The Importance of Neurodiversity-Affirming Approaches in Trauma-Informed Models of Care

Please join us for “The Importance of Neurodiversity-Affirming Approaches in Trauma-Informed Models of Care” with Trisha Thompson.

Trisha Thompson is a late-diagnosed AuDHD Early Childhood Education Consultant and parent to an Autistic child. She has been working in the field of ECE for almost 10 years. Prior to becoming a consultant, she worked in various teaching and leadership roles. She has a Master of Science in General Psychology (non-licensure) and is currently working towards a certification in Applied Educational Neuroscience. Trisha is passionate about helping others in the field understand that neurodiversity-affirming practice is an integral part of developmentally appropriate, anti-bias, and trauma-informed practice.

Transcript

Guy Stephens  0:15  

Well, hello and welcome to the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint Live series. My name is Guy Stephens. I'm the founder and executive director of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, also the host for our podcast here, and I'm excited to have you here with us today. I'm actually joining you today from West Virginia. I'm visiting my son, so I'm not in my usual space and and and uh… but we are excited to have another show for you. So any of you that may not be familiar with who the alliance is and what we do. Let me tell you a little bit about who the alliance is. The alliance was formed, gosh, I guess we're going on about five and a half years ago now, formed initially out of a personal experience with restraint and seclusion in schools that led me to really on a mission to understand why things like that were happening, what we could do differently and how we could improve outcomes for not only kids but, but also teachers and staff. And that led down the road of the work that we're doing now, which is really focused on changing laws and policies, educating people on what the better things we can and should do are, and supporting individuals as well, whether they're whether they're educators, whether they're families or caregivers or self-advocates. We work with a lot of people here at the alliance in really trying to support a positive change. So you are here with us today for our podcast, and we've got a great presentation in store for you today, and I'm really excited about our presenter and the presentation, we've got Trisha Thompson joining us, and I'll be telling you a little bit more about Trisha here in a moment, but before we do that, a couple of housekeeping items and a couple things to share with you. As you probably know, we do this live. So we do these live, but they are also available after the fact on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. So, you can go back, if you're not able to watch the whole thing now you can go back and you can look at it on any of those platforms. We also make it available as an audio only podcast. So, if you prefer to listen on the go, or you're the kind of person that wants to, you know, put something on while you're in the car, we've got a podcast version. You can get it on Apple, you know, Apple podcast, or Spotify, or anywhere you happen to get your podcast from, so that's an option to you as well. I am going to share with you a little bit about our sponsor today in just a moment. Before I do, I just wanted to ask if you are on live with us. I always like to ask if you're on live with us, let us know in the chat who you are and where you're from. It's always fun to share with the guests as we're getting ready to go into the presentation to see an idea of kind of where people are joining us from. I'm always amazed to see that we have people that join us from all over the world, and it's always fantastic to see the names of people that I know through the podcast and through live events and colleagues and all of that. So please let us know in the comments who you are and where you're joining us from. I do want to share with you that the podcast is made possible through a number of sponsors that kind of help us. Of course, doing these kinds of things take resources and time and software and all sorts of things. And we have a couple of sponsors that have helped us to bring the podcast to you. One of our sponsors this year, and has been a sponsor for the entire year, has been Supportable Solutions. Supportable Solutions is a educational consulting company run by a now friend and colleague, Connie Persike, somebody I collaborate with quite frequently, and I'm going to share with you a little bit about something that Connie produced called The Why Toolkit, if you've ever been involved in the process of doing a functional behavioral assessment, and I typically roll my eyes when somebody says, FBA, because many of the FBAs I've come across are not very well done, and don't really get at the true why of why someone's having a hard time, but Connie developed a really different approach called The Why Toolkit that really helps to get to the deeper why. And let me share with you just a quick little ad that kind of talks about The Why Toolkit.

Advertisement   4:13  

Behaviors are signals to the deeper whys. The Why Toolkit: a tool built for and approved by teachers, parents and administrators that can both assess and support individuals struggling with behaviors. Connie has created a document that turns typical behavioral documents upside down and replaces them with a deep dive into what really matters: how to support each child within a compassionate and relational framework based on their individual differences, The Why Toolkit was found to decrease seclusion and restraint by 21% in a year long pilot study.

Guy Stephens  4:54  

And that is available now, and even if you're a parent, you can actually go get a single seat for The Why Toolkit. And it's not very expensive to check it out and see what it is, and it's something you might want to advocate for  your child, if somebody is talking about things like behavioral assessments or trying to understand why your child might be having difficulty in certain situations. And of course, there are schools that use it for kids to really help them, and it's a great, great tool. And I thank Connie and Supportable Solutions for their support. It's really helpful. So let's go ahead and get to why we are here today, and we are here today to hear from an amazing individual that has some some fantastic things to share with you. And I'm going to go ahead and introduce Trisha now. Trisha Thompson, was late diagnosed Autistic, ADHD, is a early childhood education consultant and parent to an autistic child. She has been working in the field of early childhood education for almost 10 years. That happens quickly. Prior to becoming a consultant, she worked in various teaching and leadership roles. She has a Master's of Science in general psychology and recently completed a certificate, uh a certification program in Applied Educational Neuroscience. Many of you that are regulars here probably have heard us talk about that program before. That's Dr. Lori Desautels program at Butler University, fantastic program. And we actually have a number of our volunteers that have gone through that, and even some of them together last time, Trisha is passionate about helping others in the field understand neurodiversity affirming practice is an integral part of developmentally appropriate anti bias and trauma informed practices. And that is that is a mission, that is a mission to be on. It's interesting because I've been having some conversations with people recently about this important intersection of trauma informed practice and neurodiversity affirming practice. And although one might initially think that those two things are are always fully aligned, that's not always the case, so it's an important thing to talk about. So Trisha, thank you so much. And I forgot something your bio. This isn't on your bio, so we've gotta, we’ve gotta talk to the bio maker here. You are also volunteer with the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint. I think we should have led with that, right? That's an important credential there. But we are excited, and you've been a fantastic you know, excited to have you as part of our team here, but, but welcome and thank you for joining us here today.

