Have you ever heard of the neurodiversity-affirming approach to therapy?
For many years, we have been taught to teach students how to adapt to the world around them, but what if we approach it differently? The neurodiversity-affirming approach means that you work with autistic kids in a way that doesn’t ask them to fundamentally change who they are.
In today’s episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I sat down with Meg Proctor to talk about how you can start offering therapy that is respectful towards the autistic community and doesn’t teach them to be inauthentic to themselves.
Meg offers neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based trainings to OTs and SLPs who want to be more confident, effective, and affirming in their work with autistic kids.
Meg also hosts the podcast Two Sides of the Spectrum, designed to help neurotypical therapists better take the perspective of our autistic clients. Meg’s website, learnplaythrive.com, hosts a variety of free resources as well as CE trainings registered for AOTA and ASHA CEUs.
We have to let go of our neurotypical biases when working with autistic children. By teaching our students in the way that they need to be taught, we can get much better results and more motivation from them.
In This Episode You’ll Discover:
- The importance of identity-first language
- Mistakes in how we traditionally treat autistic children
- The negative impact on autistic kids when we teach them to be inauthentic
- Key strategies you can use in your therapy with autistic kids
- How to get students motivated to work with us
- Best activities to work with neurodiverse students
As Meg said, it’s so important that we listen to autistic voices and seek out new skill sets so that we can be the best SLPs we can be for our students. Just remember to be kind to yourself. If you haven’t yet been using this approach, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything bad. You did the best you could and you can always learn more and do better.
If you want to learn more from Meg, make sure to follow her on Instagram. You can also check out her course The Learn Play Thrive Approach To Autism so that you can learn concrete skills you need to be confident that your work is making the greatest possible impact. They are linked below!
Joke of the Week:
Q: Why can’t Cinderella play soccer?
A: Because she’s always running away from the ball.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to the Two Sides of the Spectrum podcast
Listen to Rachel Dorsey’s episode
Where We Can Connect:
Listen on Your Favorite Podcast Platform
Follow & Review on Apple Podcasts
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