 All right, well, it's very, very exciting. It looks like some new folks joining us today. So let me just introduce myself. I'm Mel Hauser. You see the pronouns and I'm executive director here. It all brings belong from my welcome to brain club. So what I will be doing is sharing screen and we'll do our usual introduction to get everyone oriented to our ground rules of community agreement. So we will be discussing today, book chat on the book, Uniquely Human by Barry Presant. And don't worry if you haven't heard the book. That's the thing about book chats. Here it all brings belong. We don't expect anyone to read the book at the book. So we're gonna be joined by, joined asynchronously by a panel of community members, all sharing their perspectives on the book. We also have a video clip from Dr. Presant talking about the book. And then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. But first, community agreement. All forms of participation are okay here. So as many of you have already figured out, you can have your video on or off. And even if it's on, we do not expect anything of you. We certainly do not expect you to look at the camera. You can feel free to walk, move, stim, fidget, eat, sleep, come back, and everyone is welcome. And all communication is welcome. So you can, and all forms of communication are welcome. So you can unmute and use mouth words. You can type in the chat box. You can, you know, whatever, however you are comfortable communicating is all welcome here. And speaking of communication, I'll just say a word about language. You'll hear me tonight and maybe other people using identity-first language as we discuss autism. Because for me, autism is part of my identity. So I will say that I am an autistic person. And so if anyone else who uses whatever language you use to describe yourself and your, you know, whatever terms that are how you describe your own self, you are welcome to use those terms. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, it's really important to us that we respect and protect one another's access needs. So access needs being anything that anyone needs to fully and meaningfully participate. And I'll also say that today is for education purposes only, we will not be giving medical advice. And speaking of access needs, these are the additional considerations informed by our community advisory board to just acknowledge that we all have a broad range of communication access needs. We, many of us have the kinds of brains that don't feel the passing of time. And, you know, I think that noting that when we have access needs, the conflict, for example, I have a kind of brain that like will run on for like 20 minutes without taking a breath. And that may not be creating space for other people to dialogue. And so just normalizing that, naming that, that we're gonna, you know, as a facilitator that I'm gonna try to take lots of space to and pausing for processing so that everyone can participate who wants to be. Although, of course, no direct pressure to chime in, but we wanna be able to create space for people to join the conversation. Last bit of access. So if closed captioning is already enabled, you just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on what version of Zoom you have, either clicking the live transcript closed captioning button or if you don't see that, you can click the more dot, dot, dot and choose show subtitles. And then if you wanna turn them off, do the same thing and choose hide subtitles. Okay, all ready. So the book will be discussing tonight uniquely human, but Dr. Barry Persant was, you know, when it was first released, there's been a couple of versions that have come up now, but initially written and published in 2015, it was a paradigm shift. 2015 was a long time ago. And this book that has now, you know, by this point, this is, I think the best selling book about autism since it came out and, you know, the winner of a number of awards and is Lizzie pointed out today is also the highest best selling book on Amazon, you know, year after year after year. Anyway, relating to autism. And so like, when we think back to 2015, though it was, you know, a long time ago and yet not that long ago, it was ahead of its time as far as introducing a paradigm shift, talking about how, you know, autism is not a disorder. Autism is a different way of being wired. And this was one of the first books to advocate for shifting to a focus on strengths and building relationships, seeking to understand autistic behavior and not to control and try to extinguish it. And a large portion of the book was informed by interviews with autistic people, elevating the value of lived experience. And so, and it was also one of the first books written for a mainstream audience of parents and educators that used identity first language. And that was new. And so one of the things that comes up sometimes is that, you know, yeah, how has the dialogue evolved since 2015? Well, it's evolved significantly as the emergence of the neurodiversity movement. And, but this book really was ahead of its time. So as we, the first thing we'll do is watch a brief clip, interview with Dr. Prasant in 2023. It's talking about neurodiversity and many thanks to Dr. Alyssa Minkin, host of the Jewish Orthodox Women's Medical