She's Already Dead What Do You Mean

Happy annual Dracula Paprika Discourse Day to those who celebrate!

12:01 a.m. on november 1st

Beetlejuice (1988)

I do spells and shit for the elderly on weekends.

Mulling over something right now.

My journey into understanding neurodivergence and my own AuDHD-ness has changed how I doctor, and sometimes I can see this when looking at things like auto text scripts I set up previously.

For example, when it comes to picky eaters, I used to do a lot of education about how to get kids to eat, discussing strategies like gamifying intake of fruits and vegetables, enforcing #-bite rules, and having cutoff times for meals. I also put a lot more weight on having a balanced, whole-food meal. The only thing I discussed that was focused on any underlying reason was involving kids in meal prep, though I didn't necessarily have a reason as to why. And, to be fair, these strategies work for picky, NT toddlers.

Contrast that to today, where I'm asking questions about texture sensitivities and taste preferences. I'm acknowledging that processed foods are more predictable than fresh. I'm discussing meal prep involvement as a means of sensory food play. I'm discussing about how stressful #-bite requirements can be and I'm encouraging having safe foods available and permissable - not as a means of giving in, but to make trying a new food less stressful. I'm also acknowledging that some food is better than no food, as long as we get the basics/macros in as we can always supplement micros with multivitamins.

These are things that weren't taught when I was in medical school or residency. I attended in 2015, just after the DSM changes and the focus then was, and largely still is, eating a "well-rounded", normativized, white, upper-middle class diet. Anything other than that was treated as subpar and is bad medicine, let alone parenting.

You know the other thing? When I started asking, do you know how many of my picky eaters DIDN'T have some kind of sensory basis to their eating patterns? Do you know just how many undiagnosed, unseen neurodivergent kids are out there, masking along, not making waves, with equally ND parents who don't know otherwise?

The number of times I see at least one parent squirm when I start asking the kids, especially older kids, autism symptom questions and autism distinct anxiety questions... Why, if I had a nickel for every time, I would definitely have more than two. It's not a coincidence.

Autism Acceptance Month 2k20: Autistic Headcanons

↳ Allison Reynolds (The Breakfast Club)

“I don’t have to run away and live in the street. I can run away and I can go to the ocean, I can go to the country, I can go to the mountains.”

me aged 13: I will kill myself and everyone around me if I get another maths homework sheet 🤬😡 [gothic music plays]

me now: haha I can purchase a new beverage at any time. tee hee [gothic music plays]

when I mask my disability and autism it physically hurts my brain/head and causes me to have headaches is that normal????

Anyway I was in an Autism evaluation last week bc I don’t have my original diagnosis on paper and they were asking me “common knowledge” questions and one of them was “who wrote Hamlet” and for some godforsaken reason I heard “Hamilton” so I said, “the book or the musical?” And the doctor said “there’s….a musical?” And we both stared at each other for forty-five seconds while I opened up my “past dialogue” log in my brain and loaded in “Hamlet”

ADHD and autism spectrum is funny in a way that isn't funny. Like hello, welcome to society, your brain is hardwired to function the most efficiently within certain parameters you'll almost never end up in. You're either so good at switching subjects that other people don't enjoy talking with you, or you're so good at sticking to the same subject that other people don't enjoy talking with you. Fuck you and good luck.