One of the unfortunate things about how parents usually receive diagnoses for their autistic children is that almost all of the resources they’re given are about rather than by autistic people. This is especially problematic for folks who don’t know autistic adults. While doctors, therapists, and educators have a valuable role to play, unfortunately many of the resources they pass along are problematic in a number of ways. Why not learn from those with first-hand experience?
So here are two really good resources for those of you that want to better understand what your children’s autism diagnosis means. Sincerely, Your Autistic Child is a collection of essays written by autistics about what they wish their parents knew about raising an autistic child. And Learn from Autistics is a helpful advocacy resource which aims at “promot[ing] autism advocacy by connecting parents with autistic voices, an underrepresented population in the public conversation on autism.” There you can also find another book highlighting autistic voices.
You can also learn quite a lot from the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag on Twitter.
