It’s London Live
Posted by:
31.1.16
26.1.16
It’s An Âûtism thing I’ll Help you understand it. Now Available…
It is with great pride and pleasure that we announce the release of Emma’s first book. It is available online from the publisher at the link below. Regular readers will know the insightful and friendly words Emma uses to communicate a powerful and important message of neurodiversity.
As an autistic woman, and mother of 6 autistic kids Emma has the lived experience of both being autistic and parenting autistics. It’s often said ‘if you’ve met one autistic then you’ve met one autistic’ and that is certainly true, well Emma presents in this book her wisdom distilled through the lived experience of a household of seven autistics.
No matter how much you know about autism, no matter how much you have lived alongside autistics or how long you have lived as an autistic I am confident that you will learn even more by reading this book by Emma.
https://youtu.be/TLdTudJZChM%20
Take the time and read this article about it here in South London Today.
Please consider visiting the publishers page and making a purchase.
Click either the text link or the button to go directly to the Stass Publications order page for Emma’s wonderful book.
25.1.16
20.1.16
Why Do Children W-Sit?
Why do children W-sit?
Posted by: Emma Dalmayne
Why do children W-sit?
W sitting can be a sign of low muscle tone as it requires less muscle strength and is therefore easier to balance. They W-sit because it is easier for them, and they can get away with playing on the floor without having to cross the mid-line. It takes a massive amount of core strength to sit “criss-cross applesauce” or other ways of sitting on the floor in where you can rotate your trunk and cross the mid-line of the body to move around.
In this position, a child’s base of support is wider and his centre of gravity is lower, allowing for the increased stability through the hips and trunk. It’s a convenient position for play because children do not have to work on keeping their balance while also concentrating on the toys. It also gives them proprioceptive feedback in limbs and joints that they may not otherwise feel.
Low muscle tone can be related to sensory challenges and children with autism signs of this are they are often floppy and tire easily. They require more energy to move their bodies because the muscle fibres and brain synapses are not there or not functioning properly – just sitting up for them can feel like they ran a mile. If it takes so much energy for them just to sit up, can you imagine the energy required for them to ride a bike or run or simply hold a pencil? So a child with low tone is going do W-sitting, because they can sit and play longer without feeling exhausted. They can focus less on balancing and using their muscles and more on playing.
Children with low tone are often very clumsy, falling or bumping into things and can have gross motor or fine motor delays. Just like babies are little geniuses in figuring out the easiest and most reliable way to be fed in order to survive, children are geniuses at compensating for their weaknesses to get by.
The mid-line of the body is an imaginary line down the centre of your body that creates the left and right sides of your body. Children who W-sit, often do so, so they can avoid crossing the mid-line. Many children with autism or sensory processing disorder have trouble crossing their midline, ie. bringing an arm or leg across the line to the other side of the body, or even reading across a page with both eyes. children who find crossing the mid-line difficult usually compensate by turning their entire body or their head to reach for something instead of simply reaching across their body to get it. They may also scoot their left hand and body further to the left, so that the right hand doesn’t need to cross the mid-line as they are writing. They’ve learned that when they move their whole self, they no longer need to overreach their limits.
This is also why it is really important for babies to not skip or speed through the crawling stage. Crawling is an important way a child can set up neurological pathways for later crossing the mid-line activities.
'It's An Autism Thing . . . I'll Help You Understand It'
‘It’s An Autism Thing ….I’ll Help You Understand It’ and why I wrote it.
When I was diagnosed with Aspergers two years ago I felt relieved, jubilant and sad all at the same time.
Relieved because I now knew myself, I could understand so much more about myself. There were a lot of ‘ahh!’ Moments to look back on!
Jubilant because I now knew I wasn’t crazy or a complete misfit, I was part of a neurodiverse community that helped me be proud of my autistic identity.
Sad, for all the missed opportunities I had had, all the misunderstandings and meltdowns that are, in short, terrifying when you do not understand why you are going through them.
Most of all I wanted to help other parents, I am mother to neurodiverse children, two with complex needs and felt I could offer help to others.
I started a Facebook group with the help of a friend to support and educate parents and carers with a large volume of autistics in it to create a safety ‘net’ of sorts.
If these parents, I thought, could meet adult autistics and learn from us it would help them.
For them to know and realise that their children are capable of so much, that if their child uses non verbal communication it’s not the end of the world simply an alternative to the typical is extremely important to a worried parent of a newly diagnosed child.
