This morning I attended a workshop on mentoring students with autism. I really appreciate the fact that TU Delft is organizing these, and the people presenting - while being neurotypical - clearly had a lot of experience with mentoring autistic students themselves.

We covered a lot of topics such as differences in information processing, social interaction, sensory processing, camouflaging, executive function. We also got some tips on how to reduce sensory overload, communicate more clearly, and how to create structure. Overall, pretty good stuff.

I also think there were some pretty glaring omissions or oversights:

• Lots of overly general statements, e.g. “autistic people are detail-oriented” or “autistic people lack imagination”, despite the acknowledgement it’s all on a spectrum.
• Every autistic trait got framed as either a “problem” or an “extraordinary quality”, no in-between.
• Talking about “mild” and “severe” cases of autism: the fact that it’s a spectrum doesn’t mean it’s one-dimensional!
• No mention whatsoever of the double empathy problem or the social model of disability.
• Consistent use of person-first language (“person with autism”) without acknowledging that many autistic people prefer identity-first language.
• Talking about “us” teachers interacting with “them” autistic students, ignoring the fact that some of “us” might be autistic too!

I’m sure we can do better than this! (And yes I will send this feedback to the organizers too.)

#Autism @actuallyautistic