Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month! Be kind. Be loving. Be you. #TreatmentresistantDepression #TRD #Bekind

I am Joel Ashton-Fogle, an Early Childhood Educator, writer, musician and I’m Autistic. I'm also a graduate student in Autism and Behavioural Sciences. I thought it might be fun to write a poem using the vocabulary we learn as future behavioural analysts and also comment from my perspective as a client. I write most of my poems in "free-verse" but this one is structured in meter and rhyme, fitting into the perception that people with autism prefer structured, mathematical patterns (this stereotype is not my personal experience). I hope you like it. It's my own neurodivergent  insight into some of the components of "excesses and deficits" within autism practice.

Joel

Some fancy behavioural lingo from an ‘Autistic’

Written by Joel Ashton-Fogle and Adeen Fogle

Am I a list of deficits in verbal cues and social rules?

Behaviours excessive, inexpressive or aggressive?

Beginning with my stimming, am I brimmingly obsessive?

Flapping hands and tapping knees disturbingly intensively?

Well, I would frame these differently in my own reactivity.

Reflecting introspectively, I think that I’m expressive.

Attempts to try to modify can nullify identity

though meant to be sufficiently conducted beneficently.

Some efforts may address a mess of social impropriety

But others deconstruct me with modalities oppressive.

With scientific data set and peer-review, an epithet

of modifying plans are set to rearrange my alphabet

or repertoire of heavyset habitual excesses.

Reinforcers everywhere so I comply and modify.

Behavioural strategies composed and posed most typically.

And not unlike my canine friend, I get rewarded in the end

if I perform as normative and act more neurotypically.

Lets’ cut this fancy language now. Enough conforming, anyhow.

I’m tired and stressed, my mind is messed. I’m overwhelmed. I feel oppressed.

I’m under magnifying glass in efforts to appease and pass.

So, let me stim or look away or flap my arms and overplay.

Or be alone and quite content.  Obsessing is my non-event.

I do not mean these to offend. Some interventions condescend

to shape me and to make me be a fake, an ‘un-authentic’ me.

So, unapologetically I pose the pros of equity

To celebrate divergency, accommodate with empathy,

 Relating more inclusively and varied in society.

 #Autism   #ABA   #neurodivergent    #poet   #therapistwithdiagnosis   #AutismAwarenessMonth   #SupportGroups   #Student