The group is incredible and I’m proud of it, and through it I became aware of another side of the autism community.
The side that’s being exploited and hurt by corporations intent on offering ‘cures’ for autism as if it’s an illness or disease in the most harmful ways possible.
I began campaigning in earnest here in the UK, working with the media including London Live, BBC, Ben Tv, The Independent and The Times to expose the quackery and mindset of the exploited.
Parents desperate to help their children, believing there are no other alternatives but these harmful treatments, being told they had to normalise their child through compliance therapy, that their child would never become anything and that the only way for their child to ‘fit in’ was to be ‘healed’.
I came to the conclusion that parents do want to help their children, fear comes from not knowing, not understanding how to cope or aid someone we love.
For someone to be able to say, “Right, I understand now, what can I do, how can I help?”
Is a massive thing for a concerned carer or parent.
I began writing blogs, I have a website called autisticate.com with loads of articles on it. I am published on The Mighty, Autism Daily Newscast, Geek Club Books, Autistic Spectrum Digest and Special Needs Jungle.
But I had so much more to say, so much more to give.
I had often heard it said to people “It’s an autism thing, you wouldn’t understand.”
So let’s help them, I thought.
If my book can dispel myths, give teachers and parents the tools to step over to our point of view, to see how we see the world, feel the world even then I’ve done what I set out to do.
Children and indeed adults do not need to ‘fit in’,we need help, encouragement and inclusion. We do not need harmful treatments or compliance training.
It’s An Autism Thing…I’ll Help You Understand it.
Text by Emma Dalmayne Illustrations by Raphelle Dalmayne
Out on www.stasspublications.co.uk
From January 25th 2016 available as a hard copy and ebook
Proud Autistic!!
Proud Autistic!!!
Posted by: Emma Dalmayne
Eugenics seems like an obvious eventuality
When you have an Autism One mentality
People say nah it’s getting better
But they didn’t see the Autism Speaks campaign
With the missing letter
The letter was I
As if I do not exist
They don’t see what we’re seeing
Don’t hear what we’re hearing
Don’t live what we’re living
Don’t give what we’re giving
The strength it takes to live as we do
Treated as epidemics called lepers
Puzzle pieces blue
http://youtu.be/cSPjwLrjELY%20
Sound the alarms
Apparently
We will over run your life
Break up your home
Ruin your finances
Take your wife!
Called disordered
Ill, sick
Intervention, get them quick!
Compliance training
Treats prevailing
Blend in
Be like me
Don’t be Like
Your supposed to be
Self stimulating
That needs stopping
Time out
Quiet hands
Electric shocking
Bleaching, GcMAF, faecal implantation,
Stem cell, HBOT,
Human rights deprivation.
We are autistics
We are proud
We have always been here
Mozart, Einstein, Tesla
Let me be clear
You want us gone?
Then you’ll have a fight
If being autistic’s wrong I don’t want to be right
Cos
We are a spectrum
Autistic selection
Bright strong and proud
Vibrant
Bold loud!
No quitting
No leaving
We keep on
While we’re breathing
Your child’s there parents
Cease seeking
Stop grieving
The neurotypical dream you believe you should have had
Your child’s a walking rainbow
There’s nothing wrong with that.
14.1.16
Never
Never
Posted by: Richard Johnson
Never – By Anonymous
I`m working towards being able to express some of the things that have happened to me and shaped what I became today. Concentrating on expressing my visualisation in words held back the meltdown. This is an expression of what the years between a visit to a child psychologist and puberty, when I discovered anger and defiance could keep me alive & moving, were like.
I`m standing in my mind. Small, insignificant, a part of the endless firmament surrounding, above and below me.
A tearing sound and a great light come, an invasion, a machine materialises. It is vast, its caterpillar tracks taller by far than my own presence, its yellow paint too bright against the penumbra of my thoughts, its flashing light sending my space awry with swirling nauseous shadow, its arm, leading to a toothed bucket, of a vastness unimaginable to who I was then.
I am seized by an invisible hand, held by the scruff of the neck, hoisted above the ground that has appeared to support the machine, a ground not of my making but part of the invasion, the intrusion. Something alien that has imposed on my landscape that is not a landscape. I struggle, but not for long, the hand shakes me, rattles me, causing fear for my existence and frightening me into terrified stillness as I am held and forced to see, to watch as the machine crawls, belching poison, and goes to work.
As the bucket bites, my centre screams, my outside becomes rigid with the resistance I try to mount against the agony that consumes me from within, and I become smaller and smaller within myself, dwindling until in the firmament of my mind the things that are not of me are bigger, stronger, more important than me.
Roaring, belching out smoke blacker than darkness, the machine cuts into me, digs, cuts and lifts. Moves, cuts and lifts. As it works I am forced to watch the violation, the despoiling of the place that was mine. It cuts trenches, long and deep, separate, connected, parallel and at angles to one another. Cuts them into me, makes them something that I could not hide from or ignore, try as I might, when I am outside. I am too young to know what they are. Too young to appreciate what I am seeing as the trenches cut deep enough for the searing magma of shame, pain and fear fill them, the level rising to the brim before stopping, rippling, the flames hurting my non-existent eyes in my non-existent place, the hand still holding me harshly, fingers directing my gaze so I cannot look away, shakes me, hard. A voice, angry, demanding, frightening, from so many directions around me that it pierces me and sears my centre like a lash, bellows “LEARN”, before casting me into my own oblivion, heedless of my terror and confusion. I run from that place, I resolve never to return to the site of the rape of my spirit, I lock the knowledge of its location away from myself and run, run.
Decades later I am drawn slowly, inexorably. I started somewhere that was green, penumbra now a glow that illuminates the dome of sky that surrounds the planet my thoughts and feelings have become. Principles, stand like mountains, immovable and lofty. Concepts roam in the distance and nearby, heedless of my presence until I beckon them closer that I may see them more clearly, and explore their existence. Thoughts flow in rivulets that meander and border fields of memories, some brightly coloured, nodding their fragrant heads in the breeze of time and some darker, corrupt and stinking and bound by fences made of loathing and fear, standing dark and harsh, impenetrable and poisonous.
A meander in the river has undercut the bank of one of the fences, leaving a gap into the field.
Compulsion floats me on the river closer to the gap and feeling strong, I step through. Though I am not here, and this place doesn`t exist, my bare feet are made uncomfortable by the texture of the memories I wade through. I have always been naked here, what need does a body that doesn`t exist have for clothes? Slime and thorns coat my calves as I stride across the field to the horizon beyond the fence I have crossed.
I walk for an age. Fears and anxieties buzz around me, the drone of their wings and the poison of their stings making my soul shudder with unease as crowded undergrowth gives way to clearer, stonier, darker ground. In going forward I find I am 
heading backward, the ground on either side gradually falls away and I find myself walking on a ridge, a promontory that rises beyond the distance I can see from the other side of the fences, and runs parallel to the path I have spent my life carving through this world as my experience terraforms it. Past and above the impenetrable seeming landscape of my adolescence, beyond the barriers built long ago to lands I had forgotten.
Further and further, higher and higher, what surrounds me becomes steadily darker until, scared of losing my footing I am forced to raise myself and move through space detached from any anchor, following the smell of brimstone to the end of the ridge, where I hover, stationary and extend my senses around me.
Laid out before me is a barrenness I could not imagine in this place that should be colour and light and life and love. The ground as black as pitch and the sky darker, lit only by the fires in the letters that I see clearly, carved impossibly large into what is of me and yet not of me. Letters made of lines and curves, connecting and separate, parallel and at angles to one another.
YOU WILL DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. SIT DOWN. SIT UP. SIT STILL. STAND STRAIGHT. STOP THAT. LOOK AT ME. TAKE THAT LOOK OFF YOUR FACE. BE QUIET. PICK YOUR FEET UP. STOP TALKING THROUGH YOUR NOSE. STOP BITING YOUR NAILS. STOP THAT. DON`T DO THAT. STUPID. WORTHLESS. UNWANTED. MONGOLOID. RESENTED. HATED. IT IS YOUR FAULT. DON`T ANSWER BACK. DO YOU WANT ANOTHER ONE. PLEASE MAY I. EFFORT. BEHAVIOUR. ATTITUDE. EFFORT. BEHAVIOUR. ATTITUDE. YOU. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.YOUR FAULT. YOUR FAULT.
The heart I do not have in this place stops. The control I do not need in this place deserts me. The ground that does not exist hurtles towards me as I topple from the ridge that is no longer there towards the ground of my torn spirit and land hard between the letters, where I see the small scratches, made with tiny, quick-bitten fingers in hardened mud made of spirit and tears so many years ago.
please. i can`t. please. i`m afraid. please. i don`t understand. please. i don`t know how. please. i can`t see. please. i can`t hear. please. i can`t speak. please. it hurts. please. why. please. you said to. please. i don`t know what you want. please. i`m sorry. please. i won`t. please. i`m small. please.it hurts. please. i`m alone. please.
it`s not long before the small words give way to meaningless scratches, the scrabbling of a frightened animal, stinking of piss and fear and despair and pain.
The lungs I don`t have, heave. The throat that doesn`t exist closes in sobs that I cannot hear. Tears of fire roll down my non-existent cheeks as I cry for the memory that didn`t exist because I didn`t want it to. the strength that has taken decades to build barely enough to take me away from this place to another place in my mind.
In the real world my body calms slowly as the chemical unfurls in my bloodstream. control returns as I step out of the place, through the door into the hall of stillness, and I close it behind me, noting that now the lock is broken.
13.1.16
Scattering Verus Lining Up
Scattering versus lining up.
Posted by: Emma Dalmayne
Scattering versus lining up.
You’ve hit up the Internet and every book you can read, you are pretty positive your child’s autistic BUT one of the main behaviours always listed in the checklists you’ve seen is lining up.
You have ticked off repetitive play, you’ve realised all the times you thought your child standing in the playhouse at nursery washing up in the sink where there happened to be other children was not playing with them, it was playing alongside them.
It’s quite an eye opener!
It’s definite that they have sensory issues as they scream with loud sounds, you’ve already ordered some ear defenders, you feel like your doing something.
Tiptoe walking? Tick
Picky with food? Tick
Delayed speech/ spoke early? Tick
Spins, rocks and has a seemingly inability to understand others emotions? Tick
Has meltdowns over transitions and breaks down to the point of complete breakdown over the fact their biscuits snapped in half? Tick.
But lining up? No.
Your child is the messiest little person you know! Piles of clothes, DVDs and toys in random piles adorn your front room floor, your hallway (right in the middle) and their bedroom? Chaos!
If you attempt to tidy up or move these piles your child panics, screaming and a meltdown of momentous proportions ensues.
But did you realise that your child is lining up in their own way?
The stereotypical lining up is the most recognisable autistic trait, and the reason for it?
Control.
We arrange things in order to control our environment in a world that to us is random, scary and out of sync. Knowing that that line is there, that we made it and it’s not going to be touched altered or moved makes things bearable. It looks nice, it comforts us.
Scattering is another form of lining up, these piles are specifically placed with carefully chosen items (though it won’t look like it), and arranged at key points of the room or place they are positioned in .
If in a door entrance they control (to your child) who enters, the speed they enter and control the room making it safe.
My children both line up and scatter. My older daughter hoards.
It’s all about making our mark, making things bearable.
If piles are problematic give your child a large tub or a specific area of the room to pile up in, if it’s scattering not piling it’s fruitless to try and tidy up while they are awake so do so if possible when they are asleep.
You will find an autistic piles, lines or scatters more when they are stressed or alternatively particularly happy.
School may provoke more lining up /scattering as might a much anticipated trip to a theme park they’ve been wanting to go to.
They want to go but are anxious, what will happen? Will it be ok?
Lining up/scattering is never misbehaviour it’s a coping mechanism and an important one and should be accommodated.
5.1.16
I'm Sorry But I'm Not Sorry
I’m sorry but I’m not sorry.
Posted by: Emma Dalmayne
I’m sorry but I’m not sorry.
Remember when you were a child? And you’d be at play group or nursery and another child would snatch something from you and you’d hit them?
Or in primary a child would call you a name and you’d call them one back then they’d run to the teacher crying?
Then the teachers and your parents would make you say sorry, and most of the time you were not sorry at all? But you were made to parrot those words, remember that?
The anger that you felt at the injustice of it all?
You may have come to the conclusion at that tender age that you could do what you liked, as long as the word sorry was 
uttered at the end.
You didn’t have to mean it!
Now fast forward to now, as a parent of an autistic child.
Example one.
Your out, at a friends or a play group a social gathering of sorts, just starting to relax when you hear crying and your heart sinks.
Your friend comes marching over hand in hand half pulling their angry looking child with them and calling your child over, “Oliver hit your Mary, say sorry Oliver!”.
Mary looks confused while rubbing her arm, “I said say sorry Oliver!” Cries your friend irate.
Oliver grunts “sorry” and storms away, the mother gives an apologetic look and Mary looks at you.
Now has Mary’s pain in her arm magically disappeared as the word sorry was uttered?
No.
Let’s reverse that….
Example two.
Your out, you hear crying and your friend marches over hand in hand with a tearful Oliver, angrily calling Mary.
Mary walks over and your friend says in a frustrated tone “Mary hit Oliver again!”
Mary looks at you unapologetically and your friend looks at you with an expectant look.
The pressures on …..now do you make Mary, who is autistic and may have struck out through meltdown or overload say sorry?
You know she is not sorry or regretful in any way yet the situation seems to require an apology from her.
Or does it?
What is that teaching Mary?
It’s teaching her that if she’s overloaded or frustrated she must not lash out at other people, that’s true BUT if she was not overloaded or in meltdown then it’s showing her that as long as she says sorry even if not feeling sorry then it’s ok.
There’s also the point of making children apologise for actions given while having a meltdown, we will get to that in a minute as its not proven what happened.
Your friend doesn’t care what happened, she wants a sorry and she wants it now!
The correct response in this situation is really not to make your child echo a sorry or worse insist after they utter it chide “Like you mean it!”
It’s to ask what happened, why did Mary react this way, was it crowded? Loud? Had Oliver hurt Mary in some way?
Once solved if possible the reason the next step is to settle the situation.
If Mary is not sorry don’t make her say it.
Yes I said DON’T make her say it!
Tell your friend that you will be speaking to Mary about this at home and move on.
If your friend insists your child apologises for something that was or was not out of Mary’s control she’s doing it because SHE wishes to hear it.
Oliver on the other hand will know if Mary is sorry or not and right now she looks far from sorry.
Now Oliver may have, in example one have felt he had good reason to hit Mary and was made to apologise.
He did not want to, he was angry and embarrassed yet was made to repeat that he was sorry.
That to was wrong.
That was for your friends benefit, as it was all she felt she could do.
Much quicker to make her child verbalise the words “I’m sorry!” Then try to help them understand why they should be.
A social story could help explain about feelings and appropriate responses, as could giving the child the option to walk away if they are beginning to feel angry.,
I have had the experience of taking my son to playgroups and having to leave after fifteen minutes, frantically muttering I’m 
sorry as angry mothers cradled crying children to them after my son had attacked them.
But I never made my son apologise.
He was not sorry.
He was frustrated, overloaded, had limited speech and had struck out as he had not knowledge of social boundaries or at that time care of them.
He was not sorry.
I should have explained that, at that time I did not know he was autistic but I knew something had made him react like that and forcing a sorry at a volatile moment when he was not sorry would have back fired dreadfully.
A child in a meltdown has no control over their actions at that time so cannot be made to say sorry, it’s involuntary and not premeditated
It’s would be like making a child apologise for vomiting or falling over.
There’s an example be seen, a picture of a smashed plate on the floor, with the words ‘Take a plate, throw it on the floor. Did it break? Now say sorry! Did it fix it? No.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
Fix decipher and figure out, then strategise with your children what could have been done differently.
Sorry is a social nicety and if meant then a great word to use, if not then it’s pointless.
1.1.16
More Bleachers Found Out!
More Bleachers found out!
Posted by: Richard Johnson
In the media again….
Another time for the Police to be involved. How on earth to the NAS possibly stand by their claim that they are not seeing any increase in the UK. Sounds like they have their heads in the sand to me.
Well done again Emma Dalmayne, you continue to work so hard for us. Thankyou.
http://www.dover-express.co.uk/Bleach-cure-autism/story-28401092-detail/story.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Brit parents with autistic children paying thousands for 'scam dolphin therapy'
Brit parents with autistic children paying thousands for 'scam dolphin therapy' EXCLUSIVE: A Sunday People investigation foun...
-
The Anti MMS fight Posted by: Emma Dalmayne Author: Heather Beattie My awareness of MMS started back in April 2014. I happened t...
-
Fitting in versus standing out. Posted by: Emma Dalmayne As a child I remember feeling so very different to the other girls. They ...
-
GcMAF quack autism treatment – with video Posted by: Emma Dalmayne GcMAF quack autism treatment – with video August 7, 2015 ...
