Dr. Devon Price on the Autistic Person’s Guide to Unmasking for Life

Debbie:

Hey Devon and welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Devon Price:

Hi, thank you so much for having me back.

Debbie:

Yeah, of course. I was really excited when I found out you have a new book coming out as we record this. I think it will come out probably in about three weeks, so very soon. And we had you on the show a couple years ago to talk about your book, Unmasking Autism. And listeners, I’m just going to say, if you haven’t listened to that episode, I’ll have it a link in the show notes. Definitely go check that out. But so I was really excited for this opportunity to have a follow-up conversation. And I’m going to mention the name of the book and then I would love to hear what led you to writing it because you obviously have a lot more to say about this conversation. So the book that will be coming out at the end of March, it’s called Unmasking for Life, the Autistic Person’s Guide to Connecting, Loving, and Living Authentically. So tell us about why and how this book came forward for you.

Dr. Devon Price:

So Unmasking Autism was kind of the book that I wish had existed when I was figuring out that I was autistic in my late 20s, not knowing a ton about what autism really was, not knowing what autism can look like in marginalized populations, and just how burdensome it is to grow up with a disability that you don’t know is a disability and having to camouflage it and compensate for it all the time. And so this second book, Unmasking for Life, is really about the years and stages of struggle and practical thinking and figuring your life out that kind of comes after that revelation. So figuring out that you’re autistic or neurodivergent in general and getting more comfortable with who you really are is this really difficult internal process. It’s a social process. It’s a lot of reflecting back on your past and figuring out who you are and dropping that mask. But even after you’ve come to drop that mask and try to be more authentic in your life and really honor your needs as a disabled person, the world around you has not changed. The world is still really inaccessible to disabled people. So even if you’re really accepting the fact, for example, that I’m never gonna hold down a full-time job in my life and I know that doesn’t determine my value as a human, that’s not what my life is for, this is just how my disability works and I’m at peace with that.

That doesn’t change the fact that you have to have a roof over your head and food in your belly and medicine you need to get. So how are you going to survive under capitalism and under ableism with that being the case? Or other practical life challenges, okay? I accept myself as my weird self. I’m going to self-stimulate, stim in public and be weird and wacky. But most of the people I go on dates with do not like that. Or my family is ashamed of me because they have their own baggage about this stuff. All of those external issues are still there. And so Unmasking for Life is really about the self-advocacy tools that disabled people can use and the skills we can develop and the kind of practical life planning we can work through in order to build a life for ourselves that gives us a little bit more of that freedom to be our unmasked selves, to be disabled, to have needs, to be strange, to be different. And it walks through some of the areas of life that in the response to unmasking autism, I’ve gotten a ton of questions from disabled people. Okay, I accept myself, but now how do I make friends that actually accept me and won’t take advantage of me? So friendship is a chapter, work is a chapter, family is a huge area of difficulty. So there’s a chapter on that too. Love and sex, and then also just life. You know, what does growing older as a disabled person look like? What does building networks of support and care look like if you’re not going to have a conventional life or a more neuroconforming life? And so that’s the idea behind all the book. And it’s really inspired by the tons and tons of questions and feedback that I’ve gotten from readers about the areas in life where they find it the hardest to get by as themselves.

Debbie:

And I am curious to hear about how Unmasking Autism was received because I feel like even in the couple of years since it’s come out, masking, at least in the neurodivergent community, at least in the parents I work with, there’s more at least familiarity of masking or with masking as a concept. But at the time when your book came out, it was one of the, I think, first bigger books that was really like having this conversation. you mentioned the feedback you’ve been getting from readers. I’m just kind of curious, even from the time when you wrote that and where you are now, what if, like if we zoom out, what have you noticed has changed in the overall conversation of whether it’s awareness or understanding of the neurodivergent experience?

