Tw aba
I like caaaant handle work rn. I’m an instructional assistant working with autistic kids and I’m working with this one kid who keeps being violent to other kids and I have training and knowledge and personal lived experience all giving me good insight into how to support him but the other adults I work with incl the teacher literally know so little about autism it’s so fucking frustrating. His parents have him in aba and it’s clearly doing damage and I’m trying to talk to the teacher and she literally never has time and I’m not supposed to be the one talking to his family about everything even. I’m trying just to slow down, deescalate, introduce aac, etc. but working against so much bureaucratic bullshit and incompetent allistics w/ authority over me + home/therapy actively working against the stuff I’m trying to work on with him aaaaand I’m fucking exhausted. Just trying to mitigate as much harm as I can and wishing I had more control than I do and that people would take this kids needs seriously and respect his body and his space so that he could then have any idea of what it means to respect anyone else’s. Today he pulled some racist shit that probably traumatized this other little girl a bit. There’s clearly a lot of trauma and it’s so frustrating that that’s just seen as autism and that all these autism professionals literally just think that’s what autism is. Combo of trauma and white boy socialization. Other autistic girl in the class was able to empathize with the kid this kid was bullying right away, but this kid’s not being taught that it’s just like, wrong to hurt people. He’s being taught that he shouldn’t hurt people cause then he won’t get a cookie or won’t get time on the computer which is his special interest. So many levels of fucked up. So many levels. This would be so much easier if the other adults I was working with, especially the ones with more power than me, were at all competent about autism vs signs of acute distress and trauma