Trisha Thompson  7:19  

Thank you for having me.

Guy Stephens  7:21  

And I understand you've been doing some other presentations recently as well. You mentioned, as we were getting ready for this, you recently joined Julie Roberts, the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective, and fantastic work there. So, you've been talking a lot about probably a lot of these issues. So, we are really excited to have you here to share a presentation. I do want to remind people, if you are watching live, and I can see a number of you are, let us know in the chat who you are and where you're from, because it's always fun to see who's joining us. And I will say there are a couple of people have already jumped in. I've got Jeannie-Marie here from Howard County, and somebody that I actually know here in Maryland, always great to see. And we've got Sammy here joining us, from Oregon, so great to have a couple people that have already jumped on and let us know who they are. So, you have an exciting presentation for us today. I'm excited. So, you're excited, and hopefully our audiences as well. This is really important information, and I appreciate you coming on to you know, share this presentation. Stacy also just jumped in here, “Hola from Mexico.” So, we've got, again, we are now international there. You know, I always joke with people. I'm like, you know, we've got people from all over the globe. And I'll say something like, people from Australia and somebody from Australia will pop in and say hello. So, we'll see if that works today, I am going to go ahead and bring your presentation up on the screen. And what we talked about is that you will be going through your presentation. People that are watching live are welcome to put questions in the chat at any time, but we're going to kind of hold off to the end for questions that people might have. So what we'll do is I'm gonna I'm gonna hand over the the steering wheel to you, and you will go through your presentation. Should you need anything. I'm gonna just be kind of backstage stage show to speak, and if you just call my name, I will appear hopefully, and I'll let you kind of go through your presentation as we reach the end, we're going to, I'll come back on, and I'll probably have questions for you, because I always do, and we'll see if there's questions from our live audience as well. So, does that all sound good to you? Fantastic. So, with that, I'm going to go ahead and disappear and hand it all over to you, and just know that if you need anything, we will be here. So again, if you're watching us live, yeah, let us know in the chat who you are, where you're from. It's great to great to see who's here with us. And I'm going to go ahead and pass it back over to Trisha to take over with your presentation.

Trisha Thompson  9:57  

Okay, well, hello everyone, and welcome to “the importance of neurodiversity, affirming approaches in trauma-informed models of care”. 

A little bit about me. My name is Trisha Thompson. I am multiply neurodivergent and multiply disabled. I am an AuDHDer, plus a lot of other things, like dyspraxia, anxiety, situational mutism, chronic illness, just lots of things. I am a parent, and we are a fully neurodivergent household. I am a dog person, but somehow I have ended up living in a house with three cats thanks to my husband and our child. So if anyone watching on Facebook has a dog, please throw some photos of your dog in the comments so that I can live vicariously through you. I am an early childhood education consultant. I've been working in early childhood education for 10 years now, more, if you want to count jobs and volunteer work that I did in high school, I have a master's in psychology and a certification in Applied Educational Neuroscience and a certification in Early Childhood Administration. My bachelor's degree is super random, because, in true AuDHD fashion, I could not make up my mind, and I changed my major eight times before landing on East Asian Studies, just because that is what would allow me to graduate the quickest after all of the delays I created by changing my major so many times. But anyways, because of who I am and what I do, today's presentation is really just my perspective on neurodiversity affirming practice within the field of education, primarily early childhood education, and with a more narrow focus on supporting autistic children, neurodiversity affirming practice benefits everyone, and there are many things other than autism that falls under neurodivergent but my work focuses mostly on autistic children, and of course, some of what I share today can be applicable beyond just autistic children in the early years. 

So I kind of approach today's presentation, as you know, more of a casual kind of thing, and it's a bit different from my usual trainings that I do, because rather than focusing on being super informational, and you know, maybe going over the many key terms and concepts in like a welcome to neurodiversity, 101 kind of way, rather than that, because there are so many resources out there for that already. My hope for today is kind of more about providing you with opportunities for self-reflection, or at least kind of nudging you in that direction, and to also get you curious so that you continue learning and you seek out the many diverse voices within the autistic community to learn more from. But, yeah. The presentation will briefly go over a few key terms. I'm also going to share some resources and research, but mostly today is about helping everyone understand the why behind neurodiversity affirming practice and why it's a crucial part of trauma informed practice that may not always already kind of be part of trauma informed practice. And just on a random side note, in a lot of my presentations, I've had audience members let me know, you know at the end that that was their very first time hearing certain words or certain concepts. For example, I've been a guest speaker for college classes, and even in some special education classes, the professors and the students would tell me, you know, that was the first time they've ever heard of ableism or disability justice or the neurodiversity movement. So just for my own curiosity, if you learn something brand new today, or if you have one of those light bulb moments. Please let me know in the comments. I'm going to hang out in the comments later today. 

And with that, let's get really started. So there isn't one specific, widely accepted model of neurodiversity affirming practice. There's not one model that you could point to and be like, this is it, and this is what everyone uses instead there are many resources out there that have developed neurodiversity affirming approaches based on the neurodiversity paradigm, the neurodiversity movement and lived experience. The following definitions are from We Are All Neurodiverse by Sonny Jane Wise, “the neurodiversity paradigm is a specific framework based on the concept of neurodiversity being a natural form of diversity and the idea of a normal or healthy brain as a social construct, it is a new way of viewing understanding and supporting neurodivergent individuals, where we don't default to pathologizing people whose functioning diverges from dominant neuro normative standards.” So, within this paradigm, all brains are different. Neurodiversity is as natural as any other part of human diversity, and being autistic or any other form of neurodivergent is not viewed automatically as a negative. And “the neurodiversity movement is a social justice movement that seeks rights, equality and inclusion for neurodivergent individuals, as well as seeking the end of the marginalization of neurodivergent individuals.” 

