Autism Acceptance Month: Teaching Neuroinclusion to your Children

This month is Autism Acceptance Month (formerly known as Autism Awareness Month). The purpose of the month, which was originally geared toward raising awareness and sharing resources to raise awareness for the Autism Community, is now aimed at both raising awareness and fostering a culture of acceptance. What does this mean exactly? The name change to Autism Acceptance Month urges for a change in how the community at large embraces individuals with Autism as well as their families. A large source of stress for individuals with Autism and their families is a lack of community support, this includes difficulty finding support within the education system, providing accessible housing, providing affordable healthcare, and helpful, comprehensive long term services. 

That said, we wanted to highlight one resource we found that was designed to help individuals within the community and to help educate the community as a whole. This resource is a children’s book, created by an individual who has Autism, that seeks to describe and normalize various sensory needs, mobility needs, and even nutrition needs for children with disabilities, and is not solely limited to ASD. This resource does so in a way that does not teach children who are neurodivergent or who have a disability to feel like their difference is their fault OR that it is something that needs to be hidden in order for them to fit into everyday life. This children’s story highlights that children all have differences from each other, that the needs of many children can be met within the school setting, and that this is a great thing! It seeks for foster “Neuroinclusion” rather than to create an environment of othering and exclusion. This story is called “A Room For Us All: A Neuroinclusive Story”.

Below is the link to the article written on this topic which has a PDF of the story we mentioned at the bottom of the article!

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