TPP 099: Barry Prizant Talks About His Book "Uniquely Human"

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Barry Prizant 0:00
So often what we have done has been done with all good intentions. It's totally understandable why a parent may want their child not to engage in behaviors that look different or that are attention getting in public or that may be stigmatizing for a child. But the bottom line is what are we communicating to a child if we're always saying, stop that, don't do that? Always correcting. And so there's a lot of attention now being paid to the impact of what we do on a child and eventually an adult's self-esteem.
Debbie Reber 0:34
Welcome to Tilled Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber, and today's episode features a powerful and thoughtful conversation with Dr. Barry Prizant, one of the world's leading authorities on autism. Barry is recognized as an innovator of respectful, person and family-centered approaches for individuals with autism and neurodevelopmental disabilities. He has more than 40 years of experience as a scholar, researcher, and international consultant. And he's an adjunct professor at Brown University, a speech language pathologist, and director of Child Communication Services, a private practice.
Debbie Reber 1:16
He's also the author of The Mother. Read book Uniquely Human, a different way of seeing autism, which suggests a major shift in our understanding of autism. Instead of classifying autistic behaviors as signs of pathology, he sees them as part of a range of strategies to cope with the world that feels chaotic and overwhelming. And as you listen to our conversation, you'll know exactly why I was so excited to bring Barry onto the show. He is at the forefront of the revolution and helping to change the way neurodiversity is perceived in the world. And frankly, I'm just so grateful there are people like Barry in the world doing this critical work. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Barry.
Debbie Reber 2:00
Hey Barry, welcome to the podcast.
Barry Prizant 2:02
Thank you so much, Debbie. It's a pleasure to be here.
Debbie Reber 2:05
I am really looking forward to this conversation and just getting a chance to talk with you about your work, your incredible body of work. And you've been doing this work for so many years. And I really want to learn more and introduce our listeners to your book, Uniquely Human, in case that hasn't been on their radar yet. But before we get started into the meat of our conversation, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, just your story? I'm fascinated by, you know, how you came to do this work and how long you've been doing it.
Barry Prizant 2:36
Yeah, well my my story goes way back and I and I love to share um kind of the early roots because sometimes younger professionals or even people who Do not work in the field of supporting and understanding people with disabilities that sometimes very early experiences are so formative. So I actually started as a teenager working in summer camps, in residential summer camps, mostly in the Northeast. And these were summer camps for children and adults with various label disabilities, ranging from autism to a emotional behavioral disorders to learning disabilities, to what we now refer to as intellectual disabilities. And the those experiences were so important for me because I was a caregiver. living with people and I was responsible for their welfare, for making sure they had a good time and that they were safe.
Barry Prizant 3:30
So from very early on I had the experience of what many families, as they often say, live twenty-four-seven. And that was before I got into academia. Um, so I was doing that for a number of years, and then I was academically in college, I was very interested in language and language development. Actually, I was a failed German major and then became a psycholinguistics major, which was a new field at that time. So just very quickly, psycholinguistics has to do with understanding the relationships between a person's Thought and how they organize their understanding of the world, and how they can express that through language and other ways of communicating.

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