In the final chapter of “When autistic kids grow up,” a new government grant suggests a slowly raised awareness around the need to study the lives of autistic adults, and Tempest McDonald comes through her dark period. Read the transcript. Listen to Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4.
In Chapter 4 of “When autistic kids grow up,” Tempest McDonald’s time at Vanderbilt comes to its end, and an investigation into the autism research funding landscape shows her paper was pointing toward something true. Read the transcript. Listen to Chapters 1, 2 and 3.
In Chapter 2 of “When autistic kids grow up,” after her stint as a semi-professional pool player and the birth of her son, Tempest McDonald goes west to start her belated journey through higher education. Listen to other chapters and read the transcript.
“When autistic kids grow up” is a five-part podcast that explores how Tempest McDonald’s lived experience fueled her research and explains how she stumbled onto a problem that has been hiding in plain sight. In Chapter 1, McDonald’s turbulent childhood begins to provide some answers to the question, What leads an autism researcher to publish […]
Tempest McDonald is not your typical academic researcher. She was born in Alaska into a neurodivergent family, for one thing, and then spent her at-times chaotic youth in Atlanta. She herself is autistic. She survived a period of homelessness as a teenager and then became a semi-professional pool player, spending hours in Atlanta’s bars. She […]
Insights derived from basic research are generally far upstream from clinical applications. Thus, it makes sense, in some respects, that scientists studying mouse models and molecular mechanisms tied to autism may feel removed from autistic people and their communities. But this distance can be frustrating. How do we know that our research priorities align with […]
Autistic author, journalist, lawyer, and professor Katie Rose Guest Pryal is an invaluable autism parenting and neurodivergent self-advocacy resource, with several books plus a column at Psychology Today. We talked with Pryal about her recent and very excellent book on parenting neurodivergent kids, Your Kid Belongs Here. Shannon Des Roches Rosa: I really want people […]
AutINSAR is an online and in-person discussion about autistic priorities in autism research. It began at the 2017 INSAR International Society for Autism Research meeting in San Francisco, as a frustrated community response to INSAR’s chronic neglect of existing autistic priorities and needs. Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism now co-hosts the AutINSAR chat each time […]
Lifelong outcomes: Autistic people have more health issues and higher rates of mortality than their counterparts in the general population, according to two recent publications. Autistic adults have a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease than do their non-autistic peers, one study found. And more deaths occurred in a […]
My spouse Mike and I may have been autistic together. Perhaps that was why we were drawn to each other during my inaugural college year. I was a bright-eyed seventeen-year-old, and he was an intense and seasoned twenty-something university student, driven to sling code and design all kinds of inventions. His near fall over my […]
I was 30 when my son’s Yeshiva principal called and asked to speak to my husband. When I pressed for details, I was told my 8-year-old was “awkward” and struggling, and that we should pursue testing. An evaluator within our Chassidic community in Brooklyn recommended an autism assessment. Soon after, several of my children received […]
I was 30 when my son’s Yeshiva principal called and asked to speak to my husband. When I pressed for details, I was told my 8-year-old was “awkward” and struggling, and that we should pursue testing. An evaluator within our Chassidic community in Brooklyn recommended an autism assessment. Soon after, several of my children received […]
