As a young parent, years ago, I found the best advice was to become an expert in my own child rather than in the diagnosis she was being given. I use this advice in my school too.
These days, the worst place to get information is on social media. I scroll through copious articles and blogs and posts and I get a deluge of short headline messages about Autism that feel more like pushy experts at a cheese and wine meet and greet all loudly proclaiming what I should be doing and thinking. It exhausts me.
When I started this school, information was not being shouted at me. I had to find it.
When I started thinking about writing a book the first piece of advice I got was to go back to the original thinkers.
The messages of the really good stuff are being diluted beyond recognition and it is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between great advice and someone’s experience or a ChatGPT piece on the subject.
So what makes us specialists in Autism? Besides the books, lectures and research? We work hard to become an expert in each of the children we have here at school. This is a parent-based model of education.