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, in a way we’ve kind of gone through this autism tipping point in the culture, or it feels like we’re very close to it, where autism and neurodivergence is on a lot more people’s lips. Organizations are at least saying sometimes that they’re mindful about neurodiverse inclusion. When DEI was something that was not as under attack as it is now, a lot of companies were including neurodiversity in their DEI efforts. Sometimes I would hear from care providers, clinicians, medical practitioners who were getting curious about what are the actual needs of autistic and other neurodivergent patients and how are we failing them. There was a lot more demand and interest in these things. I think a lot of it has to do with people making this discovery that they’re disabled on social media during the pandemic. That was a real flash point of a lot of people getting introduced to these concepts and self-reflecting and self-advocating more.

And it’s really changed the culture a lot in terms of at least that surface level familiarity. I don’t think we had these conversations long enough to see real changes in how our schools function, how our medical care functions, like the systemic stuff that disabled people actually need. But the culture is getting a lot more warm to these conversations and curious and mindful of the idea that a person can be autistic and not quote unquote look autistic in the most stereotypical way. That’s where I think we’ve seen really a lot of growth.

Debbie:

So and just to kind of put this in context for listeners, you know, my audience is primarily parents of neurodivergent kids. There are some therapists and educators as well who listen. And this isn’t a traditional parenting book, but I think it’s such an important conversation for us to have on this show. And I know that you must get a lot of feedback from parents. Like when I had you on for Unmasking Autism, you also came and spoke to my community. Like my people were really wanting to learn from you. I’m curious to know what kind of questions you tend to get the most from parents raising autistic kids.

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, so usually if parents are coming to my work, they are open to the idea that autism is not this horrific pathology that needs to be trained out of a kid. They’re usually very open to the idea of neurodiverse, neurodiversity just in general, that everybody’s a little bit different and that we all have different needs and strengths and desires. And they want to do right by their kid. And they know that there are institutional pressures that are going to sometimes try and push them to maybe do something that will make their kid easier for others to deal with, but that’s not actually good for their kid. So I get a lot of questions about how to navigate school systems and bureaucracies and things like that, and social pressure and judgment from other kids. So parents will ask things like, you know, I think my kid is perfect the way that they are. I want to work with the way that my kid is, but the school is trying to force them into ABA therapy and trying to force them to conform, or what do I do? Or people will ask me my opinions on social skills trainings. Are those more gentle than these kinds of forms of behavioral conditioning? Is it good to try and, on the one hand, give a disabled kid the tools to better understand neurotypical social norms? But on the other hand, are we still just exerting another kind of pressure to say the things people want you to say and do the things people want you to do, just in a softer way? So I get questions about that.

A lot of questions are about how do I navigate a world where people see me as pushing the boundaries just because I let my kid not wear socks or not, you know, go to school with their hair unbrushed because brushing their hair gives them a sensory meltdown and people are judging me for that. What I see over and over again is this really overwhelming desire to try and protect their kids from stigma and judgment and exclusion and hitting this wall where no matter how hard they try and how much they’re on board with the idea, that’s not where the world is. And so their kids do experience ableism, their kids do experience oppression. There kind of is no completely escaping that or completely protecting them from the world being that. And so a lot of the questions come down to how do I navigate this stuff? How do I play politics at school to get my kids’ needs met without getting a reputation for being difficult? All of these complicated things that you have to manage and then that’s just talking about schools as an example. Then once you throw in family struggles, the needs of other kids, you’re going through a divorce, happens, your parents are judging you for how you parent, it gets even more complicated to do that advocacy work.

Debbie:

Yeah, I mean, just in your answer, I have so many follow up questions. On the social skills training, I’m using air quotes, but really it is training, right? And you wrote in the book, paying more attention to others doesn’t necessarily make them feel more supported or understood. All it does is make them better at disregarding themselves. And I had to flash back to my own having a neurodivergent teenager and being really recommended to do social skills program and me kind of moving forward with that, but really having a lot of problems and being that parent like, I’m sorry, what is this about? Like, what are we doing? What is the message here that we’re doing? But the pushback that I often get when I have conversations with other parents is like, yes, and like, our kids need to live in a society and they need to understand, you know, how other people are. And I don’t know, I wonder if we could just tease that out a little bit, you know, if a parent is kind of led, you know, or guided towards doing some kind of social skills, social learning, social thinking, you know, work, what do we really want to be focusing on? Like, what should our ultimate goal be in an ideal world for our kids when it comes to their social relationships?