Association podcast for sharing this interview with us. All right, David, take it away. Hi, you need to turn off screen sharing. I can't do it while you're doing it. There you go. Sorry. That's okay. Here you go. All right. I had to slightly edit it down to size because they can't stream it right from YouTube. But so it'll just take me one second here. Hopefully it's in the right order. Here you go. I also want to talk more about neurodiversity because we mentioned it at the beginning and we didn't really explain. I think there's a neurodiversity lens as opposed to a pathology lens. And this is what I wish healthcare professionals, educators could get. Yes. Talk a little bit more about what I mean by that. Yeah, and I'm gonna quote the name of Mel's group that she's formed. It's called All Brains Belong. I love it. All Brains are awesome from here. That's right. And what a neurodiversity lens appreciates is that every person is wired differently. Every person therefore perceives the world differently, experiences emotions differently, experiences sensations differently, is good at some things, not so good at other things. So it's kind of anti pathologizing because we've looked at people good at some things and not so good at other things. And we've said that person is deficient or we label it a disorder. Now, I'm not talking about serious medical illnesses here. Okay. Or serious behavior problems, which we, yeah. Yeah, but even people who are, for example, highly anxious, okay? Or people who have bipolar and may have serious kind of problem behaviors because of that. There we're talking about, in some cases, medication may be helpful because the source is a neurochemical source or maybe a source of seizures, might be the source of behavior that's just harmful to self, harmful to others. What we're talking about is literally every person, you and I have kind of a profile of things we're very good at, things we're okay at, things we're lousy at, we'll never be good at, okay? And we need to make changes in work settings, in society to accommodate for people's differences so that everybody could have a good quality of life and be successful. So let me give an example of my wife. My wife does not, she's not on the spectrum, she does not have an identified, quote unquote, disability. Thanks, David. You're welcome. So just to catch up in the chat, so I just shared that, really an honor to teach your Dr. Bresson mentioned the work that we're doing here at Albury's Belong and thank you to everyone in the chat who shared the enthusiasm. So with that, oh, thank you, Mary. With that, I'm now going to transition right into our community panel, share screen. So Hannah Bloom, occupational therapist, works with children and adults, is also a member of our board of directors. Jen Bryant, a returning panelist, special educator here in Montpelier, and then I'm a panelist. I've never been a brain club panelist before. Sarah interviewed me, which was really fun to do. So this will run about 15 minutes and we'll have the chat rolling while we watch. And then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. All right, David, I'm gonna stop share, you can reshare and we'll get going. All right, so we're here today talking to Hannah about uniquely human by Dr. Bresson. Seems like trust is a big theme of this book and building trust with the kiddos that you interact with through your work as an occupational therapist. The core of occupational therapy is to be a part of a team that the individual creates with themselves in it that creates meaningful occupation and participation and quality of life, explores that as the, what does that look like for me as an individual as a unique human in this big world? Without trust as the base of that as a team member, my participation in that team, at best it's perfunctory and like whatever, just go away, you non-functional person on the team and at worst it's traumatic because as the OT there's a possibility that I would come in and give these like, do these things and without trust, there's just, there's no reason that my direction should be there. Like when I read this book, when Luna was about two and a half shortly after her autism diagnosis, I read this book and I was like, oh, that makes sense. And it really put me on a journey, like building on what I had learned from self-reg by Stuart Shanker about nervous system regulation and co-regulation. This was the next step, the cognitive piece of being a detective to wonder why. One of the questions that we're asking panelists is whether you see this come up in your practice in terms of developing and building trust as being essential. It seems to be a big theme of this book in terms of the children that you interact with on a daily basis. This is not a kid thing. This is an every human thing everyone needs to feel safe. Trust and safety come first for people of all ages. How do I heal safety? Which we talk a lot about, how do I invite another person into connection with me? How do I get myself invited into their connection because I have to work to get invited in? And then once that's happened, how do I show up in authenticity and in belief enough times that that nervous system now trusts my nervous system? As a teacher, are there ways that you work on building sort of a