 sometimes we need to take a time out and say let's put the word autism to the side for a second and remember the person in front of us. Now that's not the same as saying autism doesn't define me because it does. It does. I wouldn't be who I am if I wasn't autistic but we're losing sight of the human beings in front of us. We're taking this elusive concept that we believe is separate from the individual, the autism over here and we're forgetting who this person is. There's just these generic stereotypical things written about autistic children and the professional development for educators and people in allied health is so old and so outdated and so generic and boring and harmful that if it was actually helpful and helping we wouldn't have the amount of children unable to walk into a building and receive an education. If what we were doing right now if what we have done all this time was actually beneficial and helpful when we're pulling it out of the old texts and reading autistic people this is what they look like, this is what they sound like, this is how they think, these are their challenges. I mean wow this is what people are being trained to do. So then we have these neurodivergent children coming out of that system and then they're traumatized adults and we wonder why and we give the responsibility to them and this is called the medical model of disability where we go you're disabled and you're responsible for that whereas the social model of disability says that we understand, accept and appreciate all variations of human being and human doing and we have a collective responsibility to build that foundation of safety for everyone that's what community is we don't have to be the same to be in community together but we can be learning from each other.