Ep. 36: Why We Should Step Away from Functioning Labels & What to Say Instead
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What is the purpose of this episode and who are the hosts?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift.
We're an SLP couple from California with three boys and a passion for finding better ways to support autistic kids.
I'm Chris. You might know me as Speech Dude. I'm a neurodivergent high school SLP and the creator of the Dynamic Assessment of Social Emotional Learning and I specialize in crafting neurodiversity affirming IEPs through my online course.
And I'm Jessie, a sensory integration trained SLP, owner of a top-rated clinic in Los Angeles, and the creator of the Inside Out sensory communication programs for parents and therapists. Join us weekly to learn neurodiversity-affirming ways to support social-emotional development and regulation in autistic kids.
Are you ready to make the shift?
Let's do it.
Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Making the Shift with the hostess is Chris and Jesse. We are here. We're going to make this episode a quick fire episode because we feel like it's valuable content that can shift perspectives. And we're going to come at you with some simple ways of thinking about it in a short amount of time. So we're going to jump right into this topic of functioning labels.
We are going to be talking all about why we should stop using functioning labels and what you can do instead. And first of all, we'll let you know what we mean when we say functioning labels. We are referring to when talking about autistic kids. Historically, we've used a lot of terms like this child is low functioning. This child is high functioning. This child is mildly autistic. This child is severely autistic. So we want to talk to you about why we shouldn't be using language like that and some easy ways to change the way that you talk about your kids to use more respectful language.
Absolutely.
So first of all, let's talk about the problem with language. functioning labels in general. There's a lot of problems, but one of the foundational issues is that when we say a child is either low or high functioning or severe or mild, it implies that autism is a linear scale. It is a scale of how autistic is a child, a little bit autistic or really autistic. And we know that that's just not how autism works. It is not a linear scale. There are many, many things that make up our brain and our bodies. And it's not just so black and white as to say a child is. is on one end or the other end so that kind of puts this idea in our head of the this linear scale being like a straight line but the spectrum of autism really you could think about looks more like a circle with lots of different skills and abilities within that circle which we'll touch on
Yeah. And to follow up on that, I do think that historically that has been that thought, you know, a linear scale of a low end of the scale or high end of the spectrum, I should say, low end of the spectrum, high end of the spectrum. And so if you've used this terminology or you've heard it, that's OK. You know, we're all learning. And so this is just an educational piece. So we can make a shift in language because we make a shift in language. We can make a shift in our thinking. thoughts, which make a shift in our approaches and our report writing and our goal writing and our therapy approaches and providing the right supports and accommodations.
Yeah. And that's really what it's about. It's about how can we talk about our kids in a more respectful way? Because when we use this type of language, it does dictate the way that we perceive kids. When we talk about kids in a certain way, it's going to change the way other people think about that child. It's our words have a really big impact. So let's first talk about the problem with the term low functioning.
I'm going to dive into that profound autism, low functioning, right? Severe.
Oh man. I just saw last night I was on Tik TOK and there was a guy who had, he was playing piano and to his brother and who was autistic. And he said, me playing piano for my severely autistic brother or something. And like, I was like, gosh, is this a place where I should chime in and say, we don't say that, but all the comments were so supportive.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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