Sincere thanks to Dr Luke Beardon who discussed his thoughts on many topics surrounding autism, and shared more of his profound insights whilst responding to questions both sent in, and from audience members.
For those of you who couldn’t attend the PDSG, the presentation was recorded (excluding some sections to preserve anonymity) and is available to view bellow.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
02:42 – Luke discusses the Monty Hall Problem
12:02 – Question on Neurodivergence
19:33 – Question on politics
20:31 – Apostrophes have feelings too
21:34 – Question on Reasonable Adjustments
27:31 – Question leading to FAME system
30:54 – Question about reading peoples intentions
36:39 – Question about what we should be studying
39:54 – list of blogs by Actually Autistic bloggers
43:40 – Question on revising previously held beliefs on autism
49:28 – Discussion on definition of Challenging Behaviour
55:03 – Question on schooling
58:23 – comment on chronological age
59:42 – Luke discusses allocation of energy
1:04:18 – Luke discusses decision making
1:05:23 – Luke discusses Masking
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Another great session. If all three words of the acronym ASD are so seemingly inadequate, then perhaps the time is now right to create new more inclusive terms. The problem with descriptions like ‘different wiring’ is that some bystanders might think we are referring to the physical attributes of neurotransmission, whereas elsewhere in your talk, you made comments about differences in processing ability. Now, I can easily see that hyper-processing is a significant problem for some of us, as I seem to be experiencing considerable monotropism with this Q&A session.;-) As always with Luke, I have gained a great deal from this session, but I am also left wondering if the first word in the equation, Autism + Environment = Outcome, really should now be updated. Not that I can really think of an elegant plain language alternative just yet!. So perhaps we will have to live with the apparent contradictions of the letters A,S & D for a while yet, as it is going to be quite difficult to come up with more consistent and broadly acceptable labels.
Thank you for your feedback, much appreciated – and I agree, excellent session! :0)
Well, it was me who hadn’t really quite figured how neurodiversity and neurodivergence differed. So I spent a bit more time investigating that, and discovered that the two terms are considered non-medical. Now, as it is increasingly obvious that standard medical terms like autism are often perceived now as somewhat meaningless, why don’t we just drop that term and just use a term like ‘neurodivergence’ instead, which at least indicates some movement away from the usual norms. Why not form equations like neurodivergence + environment = outcome, for instance? That would emphasise both the ‘differences’ and the various combinations of so-called comorbidities (perhaps also a far too morbid and moribund term) 😉 Now I am probably yet again barking up completely the wrong tree, but I still see that such thoughts might make for interesting follow-ups to Luke’s PDSG presentation.
As a survivor of a failing 11+ system at Primary School, two Secondary Moderns, a Grammar School A Stream, an early comprehensive school, two tech colleges and an open university, I am very inclined to agree with Luke’s views on the current mainstream educational model. And also the politically imposed need for students to all progress thru’ the system year by year with their so-called peers of the same age.
Absolutely!
I very much enjoyed Luke’s Q & A session and found it very helpful. Especially talking about reasonable adjustments and advocating for oneself.
It gave me the confidence just two days later, to actually seek medical help after suffering an extreme reaction to a nasty bite. I got help and I did it all by myself. That was huge for me.
Many thanks Luke and Axia xx
Fantastic, well done Helen! :0)