sphere of trust with the children that you work with? Yeah, it's gonna sound a little cheesy, but I think being uniquely human kind of does that. So I am my own self with each kid that I work with. And I listen to who each student is. I really, truly think that kids can feel when you authentically care about them and are happy to have meaningful conversations with them and listen to who they are and what they need and what they want to tell you. Yeah, another thing that seemed to come out of the book was the idea of sort of digging beneath behaviors, looking at behaviors. And this is where it sort of reminded me a little bit of Ross Green and collaborative proactive solutions. And the idea of like the behavior is just the signal, it's just the fever, like Dr. Green says, kind of digging beneath that and looking at what's going on underneath. Does that resonate with you? It definitely does. And I think I love Ross Green of looking at those lagging skills and I love looking at those skills where they're flourishing as well. And that book really did bring that up. So I think when we work to eliminate behaviors without understanding their purpose, behaviors that are signals that we need something and need that's not met. He really went into it in the book, talking about being a detective and how it was our job to do that. There was one story that I felt was so fitting because they do have students where I never can quite figure out what it is that is causing an issue. And it was a story about driving through a neighborhood and one of the buildings reminded him, the student of something else. And the parents were able to piece that together but so often when we have little pieces of who a student is, it's hard to piece those together for sure. Can you talk to me a little bit more about, you know, your beliefs around behaviors and how they present and what that means? Yeah, yeah, the information given to me by another nervous system is always, when I have access to it, which I do in work a lot, is met with curiosity. And it's very much met with like, okay, something is being communicated to me that I need to understand because I'm the adult, because I'm the professional, because I'm in the role of figuring this out, of being a part of this that is coming to it with genuine curiosity and presume competence and belief in meaningful occupation and belief in participation. So if I'm getting communication that something is not gelling within this other nervous system, that's the curiosity of like the task analysis, the little Rolodex in my head that I start to go through. What are some ways that you dig beneath behaviors when you're looking at somebody's behaviors, behaviors? So somebody does a thing and I automatically ask to myself first, I wonder why that's happening. And like as a parent, I learned that from this book. What are the factors in the environment? Or actually like, I think like, rewinding of like the algorithm of like what goes on up there is like I see behavior and I presume dysregulation. I just presume it. It's like that would not have happened if that person were regulated. So then I wonder why are they dysregulated? I wonder what are the factors of the environment? What are the cognitive aspects? What were the expectations? What are the access needs that are not met? Like the interpersonal access needs. And then I find a way to like, I hypothesis test about that. And then I like check whether I'm correct when the person's regulated. I might make some comment like, I noticed in the middle of the night that you flipped your lid. I wonder if it's because you were expecting Daddy to transport you to your room. And that didn't happen. And then my six year old might tell me, yes or no, whether I'm correct. But this is like a debrief. It's like the see behavior, wonder why hypothesis form test hypothesis. Like that's how my algorithm works. You know, I really like the double empathy piece that's come into conversation a lot lately too. Like, all right, we're all human. And this nervous system has had a day where they're taxed. And that's totally a part of the reality of walking this earth in community. And kind of breaking away from having that spotlight on one person that really diffused that light. And like, yeah, a lot of people are having hard days. And on we go, hold space for that, allow it to be there and accept it as a part of the communication of the day. You know, and then not to discount when those behaviors are things that are painful, self-injurious behaviors. Like when those behaviors become things that attention needs to be given to, then absolutely we dive deeper as a team and say, what's the function of this behavior? You know, why are we picking at our lips until they believe? Why are we picking at our cuticles till they believe? Why are we smashing our head with our fist in response to things like those behaviors and others? Absolutely. That becomes the part where there is a reason for the algorithm for the model where it says this thing needs to change. How do we change the environment to affect this behavior? How do we change the expectations to change this behavior? What are the things in this orbit that can help provide safety when this behavior is unsafe? So I would say that trust is an essential ingredient for safety