Dr. Devon Price:

Right, I think that’s the right place to zoom out because if you don’t really check in with yourself and first and foremost your kid about what are our actual goals here, you’re going to have goals and outcomes decided for you from the outside. And usually the goal that is presumed is we want this kid to not stand out as different, we want this kid to have lots of neurotypical friends to be approved of in neurotypical spaces like schools to be able to have a job and be neuroconforming. Those are the kinds of outcomes that are presumed as kind of the gold standard. And we already know that that’s not gonna happen for some kids. Things like holding down a job, things like having an easy time in a conventional school. And we also know that for some of the kids who can do that stuff, it’s through masking and an extreme amount of stress and exhaustion and not being true to themselves. And so you really have to take a step back and really question is being liked by everyone, is being palatable to everyone actually an important goal here? Or when I envision a happy empowered future for my kid, do I want to see them surrounded by people who get them, people who are like them, and to have the strength to march to the beat of their own drum, to do things their own way, and to feel supported in that, even when what they’re doing is something that most people aren’t familiar with or don’t understand.

And those kinds of skills that skill to really stand in your truth, to say no to people, to exert body autonomy even, to be willing to not necessarily be unpopular for the sake of it, but to let go of certain people’s judgments because they’re not ever going to be compassionate towards you and to instead care about other disabled people and other ostracized people and people like yourself. Those are really important social skills that we don’t really train anybody to engage in in our society. Our schools are very focused on compliance for everyone, not just disabled kids, but it’s really heightened for them. And so that became a big focus of Unmasking for Life is really reframing the entire conversation of which social skills do autistic kids supposedly lack because we’re said to lack attentiveness to other people, interest in other people’s feelings. It’s all about other people. But what I really would like to see is for autistic people to have more confidence and ability to go after what they want for themselves. And I think that’s the most important thing that we can do when we have kids in our lives that we’re trying to guard and mentor and empower is the empowerment piece, is being curious about what they care about, what do they enjoy, what makes their life worthwhile, and how do we get them to the place where they can go after those things in their life.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think so many parents, I hear so much anxiety from parents about what their kids’ social life does or does not look like. And you talk about that in the book. You said that young autistics often attempt to forge friendships in ways that confuse their more neuro can can. Sorry. They’re more neuroconforming peers and that parents also then have judgment right around their kids’ social relationships. You said that a study found that only 34 % of autistic children had what their parents judged to be a good friend. And so that’s, think, when parents can kind of get concerned, and what does this look like? This isn’t what I expected, or I really want to prioritize this relationship. can you talk about, again, if we think about a friendship goal, what would we, what have you found have been like the most supportive types of dynamics for friendships when it comes to autistic, you know, whether it’s kids, young adults and adults, like what tends to work best?

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, so one thing that I hammer home all the time, and I probably said it last time I was here too, so I apologize if I’m, you know, repeating myself, but anything that you can do to bring your autistic child around other autistic people as much as possible, that’s gonna really pay off in all kinds of different ways. One, it just normalizes their way of being. It gives them a window into all the different ways that autistic people can look and act and what their lives can look like. I think if you have access to something like a local autistic self-advocacy network chapter or groups, parent groups where autistic kids are just meeting and playing or parallel playing near one another, do as much as you can to bring your kid into that because you’re going to see a potential future for them in how other people are living and getting by, which is super healing and relaxes a lot of people’s anxieties.

And you’re also just bringing your kid into a situation that’s the opposite of what they’re used to, which is when they’re singled out and they’re being different and they’re having to appeal to kind of the neurotypical majority. And sometimes that doesn’t even just mean taking them to autistic groups. might be taking them to groups that are focused on their special interests, right? Take them to an anime convention, take them to a video game speed running competition, whatever it is their thing that they’re passionate about, so they can meet other people who are passionate about it and really engage in that hobby. We know that that makes people feel really empowered. It helps them build friendships that are based on actual mutual connection. And then another piece there is doing what you can as a parent to cool a little bit of that anxiety that is totally understandable. You want your kid to have people that love and care about them. You don’t want them to be alone, but that can sometimes look like pressuring them to socialize with people that they don’t enjoy doing things that are really exhausting for them. Your standards of what an adequate amount of socializing looks like might be informed by the neurotypical world. I know I still do this to myself even as an adult. Like I think if I’m not socializing a certain amount with a certain amount of people that I’m being reclusive and it’s bad. But my energy recovery needs are just different. And that’s true of autistic kids too. They can get social burnout. And so again, a lot of it is about empowerment and normalizing how autistic people feel and do their own thing. And again, follow as much as you can from the kid’s own passions. What is motivating them? Who do they enjoy talking to? What do they enjoy talking about? And when they need a breather, can we honor that instead of seeing that as, my gosh, you’ve committed a social faux pas, you’re not gonna have this popularity and those anxieties that we sometimes get.

