from the criteria. But the idea is that, you know, at two years old, there's this big regression in skills and, you know, misdevelopmental milestones and no social interaction and extreme sensory responses, those types of things. And so speech for a long time focused on, you know, really just assimilation into neurotypical functioning or like, hey, let's put you off to this box on the side and you're going to be in this self-contained classroom forever and be on these services forever. And just like this dichotomy of like, are you autistic or can we make you normal? And maybe that's just my own perception mixed in with my own, like, you know, emotion, but that's the gist that I see. Obviously, speech pathology has been really, really instrumental in early intervention and the advancement of early intervention and research with autism, like I don't mean to discredit that by any means, because especially, especially as time goes on, there's so much more being done by neurodiverse professionals. I'm in a lot of groups on Facebook of autistic SLPs and a lot of other neurodiverse rehab professionals, I guess, like speech paths, OTs, PTs and a lot of like educational people. So would you say that a lot of the work of a speech and language pathologist would be centred either around helping them to communicate using language? Yeah, definitely. Would it also include sort of the aspects of socializing as well? Oh, definitely. So when we in grad school, they really stress like the social communication, the pragmatics, you know, the eye contact, the learning to initiate greetings, hi, bye, that type of stuff, the social piece as well as the language piece. And it's obviously hard to separate them completely, but there is obviously a difference of doing language therapy with an autistic child, like we're going to teach them, let's say we're working on auxiliary B. So I am running, I am jumping and, you know, we're working on activities to teach them that form of syntax. We can do that versus social pragmatic, like, hey, let's talk about, are there any issues at school with friends? Like, should we talk about them? Maybe it's because of X, Y and Z. Maybe we could try this skill. Maybe we could do this. Like, there's that piece, there's teaching kids about, you know, social skills within a classroom, because in early intervention, we're usually that first place they're going that's school like setting or adult led really outside of the home. So we do a lot of teaching on like basic social, like how to raise your hand, how to all of that. What's appropriate, what's not in not necessarily like a neurotypical, neurodiverse, neurodiverse dichotomy, but just like a, this is what we do when we're not home. Like, you can't do that sometimes. Cause like all kids need that. But yeah, language and communication is a huge piece. Augmentative and alternative communication is one of my most favorite, favorite pieces that we do. AAC is like the abbreviation. So whether that's high tech, low tech, no tech. So pointing to words, like I want blank or like at snack time, if we have a map at snack time at school and we have, you know, it written out on laminated pages and then we have belt pro like snack pictures for each snack for the day. Yeah, kind of like PECS. There's a lot of pushback about PECS because it can be very robotic ABA like and how I feel about that is it's all about how you use it. I've never gotten any formal training in PECS itself because I don't really want to follow those protocols to the T. I'm not doing research at the moment. I'm not like, I don't have a need for huge strict protocols. I like to learn about those protocols, learn about them for my colleagues who go to the trainings and then I implement the pieces that I find appropriate for the children I'm working with or for the context. So it's kind of more, more of a holistic. Yes, I like total communication, which is gestures, pointing, body language, facial expressions, sounds, verbalizations, vocalizations, like full words, part words, whatever it takes to get it across like that is what I teach. And that is how I do therapy as a whole, for sure. Well, that sounds that sounds great. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird that I don't know. I've kind of found myself in a weird spot. The more I dive into these autism communities with other adults who, you know, experience those therapies as children and adolescents, and it puts me in a spot where I'm really, really critical of the treatments and the therapies and the everything that I was taught about and have seen because they never came to me from a neurodiverse perspective. I completely understand that. It's strange because, you know, a lot of a lot of schools that I have to go and work in, they use a lot of those sort of ABA practices and previous podcasts that I had with Michelle Rogers. We were talking about it and, you know, we were chatting about sort of the difficulties around, you know, there's adults that have told the world about how horrible it was, these kind of specific ways of teaching autistic people. And it kind of hits home quite a lot because you sort of read about it and you're like, oh, geez, like, that sounds awful. Yeah, and I'm like, I don't want to be a bad guy. Like, I don't want to be that other side of the educational professionals who are like, yeah, ABA 40 hours a week, woohoo, and like, you know, let's do all these therapies and do all this stuff. And I find myself feeling in between because I'm like, I don't want to bash a ton of people, but I also want those professionals to learn better. And I also don't want, you know, other people in the community, like autistic community to feel apprehensive towards, you know, me or other speech therapists, because that, you know, like, there's