and safety comes first, right? So like if you don't feel safe within the context of a relationship, nothing else happens. So safety, then engagement, then communication, then et cetera, et cetera. If you don't feel safe, nothing else happens. And so what I see in my practice, people of all ages don't feel safe. Luna would be just constantly flipping her lid and I read in Newtley Human this example of having a board that told the child in the book where their person was. So we developed a daddy board and we would write what room of the house daddy is in at all times. And just doing that to signal safety, that went such a hugely far away because at any given time, Luna could refer to the daddy board on the refrigerator and we just had an arrow of upstairs or downstairs. What floor of the house is daddy on? And that helped regulation tremendously. There was a portion of the book where they talked about classifying typical autistic behaviors as autistic behaviors. And he spoke to a group in the book if I'm remembering it correctly and asked what kind of behaviors are you talking about? And it was things like, well, flapping. And he was saying, well, when I get anxious, they tap my feet or talking to yourself. And it was another person who said, you know, I also talk to myself all the time when I'm thinking things through or when I'm cleaning and so many of the behaviors that we label as autistic behaviors really are just common human behaviors that we're all doing. And we do use them to regulate, but with this idea that we do that ourselves in private or that it's wrong and so we don't show those healings. And when we think of this as a way for students to regulate, we stop looking at things like bouncing on the rug during morning meeting or like not gazing into your eyes or looking at you. Those aren't necessarily signs that a student isn't engaged and isn't learning. Those are signs that a student is regulating their bodies so that they can be attending and so that they can be learning. And I think it's so important to remember that. I think that so much we get stuck in changing. And this, I mean, uniquely human was so wonderful about kind of affirming this and giving it language. We so much want to change the individual to fit in our perceptions of the world. And if we can look at the world as a wonderfully diverse and expansive place to them, community as that, then how do we create the environment that allow the individual to be uniquely who they are? And I want that for myself. And so why not give that as a base of it for everybody we interact with? The other part that I thought was really huge was just one line in the book that I thought really resonated in. It was talking about rather than autism spectrum disorder, that idea of neurotypical spectrum disorder where it's really easy to ask that perspective taking from autistic people of why people do things. So explaining, oh, he said that but he didn't really mean it. And when you look at it the other way, it's, but why would you say it if you didn't mean it? So that kind of perspective taking from both sides and looking at the idea that both neurotypical and neurodivergent people have different ways of expressing things and not all of the ways that neurotypical humans express things really make sense. It's a book that I've looked back on and reflected on in my own practice and in my own life and really taking a skill-based viewpoints and some of the things that came from it were huge and there were parts that I didn't love and it's a nice reminder that this was written quite a while ago and we've learned and as we get new information and learn more, we put that to use. We're so much further along now in our understanding of what is expected and what is appreciated within all of society that I think we're looking now at these uniquely human humans all around us. I heard this book, I bought a bunch of copies of it and gave it to everyone working with my child. I did that for years. You know, there's a lot about the intentionality of how I work and how I feel like OT has the capacity to work where it's, I find joy in the joy of whatever is happening in the moment. Like it can be and the range of things all hold the same amount of joy, vacuum cleaners to Pokemon cards, to fairy houses, to world politics. All of those things, the joy is actually in, for me, the joy is in finding the person who's finding joy in the activity or the topic or the action and that creates a connection. I'm so happy that you are happy about these things and I wanna know more about that happiness and that joy. All these years later, it's still just incredible to me how many professionals don't see the world this way and they don't have this paradigm. It's not the way they were trained and we wonder why there's chaos, right? Because safety comes first and the basic paradigm through which you see the world ultimately has a huge implication for the relationship. If you are seeing someone through a deficit-based lens, they feel it and they're not gonna feel safe with you. So that ending, right? That's building on the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the impact of stigma on autistic health. And Lizzie, can you throw the link to the recording to that in the chat? Because I think that the lens of uniquely