Debbie:

I’m just a question that just popped up as you were saying that, you know, I know also there are people who have a strong drive for social connection and they also require a lot of time to recover. And sometimes those can be at odds. Any advice for parents who recognize my kid can get really overwhelmed if they spend too much time socially, but they are pushing themselves. Like how do we support them in striking that balance?

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, it’s tough and it can sometimes be frustrating just on the household. But I think it’s worth thinking about in the same way we make these decisions as adults. Sometimes we take on a risk or a challenge that has a cost for us because we value it. And so it may be sometimes for some kids like that, because autistics can be extroverted contrary to the stereotype. It may be that your kid is so excited and energized that after that birthday party, after that social event, they have so much energy in their body that they’re kind of tipping almost into meltdown category. And that doesn’t mean that all of that socializing was necessarily a bad thing either. It really depends on the preferences of the kid. If you know that they’re always talking about seeing this friend, they’re really looking forward to it, they seem to be having a good time when they are doing this social engagement, it might be the case that a little cranky attitude afterward is just the price that you pay sometimes forgetting the things that you want out of life. That happens to all of us, whether we’re doing an extreme sport that makes our muscles ache afterward, or we work on a creative project that we’re passionate about and it keeps us up all night working on it and then we’re exhausted. Not every kind of extreme peak and valley in emotions is a bad thing or a sign of dysfunction or a sign that something has been done wrong here. It really is, I think, something you kind of have to negotiate with your kid and what you know about them and what they’re communicating to you in their words and in their behavior about what’s a priority. And yes, you can kind of check for signs that maybe they’re starting to head into that meltdown territory or that overwhelmed territory, but it doesn’t mean that anybody necessarily failed to have these kinds of strong feelings or these competing motivations, if that makes sense.

Debbie:

Right, yeah, makes total sense. You have a section on the family dynamic, which, you know, that’s a huge bucket, right, to cover. You know, there are so many adults who are discovering their own neurodivergence as a result of parenting their child. And that seems to be a big area of kind of shifting in terms of, you know, reconciling, how do I do this? Maybe being triggered by their kids, but also realizing, gosh, I have similar needs. And I’m just wondering, just as kind of a big picture zooming out on the section on family, what is it about the family dynamic that you find is most challenging for autistic adults? There’s probably not one thing, but where is one of the biggest pain points that you came across as you were talking to other autistic adults about their own experience?

Dr. Devon Price:

I think there’s a lot of generational trauma. And I think everybody in the family system is bringing their own perspective and assumptions and baggage about disability and about themselves. And they’re reflecting a lot of times if you’re looking at, let’s say, three generations in a family, grandparent, parent, and kid, and maybe they’re all somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum because these things tend to run in families. Those three people have had such wildly different experiences of even knowing what neurodivergence is, with how they were treated for anything they did that was a little bit different or strange or any help that they needed when they were young. And the coping mechanisms that they reached for to try and blend in or try and suppress those parts of themselves, they got them attacked. And so I see a lot of family members with the best of intentions setting each other off in all kinds of different ways where for example you might have a grandparent who nobody was getting diagnosed as autistic when they were a kid, virtually no one. So they didn’t have a chance of finding out. And so maybe they’ve coped and hidden their neurodivergence through workaholism, through alcoholism, through just having a reputation for being grumpy and flying off the handle in unpredictable ways. Like there’s all kinds of dysfunction and trauma there. And then when they see their kid or their grandkid being more openly different and breaking all of these social rules that they were never allowed to break, they can respond with really intense embarrassment or outrage. They can think it’s really irresponsible. If you as a parent letting your kid, letting your kid be themselves, they can think that it’s dangerous in some way and that can really set them off. 

And then on the flip side, if you’re, let’s say a parent who’s found out that you’re autistic, maybe in your 20s or 30s, and you’re figuring this stuff out and you’re trying to do right by your kid, which is so often the case. A kid gets diagnosed and then a parent realizes that they’re neurodivergent too. You might be forcing a lot of your journey onto both your kid and your parents. I’ve seen a lot of cases where somebody finds out that they’re autistic. It’s a huge, really positive revelation for them. They realize autism’s in their family, running in their family. They’re telling everybody in their family, you’re autistic and you’re autistic and you’re autistic and you’re doing that because of ARFID and you’re doing that because of PDA. And it doesn’t go over well because the people in their family are not on that stage of the journey. They don’t see autism as not a bad thing. They’ve never heard that it’s not a bad thing. And so they feel really attacked and confused. And so people are communicating across purposes. And of course, there’s a lot of baggage that then flows down into a kid. All of the expectations that parents and grandparents and everyone else in the family has for them, things that a parent was uncomfortable in themselves that now they see reflected in their kid. And then on the flip side, a parent who’s been through a ton of difficulty who really, really wants their kid to not go through that and is like clutching with both hands, you know, like digging their hands into their nails, into their palms, trying to make something, nothing bad ever happen to their kid and projecting all that trauma under their kid when, again, it’s the best of intentions, but we don’t let our relatives walk their own paths, I think, is something that can be really difficult to untangle in a lot of different ways.

Debbie:

Yeah, it’s so messy. Like as you’re explaining, there’s so many layers there and this is like, this is big stuff. This is identity. It’s your entire worldview. It’s, as you mentioned, trauma, like it is a full body experience. And one of the quotes I pulled out, you said, you can start to unmask family relationships by practicing the skill of acceptance and acknowledging that you are allowed to keep growing, even if that means growing away from where your family dwells. And I’m just wondering if you have thoughts on how or what parents can do to help kind of make this process of being more authentically themselves within that family dynamic, how they can kind of navigate that in an easier, I don’t know if it’s easy, but in a smoother way.

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, sometimes you really do need some kind of reset because families get locked into patterns. There’s expectations and traditions and people think that they know their children more intimately than anyone else. So then if there’s this side of your child or your nephew, your relative that you’ve somehow missed because you just didn’t know about disability, it can be really hard for people to kind of swallow that pill. So what I find is that often people need a little bit of time away or breaking out of old traditions and scripts just to kind of demonstrate that family doesn’t need to always mean the same thing and that we don’t always need to run the same way. And that can be something like just saying, okay, I know that the holidays are super disrupting to my kid who’s neurodivergent and to me, and we have all these ideas in my family about what needs to happen, otherwise you’re ruining Christmas or whatever. And I’m just gonna give a hard reset on that. We’re not gonna go visit this year. We’re gonna start our own traditions. And once we’ve had the chance to kind of work from a blank slate and do things that actually feel good in our bodies, then we can have a conversation about meeting up and how we actually want to exchange gifts, have a meal, do we wanna do those things and so on. And that’s a really micro, really specific example. 

But I think you can do things like I’m gonna call a little bit less often. I’m not going to share information about this aspect of my life that I know my family is judgmental about. I’m going to, if I’m feeling pressured or attacked, I’m just going to say, okay, you I love you, but I’m getting off the phone now. I’m going to leave the room. These kinds of things that sometimes feel unthinkable, especially when we’re younger in our families can really just demonstrate, okay, I am a fully realized person and I have the power to define what this relationship is just as much as anybody else in this relationship does. That can help a lot of the time because a lot of times the dysfunction isn’t coming from any parent or family member trying to be abusive or controlling. They’re just, they have their expectations and they’re freaking out and you can kind of set a new tone that is a little bit more even keeled. So those are things that often help. think offering family members information rather than expecting them to be on the same page as you, just saying, okay, you know, my kid has these sensory issues, here’s a book that might help you understand that, and then the next time that that relative is complaining about the kid having a meltdown, you can just say, you know, I’ve given you some tools to try and help you understand, it would really help us if you look at them. I interviewed a consent educator, Sarah Casper, for the book, and she says that it’s really helpful to not issue rules for your relatives, but to frame anything you ask them for as a way that they can help you, a way that you’re letting them in on some work that you’re doing. Because then they feel like they have a role, that what they’re doing is important, rather than they’re being told, you’re not allowed to hug my kid without consent. You can frame it as, we’re trying to teach our kid about physical boundaries. Can you help us by asking our kid if they want to be touched before you touch them? Just a little reframe like that can help people feel way less attacked. So little things like that can make a big difference too.

Debbie:

Yeah, I love that reframe. You know, I talk a lot about compassionate education because people don’t know what they don’t know. And I just love that language you just shared. I do want to just ask because this comes up and I read a piece recently about, you know, I don’t know if there’s an increase in, or we’re just kind of better understanding that there are a number of autistic adults who are choosing to sever ties with their family of origin. And you write about that in the book and talk about how to kind of navigate that. And, you know, I think that’s a fear for lot of parents that that’s going to happen in their relationship with their child. And I’m just wondering, is there something you would want parents with autistic kids to know if that’s something that they’re, it’s in the back of their mind as a fear that they have?

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, I would definitely recommend people who are concerned about that to kind of look into it. There’s a resource that I cite in the book, but you can also just find it online. It’s this blogger, Issendai, I-S-S-E-N-D-A-I, and she analyzes estranged parents forums, so forums run by parents whose kids no longer speak to them and really analyzes what’s going on there. And there’s a particular profile for people who often wind up in that situation for the long term. And I think if you don’t recognize yourself in those parents, which tend to be parents who aren’t willing to admit that they’ve ever done anything wrong, feel entitled to all aspects of their children’s lives, and have kind of a sometimes kind of self-martyring kind of way of thinking about their parenthood and all they’ve sacrificed and people aren’t grateful enough, those are often the people that end up in an estrangement that they can’t understand and can’t control and that never ends. And if you’re approaching your kid or your family members in that kind of way of disrespect, I don’t think you have a ton to worry about. I think it is definitely true that there’s been a rise in estrangements happening. And some of that does trouble me. I think there’s a lot of language on social media sometimes that encourages people, if you have any difficulty with someone ever, just cut them off. And that’s the solution. 

And that’s not the solution. know, the way we build supportive relationships is through conflict and telling people when they’ve hurt us and giving them a chance at repair. And that stuff is really beautiful and important. And so sometimes I think there are people who, when they’re going through a tough time and rethinking their whole lives and advocating as a disabled person, sometimes they come down pretty harsh at first and draw boundaries. And those boundaries can really hurt and be scary. But I think as long as you kind of see it as this is someone who’s trying to exercise agency, this is someone who’s trying to understand who they are and what they need and be independent from me, probably in the ways that I do want for them long-term, then as much as it can hurt and be really confusing, it can be just a stage on a path towards, again, resetting those relationships, reestablishing how we relate to one another, and figuring out how to be in the world. Sometimes we just need a little time away. Sometimes we move away from our families. Sometimes we just need time to reflect on who am I outside of these people I’ve been around all my life. And it’s not necessarily an attack against you or your parenting. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be lifelong or anything like that. If you can be respectful of that agency and understand that that’s some important internal work that a person’s trying to do, then that can cool a lot of the tension over time. And sometimes it just takes time too.

Debbie:

Yeah. I have one more question, but I want to make sure are you okay time wise if I ask you one more question, then we’ll wrap up. Okay, okay. Okay, just wanna make sure. Okay, so before we kind of wrap up, you know, the last chapter of your book is about life and it’s such a good chapter. There’s so much great content in the book. We can’t get into all of it today. But as I was reading that, I was thinking about how you kind of, how you define maybe a self-actualized or a fulfilling life for an autistic adult. In other words, you know, I’m always talking with parents about to redefine what success looks like, right? And to really hone in on your values and what really matters. And we talk about pivoting from independence as the goal to being self-determined life is the goal. And I’m just wondering, what would you want listeners to think about as they are parenting their child that we should be working towards? And what would that look like for their kids?

Dr. Devon Price:

I think you kind of have to question everything you’ve been taught. And it’s kind of scary, existential stuff. It’s really a philosophical deep dive to say, okay, if my kid is never going to be financially independent, if they’re never going to have a house and a spouse and kids that they’re raising, or like this blueprint of what a fulfilling adult life is supposedly supposed to look like. Can I be okay with that and realize it’s not some great tragedy? Because many of them don’t want those things and if they want some of those things and they can’t quite attain them, they can still have a family. Because what is a family? It’s people around you who support you and care for you and who help carry on your legacy in some way. That can be your neighbors, that can be your friends, that can be a church that you’re part of. It can be so many different things that you’re a part of and that you contribute to. If you’re never going to have a full-time job, well, a lot of full-time jobs aren’t all that fulfilling anyway. 

So can I think about a future where my kid is working on projects related to their special interests and they do something every day that excites them emotionally and intellectually and maybe helps them connect to others in some way, even if it’s just like posting on a forum for other people who have that special interest and they’re building something and maybe it’s not the kind of thing that I was taught is impressive and valuable. But if it’s bringing my kid and people around them joy and connection, how is that not the most valuable thing in the world? I talk a little bit in that chapter about just thinking about your legacy and what lives on after you were gone and what having a meaningful life is. And that’s something that we each get to decide for ourselves and have to decide for ourselves, which is freeing and terrifying. so the things that we typically lean on for that in our society are things like having children, having professional accomplishments. And that’s not the only way to have a legacy that matters. If you’ve broken out of a cycle of dysfunction in your family, you have a legacy. If you’ve done less harm than the people who came here before you did, you have an impact on the world, you know?

There’s just a lot of anxiety, I think, especially in American culture about not doing anything, not constantly going. And yet, slowness and stillness and not kind of consuming tons of resources and destroying the environment and all of these things we do in search of productivity, those are great things. If your kid is just content and comfortable for the majority of their life, that is a major accomplishment. That’s not how most people in society live. And so that’s something you can definitely make peace with. And again, as you just said, self-determination is key. It should all flow from what the disabled person themselves finds really illuminating. And part of how you get them there is you just give them as many opportunities as possible to try new things, meet people who are going to get and accept them, follow their passions, say no to the things that upset them and make them uncomfortable and hurt them, and just lead from there where you end up might look like something you’ve never thought of before or something that you were socially conditioned to be ashamed of, like being on disability benefits or something like that, but there’s nothing wrong with any of those things.

Debbie:

Yeah, I love that answer. Thank you so much. And in the beginning of that response, you said this can be existential. And it can be. And I just want to acknowledge, too, for listeners to really lean in and consider that this may look completely different than I ever imagined. And that’s OK. It can be really uncomfortable. But I also think it can be so much more freeing on the other side. But as you said, you know, there are certain things, especially in American culture, it’s so contrary to what is drilled into us of what a life should look like. But I agree, it all has to be questioned. So thank you for that. So just, I’m going to say the name of your book before we say goodbye. Again, it’s called unmasking for life, the autistic person’s guide to connecting, loving and living authentically. Is there anything that we didn’t say or that you would want at like a last … I hate putting people on the spot. Is there some great last thought you want to leave my listeners with before we say goodbye?

Dr. Devon Price:

The last thing that I’ll say is that one of the big messages of the book is that being a socially skillful Autistic person or disabled person often means being harder to deal with, you know saying no Believing things that maybe others around you have not been conditioned to believe walking away from expectations that are not for you that we’re so afraid most of us if you’re on the neurodivergent spectrum of of being that nail that’s sticking up and that’s going to get hammered down. And there’s so much power in realizing that we’re always going to do things in our own way and it’s not going to be for everyone and it doesn’t need to be.

Debbie:

What a great note to end this on. Well, thank you so much listeners. I will have links to Devon’s books, to our last podcast episode, to your substack, to all the places where listeners can connect with you. good luck with the book launch and thank you so much for everything you shared today.

Dr. Devon Price:

Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for having me.