Ep. 44: Why Understanding Sensory Processing is Key to Being Neurodiversity Affirming
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What is neurodiversity affirming and why does it matter for therapists?
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 Jesse, 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?
Hello, hello. Today we are talking all about why you need to understand sensory processing in order to be a neurodiversity affirming therapist. So maybe you are already on your journey. You probably are at least working on that if you guys tune in to watch our show, but Why do you need to understand sensory in order to be a neurodiversity affirming therapist? Well, sensory impacts us every day, all day long, in virtually every way, right? We are sensory beings, the world is a sensory place, there's always sensory input around us. Therefore, we are constantly being influenced by our sensory system. So why specifically do we need to understand sensory in order to be a neurodiversity affirming? So first of all, let's just quickly talk about what it means to be neurodiversity affirming.
This means that we are looking at autism as a neurotype. We are looking at autism as a brain type. And with that, we are looking at how autistic if we're speaking I know we're talking about neurodiversity in general, but let's say we're talking about autism specifically. If we're took talking about looking at autistic brains. We are not looking at how their brains function as being deficient. We are not looking at them as not functioning correctly, right? We are looking at their brains functioning differently. That's really the key words. It's moving from focusing on deficits to moving to focusing on differences. So we know that autistic brains commu have differences in communication, differences in interaction, differences in emotional regulation.
And a huge one is differences in their sensory processing. So this is really about embracing those differences and validating those differences, not trying to change them, not trying to make them go away, not trying to make them more neurotypical and less autistic. So that's really the foundation of this is we need to realize that autistic brains function differently and sensory differences are a big piece of that. So if you were to take a non-neurodiversity affirming approach, your goal would be to fix it. Right, your goal would be to make it go away. Like they're not gonna have these differences anymore. They're going to be the same as everyone else. But the neurodiversity affirming approach of helping kids with sensory differences would be accalming the accommodating their differences.
and supporting them and trying to make them more comfortable. Our goal as neurodiversity affirming therapists, providing sensory experiences and strategies and approaches, is not to desensitize kids and This is such a hot topic. It's a hard thing to talk about because there's a a lot of disagreement. But if you take really any neurodiversity affirming sensory based therapists, that person will know that our goal is not to just increase someone's tolerance to our particular type of sensory input. It's not to decrease their sensitivity. It's to make them more comfortable. Okay, and I put up this post recently where I showed a comment that a parent had written. And it was there was a video I posted about if kids have light sensitivity, there are these awesome magnetic light covers you can purchase to dim the lighting or change the lighting.
I always get so many questions for that by the way. Literally go to Amazon, Google, magnetic light covers.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
Ep. 125 How to Run Successful Social Groups
Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)