A Kids Book About Autism

I think this book is a great example of *one* child with autism. I do not like the use of disabled language as it is considered damaging to the autistic community and I listen to them. Not neurotypical parents of autistic children.

I enjoyed that the son and father teamed up but it seemed that the voice was mostly the father’s. It was not autistic people that decided Person First Language (person with Autism) was best, it was caregivers that can’t speak from the Autistic point of view. While it’s true some prefer PFL, most prefer Identify First Language (Autistic Person). This books uses PFL and I will not continue to read it my child. She should learn to refer to Autistic people as they want to be referred to.

A Kids Book About Autism

Great format for sharing information

I wasn’t a fan of the consistent use of person first identity labels (has autism rather than is autistic). And also it felt deficit based, until the autistic person was useful to the neurotypical person. We are autistic and we didn’t see ourselves in the book as much as we wanted, but I’m glad we got it. Representation for autistics is usually just boys, so I was hoping for something different.