Lived experience is crucial to neurodiversity affirming practice, we need to be aware of what neurodivergent individuals and communities have to say about their experiences, and we have to incorporate that into the work that we do. For far too long, the information regarding autism has come from the narrative of outsiders looking in. A parent who raises an autistic child, a professional that observes or works with autistic children and adults, they do not have the lived experience of being autistic unless they are, of course, autistic themselves. Research in recent years is sort of catching up to what lived experience has already been teaching us about autism, which is really great in so many ways. I love seeing Autistics leading and actively participating in research, but at the same time, it's also kind of sad that many have ignored the value of lived experience until it started fitting into what they consider scientific evidence or evidence based practice, especially when we know that you know science or research is full of bias that historically has harmed and currently harms many communities. And then this short but important quote is from the book decolonizing therapy, and it says that “lived experience is vital wisdom.” And then this one is from a Facebook post by Trauma Geek that I absolutely love, and it says, “Stop asking if research validates lived experience. Start asking if lived experience validates research.”

So there are many self advocates, educators, counselors, psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, registered dieticians, doctors and many other professionals who educate on neurodiversity affirming practice and provide resources on how to implement neurodiversity affirming approaches in ways that are relevant to their respective fields, and many of it is available for free online. So this here is not at all a complete list of my favorite resources. It's just a very, very small few of them. So some resources you can check out online are the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective, the Autistic Self Advocacy, Aucademy, NeuroWild, and the work of Dr Nick Walker and. Some books I recommend are The Gold Standard Fallacy of ABA by Julie Roberts, Supporting Autistic Girls and Gender Diverse Youth by Yellow Ladybugs. We're All Neurodiverse by Sonny Jane Wise and I Will Die On This Hill, by Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards, and I'm sharing these resources because I'm kind of skipping over a lot of basics in order to cover other things in the time that we have today. And you know, these resources here should help you fill in any any blanks. And I would also love for anyone watching to add their favorite resources in the comments too, or if you're familiar with some of the resources I've shared here, let me know and share your thoughts on them, because, like I said earlier, I'll probably go check out the comments later today. 

Okay, so before we go any further, I think it's important to acknowledge that some early childhood educators and other professionals, you know, they learn nothing about autism through earning their degrees or even through a professional development and if they do learn anything about autism, it's usually from the medical model, pathology paradigm or deficits narrative of autism. And you know this is not about shaming teachers for not already knowing you know all the things about neurodiversity affirming practice. You know, we can't expect anyone to just magically know all the things teachers are doing the best with what they've got, and they're also causing harm. And we just, we don't get anywhere by refusing to learn about the harm. And then at the bottom of this is a favorite quote around here, and it says, “Do the best you can until you know better then when you know better, do better.” And I think there's actually some Alliance merch that you can get with that quote on it, if that's something that interests you. 

But anyways, when it comes to autism, the dominant narrative has been rooted in the pathology paradigm and the medical model of disability. And, you know, from this perspective, autism is seen as a flaw, an impairment, a deficit, or an illness that needs fixing or needs treatment or needs a cure, and this narrative has led to a lot of harm, things like stigma, misinformation, trauma, invalidation, masking, burnout and so much more. And you know, for reference, masking can be thought of as hiding your natural way of being in order to meet neuronormative expectations and burnout can be understood as you know, just being completely depleted in every way imaginable. And those are very simplified definitions of those terms. Any of the resources I mentioned earlier will give you a much more thorough explanation of those things. For me, at the core of neurodiversity affirming practice with autistic children is, you know, wanting to end this harm and instead supporting autistic children in the ways that work best and feel best to them, you know, in ways that honor their internal experiences and their perspectives. And you know this line of work best and feel best is something I actually adapted from Sarah, who is known as The Autistic OT online or on social media. And I heard Sarah talk a few different times about finding what works best and feels good. And I just feel like that summarizes everything so perfectly. It's such a simple statement on the surface, but really, when you think about the common practices that are often used with autistic children, the harm comes from the fact that they completely disregard the internal experiences of Autistics. So when we shift our perspective to focusing on what works best and feels best, and you know, understanding that it is the autistic individual that defines what that is, that is the key to affirming practices, that is the key to recognizing when standard practices are actually harmful, and it's what will make it easy for us to say no to engaging in harmful practices and instead say yes to embracing neurodiversity affirming practice. 

So this change requires a mindset shift. When people approach neurodiversity affirming practice as a checklist of tips and tricks, or maybe arrive to this work from a place of feeling like they need fast and easy solutions that they can just jump right into, um the strategies they implement are likely to continue causing harm, or they are likely to not really be that effective, even if they aren't necessarily causing harm. Strategies that are considered neurodiversity affirming can be implemented incorrectly or in harmful ways when the intentionality behind them is lost due to people kind of skipping over the mindset shift work, and this work includes unpacking our biases and really understanding where they come from and how we consciously or unconsciously act on them, and how they influence the way we approach things like social, emotional learning and other trauma informed practices with autistic children. We really need to unpack colonialism, white supremacy, ableism, neuro normativity, childism, behaviorism and so much more. And once you kind of do that mindset shift work, you won't really need to seek out those quick tips and tricks, because you'll notice when something that you do or plan to do with autistic children is or is not in alignment with your new neurodiversity affirming mindset, and that will guide you in how to proceed. And then these definitions on the slide are, once again, from We're All  Neurodiverse by Sonny Jane Wise, “ableism is a system of oppression that disadvantages and discriminates against disabled people based on a set of assumptions that disabled people are less than while non disabled people are superior.” And “neuronormativity refers to a set of standards, expectations and norms that center a particular way of functioning, thinking, feeling, behaving, learning, communicating and more as the right way to function.”