human is the opposite of that, right? So when you view someone through a lens of pathology, how could that not impact your relationship? And how could that not group? And so I think that, thanks Lizzie, I think Amy. So I just wanna, there's been just a lot of conversation in the chat that I can catch us up but I first I just wanna open it up to what's standing out for anyone after either directly or indirectly related. Cause of course, everything's connected to everything. So whatever thoughts are coming to mind, they are welcome here. Kelly, go for it. Hey, sorry, I'm painting so that's why my camera was off. But working with other professionals that were trained a long time ago, I've talked about this before, leads to some frustrating moments. What would you recommend or what would anyone recommend as kind of a gateway piece of literature? Like I thought about using uniquely human. I also thought about using sincerely your artistic child. Do you have any recommendations for a gateway piece of literature that you think would introduce things in a way that would be less likely to make people defensive and more likely to make people listen? Yeah, so I think uniquely human is an example of, I think, something that professionals who are at least open to learning may be able to connect with. I also think that you could approach this, like zooming way out, not necessarily talking about autism specifically, is that I think many professionals accept the premise that we're always learning new information. So when we talk about the brain science of nervous system regulations, so a book like, and I made a reference to this in my comments, the book Self-Reg by Stuart Schenker about the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, pro-social triggers and regulating variables for an individual or beyond behaviors by Mona Della Hook. I think it's really about, like this is new. It's not new. It's always been like this since the dawn of time, but these are books that present brain science so that it's like, it's the oblique angle where you don't tell the people you're doing it wrong. You just, you learn to this new information that it's so exciting and it's new and we can apply it. So that, just reading Allie says frustration that the attempts at helping others who are different has led to the pathological lens that dehumanizes so many of us, so grateful that we have communities like ABB that are shifting the paradigm. Thank you. Steve says, one caveat, not all behaviors are autistic, neurodivergent children do simply misbehave and that's a wonderful thing, right? It's developmental. It is a, it's part of human growth and often the problem is that professionals cannot parse the difference. And Allie adds to that that when you label someone, it's so easy to view all their behaviors from the narrow lens of a problem. Yes. And it also becomes, you know, people talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, I think that it's energetic. If I enter a space and someone is judging me through a negative lens, I feel that and it's not only that I fulfill the prophecy, it's that I'm dysregulated by the prophecy. So like you think that about me, I feel it and it hurts me and I'm much more likely to be dysregulated. And again, we talk about this a lot at Brain Club is that when the, sorry, Kelly, I'll come to Jim Sinclair in just a minute. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm gonna, I'll pull up his famous piece that I can link in the chat. But we talk a lot about at Brain Club that we're talking about brain. I don't remember. It was, what was I saying? Anybody? Was that you've used someone dysregulated? Oh man. It's gonna be one of those things. What you were saying about, you know, you get dysregulated and it leads to fulfilling the prophecy even though you weren't there to begin with, but maybe you've gone on beyond that. You felt what they were feeling towards you. Yeah, that. I think that when that happens and we have these, oh, I remember, thank you, Mary. I got a June and Mary together. You like support. Thank you for supporting all that goes on up there or it doesn't go on up there. Is that we hold downstairs brain to the standards of upstairs brain where we are in, you know, meaning, so this is using Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Brayson's model where the cortex is upstairs brain, the limbic system is downstairs brain. The limbic system is involuntary, automatic reactions to what's happening in the environment. And so downstairs brain having a reaction to being interacted with through a deficit-based lens and what happens, behavior is ascribed to like, you know, a calculated decision of like, should I throw that toy? It's not like, oh, you know, what are the pros and cons of throwing that toy? You know, oh man, I'm not gonna get my sticker on my sticker chart if I throw that toy. I'm gonna do it anyway. That's not happening at all. People are under threat and limbic system is reacting. Christina says, I think sometimes even when we think about people in a growth lens, we have to be careful to not have the view that if only they could improve this thing, they would be better. It's often better to accept them where they are and support their own exploration, right? Yeah, I think that whenever we are