Beyond Inclusive Education
Many people believe in inclusive education for autistics. However, I believe that we cannot create mutual acceptance and empathy by simply mixing autistics and non-autistics during school time. At best, this tends to create superficial friendships with little lasting value to autistics. At worse, the added sensory and social demands make school life difficult for...
Free Online Education Resources Directory
SG Enable's Online Resources for People with Disabilities including autism and intellectual disability Superhero Me educational resource package for developing self-care skills and understanding routine changes and protective measures due to COVID-19 Special Care Kit for people with Special Needs by IMH, NUH, KKH Supporting Individuals with Autism through Uncertain Times: content, strategies, and resources by...
Persuading Autistics
One day, I was invited for dinner with a Chinese family of an autistic teenager. The mother, an autism professional, was busy interrogating her son as if she was a lawyer cross-examining a hostile defendant. The scene reminded me of my Primary school days, but this autistic was much more capable of defending himself than...
Parental Judgment & Ableism
If I can travel back in time to my childhood, I will tell myself to ignore others' advice to use NeuroTypical strategies that I was hopeless at. Instead, I am to create new ways to succeed without betraying my dreams and ethics. During the few years when I started working, my mother occasionally compared me...
The Inconvenient Truth about Fixing Autism
When we cure autism, we seek to eradicate all traces of autism and convert the autistic to be NeuroTypical. Fixing autism is much less ambitious – the goal is to change the autistic just enough so that they are not a burden to their caretakers. Fixing autism is the more politically correct cousin of curing...
Accommodating Disabilities or Bad Attitudes?
Attitudes are policies that we choose to apply to our lives. Once we have awakened to our free will, we choose our attitudes regardless of our abilities or disabilities, advantages or disadvantages. 1) People with good attitudes choose to be a positive force that contributes to the world. People with bad attitudes either do not...
Looking into the Future
My mother told me that a bowl of laksa noodles used to cost $0.10 during her childhood in 1964. Today in 2018, it can cost between $2.50 to $7.50. I realised that the price has increased by at least 25 times during 54 years (6.26% inflation per year). Hence, I took out my calculator and...
Mass Produced Education: Autistic Genius to Mediocre Worker
Most NeuroTypicals have little idea about how to work with autistics. They seek to make autistics behave in a compatible manner with their society. Their goal is to manage autistics, not to develop them. Hence, to create their successes, autistics must invent and use unconventional strategies and methods. NeuroTypical strategies usually fit them poorly and...
Why does my autistic child hate me?
While it may sound politically incorrect, I confess that I did not like my mother who I felt often pressured me to do what I disliked. I was not alone in my sentiments. When I joined a family with an autistic teenager for dinner in Macau in 2007, my hopes of a peaceful dinner were...
Some Autism Parents also need Therapy
When people asked how I broke the limitations of autism, I usually share the metaphor of a child trapped in a bank vault with two steel doors. With much effort, his parents can crack the code and open the first door. However, the second door was locked from the inside - the child must crack...