Another way to think about why we need to shift our mindsets is that the autistic children we work with are likely experiencing trauma and oppression in many different ways in our schools, especially if we think about any other identities autistic children may have and sometimes, you know, we, the adults, are the ones that are creating those traumatic or oppressive experiences for students. So, when we implement trauma informed practices like social, emotional learning, breathing exercises, mindfulness, whatever it may be, we really need to kind of think about, you know, what good do those things do for a child that is constantly experiencing harm or oppression? Or think about how, how can we be sure that the strategies we are using aren't adding to the harm in any way. And then this is from research that explored educators’ perspectives on social emotional learning. And one of the three themes that they found was that “educators expressed that social emotional learning should not try to save students or ask them to breathe through their oppression,” and that's kind of the more broad why behind the importance of neurodiversity affirming approaches in trauma informed models of care. So now we'll kind of get a little more specific. 

Okay, so let's say you are an educator that has some training in what could be considered basic or general trauma informed practice, but you've never heard of ableism, the neurodiversity movement, or disability justice or anything like that, and maybe none of your college courses or professional development really taught you anything about autism or working with autistic children. And you know, if it did teach you anything about autism, it was the typical deficit narrative of autism, where you know autism is a condition that causes someone to lack certain things, and that the source of all of an autistic person struggles is their autism. So while you might have some really amazing social emotional strategies happening in your classroom, like maybe validating all the feelings your students express and trying to help them work through their feelings rather than punishing them, maybe you are simultaneously doing social skills training with your autistic students, like having eye contact goals, suppressing stims or forcing kids to communicate or play in specific ways. And it's because you are missing the neurodiversity affirming piece to trauma informed practice that you're missing things like understanding that Autistics aren't bad at communicating, or that they aren't lacking social skills. You're missing ideas like, you know, eye contact not being necessary for communication, and that forcing eye contact can be very dysregulating for autistic children. Dr Milton coined the double empathy problem, which is this concept that communication differences and misunderstandings are not slow solely an Autistics issue. Autistics might communicate differently than non Autistics. Autistics might misunderstand non Autistics, but non Autistics might also misunderstand Autistics. But you know, for some reason, it's only the autistic children that are seen as having communication deficits and being subjected to social skills training. A study in 2020 showed that communication between Autistics was actually highly effective. The difficulties that happen when you have non Autistics and Autistics communicating with another sort of didn't really occur when Autistics were communicating with autistic peers. And because you're missing this perspective, you know, you've unknowingly put a lot of effort into teaching autistic children that their natural ways of being and communicating are wrong and that they have to become more like their non autistic peers, and you've spread stigma towards autism to your whole class. You know, despite your best intentions, because you're missing neurodiversity affirming practice, you've contributed to differences being seen as deficits that need fixing, rather than accepting differences as just differences. 

And now let's say you are a teacher that has some training and social emotional learning from a program that is known to be trauma informed, but again, you've never heard of neurodiversity affirming practice or anything involved with it. Your only knowledge of working with disabled students and autistic students probably came from just really brief mentions during your teacher preparation, and none of it came from the perspective of disabled or autistic folks. And you know, let's say that what you did learn again was that autism is a bunch of deficits. So you understand that social emotional well-being is crucial to all learning and development as part of your background in social emotional learning and trauma informed practice, but because you're missing the neurodiversity affirming piece to social emotional learning, you aren't aware of how your language and your actions in the classroom might be negatively impacting your autistic students and their ability to form positive self-identities, which include their identity as an autistic person with ties to the autistic community. A 2024 scoping review found that self-identity development and positive self-identity were key factors in autistic well-being. In another study published this year, autistic perspectives on quality of life really highlighted the importance of self-acceptance and living life as your authentic self. And from Dr Botha’s work on the minority stress model, we learned that having a positive autistic self-identity and finding belonging in the Autistic community can act as buffers to the mental and physical health disparities that an autistic person experiences as someone who belongs to a stigmatized minority group. So you really have to think about how effective your social emotional learning strategies truly are, if your language and your actions in your classroom are kind of, you know, getting in the way of the social emotional well-being of your autistic students, like maybe treating autism as something you shouldn't talk about in front of them, or talking to your class about autism, or even reading books about autism that frame autism as something that can or should be hidden or fixed or again, using social skills training with your autistic students and encouraging masking.

And now let's say that you're an educator that has a lot of experience when it comes to social, emotional learning and trauma informed practice, and one of the things that your experience has taught you is how important it is for students to have a sense of belonging and to have positive relationships with their peers. And let's say that one of your favorite ways to help foster these things is through play. But again, you have not learned about autistic experiences from autistic perspectives. So maybe you have an autistic student who you notice plays alone a lot, and maybe they don't really play with the classroom toys that often, and when they do use those toys, it's not in the same way that non autistic students in your class like to play with them. And so you notice all of this, and you think, you know, this student must be really lonely, and you think it's because this student doesn't know how to play, so you spend some time trying to teach the student to play with toys a certain way, and you put a lot of effort into trying to get the student to play with other children as much as possible. And because you're missing neurodiversity affirming practice, you're unaware that maybe playing alone is exactly what this child needs to do in order to help them regulate and tolerate all the demands they experience throughout the school day. And you know, taking away that alone time and you know, really encouraging them to play with others is just adding more demands to their plate. And you know, maybe playing on their own in proximity to others is how they experience and enjoy connection. And maybe they aren't feeling lonely about it in any way. And so maybe all of the effort that you're putting into teaching them how to play is actually what's starting to make them feel like they don't belong in the classroom. Autistic ways of playing have been associated with, you know, red flags for autism, so they're often seen as something that need to be fixed, without regard to an autistic child's perspective, and so teachers end up sort of forgetting that true play is meant to be self-directed, and that there isn't a wrong or right way to play. 