such a variety. And at the end of the day, each human is their own human. So you just got to figure it out for yourself about certain people and providers. But yeah, I feel the very much the need to make it clear that I don't do things that way. Yeah, I think what what we were saying in the previous one was, there's a lot of utility in sort of picking and choosing what works. And so as you said, you know, you listen to people who've talked about specific courses and stuff, and you pick out the good bits and the bits that work for the children that you're working with, but not necessarily like following it as it is on paper, if that makes sense, you know, you see it, you see it on paper and it sounds quite rigid. And it sounds like you have to, as you said, kind of like robotic and stuff like that. And I think a lot of the difficulties come in with is like the practitioners, you know, like if you've got a horrible practitioner that traumatizes the child, then it's awful. Right. If you have, you know, a practitioner who doesn't necessarily follow it directly to the book and they incorporate different ideas and teaching styles and deliver it in a way that the child is happy and, you know, they're happy with it and they're not like crying and stuff when they have to go to these sessions. Then in my mind, I can't really think of why that would be bad, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like just about anything is fine if you approach it with, you know, with reason and with your own education around it and your own, what's the word, like, you know, rechecking in to analyze like, how's this going? What's happening? Do I need to adjust? Yeah. I think that that's that's quite an important aspect of being kind of, because it's difficult, isn't it? Because I don't want, I don't want to like talk about it and put these podcasts up and people just instantly hear me say stuff about something that they hate and just be like, no, get out of my house. I'm out of here. I hate you. You're not an autism advocate. Right. But then again, I'm also a rational human human being and I'm trying to find some kind of middle ground between what seems to work via research and what autistic people are saying about things. It's kind of like, you've kind of found yourself in a bit of a sticky situation. One way. Exactly. Everyone hates you. Stuck in the middle. The other way. You're neglecting science, if that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. Like it's such like a strange thing and like, because I try to follow a lot of different accounts on Instagram that I don't necessarily agree with. Like I want all the different perspectives, right? Like, how are we supposed to know what we're, you know, advocating for and working with and working near if we don't know what the quote unquote other side is saying and doing. So I think that that internal gut reaction to see something like, oh, no, I'm out of here. I hate you. Like, I'm not going to lie. I have that all the time. Like I see the Instagram page talking about neurodiversity or autism and I like click on it and their bios, like all this person first language and blah, blah, blah. And there's puzzle pieces everywhere. And I'm just like, ooh, I don't feel great about this. And yeah, I think that I've been trying to do my best within the autism world, especially to not have those internal gut reactions. Like, no, because like, I don't know, I probably gave people that reaction a while ago. Like, you know, we're all growing and learning. Like I found this really cool Instagram page right when I made mine public and started all this and they were starting a page. They're a mother of an autistic child and they're starting this page. It was really cool. And I like clicked on it, followed them and I saw that their picture had a puzzle piece in it, like their logo. And I was like, OK, this is amazing. So happy for you. Like you're advocating for your daughter. I just want to let you know that some people in the autistic community, like they're going to see that puzzle piece and they're immediately going to be deterred because of autism speaks. And a lot of people have really strong opinions about that organization and how they view autism and how they treat autistic people. And I don't want you as you're getting started to lose that opportunity to have those people follow you. I just want to let you know, like I'm not offended. I'm not mad. I'm happy to, you know, answer any more questions you have. I just wanted to give you a heads up because so many people stick to this puzzle piece idea. And it like I understand where it comes from. I didn't even realize the depth of autism speaks and things until a few months ago. Like it's it's a strange thing. I actually made a bit of a boo boo when I was starting to wear YouTube videos out. And I put a YouTube video out about autism speaks. So it's like, oh, they've got the lighting up blue things like this is going to be where I'm going to talk about autism. And then I received messages and I was like, oh, God, people hate this thing. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to take this down. Yeah. And that's like, that's the thing you live, you learn like, yeah, whatever. How are we supposed to know? Like, especially as autistic people, like when I it took me a while to get involved in the autism community online because I was just so like, I can't tell anyone about this. I'm going to hide in my apartment. I'm sick. I'm just going to sit here. Like, I don't know. And then good old Tik Tok, the algorithm just found out I was autistic, apparently, and sent me. I don't know how to say her last name, but Paige, like Lee or Leigh or something. I don't remember. But she is this younger girl, like Gen Z. And she is an autism advocate, like all over social media. And she popped up in my Tik Tok. She was like the very first time I ever heard the phrase actually autistic. Like, I truly was not aware of any of this. This must have been like February, no March, it must have been like April or May when I found her. And it just blew my mind. This is like a thing. Oh my God. And so she was really the first time that I got any inclination about autism speaks and just like the actually autistic community. And I just dove into it. So, yeah, like we all just like don't know things because like, how are we supposed to know? I didn't even know it was autistic. I'm supposed to know that autism speaks as garbage. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I think that's it's quite a big barrier for people because we view social media in such a such a snapshot. You know, it's not like an article on something. It's like a few lines and explanations of things in a very short form. And, you know, people who are wanting to get into sort of advocacy are very deterred by doing it because if they, you know, they'll do something wrong. They'll like one of my friends, my friends, the chronic couple, they started and they use like person first language and they got so much horrible message, so many horrible messages just for doing that. And I think that sometimes we can get very worked, worked up and reactive to certain things and words without really appreciating the message behind it or the reasoning behind it. And I think your idea of sort of following people that you don't necessarily agree with is a great way to number one, if you don't agree with them, then you have things to cite and you can have your own reasoning so it broadens your ability to understand something and sort of arguments are against it. Or number two, they may say some things that you agree with. Yeah, like build open mind and share. Yeah, open mind is willing to listen. Yes, yes, willingness to listen and to accept some other perspectives, because I think especially for autistic people, we all get so caught up in our own bubble and our own reality and our own perception that it's like, wow, how dare you say something that insults me? Like you said that just to insult me and like, that's not true. You know, people do well if they can, not if they want to, like nobody wakes up and decides I'm going to go be a garbage human today. Like that's not happening. If someone's doing something, you know, offensive or wrong or whatever, like I, you know, I'm firmly of the belief that, OK, what skill are they lacking? What perception are they lacking? What experience didn't they have? Like what support do they need that can get them to a healthier perspective? Or you know what, maybe we just don't agree. Like that is also a reality. And for people like that cancel culture is exactly what you're talking about for Instagram accounts, like the chronic couple who start and have this amazing, you know, decision to be advocates and to spread all this and then getting like, oh, how dare you say that, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, yeah, that's not helpful. Like the same people that are offended are the same people that are going to be benefiting from that advocacy and not to say bad on those people who reacted to them because that's fair, like their reactions are fair. That's their internal, you know, response. But I think as a whole society needs to give each other a break a little bit, like we're all just trying to survive, you know. Yeah, I can agree more. I think over these sort of coming weeks, I've been trying to sort of get people on to sort of give we tend to have a lot of different groups of people, like we've got autistic only groups, then we've got quite, quite strangely partners of autistic people groups. We've got parent groups and like the hate that flows between these groups is equally bad on both sides. Yeah, and also it's like if somebody personally wants to identify using person first language, like that's their prerogative. Like who am I to tell you how to, you know, visualize yourself and identify yourself? Like that is nothing to do with me. We do have a lot of differences, you know, from the episodes. We have loads of I always ask at the end, you know, what does awesome mean to you? And there's so many different ways of verbalizing what it means. And for some people, it's a challenge that they've overcome and your deficits that have caused them problems, but they've worked on it. And for other people, it's quite integral to their personality. This is a very nice concept. I'm enjoying this conversation. But let's maybe we got to turn it back. Yeah, let's turn it back. Let's turn it back to the speech and language. Yes, yes, yes. I will definitely leave this in because some you got to talk about this stuff, you know, right, right. So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors, Timo. If you love visual support in your scheduling, Timo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism, and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work. Users say that Timo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.timoapp.com or just type in T-dub-li-mo into your search bar. Thanks so much to my Patreon supporters, Patrick Vedy, Malmakati, and Julian Marks, of course. All of this support means so much to a little podcasting dreamer like myself. Anyway, let's get back into the show. So could you tell us some stories of, you know, how speech and language pathology has helped autistic people or children? Yeah, I think to keep myself from rambling too much, I've got a couple like small examples of just like things that have happened in my jobs. I was in an IEP meeting. So I don't know if you know what that is, but individualized education plan just like the public service or public school plan. Yeah. And so I was in a meeting with the preschool teacher and the parents and we were talking about this child and they were really trying to find some help and support with taking showers and bathing because their child just could not or would not, I guess. I don't know. The bath time was impossible. And so I was just kind of sitting there quietly because that teacher that I was working with in that specific meeting didn't really, we didn't have a great working relationship. They didn't really believe that I understood anything because they were like twice my age and it was this whole thing. But anyway, the parents, oh yeah, definitely. The parents were just really, really frustrated. And so I finally spoke up and I was like, well, when I am even still now, you know, when I was a kid, I had a really hard time getting in and out of the shower as well. And for me, it was a temperature thing. It was a sensory thing. So why don't you try, you know, warming up the water, making sure it's okay. And then while they're in the shower or bath, start the dryer with a couple towels and come to them with those freshly warmed towels and hopefully that will help. And so they were like, wow, we never thought about that like that's so helpful. Thank you. I think that I have helped a lot of families in those types of situations. So it's very specific individualized home problems or school problems because I have that internal problem solving and a lot of those same processes, like my sensory stuff is off the charts. And so my immediate thought was, well, obviously it's freezing. I don't want to get in the water either. Like it's just it helps kids in the, I think I personally can provide a lot of the more anecdotal like home advice to some of those families rather than just that professional perspective of this is what the research says. This is what I suggest and follow X, Y and Z because like that's not reality. No, I completely agree with you with that. Like I was going in with my mom who sort of works in the special needs. She sort of does outreach and stuff and they were having this particular difficulty with this kid. And they basically have like a lunchtime place that he can go to. And there was some kids who either had like having like a really bad day or are not feeling very great. So they were invited to go into there as well. And he was very reluctant to that. And they thought it was because he wasn't given notice or we didn't explain to him that what exactly everybody was coming in for. So they were kind of looking it through the autism research lens when in reality, the problem was he felt like they didn't take him seriously like they didn't think that his problems or the difficulties that he was having meant very much because everybody can go there. And they didn't see that, you know, that's quite a big thing to be able to approach it with that sort of neurodiverse mindset, because you can sort of get into the hands a little bit more. Yeah. And I think so one of the things that I my biggest thing and I really want to get a tattoo of this is the word why? Like, why is the child doing that? Why are other people reacting that way? Why might they feel that because so often as adults, we assume things and we like project things onto children like, Oh, you look like you're frustrated or Oh, you look like you're sad or Oh, you're just sad because, you know, we didn't warn you or whatever the situation is. And sometimes that's helpful, right? We're modeling that language. Oh, you're frustrated. You look really frustrated, you know, teaching that. But I think that it's kind of overused in that sense. And there are so many times in my life, in my childhood, I have these vivid memories of looking up at adults saying something and then just laughing at me and walking away. And I'm like, No, like I was serious, like, especially children with autism, I think that that's really common because they tend to sometimes be like that old soul, especially as young children and get along really well with adults more so as their own peers. And having that instinct to be like, OK, why are you knocking your friends toys down? Or why are you really needing space? Like, why did you do it the way that I like, why did I explain this game one way, but you're doing it a completely different way? Like, why are you doing it that way? Instead of, Hey, this is what I said, because at the end of the day, there's probably a reason. Yeah. So yeah, I think, yeah, like, I mean, to be honest, I got to be honest, like, I am guilty of sort of not doing that sometimes. I mean, me too, everyone is, right? Yeah, sometimes, you know, like the stress of the day and the stress of teaching sort of gets on you and you're like, could you please just not do that? I'll do this and please, like, come on, just do it. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes they kind of not in the right frame of mind, either they're distracted or they don't want to talk or they want to do something. So sometimes it's hard to sort of to do that, I guess, especially like in the working day, when you've when you've got things to to do, you've got to go to break time this time and then do this at this time and all while managing your own sensory stuff and your own internal states and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of it's hard to to to get into that mode and have a conversation with the kids and sort of ask them why they're doing this. And but I totally agree, like there is a lot of utility in asking, especially in autistic kids, they usually have a lot more insight and awareness than then they would appear to. It's just not communicated that way at that age. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. Well, let's let's talk about you. What accommodations have you been given by your employers? Like is is autism or autistic people welcome in your line of work? Oh, I don't know. Oh, boy. So that doesn't sound very positive. It's not, honestly. Like I said, I got what I thought was a dream job at a pediatric hospital in this past fall in November. I started and I left that job because of my health, but also because I felt extremely discriminated against. So I shared a handful of things with some of my colleagues, like we would be talking about shared patients, one of the O.T. Occupational therapists and I and she had this kid who is extremely had a lot of sensory stuff and she just was kind of looking for some insight and I had the same child that we were doing a C with and I had really productive sessions with them, but they were really having a hard time in occupational therapy. So we're like, OK, let's talk about it. And, you know, I said a handful of things like, oh, well, I know personally from my sensory stuff that X, Y, and Z. And I just she completely dismissed all of it. Like the whole conversation, it was like she wasn't even listening. And I was like, first of all, why did you ask for my professional opinion if you didn't want it? And second of all, why are we having this conversation if you're not listening? Like, come on. And so that was like a frustrating thing. But then I had some other issues where I so it was all professional dress code and I have a really hard time with clothing. And so there was one Saturday like nobody was in the clinic on Saturdays. There was one Saturday that I wore my really nice leggings with a long shirt that went well past my butt. Nice boots, nice. Like I looked presentable, you know, like I got ready for work, but I happened to be wearing a pair of leggings under a shirt. And nobody was in the clinic. Like barely anyone works on Saturdays. And then I go into work a few days later and my boss like shuts the door in one of the clinic rooms and is like, I need to talk to you about the dress code. And I was like, what? I see people walking around in sweaters and leggings every single day. How on earth is this an issue? I said to him, I was like, well, I have a lot of sensory stuff. Like I'm crawling on the floor 10 hours a day with, you know, a lot of my patients were 18 months old, two years old, three years old. Like I'm crawling on the floor all day long. Like what do you want me to wear? I look perfectly professional. And I was like, well, with my sensory stuff, like I just I really needed to wear leggings that day. They were professional leggings. Like I thought it was OK. And I of course didn't say, well, they do it because like that's not productive or mature. But he was like, well, you know, follow the dress code. And that was kind of the end of it. That same boss one day at work, I was sitting in the therapy room, sitting at the little kid table because all of our furniture is kid furniture. And time chairs. Right. And like I'm only five feet tall, like I'm not a large human. So I kind of like the kid furniture because a lot of adult chairs, my feet don't touch the ground. So I'm just like, I do not empathize with that at all. Like the chairs. And if I score, my knees are literally up to my chin. Oh God, yeah. Different ends of that spectrum. So I'm just like sitting in this little baby chair. I've got my knees up and I'm just like sitting in a ball playing my dots game on my phone. Like, you know, you make squares. The dots go away. Just like a very like I'm grounding myself. I've got 15 minutes before my next patient. Like I am allowed to do this. Like it's not like I'm doing anything wrong. And my boss walks by the door. It's like a glass window and stuff. So he walks by and then he walks backwards back. And it's clear he did like this double take and he goes to the doorway and he's like, you look like you're stimming. And he walks away. And I mean, I wasn't I wasn't diagnosed yet at the time. But I knew that I was like I had in my head, like, like I was just so enraged. And I was like, how of course I had to go on with the rest of my day. But like, you know, he's a speech pathologist and he like that's supposed to be a teaching hospital. He's supposed to be educating me and mentoring me and, you know, all these other people. And we're not right. No, and I'm like, no, that's not like, in any way, OK. No, and I'm like, even if I wasn't autistic, like that's fucked up. And how are we supposed to be treating people and advocating for these people? If this is how my co-workers are treating me and I'm not even openly autistic. And I'm masking everything like, that's not cool. And so when I started to get really sick at the end of February, I had to take a couple of days off work. And so then I was trying to come back to work and, you know, it was all over the place. They're like, well, we need this now and we can do this and you have to come back next week. And I was like, well, I can't. And they're like, well, you have to. So I was like, OK, fine, I'll come back next week. And they're like, well, actually, I don't know, maybe, I don't know. And so basically they didn't believe I was sick. And it was very clear I wasn't welcome there. And I didn't want to be in that environment. So I had to leave. Sounds awful. It was awful. And I was an hourly employee. So I did not qualify for any benefits. I've not been able to qualify for unemployment or anything. I've just been kind of stuck. And yeah, it's really frustrating when they are advertised as like these experts. And yeah, it's not fun. One thing I found is that people who work in those areas, whether it's like with mental health or with autism, a lot of them can have kind of a little bit of a superiority complex from the research. There's like, if you say something about autism that they don't agree with, then, you know, they'll just palm you off or just, you know, just ignore what you're saying, which is silly, because if you are autistic, then you have that more close connection with it. Yeah, you have an idea of the type of things that autistic people do and the type of things that autistic people feel. It's just like not listening to people of color or black people about their own experiences. Like it is the same thing, whether it's, you know, yeah. But to speak on their behalf, as angry as their actions still make me when I think about them, like that is that superiority complex, like that is super real. And some of that has to do with the way research about autism has been presented in our education and in our field. Like I was terrified of autism when I was still going through my early education. Like I was told all these things like they're so unpredictable and they're going to hurt themselves and they're going to hurt you and they're going to kick everything and they're going to scream and nothing is going to work. And it's all going to be, you know, like just like this horrible image of it. And that's that superiority complex, that lack of awareness, like that starts without proper education and that's continued obviously by a lot of other things. Like they should be looking into that. But, you know, that's not just on them. That's on our whole system of how we educate people and how we treat autistic people as a whole. Yeah. Every autism related service or, you know, teaching or teaching autistic people and all that kind of stuff. I think always autistic experience and autistic adults talking about it is a very good way to sort of educate yourself and sort of think about think outside the box to, you know, what may be going on rather than what the research says going on and what you should do from that. Yeah. I find the best teachers, the most lovely teachers and the most effective teachers always take little bits from everything. They always are willing to learn and not be so kind of what's the word? Draconic? Like rigid? Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Another autism to try. But we can talk about that a little bit more. Yeah. I think that it's good to have. Yeah, it's a good thing to have a little bit of everything be open. Like, you know, nothing is black and white. Nothing is truly binary. And I think that our world wants everything to be that so desperately that that's where we're all raised to like think like, let's put everything in this or that category. And I think or I hope that, you know, the current ideas in education that I'm seeing, like with my eight year old niece, like the way her education is going. And, you know, with everything starting to change, like I hope that those binary, like good, bad, autistic, not, you know, neurotypical, neurodivergent, like those big dichotomies will maybe start to soften. But who knows what humans will do. Who knows, indeed. Like, we've covered a lot of the questions that I wanted to ask you. One thing that, you know, I try to get from each podcast is, I mean, obviously the entirety of it is good and it's educational and anecdotal and all that. But if you were to give advice to autistic parents, something that could help them sort of get in the minds of their kid and sort of adjust their ways of parenting, what would you say to them? Yeah, this is a good question. I had some very in-depth discussions with my own parents this morning actually about autism. I think that parents of autistic children or parents of neurodiverse children, the three things that I think they should really remember is A, none of this is your fault. So get that out of your head and do your best to start every day by, hey, this is happening, this is real, this is great, I'm doing great, but I didn't cause any of this. Like, get that out of there because all you can do for your child is be support and be helpful and, you know, you didn't cause anything but you are here to help them. So focus on that. Not your fault, number one. Number two, why? Ask why, guess why. Think about why, observe why, give yourself a few second boundary before you verbally like correct something or ask a question or direct to tell them to do X, Y, and Z. Like, think about why they're doing it. You know, I like to think of neurotypical versus neurodiverse brains as one's an Xbox and one's a PlayStation, all doing the same thing. We do it different ways. Yeah, I got it from a TED talk of an autistic guy who, and he said that and I was just like, oh my God, yes. So yeah, think about it that way. Observe your kids, ask them why, theorize about why, you know, just figure it out. There's never one right way to do anything. Yeah, every child's different, brilliant. Thank you very much for those. So I was gonna ask you sort of the three main things that you want people to take away. Would you say that those were the things that you wanted people to take away or? Yeah, I think that that can apply really all across the board. Autism's cool. I think it's super cool. The more I learn about it, it's super cool. And, you know, if you have someone in your life who has autism or who is gay or who has dyslexia or whatever it is, like, yes, ask them about it and hear their perspective, but the most meaningful thing for me has been when people do their own research and, you know, yes, they follow my posts and ask me questions, but they follow other accounts and they read the articles that I share and they comment on them to me like, hey, I really liked this about this and like that piece is the most meaningful and, you know, it's not our burden to educate the world. Like, yeah, we can do it and we can be really great at it, but that is still a burden. So doing that for the people in your life can go a really long way. And so I think it's also, it's a good twin to highlight, you know, I know it wasn't particularly the main focus of the podcast, but, you know, being able to be critically, critically analyze stuff and read around things and read the country of what you believe is a massive way to improve on yourself. You know, as you said, being in those communities and listening and learning about autism is great, but with anything, like even with this podcast, even with the social media, you've always got to think about it. You've always got to read around it and get different people's opinions and make your, form your own opinion on it. Yeah. That's something that we're, you know, all of this great change that's happening as a society, people becoming, accepting is great, but something that's kind of tailed along with it is wanting to, you know, kind of have blinkers on your eyes, you know, like tunnel vision, you know, being able to expand on topics and just following one particular person. Right. And like being so reactive to anything opposing, I think that that's what sets us up for that reactiveness and that like defensiveness and, you know, arguing is we're so, we get that hyper focus tunnel vision on some things. And then it's like, you know, how dare you go against that? And it's, you know, that's a really hard internal reaction to shake, but I think it's good to get ahead of that. Like you said, we can't just look at one perspective. That's some, that's a good message takeaway. So don't listen to anything that we've said. Don't listen to anything. Don't listen to other people. Even the advice about listening to other people, don't listen to that, you know, make your own mind up a lot. Exactly. You can get, you can get in the right spiral if you tried to critically analyze that. Yeah. It's like the whole opposite day thing. Like, oh, is today opposite today? Opposite day. Or is it, am I saying it's opposite day because that's the opposite? Because it's not opposite in what's opposite. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. You've set me off on a laughing fit. Oh, good. Okay. Right. So we've got one final question that I try and ask every single person that comes on to the podcast, talk about autism. What does autism mean to you, Allison? I think that autism to me means validation. You know, it's, it's validation and it's acceptance and it's purpose. It's giving me a reason to not sulk around in my house feeling sick. And it's giving me a reason to use social media and communicate with people even when I don't feel like leaving my bed. And it's giving me a solid purpose for like where to direct my career. Like it's such a flexible path. And now I feel like I have some excitement and some direction. And so autism has been kind of like a, I hate this word, but kind of like a savior to me in that like, I'm not crazy. Like I have things that are good and things that are helpful and productive and that what I'm experiencing is perfectly normal. Thank you very much for that. I know it's always an open question. So it's very fun to, so some people really struggle with this and not just autistic people like. Yeah, like all people. Yeah, that's a very broad question. It is, but I like to joke that I like talking so much that I went out and got multiple degrees in talking. So it's like not, not true. Yeah. And you do sport, which is again, not an autism stereotype. Right. Cool. Well, thank you so much for chatting to me. Would you like to give out some links to like your social medias or anything like that? The really the only link that I have right now is my Instagram at Alice in V, I, yeah, I think that's it. I share a lot of other accounts and a lot of things. So I would say if you're interested, go check out my page, look at some of my highlights and the other accounts because they're awesome and follow some hashtags, actually autistic, things like that. I've been using like for myself kind of the hashtag SLP and ASD, but yeah, give it a glance and follow some other accounts. Brilliant. And if you want to find the Fortiotti podcast anywhere else, it's available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts, all free and open for everybody. If you want to hear more of my kind of day-to-day, the things that I'm doing, the type of media things, bit about the documentary, bit about every aspect of my life, then you can find regular updates on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, all under at aspergiosgrowth. And if you've got any questions, if you wanna chime in, give some positive feedback, give some critique, then you can forward that to my email aspergiosgrowth at gmail.com. And of course, if you've got your own interesting stories, then you can also send me a message over there. For anybody who follows my YouTube channel, you may have noticed that I have not uploaded for at least two or three weeks. And that is mainly the product of going back to work. Like I really have not had enough time to do podcasting, to go to the gym, to go to work and to create YouTube videos. So from now on, I will be sort of putting them out when I've got the time and when I can get them out really. So if you're disappointed with that, then I apologize. Yes, I hate, I hate ending podcasts. That is one thing that I, or with all my mind, I've been trying to figure out how to end the podcast. Right, cause it's like, do you wanna be a cheesy TV show host with like a little catchphrase sign off? Or like, yeah, it's, I can imagine that being a difficult decision. Well, I had so much fun talking to you. This was super great. And I'm really excited to hear it. Awesome. See you later, folks. Hope you have a good day. Bye guys, have a good day. Thanks for listening. Peace out.