Ellie Wilson

Anytime you try to narrow people down into either one of two options, like, yeah, it doesn't work very well for most people.

There's something about autistic development that's really interesting.

I'll only mention it briefly because, of course, like this could be its own topic, but

there's something called splintered skill development that happens amongst autistic children and adults.

And that is that the way an autistic brain tends to develop is that rather than having a bunch of centers of your brain sort of develop in a way that's quite cohesive, we see development in autistic children where they develop some skills very quickly and effectively to the point where

you might see an autistic person that has a profound skill in a certain area, whether that's a language asset that they have or whether it's a particular affinity for a certain topic, math or science or animal studies like you mentioned with Temple Grandin.

There is this sort of profound likelihood of developing great skills.

But there are also real ways in which that lack of cohesion of that brain development means that you have unexpected challenges or differences that really need a lot of support.

And so rather than someone necessarily being like all strengths or all weaknesses, what we see is this dispersal of skills all over the map that makes it by definition incredibly difficult to characterize someone as high or low functioning.

If you need those words, think of saying something like, ah, this person has a lot of support needs.

They have very high support needs.

Or you could say this person has very low support needs.

But in general, let's take some responsibility for rejecting the idea that someone fits into one of two categories.

Because here's what happens, you guys.

What happens is someone says, oh, please meet my son, Bobby.

He's autistic, but don't worry, he's high functioning.

And when someone says something like that, it means we're kind of inclined to ignore the ways in which they really need help, whether that's well masked or not.

You know, this is part of how autistic people tend to get into a lot of trouble at school or at their jobs or even occasionally, you know, amongst emergency responders like police officers.

The idea is that, yeah, a person might be able to speak and

and have great talents and engage well, but they have certain areas where they need a lot of help.