Okay, so now let's say that you're an educator that has extensive training in social emotional learning and trauma informed practice, but again, zero knowledge and experience when it comes to neurodiversity affirming practice. You know you've never heard of the neurodiversity paradigm or the neurodiversity movement, and you've never sought out autistic lived experiences as a resource to learn from. So maybe you don't use rewards and rewards charts with your class, and you especially don't use food as rewards, and you don't use other things, like planned ignoring as a response to a child expressing sadness or anger, frustration or disappointment, because you have an understanding of intrinsic motivation and coregulation from you know your background in trauma, informed practice, but maybe you learned in school or in professional development that ABA is what is best for autistic children. So you know, it's okay for that one autistic child in your class to have a little m&m popped into their mouth every time they give you eye contact. You know that's what's in their program, and it's what you've been told is best for them. So while you would never, ever do that with any of your other students, you feel or you've been taught that it's okay to do it with autistic students. And you know, even when other students start asking, you know, why they don't get m&ms when they do something that you like, maybe you turn that into a little lesson on equity, right? You talk to the students about how that student gets what they need, and what they need is, you know, the m&ms, and you get what you need and we all have different needs, and that's okay. So you know, in this perspective, you're not being unfair in your practices by continuing to use rewards with autistic children, you're just being equitable, and it's because you're missing that neurodiversity affirming practice piece to things. So you're unaware that many autistics strongly oppose ABA, that ABA has been linked to PTSD, that ABA leads to masking, and that masking can lead to things like a lack of belonging and suicidality, that ABA leads to burnout, and that burnout has a negative impact on mental health and well-being. And this is something I see a lot in schools where, you know, teachers have really, really great social emotional foundations, but those things kind of go out the window as soon as a child is identified as autistic, when really autistic children need those same social emotional strategies, or that same social emotional foundation, it just might look a little bit different. And the book I mentioned earlier, or one of the books I mentioned earlier, The Gold Standard Fallacy of ABA by Julie Roberts, as well as the references on the bottom of the slide, those are really great resources for you to learn more about the harms of ABA. And the Alliance also has some articles on this topic as well that you can find on the website. 

And so there are many, many more examples like these that we could do, like approaching self-regulation and mindfulness strategies as one size fits all, rather than recognizing that these can be very individually unique and that maybe some strategies aren't the best for certain neurotypes, or that you know adaptations might be needed, or misunderstanding, mislabeling and incorrectly responding to autistic expressions of regulation and expressions of dysregulation, like maybe assuming that certain behaviors like stims and monotropic interests are coming from a place of anxiety or not noticing when certain strategies or social emotional lessons feel like gaslighting to your autistic students, like when we focus on things like tolerance training or social skills training that focus on telling autistic children what they should feel and how they should feel, or how they should display those feelings, or maybe not noticing when quiet and compliant children aren't regulated or disproportionately restraining secluding, suspending and expelling autistic students. When engaging in any trauma informed strategy if you're not actually taking the time to shift your mindset and unpack harmful mental models and become more intentional with your language and your actions, then you're often not inviting actual healing and learning for your autistic students, you're likely just inviting masking, and we know that masking can be harmful.

As Guy often says, you know, you cannot be trauma informed while you are causing trauma. And I also want to add that it's, it's not just about, you know, teachers taking the time to do this mindset shift work. Teachers need and deserve to have the adequate education, training, funding, materials and support to do this work, and on the topic of adequate training, if you're watching this and you are someone who is in a leadership role in an education setting, I really want to encourage you to be more discerning about who you consider to be experts when it comes to selecting speakers to train teachers on how to work with autistic children, and I really want to encourage you to go straight to the source and hire autistics for speaking engagements or ongoing coaching for your staff. 

And my goal for today, you know, isn't telling teachers that everything they're doing is wrong or that they should feel bad for not knowing these things or for unintentionally causing harm. The goal is to bring these things to your awareness so that autistic children can be supported in the ways that work best and feel best to them, because they need and they deserve that. Neurodiversity affirming practice requires us to unpack the harmful mental models we have, and that starts with this awareness, and sometimes that awareness comes with a lot of discomfort and dysregulation. If anything I've shared today led to any feelings of guilt or shame or led to any defensiveness, I encourage you to sit with those feelings, find ways to self and coregulate your nervous system, and then reflect on your experience with me today until you get to the core or the root of those feelings during that reflection period. If you check out any of the resources I shared earlier, or any of the references on my slides, doing that will help you to come to the realization you know me, speaking up about harm isn't about shaming any of you for anything, and that you know when I or others, we speak up about harm, you know we are not responsible for any of the difficult feelings that people experience when listening to people speak up about the harm, especially harm that personally impacts them and their lives, or yeah. So you know, it's not about wanting to shame people or looking for places to place blame, you know, it's really about the systems and it's about the frameworks. And, you know, this whole process that you know is kind of outlined on this slide. You know, this is the mindset shift work. This is how we get to, you know, the point of working together for that goal of supporting autistic children in neurodiversity affirming ways. 

