It has three parts. The first talks about autistic experience in the third person. The second is a narrative written by Martin about her experience of discovering she is autistic. Part three is some guidelines for clinical assessment.
I wasn’t too sure what to make of the book. There is clearly a lot of relevant clinical experience here. But is it neuroaffirmative? I’m not sure. It’s not medical model but it’s not the language I would expect to see in a new book. However, it was written in French and then translated to English, so it is fair to say some of the language may have got off point in translation.
It also leverages the work of Tony Attwood a lot. Now, Tony Attwood is a legitimate bigwig with his own Wikipedia page. But some of the language is like “and the magnificant Tony Attwood says…” as if he is the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he is; I’ve not met him. But I would like a clinical book to reference research and integrate ideas a little more. And again, maybe some of this is the translation.
The assessment guide provides a lot of useful questions. I would tweak the language to pathologise a little less, but the questions hit on the relevant issues. Overall, I would say this is a useful book for clinicians working with autistic women and girls.
Lovely parkrun. I received a warm welcome at the gate and after the run, where they provide a spread of biscuits and hot and cold drinks. It is three laps around the park and has a few lumps but no serious hills. Thank you to all of the volunteers for a pleasant morning.
2025 marked the fifth outing of Around The Park, Around The Clock: an event that involves running three laps of Woodhouse Moor (approximately 5km) every hour for 12 hours.
We have had a range of weathers over the years and this year was mostly good. Last year was rainy all day while 2023 was glorious sunshine. This year was mostly dry but with some heavy rain around the 2pm loop. This meant lots of people joining us for the morning loops, one of which had around 40 of us, and a quieter afternoon.
I had a rough time last year, both at ATP ATC and in life generally. No such problems this year, thankfully. I did some some stomach issues for the last two hours but nothing serious. it was hard going, running wise, though. I really felt tired for some of the middle loops and that never really got much easier despite the introduction of caffeine. But all good fun.
A big thank you to Toby for organising it, Andy for watching the bags all day, and everyone else who turned up to mind base camp and cheer. Also to everyone I ran a loop with, especially Robyn as we took in most of the loops together and had a lovely catch-up.
Pontefract parkrun takes place on the race course. It features one loop around the race course track and two laps around the lake. All fairly flat. Thank you to all of the volunteers for making it happen.
Under the Radar: An Essential Guide to Autism and Girls is a book by Dr Emilia Misheva.
It’s a short book at arounf 140 pages which makes it a nice easy read. There are not enough short books in the world. It is written for a general audience and would be a good read for anyone looking to understand a lot of the key issues for autistic girls. Clinicians might want something a little more technical but it would still be a good overview.
Today, Holbeck College is launching its first YACEP courses.
As I discussed back in February, we are now a Yoga Alliance Certified Education Provider. All registered yoga teachers with Yoga Alliance need to complete CPD as part maintaining our accreditation. Since February, we’ve been working on adapting our courses to to be suitable for CPD.
The first two go live today: Mindfulness Teaching and Meditation Teaching, with hopefully more to follow this year.
The Adult Autism Assessment Handbook is a clinical guide to carrying out autism. It is written by Davida Hartman, Tara O’Donnell-Killen, Dr Anna Day, Jessica K Doyle (Author), Dr Maeve Kavanagh, & Dr Juliana Azevedo, most of all of which are connected to the Adult Autism Practice of Thriving Autistic.
Although it is typically a guide to assessment, it’s a brilliant book to help anyone understand autism. It has a guide to neuroaffirmative language, in-depth explanations of what it is like to be autistic, up-to-date research on models of autism, a critique of current autism assessments and a guide to conducting collaborative assessments neuroaffirmatively. Well worth a read.
The Lost Girls of Autism: How Science Failed Autistic Women and the New Research that’s Changing the Story is a cognitive neuroscience book by Gina Rippon. It looks at the gender disprepenacy in autism. Previously, it was thought that it was mostly a “boy thing” with a 4:1 ratio. But increasingly, this difference is disappearing, and this book likes at why.
The two key issues the book identifies is that because it was thought of as a boy thing early on, researchers were mostly looking at boys, as well as girls that confirmed to a traditional male presentation. Women and girls who presented in a female way or non-traditional way were not spotted. Then the criteria and the standardised tests were developed on mostly male populations reinforcing the gender gap.
The second issue is that girls typically engage more on camouflaging and masking. Whereas boys will act out very visible behavioural differences, girls will typically internalise their struggles. This means they don’t display the same outward characteristics of boys but still have the same struggles. As a result of these internal struggles, they are often given a variety of labels such as anxiety, social anxiety, borderline personality disorder and basically almost anything other than the correct one: autism.
Women, regardless of neurotype, typically have more highly developed social skills than boys and are socialised to be more empathic. Autistic girls, like neurotypical girls, often feel a greater need to fit in, speeding more time modelling, writing social scripts, and practising social interactions in front of the mirror.
Having outlined all of this, the book dives into what neuroscience can tell us. I found this hard going without a neuroscience background but some of the possible models of autism that neuroscience is developing are interesting.
Last weekend I attended the Neurodiversity Ireland Summit as part of my role working with a student counselling service. I was able to go to the neuroaffirmative practice talk and the autism in girls and non-sterotypical presentations. They were both fascinating and included a talk and a panel discussion. I was also impressed that a room full of people, many of whom were ADHD, sit still for three hours ?. I’ve come away with pages of notes and interesting stuff to look up.
Good songs this year. I liked Denmark but I was apparently the only person in Europe that did.
There were two points of controversty rearding Isreal’s performance. First was the claim that there was fake cheering added. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have confirmed that this was true.
Second, multiple countries have now asked for audits into the voting. I think it is plausible that Israel did win the public vote. It’s very easy for the Pro-Israel camp to make a political statement by voting but almost impossible for the Pro-Palestine camp to do the same because there are 24 other options to vote for. It’s the same problem we have in the UK general elections: first past the post does not create a result that accurately represents the views of the electorate.
