In this episode we talk to Dr. Wenn B Lawson—autistic psychologist, researcher, author, and international speaker—to discuss one of the most important conversations parents can have: protecting autistic children from grooming, manipulation, and exploitation. Together, we explore why traditional “stranger danger” advice often falls short for autistic children, how monotropism can increase vulnerability, and practical strategies parents can use to teach body autonomy, consent, online safety, and personal boundaries without creating fear.
Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, educator, therapist, or autism professional, this episode offers compassionate, research-informed guidance to help keep autistic children safe while respecting their dignity and independence.
Resources mentioned:
• Dr. Wenn B. Lawson’s website: https://www.buildsomethingpositive.com/wenn/
• Not the Norm: https://notthenorm.com.au
• The Very Secret Diary of Jesse Jones by Dr. Wenn B. Lawson: https://www.amazon.com/Very-Secret-Diary-Jesse-Jones/dp/0987274325
If you found this conversation helpful, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who supports an autistic child.
Full Transcript:
Kim Pitsko
Hello everyone, welcome to Stories That Stick. This is the podcast and blog. From DP4 Social Stories. My name is Kim Pitsko.
I am the founder and CEO of DP4. And I am really excited to be sharing different conversations that are really important for us parents with autistic kiddos to have. And today’s episode is called Beyond Stranger Danger: Protecting Autistic Kids from Exploitation. So, not necessarily the most fun topic that we could come up with, but one that is incredibly important.
Especially here in the US, it’s the summertime. This week is July 4th week. So, you know, we’re gonna be out with our kids to a bunch of big festivals, areas that are gonna have very large crowds. And our kids are going to be around people and family members that they’re not necessarily around all that often.
So, you know, as parents, we spend so many years teaching social skills, teaching independence, but we rarely take the time to prep for manipulation, grooming, and exploitation, all these words that are so like icky, but so important. And research consistently shows that. Autistic individuals, both in childhood and in adulthood, experience higher rates of victims victimization. So prevention in education is so incredibly important.
I am incredibly honored to be here today with Dr. Wenn B. Lawson, hailing from Australia. Dr.
Lawson is an autistic consultant, researcher, psychologist, and author of over 30 books. He is internationally recognized as a speaker whose work combines his own lived experience with decades of research and education. So Dr. Lawson, welcome to our little show.
How are you doing today?
Wenn He/Him
Thank you. I welcome the opportunity especially to address this really important topic. Thank you.
Kim Pitsko
Absolutely. Absolutely. And why don’t we start first by talking a little bit about you and your work and your experience in this field?
Wenn He/Him
Yes, I was late diagnosed as an autistic person. I was about 42 when I was diagnosed. Coming to understand that I wasn’t schizophrenic, which was the diagnosis I’d had earlier, and in and out of mental institutions on lots of antipsychotic medications, I needed to understand autism. was not really…
studied or explored it at all. The only connection to autism was the film Rain Man and that didn’t describe me. So currently and over the years we’ve moved well away from understanding autism as a only sort of in medical terms we now understand it more bio, psycho, social and that means looking at the whole person. And we also understand that and this has come out of the research I was doing with originally Diana Murray and Mike Lesser who are now passed away, on monotropism and there’s a whole webpage that people can look monotropism up monotropism.org they can look that up and understand the term But it explains that as autistic people, our minds work really differently to non-autistic people.
mean, everybody’s mind is different. Yeah. But we’re actually governed by single focused attention. That means we get into kind of an attention tunnel and it’s really hard to move us away.
It means it’s very difficult for us to cope with change. It means we often don’t really have a full understanding of object It means therefore that media, especially the big porn companies for example, that flood our mobile phones and computers etc. With ads, once a young person gets attracted to something that could be through a cartoon character, you know, and they start researching because we’ll often spend lots of time looking at things that we’re really interested in because of that single focus that we’re governed by. So unfortunately, media and the world in general takes full advantage of that.
We don’t recognize the subtle subtleties of people’s intention that might be expressed through body language, you don’t notice that. So I myself have been a victim of sexual abuse. I’ve written about this. I’ve published kids books to help autistic children in particular understand and recognize and then know how to contact a safe person to do something about it.
So I was diagnosed. 32 years ago and since then have gone back to high school then back to university and studied and now I’m an associate professor working with Curtin University in Western Australia so it’s been a long journey but this definitely comes out of a real desire to protect our kids not have them go through the sorts of things I went through and yeah that’s enough.
Kim Pitsko
Wow. I can’t thank you enough for you know sharing your story and sharing something so deeply personal and also taking that experience and trauma and turning it into something that is so incredibly impactful and influential for us parents out there. I can’t thank you enough for your work in this. That’s absolutely phenomenal.