We all have to start somewhere and unfortunately with the way that our society is designed, most of us don't start this journey until after we've already been working with autistic students. I know when I first started teaching, I was taught that identity first language is absolutely never okay, that person first language is better and that avoiding person, avoiding person first language is even better, right? Like these students aren't disabled students, they’re students with disabilities, or better yet, they’re students with different abilities, or, even better, they're just exceptional learners, right? So we can completely avoid the words disabled, disability and ability altogether, and that's something that a lot of us are taught, and that is so far from where I'm at now. And then this quote at the bottom is from Open Future Learning. It's from their Facebook page, and it says “differently abled, special needs, uniquely gifted are all terms that make the speaker comfortable and the disabled discounted. We do exist. Sometimes it seems like that fact is the problem, our existence. So, you euthanize language to make our affliction disappear. Well, it's not an affliction and it's not a source of shame. It's an identity, a rallying call, a uniting force. The disability community only exists if the word exists.” And you know, identity first language is just one random example from my teaching experience. There are so many more. So, yeah, we, we all have to start somewhere. So please let today's live be an invitation to learning better and doing better. 

And then these are all the ways to get in touch with me. I'm more active on Instagram than anything else, so if you have a quick question or something, Instagram is the best way to reach me for that sort of thing, and then you can email me for anything beyond that.

Guy Stephens  55:21  

Trisha, this has been fantastic. I'm going to leave that slide up for just a minute, and then we'll make it go away. But I have to tell you that, you know, I've been off screen kind of listening to your presentation, and my neck hurts from shaking it up and down so much. You've shared so much here, and you've shared it in a way that that, to me, is really important, and that's kind of the recognition that you know, that we're all on a journey in various places, on our journey, and often the things that you know we've learned or been taught, or you know, you know, have, have come, you know, we've kind of come to realize, you know, kind of that we can do better, and there's better things that we can do and and I appreciate, again, not only all that you presented here, which was really fantastic, but the way that you presented this, and it is hard. I mean, there's a couple points here, and I'll try to hit them in the chat here in a moment. But you know, you know, very truly, there's a lot of people out there that are doing things that they've been taught and believe are in the best interest without knowing better. And you know that idea of knowing better and doing better, I think, is really critical to this work. So anyway, thank you so much for this. I'm going to make your presentation go away here, and I'm going to hit a couple of the things that I saw here in the chat, but I also want to open the floor. If anyone is watching and you have questions or comments, feel free to put those in the chat. We'll try to get get to those. But I'm going to go ahead and highlight a couple things here real quickly. Sh-, Stacy, rather, said, “I'm sooo over the insistence for eye contact. It's 2024 and folks really should be aware of that myth.” You know, this brings up a great point. There are a lot of practices out there, like sometimes I want to think like, nobody does that anymore, right? Nobody has the stoplight clip chart. Nobody's insisting that kids make eye contact. But unfortunately, these things are far more common than I think a lot of people think it's easy for some of us that have kind of been on some of this journey to think, “Oh, well, those things can't possibly still be happening like we know about this,” so I thought that was an interesting point. Stacy came back with a question, though, “what is your advice to parents that reside in areas that do not provide neurodiversity-affirming approaches? Many families live in rural areas, and it can be tough when a parent is informed on these practices, yet they don't have access to those services. Any suggestions?”

Trisha Thompson  58:01  

Yeah, that is a great question, and it would be amazing if there was a quick and easy solution that worked for everyone. But yeah, a lot of, a lot of times, you'll find families that you know understand neurodiversity affirming approaches, but there are only options where they are don't necessarily embody those practices in the schools or in the therapies that their children need to go to. So really, the best that you can do is, you know, kind of like today was sort of like a starting point for that self-reflection and that learning, so anything that you can do to kind of create that starting point for the people working with your children, you know that's going to help. You know, we can't force people to make the changes. We can't, we can't make changes overnight, but we can definitely advocate for our children. We can share information. We can get connected with, you know, other parents who are maybe feeling the same way that we feel. We can advocate together, but yeah, there isn't, I wouldn't say I have a one size fits all solution for every parent out there. I know I personally homeschool my child, but that is not something that everyone can do. So yeah.

Guy Stephens  59:32  

So I'll add on to that, if you don't mind a couple things, and I think it relates back to your presentation here. You know, I think we're both probably in the same mindset of, you know, I always begin my thought process around collaboration. You know, whether it's working with kids or working with adults. And you know, if you've been on a journey and learned some of these things and it's been transformative in the relationships and the interactions and the things that you're doing, you know. Share that you know, find an ally. You know, if you have an ally at your school, somebody that you're able to have conversations with, you know, I mean, one you want to, you want a really good answer: share this broadcast today with with that ally, right? Share this presentation, those books that were mentioned earlier, you know, you know, share and encourage and, you know, I mean, I know that not everyone is as receptive. You know, there are different mindsets that you run into. And you know, we've all seen them. We've seen the people that are more or less like, “oh, parent, you have these ideas, stay in your lane,” but, but I've also had the honor to meet and work with educators that really are curious and want to know, you know, you know, want to learn and are really open. So I would say, always assume that somebody might be receptive and try to have a conversation, but in a graceful way as well. You know, realize that you know what people's journeys might be and understand but there are a lot of great resources that we can share. Let me continue to go through these. Yeah, and to the point here, “This recording, this is a recording that educators need to watch, I will be sharing.” And of course, we always encourage people, you know, if you’re parents share these with your school, if you're a school, share them with other, you know, other colleagues. You know, that's the whole purpose of doing this is the, you know, share ideas. Amy, I, you know, I agree Trisha is amazing.” You know, you've got to have the amazing comment there.  A couple other resources were shared in the chat, and we got a very affirmative “Yes!” here from Amy on something we were talking about and I don't remember specifically what that was. Nice comment here about how well presented this was, and this is a point that I saw a moment ago and wanted to get to. “I feel like a lot of educators and therapists don't see what they're doing as harm, because they're so used to being in their own state of trauma, so they don't think that there's a problem.” And I think again, that gets back to that whole idea of, you know, many times these are these approaches that people have been taught, and things change like again, you know, we know better, we do better. The thing that you may have been taught 20 years ago in terms of what language you use, or about the, you know, the medical model of disability versus social model. You know, these things that we can learn along the way can really be helpful. But any thoughts on that?

Trisha Thompson  1:02:36  

Yeah, I think, I think this is one of my favorite things about the alliance is, you know, if you look at the articles that volunteers write, or the articles that Guy has written, or you join the book studies, or, you know, you join the lives, we're often kind of connecting the dots between, like, what we're saying that the students need is also what the adults need too, right? So as we, you know, plant those seeds and we share those resources. You know, it's not just like, “oh, students need coregulation, and they need these things.” Adults need those too, right? There is not a single point of time in life where coregulation just goes away and you don't need it anymore. We all benefit from that. So I think in addition to kind of sharing information about, you know, the autistic experience from autistic perspectives, it's important to build relationships with people. It's important to also kind of share resources that are about, you know, working with your own nervous system. Because, you know, that might seem like it's just about the adult, or it's just about the teacher, but it's that nervous system work that is going to allow those teachers to do that same work with their students, and that's for any students, not just autistic students, right? And a lot of times for a lot of teachers, you know, because they're, you know, as Stacy said, kind of like stuck in their own trauma, it can be really hard to jump into those kind of regulatory practices, or even know where to start with them. But so like, in my experience, for a lot of teachers, it's, you know, learning to do it with the children first ends up being that light bulb moment of like, “wow, like that did something for me too” right? Like “earlier today, when I took a breath and I offered soothing and coregulation to my student, like not only did that help them, but it helped me feel better in my own classroom too.” So I feel like I kind of went all over the place with that answer, but yeah, like a lot of the things that we talk about at the alliance are about how, you know, there's work that adults need to do first, but that work is the same thing that is going to help us give kids what they need, and as we give kids what they need, we realize more and more what we the adults need. If that makes sense. 

Guy Stephens  1:05:20  

It made a lot of sense, and it was really beautiful. I mean, honestly, what you were saying there really resonated with me a lot, because it is important. I mean, even though, you know, we're an organization, we're trying to advocate for change, and there's things in the world that we would like to see, you know, be very different than what they are. But you know, you're absolutely right. If we don't, if we don't live by and practice the things that we want to see in the world, you know, they're not going to we're not going to bring about that kind of change. I mean, even in thinking about very simple things, like, you know, I'll say something like, you know, you know, the idea, Bruce Perry, I think, you know, kind of the idea that a dysregulated adult is never going to help a dysregulated kid, right? Well, guess what? A dysregulated adult is also not going to communicate something to a dysregulated adult, right? So, you know, our, our approach, and you know, you know, if we want to work with others, if we want to, if they're educators that aren't doing these things that we'd love to see them do the same things that are foundational for the kids, building a relationship, building safety, building trust, all these things are really, really critical. You know, if I go in guns a blazing, enough, you know, “hey, why aren't you doing these things that you should be doing?” and, you know, that's not going to get a response that’s going to help us collaborate towards change. And I do think it's important. I do think it's important that, you know, one, I mean, I'm a huge believer in kind of focusing on the adult, you know, brain and nervous system and where that's got to be a foundational starting point. But even as we're advocating for differences, there are things in the world that might be really upsetting to us, but if we're not, you know, kind of trying to collaborate and working in ways to understand that. You know, somebody might become defensive when we begin to ask questions. You know, how do we build that trust and relationship to create a safe place that we can help people along in a journey, because somebody that is defensive and resistant is not going to, you know, is not going to go on a journey that maybe they could. Okay, so another comment here from Stacy, “I co-host a podcast and we are on a mission to shift the narrative on everything autism,” which I was, have been listening to that recently, “thanks for all you're doing to shift the mindset.” And I was thinking, actually recently, Stacy, I'm like, “you'd be a great guest for our podcast.” We'll have to reach out to you some point. And I wouldn't be surprised to see maybe, Trisha, Stacy, reach out to you. I mean, so there's lots of opportunities to have these conversations and I certainly encourage them. Another comment here from Amy, “You're phenomenal, Trisha. Thank you so much for all of this incredible information!” And I'm just going to go through… “So many therapists and educators just follow what someone says and are afraid to do differently.” And it's hard. I mean, it's hard to challenge, you know, and you know? I mean, we all know this. I mean, I know that when parents question things that you know, sometimes there's a lot of pushback. I know educators in schools who raise concerns and questions, question things, and they're often encircled by others to convince them that their concern or thought is invalid. So it is hard, it is hard, to be a change maker. You know, I've always loved, you know, there's others that we work with, and a lot of the folks in the trauma informed, you know, movement, I think about Matthew Portell at one point, had a shirt that said “unapologetic disruptor.” You know, we do need people disrupting systems, but we also need to, you know, make sure that we're following those collaborative pathways as well. All right. Doo doo doo. Let's see here, “are you saying I should give more grace?” Yeah, and “no one listens when you're yelling”, right? Yeah. A lot of lot of fantastic interaction here. And appreciate the questions and the comments here. I have a couple for you, and we're getting to kind of the end of our time here. But one of the things that has been on my mind a lot lately, and you know, your presentation, even as we were beginning, was kind of queuing it up in my mind again, is, you know, I love seeing that there's progress being made in various areas around, you know, we talk about here at the Alliance, kind of the five principles, and there's probably more, but we kind of have these five principles of trauma informed, neuroscience aligned, neurodiversity affirming, relationship driven, and collaborative. You know, to me, those five principles are really foundational in bringing about the kinds of changes that we need to bring about. And I am always happy to see growth and movement in these areas. Trauma Informed, I think, is, is a term that has gotten a lot more attention and focus. And we're seeing more, you know, training and more things moving in that direction. But there's also the flip side of that, where something kind of becomes a bit of a buzzword, and the truth of matter is, and I've said this a lot, but you know, being trauma informed, being neurodiversity affirming, like this, really is a journey. You don't take a two-hour class, and then suddenly, “oh, I'm trauma informed now,” like, “hey, we sent everybody to a PD, so we're a trauma informed school.” You know, I mean, I always talk about how, you know, these changes are far deeper than just, you know, getting some knowledge. It's actually about changing kind of the fabric of an organization. Like, you can't be trauma informed towards kids, if you're not trauma informed towards staff, you know, if you're not trauma informed in your approach towards families. So, so I'm happy to see some movement in some of these areas, and again, neurodiversity affirming. You know, again, you know, I think that there's some positive movement in that direction. But there are many places around the country that are neither trauma informed nor neurodiversity affirming. But the one thing that's been in my mind a lot lately is that even among the trauma informed, you know, I would say that looking among a lot of people that are moving in that direction of being trauma informed, I think there's still a lot of people missing the intersection here. And what I mean by that is that, you know, again, a lot of good information has been communicated, and people are understanding trauma differently. They're understanding the impact that trauma has, but sometimes there's a very narrow look at that, and they're looking at trauma through the lens of, “oh, I learned about the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies, and if one of these things happen to you. You experience trauma. You are a trauma child,” and they're not even understanding you know, things like systemic trauma. Or you know that you know being neurodivergent, you know, and I've often said this, and I believe it that, and you can tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I think that being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world, in and of itself, can be traumatic, right? When you're in a world that's not always designed around you and designed for you, and sometimes it's quite to the opposite, the experience can be traumatic. So, I guess my very long winded trying to get at a question here is that looking at the idea of trauma informed practice, looking at the idea of neurodiversity affirming how do we begin to better bridge that gap? Because again, I think that that people sometimes look at, look at individuals and don't realize that they're looking at somebody that may both be neurodivergent and may also have experienced trauma. They look at those as two separate buckets, sometimes, is what I'm saying making sense. And do you have any thoughts?