sending the message implicitly or explicitly that there's something that is fundamental about a person that needs to be changed, there are many nervous systems who experience that as threat. Even if it's well intended of like, I wish you could dress yourself or I wish you could do the thing, like that is experienced by many nervous systems as a threat. And as Ali said, kicks pick up on that, this lack of hope for their future and it feeds that self-fulfilling prophecy, right? But we talk about so often presuming competence for all people at all times, for all ages. And that all too often is presuming competence, it's presuming good intent. It's like Dr. Ross Green says that kids do well if they can. I shared that line with Luna the other day for the first time and she's six and it meant something of like, yeah, when this thing happened your access needs were not met. And then later when we debrief things, it's like, let's think about what was upsetting about that and what could have made it better for you, Luna. Laura, I just called you Luna, that just happened. That was the biggest honor ever to be mistaken as Luna for a second. So now one of the things that I find when I'm talking to professionals who are new to this paradigm is that that's a great lens for the so-called high functioning autistic and they separate out this as though we're talking about something completely different when we're talking about people who have a higher level of disability. Do you have a response that you use when people like, I kind of just talk about, we're really talking about the same picture and dysregulation and that kind of thing but I'm wondering how you respond to things like that or if you see that. What we know now is that functioning labels are unhelpful and that for all of these nervous systems, there are fluctuating capacities depending on the demands from the environment and the demands on the cognitive load on that brain. I see something like that. I wonder if, because I know there's a lot of people who probably encounter this in various realms. What do we say when we hear a professional use an outdated paradigm that is not rooted in brain science related to functioning labels? Mel, I also hear it from a decent number of parents when I present research that say like, that's great but it doesn't apply to my child and they sort of give this alternate view that's totally unrelated. I don't know if you see that with any... Oh yeah, I mean, I actually also see it with, I mean, there's, there are people that, there are some people that as part of their self discovery of their own neurodivergence that sometimes there is like an elitism that people kind of ascribe to or incorporate. And it's like we talk about it brain club a lot is that you don't challenge brain rules. So if somebody, and what I mean by brain rules is it's something a brain made up. It's not like it's a law of physics. So if somebody, if there's, if someone has a narrative of like, this is what I have to tell myself to make my world make sense. And you're challenging that. That's not gonna get there. So that narrative needs to be amended by the person. And so it's about strewing the content and they will take of it what they will. For what I can say is that when people... I'll just give a personal example because again, I am agreeing with Annika saying, quote, high functioning is a trigger word for me because especially since I found the understand that that label was what led me to not receive support that I really needed as a child. That is absolutely so common. So anyway, when I'm in, I remember once attending there was a group where men, there were several autistic adults who were themselves using functioning labels. So I raised my hand and I said, the week I got my autism diagnosis, the week I got my autism diagnosis, I lost the motor planning skills to brush my teeth like mic drop, I'm a physician. So like that is, that's the story that I think that you're providing evidence. You're strewing it and then people will pick up what they're able to make meaning of. But what we know is that functioning labels are wrong and the fluctuating nature of support needs is more common than not. Yeah, I think also on the other side of that, if we use the word low functioning, if we're trying to like describe people, it kind of limits their or skews their ability to show off the way that they would like to show up too. It's like a double-edged sword because somebody isn't communicating the way that you expect people to communicate doesn't mean that they can't and cognitive abilities, communicative abilities, those are all separate categories. And I think we shouldn't lump them into one functioning label like we sometimes do. Yeah, and I think that using a label like low functioning is the opposite of presuming competence. Steve says it's okay to show that we can be successful, which is way different than this functioning business. Yes, and I think that what we would want to see is we'd want to see that everyone has their access needs met. And we know that so many neurodivergent people don't have their access needs met. And I'm just catching up in the chat, Lillian says the linear view of autism is so misleading. There is some not cool discussion about embedding language for separating people who need more support right now and trigger warning for the label profound autism. And that is that controversy coming out from researchers advocating this lens as being met with huge resistance from many members of the autistic community. Yeah, and as CB says, ranking functioning is so dehumanizing, yes, could not agree more. And I think that it's one of the things I think about both as a parent of an autistic child and as a doctor taking care of autistic people of all ages is that talking about the fluctuating support needs is really important because when you have the kind of brain that derives safety from predictable systems, it actually can be quite dysregulating when you've not normalized a culture of interdependence. You've glorified independence and now someone needs more support and there's not a framework for that of how normal that is, that can be really hard. So I like to talk about that with really all children and even with my patients who are typically developing, I'm like trying to put through these comments of like we all have different brains, we all have things that come easily, things that come hard. When things are hard, it's okay to ask for help, it's normal. Christina says, I really only feel like I share myself on quote, functioning days because I have this internal stigma, right, internalized ableism on the quote, not functioning days. Allie says functioning should be determined by the individual's perspective of their quality of life, not their ability to meet society's expectations, amen to that, yes. Steve says, if hyperlexia leads you to have difficulty communicating with others, how is that functionally different than aphasia? I don't know, but I wonder how is that different than echolalia? So let's just grab the echolalia piece. So just a little bit of jargon busting. Echolalia refers to repeating sounds. And so the idea, and this could be immediate. And there are so many people who have no idea that they are echolalia, they're adults and they're listening to you in conversation and they repeat your last word back to you to show that they're listening, echolalia. So that's common and so then there's delayed echolalia and there's a lot of people who they are processing language as like chunks and scripts. So, you know, and whether that be, Lizzie says, I realized I was doing delayed echolalia today and it says, I recently noticed that I repeat back synonyms. Oh, that's awesome. So I think that, you know, like the, this is just, this is common. And I think that there are, you know, just, there's, actually I'm gonna share a story that I'm not proud of. Luna's new thing is that she likes to watch videos of herself as a baby and a toddler. And we watch this together when she's falling asleep, like things that we've collected in like an app that we've kept track over time. And we're watching these things. And I am remembering back then when I was, you know, an unrecognized autistic parent. And there were things that she did that were so worrisome to me that, and I'll tell her about that with the lens of I didn't know. I didn't know how you were making sense of the world. And when I think about how for so long, she was communicating with echolalia. They were in the form of like, you know, even like, you know, two syllables of a chunk that went together. And she was communicating so much with these things. But in the moment, I remember freaking out of like catastrophizing of all of the, like the ways that kids would bully her, she was too. And I think this is what goes on for a lot of people. And I think that one of the, you know, Dr. Virginia Spiegelman, who is the executive director of the Star Institute, we once had a conversation and about how one of the reasons that internalized ableism has so much purchase is about the, you know, the unrecognized neurodivergent parent of the neurodivergent child who sees something that reminds them of what, of their own experience and their own trauma. And so desperately wants to shut that down. And I think that part of the unlearning, the self-regulation as an adult is the healing required in order to not be driving that lens of I need to change you and fix you because it's a trauma response for a lot of people. Loris and Sarah says, yes, and it's often unconscious on the part of the parent, right? So it's like bringing self-awareness, like self-awareness is the first step and you can't make someone have self-awareness. They have, I mean, maybe you can for some people, but like there's a lot of people for whom, if, you know, someone making an interpretation about them is a threat. Like, so it's about, it's someone who's open to learning and collects information and applies it on their own terms. Loris says, it's so helpful to hear because internalized ableism is a constant undoing process and it's helpful to recognize that it comes from a place of love and that it needs to be corrected. Both can be true, right? It's radical acceptance. And I think that like shifting butts to ends is like a really important part of being a human who's constantly learning and unlearning. Christina says, for sure, I have very undiagnosed neurodivergent parents that tried the fixing. Yup. Yup, yup. Just scrolling up, Liliane says, the other misleading thing is quote, intellectual disability based on IQ testing. Yeah, IQ testing is just bogus for lots and lots of, lots of people. And Liliane's also sharing specifically because of motor differences that it is like these tests are not, they're not actually valid for a lot of people. Steve says, as an educator, I have to expend a lot of energy on forgiving myself for spur rups with students I didn't understand. Steve, like let's pause there because that's like a really important piece of healing for I think a lot of people in this community, right? So like part of being on a journey of learning and unlearning together is that acknowledging that we only, we only know what we know at a given time and it does consume a lot of energy to like, I should have done different. I should like, you did what you, we all do what we do at the time because that's the scope we have. And being on a journey of learning and unlearning, now you have a different perspective. I think we all do. So thank you for sharing that. And because I think that, I mean, that resonates with me a lot. That's me, that's the story I just shared about the Luna and the watching of the videos thing. Kelly says, I remember getting really upset during my son's assessment. They kept pointing out things that I do and calling them wrong. I kept defending them by saying that he's with me all day. So it makes sense that he would pick up my traits pretty annoying that no one said anything right then. You mean in terms of that, that was an opportunity to learn that you were autistic earlier. Is that what you mean by that Kelly? Yes, okay. Yeah, because again, many, so many professionals are trained in stereotypes. And it's like we talked about at Brain Club a couple of weeks ago. All of the people who have a, this long delay in understanding how their brains work is because the professionals don't know. And when we think about presuming competence and how many professionals do not presume competence, there's like, it's a trade-off. There was this one time, somebody I was working with was having a really hard time accessing what they needed in school. And they were not being given opportunities that were within their self-determined future goals. And I remember like crying. I like cried with my patient of like the realization that they were being denied opportunities because it was known they were autistic. Like that that was a difference between me and them in that moment of like the only difference is that no one knew I was autistic. So I had opportunities and that's messed up. And just like the sheer urgency of shifting that is real. And I share Anika's observation and Allie's observation of that the idea that professionals would refer to a behavior as wrong is part of the problem. And again, the impact of that stigma, that judgment that presumed the neuro-majority, that the view that there's one correct way to play, to communicate, to be a human, like that's not a thing. And yet society all too often gives those messages. And so with and Lily ensures there's a need to educate even within the Autism Treaty, I was on an email exchange with an autistic person who was endorsing the profound autism category. But again, there is and Lily is sharing the difficulties that, you know, non-speaking or minimally speaking people, there are assumptions made about competence and it's bogus. And so, you know, when taking time to read the, you know, the writings of non-speaking individuals, you know, these are the stories being told of what the impact is of kneeling, like their not being, that competence is not being presumed. And so actually I'll mention that the book that we're gonna do a book chat in for May is the reason I jump. And that I think will be a powerful discussion. What I'll also say is that as we wrap up April and head into May, May's theme for Brain Club is the neurodivergent experiences. And so neurodivergent experiences are going to capture a lot of, we've got some prerecorded community panels talking about things like burnout. I think, Sarah, is burnout next week or the week after? Anyway, neurodivergent burnout, I think my- Burnout is next week. Yep. Yeah, it's neurodivergent burnout next week. This was requested by this group. So we're doing it and a range of other topics. So with that, I really appreciate the conversation today. Thank you all so much for coming. And if you are not, if you were not registered for Brain Club tonight, Lizzie, you know what we forgot to do? Maybe if you could put, if you'd like us to be sending you a link with the registration link for May Brain Club, if you've registered for April, you're gonna get it, you're in the system already. But if you were not registered and you, anyway, just stick your email address in the chat and we'll make sure to get you the link for May Brain Club. And Steve, I agree that chat is where the action is. But also that we, there's a lot of action in the chat and multiple ways of doing the thing that you're engaging in the chat. You're engaging by speaking out loud. You're engaging by observation because observation is a totally valid form of participation and normalizing that for all people as early as possible is part of neuro and close to community. So yes, I agree, Sarah. You're engaging by being here and you're valued by being here. So thank you all so much. Have a good night.