Well I know that as parents, you know, especially in the 80s, we when we talk about things like watching out for strangers and stranger danger, that’s kind of like the big message when you’re talking to your kids about how to protect themselves is don’t talk to strangers or have a certain password for a stranger, etc. when it comes to this stranger danger mentality, especially especially for kids with autism and when it comes and for exploitation. Is stranger danger that term that we’re saying? Is that really the biggest risk or what are we missing here?
Wenn He/Him
No, it isn’t because if you’re working with a mind that’s very single focused, if somebody says, hi, I’m Adam, what’s your name? And you give them your name, then they become a friend. mean, you’re thinking very single-mindedly and the wider concepts of what real friendship is, that sharing over time, getting to know somebody, age range, because we often don’t recognize the differences between people’s ages. No, it’s not enough because as soon as you’re introduced, then that person is not a stranger anymore. In our thinking.
Kim Pitsko
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that’s that’s really important to know and to think about. I I I think that’s a really big learning lesson for parents with autistic kiddos is you can’t just tell them that someone’s a stranger because to them that’s not a stranger.
That makes perfect sense ’cause they you know, I know my son thinks very logically. So he’s like, I know your name. Now I know you. The end, you know.
What else makes autistic children particularly vulnerable to these types of situations that we as parents, you know, just find horrific?
Wenn He/Him
Well, apart from being very mono in our thinking, very one tracked, all our attention in one place, the sort of flow on effects from being monotropic are things like not recognizing internal, we call that interoception signals about what we might be picking up. We might feel uncomfortable. We might just notice we’re a bit anxious. If you’re not autistic, you pick up on those things.
And then you can second guess or think, okay, I don’t feel right. Mum’s told me, dad’s told me, teachers have said, you can act on that. But when your mind is all on one thing, there’s no spare attention to connect to those other signals that your body, your brain might be telling you. So we often don’t pick up on the fact that we need to go to the bathroom or we’re hungry or we’re tired or we’re anxious.
We don’t notice those things if our attention is on something else. We’re driven, especially young people who are more likely to notice social stuff. So if you think of girls, usually girls have a double X chromosome that’s in our DNA that sets the sexuality of the human gender. and on the corner of the X chromosome, that’s where it’s coded for sociability.
So if a person has two of those, they have double the likelihood of noticing. But if you’re autistic, even if you notice and you want to be friends and you want to have friends, you may not know how to go about that. You may not know what’s involved in building friendships. So there’s a lot going against you if you like in the world that we we live in because the predominant population in this world is not autistic people we are on the rise one in Some say one in 36 of us will be on the spectrum somewhere. So eventually we might take over the world, but we’re not there yet. Not there yet. So at the moment, the majority rules and the majority are non-autistic people governed by a wider understanding, much wider than us.
Us as autistic people have access to simply because we’re really good at building up from an interest state, really good at building up all sorts of skills. We have passions that are amazing, but we don’t access the wider picture. We operate on this really narrow beam of attention and the rest of the world is on like the streetlight, you know, illuminating so much more. So people use that, unfortunately.
There are people out there who will take advantage of us and will use that against us. They pick up our vulnerability, they pick up on our gullibility and they’ll say things that sound really nice to us, you know, and then you’re hooked and very quickly we can go down that rabbit hole. And it isn’t just strangers in big places. or even people we know well, unfortunately, the research shows that most of the sexual assaults carried out by family or friends are close people to us.
So, yeah, that’s definitely not enough. Stranger danger, et cetera, and being monotropic, not recognizing our internal awareness of discomfort, that’s another contributing factor. And there are others.
Kim Pitsko
Yeah. Yeah, that’s all, you know really great information and intel that you just provided. when you’re thinking about this monotropic lens for us parents when we’re teaching our kids you know, some of the simpler things like what you mentioned, brushing your teeth, going to the bathroom, you know, that’s easy and that’s that that’s comfortable to teach. But I feel like a lot of parents like myself out there Who really want to help and support and advocate for their children, but are also not experts and deeply flawed individuals as we all are.
You know, we don’t want to scare our kids. and especially when we know that complex issues that go out of this monotropic lens can really heighten anxiety for our kiddos. So how can we Teach safety without increasing fear and anxiety? Probably not an easy question, but
Wenn He/Him
Yeah. If you think about it, as parents, we are teaching our kids all the time. Consent, for example, can I help you with those buttons? Do you need help tying those shoes?
Can I help? And we’re asking and we’re checking in. So we’re teaching a modeling consent. We’re teaching a modeling appropriate interactions.
