Reflections and practical guidance for supporting autistic and neurodivergent learners from the inside out. Explore regulation-first, neurodiversity-affirming perspectives on communication and AAC, body awareness, change, safety, co-regulation, and the environments in which learning happens.
Intense Enthusiasms: What Happens When We Stop Trying to Shrink Them
July 14, 2026
A child returns to the same three songs. Talks about trains through every conversation. Memorizes television episodes, studies maps, focuses on video games, sorts figures, or watches the same short video again and again. Adults often notice the repetition first. We may worry that the interest is taking up too much space. We may try
What I Once Believed: Forty Years of Changing My Mind
July 7, 2026
Early in my career, I used to stand in front of rooms full of parents—though, in those rooms, they were usually mothers—and tell them that autism affected about 1 in 10,000 children. I believed it. It was the number I had been given, and I repeated it with the confidence of someone who thought she
When Your Child Is Overwhelmed, Your Nervous System Is in the Room Too
July 2, 2026
You have probably noticed this. Your child is melting down, shutting down, running, screaming, pacing, or completely frozen. You want to help. You start talking, redirecting, offering choices, explaining, trying to make it better. And sometimes, the more urgently you try to help, the harder the moment becomes. That does not mean you are doing
Meltdowns, Strong Energy, and Body Signals: Where Families Can Start
June 22, 2026
You’re tired. Not the tired that sleep fixes. The tired that comes from bracing for the next hard moment. From trying to keep everyone safe. From wondering whether today will be the day your child throws something, hits, runs, crashes into you, chews through another shirt, or falls apart over something that seemed small from
Why SSS Is Built the Way It Is
June 17, 2026
A look at the framework behind Shared Stories Studio — and why every design choice is intentional. When I started building Shared Stories Studio, I wasn’t trying to create a new kind of resource just to be different. I was trying to solve a real problem: autistic learners and AAC users were being handed tools
The Other Nervous System in the Room
June 8, 2026
Appointment Support for Autistic Learners Begins with the Adults, Too You know the feeling. The appointment is days away, and something in you is already bracing. You run through the variables: how the waiting room might smell, whether the provider will be running late, what you will do if the learner you are accompanying cannot