A group of young people with autism are reclaiming the word normal for World Autism Awareness Month. The myVoice volunteers, supported by Ambitious about Autism, want to remind people that everyone’s normal is different.
Their message is that those idiosyncrasies that everyone has are what make them who they are. And the same applies for people with autism.
Fern Adams, myVoice volunteer, explains: “One of the problems with people always looking at people with autism differently is they forget we have shared experiences.”
‘They might miss the signs’
She adds: “People spend so much time looking at what makes us different than everyone else, they might miss the signs we’re becoming unwell.
“And because we get told so often that our unique behaviours are a problem, we might not recognise in ourselves when something is going wrong.”
Ambitious about Autism believe it’s important that we, and the people in our lives, know what our normal looks like.
Easier to seek help
Knowing how we normally behave when we are well, accepting that and communicating is really important. It helps us and the people who care about us notice when something has changed. In this way it makes it easier to seek help.
We’ve created a tool to help young people define and voice their own experiences. Everyone can use it – whether they are autistic or not to help them explain their normal.
We hope it’ll showcase the wide variety of ways we behave when we’re healthy, and make it easier to get help when we’re not.
Find out more: www.knowyournormal.co.uk.