We’re teaching and modeling what’s allowed and what isn’t. We’re doing all those things. No, you don’t go in the bathroom, your sister’s in there or whatever it is. We’re teaching what’s allowed and what isn’t.
And when you’re thinking of working with a monotropic person, it’s important we don’t say words like you can’t do that because they can easily and they are. So it sounds like you’re lying. What we mean is that’s not allowed. Or we don’t do that in our house.
Or we need to say things in ways that are literally understood, that make sense. Setting boundaries of yours and mine, public and private. Those are things we’re doing all the time as parents, just part of parenting. But we need to do that explicitly.
And we need to do it in very many different situations because as autistic people, we don’t generalize well at all. what I do at home is not what I do at school. It’s not what I do in the shopping mall, at the library, etc. They’re all really different places.
So we need to put information across about the rule, the recipe, the prescription of what to do when, if, how. in ways that are for each of those places and every place. So that it’s always the same. We’re not good with things that are changing and that are different.
But if we’ve got a set of understandings that this is what we apply every time for whoever, wherever, whenever, then it can make sense for us and we can practice that at home. Did you ask your sister for that? Or did you take it? Did you, did you…do that publicly or were you meant to do that privately? You know, we can be modeling and setting those understandings. Because something that’s private at home, we talk about, well, least in Australia, we go to public conveniences. This is a toilet where the public go.
And it’s convenient. And everybody’s there and it’s allowed. in a men’s, in men’s lavatories, men’s public conveniences here, there are lots of places all lined up. and men go to those those places to pee and they stand next to each other but a man who who understands or boys who understand don’t usually stand close to another person there’s usually a space in between there’s all these things we need we need men to be teaching the boys because it’s quite hard women don’t usually go into men’s toilets so it’s hard for those things to to be put across but there are it’s really important to model.
Kim Pitsko
I like what you say about modeling and drawing all of the different scenarios, especially when if how, because I could absolutely see how impactful that could be for a kid, seeing like a visual schedule or a visual board of like when you’re in school, this is what we do, when you’re at home, et cetera. and how that could really help kids. With just understanding the basics of what to expect within their environment, because I think that’s the hardest part is taking them into the unexpected, especially when you’re in the summer season and your routines are gone. Like, you know, they don’t know what to expect, so there’s a lot going on in their brains that could make things a lot harder for them.
Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the word grooming. not the most exciting word to share or to talk about, but this is such an important conversation. oftentimes when we hear the word grooming for kids, it comes with a very dramatic effect. we see a lot of, you know, clickbait on social media and dramatizations on all our streaming services.
but grooming isn’t necessarily always a very dramatic ex Well, it’s a traumatic experience, but not dramatic necessarily in the way that we see it in mainstream. How would you define it and what would you say are some of the early warning signs that parents should look out for?
Wenn He/Him
Grooming simply means somebody else is entering your space to prepare you to enter theirs. So it’s a way of them capturing your attention and your interest in a very friendly, seemingly comfortable way. And again, if you’re autistic, you might not pick up that discomfort that somebody else might feel.
A person can seem kind, really nice, and… You know, you just want to please people as autistic people, we hate upsetting others. When we do, it’s usually because we’re overwhelmed and overloaded. it’s not usually intentional.
So that’s what grooming is, someone being kind to get what they want you to do, not any interest in your welfare whatsoever. And unfortunately, this can happen within families. It can happen outside families, certainly happens online all the time and our kids won’t recognise it because we’re often not, we don’t have people being kind to us enough, we don’t have people being friendly to us enough, we’re weird and different and difficult apparently. So we take that opportunity, we want to connect.
We’re driven like anybody else for community, it’s just that we usually connect through what we’re interested in. And that will be the first place that somebody will go. They will use our passions and interests. It doesn’t mean as parents we should take them away and lessen them.
It just means we really must instill into our kids. What’s private? You’re not allowed no touching of breasts, no touching of penises, no sending pictures. None of that is okay. Not allowed. That’s private stuff. So we have to instill those. rules if you like and if you’ve got kids who are PDA, we use that term in Australia, pathological demand avoidance sometimes is referred to in that way, I think of it as a persistent drive for autonomy.
So you might have kids who don’t like to be told they’re not good with demand, it causes more anxiety. So if you’ve got an autistic young person with a PDA profile, we need to make sure that this is by negotiation. So we can, we can sit together and critique the media, what we’re watching on TV with kids programs, we can talk about what do think of that? He just kissed her. He didn’t ask. Do think that’s okay? We can critique stuff. critiquing it is great for building up skills in our young people.
