What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew Quotes

“when I was a teenager I was planning out how to live in the woods as a hermit, to avoid permanent institutionalization. And when I realized that wouldn’t work, I was planning my own death.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“Don’t fall into the trap of believing that if we are good at one thing, we will be good at some totally unrelated thing. Don’t make it sound like any autistic person has a certain level of skills across the board. Autistic people’s skills are described consistently since the 1940’s as being very uneven. There’s a reason for that.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“I feel intensely. I smell mold and bad food before others. I hear fluorescent lights. Clothing hurts, noises invade, colors take my breath away. My daily reality is governed by too much sensation and not enough sensation. Patterns are soothing because they create order in what feels like chaos. Sometimes I shut down and I lose language. Other times I get overloaded and act it out in ways that get me in trouble. My world is intense, rich, real, sometimes painful and definitely different. Understand”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“There are a lot of things I am not likely to ever learn how to do. Or if I learn how to do them, my movement disorders will prevent me from applying that knowledge. So if I’m going to put in the extreme effort it takes for me to learn and sustain a skill, it had better be a skill that makes me happier (like crocheting), not just a skill that makes things easier on everyone else (like making my bed).”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“It seems that between one-third and one-sixth of autistic people lose major skills in adolescence. Of those, about half will gain the skills back eventually, and half won’t.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“I learned that people won’t believe me when I say I need help, and so I stopped asking. I found passive or covert ways of getting help, which ultimately led to poor self-advocacy. I learned helplessness.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew