In a speech to Congress, the US Health (sic) Secretary, recently declared that autistic children “will never pay taxes, never hold a job, never play baseball, never write a poem, never go out on a date and many may never use a toilet unassisted…It has to stop”. That statement is profoundly dehumanising and deeply inaccurate.

When I started this blog last year, I wanted to help change attitudes to and stereotypes about neurodivergent people of all kinds. Ageing Autistically is for people who’ve felt different for most of their lives and have only recently found out why. It’s also for anyone who is interested in understanding better. I can only speak from my own experience, and everyone is different, but there’s a growing body of up-to-date thinking and research that needs to be widely shared.