Trisha Thompson  1:12:49  

Yeah, so for me, the kind of, the thing that bridges those things together, for me is like going back to like the doing what works best and feels best, right? So, making sure we're honoring internal experiences. And in order to honor those internal experiences, we have to be curious about those, right? And as we learn about those things, we start to realize that, you know, ACES is a very narrow definition of trauma, right? There are so many other forms of trauma that people can experience--- 

Guy Stephens  1:13:32  

Yeah like restraint and seclusion, which are absolutely traumatic!

Trisha Thompson  1:13:36  

Yeah, like when we focus on those internal experiences of people we can, you know, we open our eyes more to all the different things that can cause trauma, can be experienced as trauma, and how that kind of impacts everything else. And I think, you know, another part to this is, you know, I'm talking about the mindset shift work and how part of that is unpacking biases or unpacking mental models. So, when we're kind of doing that work, one of the things that comes up is like really understanding your own values and really understanding how your language, your actions, the things you do in your personal life, the things you do in your work life, how those align with your values. And a lot of times, I think, when people are kind of doing this learning and this reflecting, they’ll, they realize that some things that they just automatically assumed were in alignment, actually aren't in alignment. So, you know, I think, especially if we're gonna, if we're talking about, you know, the education system and all the things that have influenced the way the education system is today, and how different things in the education system can cause trauma for people that, again, is like looking at those frameworks that led to things being that way, and understanding the connections between those frameworks, right? You know, even outside of neurodiversity affirming, even though it's not really outside of it, because it's all connected, like when we think about the way that capitalism has influenced the education system, right? We can start to draw those connections between the way that capitalism negatively impacts everyone, but also how it can, more specifically, negatively impact neurodivergent folks because of how it's influenced how most people understand neurodiversity. So, I think there's a lot of very like lofty things in that answer. But yeah, when, when you really sit down to do the reflection, think about those values. Think about aligning your actions to those values. It's a lot easier to see where that bridge is between, between trauma informed practice and neurodiversity from practice.

Guy Stephens  1:16:09  

Yeah, this has been really fantastic. And, you know, I feel very fortunate to be able to to host these, these conversations, because it's, it's such a learning process. Always, for me, I feel like, no matter what the topic is, you know, when I have the opportunity to have people like you come and share, you know, I know that I always get a great deal about it from it, and I hope our audience does as well. This has been really fantastic. I do want to give you an opportunity. You know, we're kind of at the end of our time here, but any final thoughts, any any final words that you want to leave us with as we wrap up the show today,

Trisha Thompson  1:16:50  

Not really, I think you know, just thank you for joining me today. And you know, please check out the resources that were shared in the video, and also the different resources that were shared in the comments. And, yeah.

Guy Stephens  1:17:06  

Fantastic. Yeah. Again, this has been, this has been really excellent. And you know, again, very much appreciate you joining us and doing the presentation here. We'll go ahead and wrap up, and I want to thank everybody that joined us today. You'll see us again, actually, I think maybe in a week, because I think we have a special edition where, usually every two weeks, but we've had a lot of little specials recently, so probably be back here again in a week with, I think, a special presentation. So thank you so much, Trisha, I'll ask you to hang around, but we're going to say goodbye to everybody else, and we will see them again soon. So thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai