advice for educators

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What advice do you have for educators who are working with children who are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum?

1. Do not assume to know anything about any kid just because they pull an alphabet soup of letters behind their name (ASD/AS/ADHD/NVLD/TS/OCD, etc)

Everyone has 100% of effort they can use at any given time.

Say a typical kid comes into your classroom. He maybe needs to spend 10% of his effort on paying attention, 10% on decoding social interactions, and 10% on random other things (tag in his shirt, uncomfortable shoes, etc). That leaves him with 70% of his effort to use on your class.

An autistic kid comes into your classroom. She needs to spend 20% of her effort on paying attention, 30% on decoding social interactions, and 20% on trying to regulate her sensory system. That leaves her with 30% of her effort to use in your class.

If the typical boy spends half of his available effort on your class, he will do better than the autistic girl, even if she is spending 100% of her available effort on your class. (35% vs 30%)

And if she is like my son, she is 100% aware of this.

Treat them the way Mister Rodgers would treat them.