It doesn’t prevent harm from happening. if porn gets into the system some way or other, but grooming and connections to what that person wants from you will happen in a variety of ways. It’s not always easily recognised by us as autistic people.
Kim Pitsko
Yes, yes. I can Absolutely see how like easy it would be to mistaken these actions as kindness, especially when you’re just yearning for kindness and for empathy and acceptance. let’s say that your child has an uncomfortable encounter, whether it’s in person or online, And your kid, you know, because of you know, because when they come home they unmask, they don’t want to really talk a whole lot. I know this is I I’m kinda speaking a lot for myself because this is something that I think about a lot with my oldest son.
Like, you know, when he comes home from school, after six hours of being, you know, masking and doing what he’s supposed to do, he doesn’t want to talk to me at all because he He just wants to just unwind and, you know, just be himself and I respect that. But my big fear is if something were to happen, would he ever tell me? what advice would you have to parents on how they can encourage their child to feel comfortable to have that kind of conversation?
Wenn He/Him
Yeah, we need to be talking with our kids. If we wait for them to mention something, we could be waiting forever. So we have to create the opportunities to have those conversations. And it might be a young person buying a phone, you know, yeah, you can have a phone, but first we need to talk about.
what you can do with it when how there are some rules about getting a phone and we need to talk about those conversations. We made the check in and have those conversations frequently. It might be I noticed something online the other day. It was really weird. This just popped up. I didn’t ask for it. Yeah, this this person was was showing their breasts and it was really uncomfortable. Has anything like that ever happened to you?
So I might be showing something from me that will then allow them to talk. And it might, you might not even have to mention pornography. It might just simply somebody touching someone, giving them a cuddle, reaching over to touch your forehead to another person. But there was no consent.
You know, when you critique stuff that you watch on TV, this happens all the time, then you can use that as an opportunity. So you need to make sure what your kids are watching. You need to make sure we don’t have mobile phones and computers in bathrooms, in bedrooms. We shouldn’t be doing that.
A young person can have a quiet space that we’re aware of for sure that we don’t interrupt but it needs to be opened to view. It’s really uncomfortable but in today’s climate unfortunately these pop-ups and ads are everywhere and they invade things that kids are watching and then they’ll have a kid at school who might see something and we’ll show them at school and you need to watch it because you’re trying to develop social skills and learn what to do so you’ve got to be part of the gang and you join in we need to be make sure that our kids will talk to us about those sorts of things so we can have the conversation we can’t stop the world invading but we can certainly prepare our young people to know how to recognize it what to do if it does Et cetera.
Kim Pitsko
Completely agree with you and you know I’m a tech company that advocates for less tech. So it you know, I completely agree that there’s s so much that a kid can see online. You know, my almost four year old was on YouTube one day and I I kid you not, like he was just watching the kids version and he got a pornographic ad. And was trying to watch the video, handed the phone back to me, and I gave him the phone because I was trying to get something done that was really important.
and he handed the phone back to me and said, the video’s not playing, and I was like, dear God. But it’s like it really is out there. You have to know what your kids are watching. I like your advice too on asking them what they watch at school or at therapy as well.
Wenn He/Him
Yeah. Yeah, Because often it’s not something they’ve even chosen or wanted to do, but other kids will. And we want to share that with everybody or the other children. So we certainly need to be on top of that.
And of course, you can put various provisos on, know, provisions on your equipment to stop things getting through. can hope for that. And some of those… Governmental things here in Australia, we’ve got under 16s are not allowed to access social media.
And there’s some more stricter barriers coming out in the UK, they’re doing the same thing. But currently, if that is not happening for you, you’ve got no control over what tech companies will put across and how they do it. And pop ups are the most obvious and regular things. And they invade kids shows too, they don’t care.
Kim Pitsko
Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, kids are smarter than their parents when it comes to technology. If even if even if you tell them especially, yes, like it says, you have to be thirteen and older, they’re gonna figure out how to get on there. So speaking of online platforms, have you seen Toy Story Five yet? Obviously the story is going to be about, you know, kids using too much s to having too much screen time. what I didn’t expect was that the topic of social media came up. And in one scene, Bonnie, who is eight years old, her lily pad had a chat function and her friends from dance class were cyberbullying her and you saw that effect. so and I didn’t Expect it because in my mind I’m like, well, why would an eight-year-old have social media?
The reality is, you know, it’s not just Instagram and TikTok and Twitter X, that’s social media. Twitch is social media, Discord social media, YouTube is social media. There’s so much there. So when it comes to these online platforms and these chat capabilities, in your mind for an autistic individual thirteen and under or really just any kid thirteen and under, is any social media or okay? or does it have to be heavily monitored?
Wenn He/Him
It has to be heavily monitored. It really does. Until the government’s bringing policy, the tech giants, the pornography industries are out to make money. This is their main gain.
And they will invade and invade and invade and get people to click on. You get down those rabbit holes and it’s really hard to get out of them. You close one thing, they send you another. So for kids, just like you would hold a kid’s hand across the road, just like, you know, you would monitor what their friends are, who their friends are.
We want to know what they’re doing at school. You want to know the teacher and what they’re being taught. It’s part of being a parent. It’s part of covering and catering for those young people.
We are there to protect. And this is just another avenue, unfortunately, we need to be on top of because… The research shows us kids younger than eight are watching pornography where there is no, nothing described of what’s private, what’s public, no. Consent is not mirrored.
Safe sex is not mirrored. Our kids are watching this. And if you’re autistic, what you see is what you believe because they wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t right, if it wasn’t real. The understanding that that’s a script, we don’t get that.
Their porn stars are acting, we don’t get any of that. So unfortunately, we do have to take charge and be quite firm. And it’s uncomfortable, especially with autistic kids because my computer is my favorite thing. Oh, everything I do is on my laptop and it doesn’t come with overwhelming people smells and body language and I can count on it.
Usually it’s the same. So I’m very drawn, very happy and I use my computer for everything and my mobile phone. So especially for us, it’s even harder. Remember that double X gram of stone if you’re a girl.
Remember being mono. Remember. not necessarily knowing public and private, we might know it at home, doesn’t mean we know it elsewhere. I mean, you go to the doctor and they tell you to sometimes take your clothes off for an examination.
Well, why is that okay? How come I can change into bathers at the pool publicly, but I’m not allowed to take my clothes off in the shopping mall? There’s all these rules that are, yeah, all that needs to be explicit. So we do have to monitor.
Kim Pitsko
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you’re bringing up the explicitness of the rules. I think that’s the key theme here. And I appreciate your take on the online platforms, you know. I wouldn’t think that a child under eight could access this stuff online, but that’s just my ignorance, in not recognizing what is available no matter how many kinds of blockers you have. We’ve talked a lot of we’ve talked a little bit about consent. but when I’m thinking about you know, teaching your kiddos you know, everything that’s going on and you know, the when, if, how, I think consent is really important, especially when it comes to body autonomy. Like, you know, you’re gonna be out this weekend with a bunch of family members, they’re all gonna wanna come up and grab you and hug you. you might not want that to happen. And I think teaching your children consent is incredibly important.
How, in your opinion, would you teach that consent and bodily body autonomy to a child with autism?
Wenn He/Him
Yep, the same way as you teach anything else, bit by bit, little by little, not too much, and according to their age, emotional, social age, which mightn’t be the same as their physical age. So you go slowly, you’re consistent, the same as you teach anything else. We talk about bodies, we don’t talk about, hopefully you don’t talk about down there. You talk about the penis, talk about vagina, you talk about breasts, you talk about things with their real names, you talk about what’s allowed, what isn’t, and it’s not okay, even for a family member to come up and hug you, that’s not okay, unless you say yes, they have to ask.
So a t-shirt, no hugs please, would be good. Otherwise, it’s hands out there, no thank you, or whatever. We teach this stuff and you’ve got to practice it because. And grandparents might get upset. Well, that’s tough. But it’s really important that we are in charge of our own bodies and we say what’s allowed, whether other people agree or not is not up to us. The bit that we need to take charge of is what’s happening for us and to us.
And we need to be able to say, not okay. Don’t want that. And if we do want it. We check in with the other person, you know, is it okay if I give you a hug? And we need, this is where parents need to monitor and watch carefully because it might be somebody who really, really would like to hug. I remember as a four year old traveling on the bus, I loved, absolutely loved, I don’t wear them these days, I don’t think, women’s stocking legs. Maybe they wear tights, I don’t know, but the feel of that I’m going up to people on the bus and stroking legs not okay when not okay. I had to be taught and told not okay. So what’s mine? What’s ours?
What’s theirs? All of those everyday bits and pieces, public and private all of that actually covers a lot of things. But you’ve got to name them. Because I won’t know.
Kim Pitsko
Yeah. Yes, I love the naming and I also love I think this is a lesson every adult needs to learn is you do not just run up and hug a kid. You gotta ask ahead of time. And there are times where my kids will say, No, I don’t want to hug. And I say, Okay and I walk away.
You know, that’s their choice. what are some other when it comes to meeting people out and about? We know the stranger danger, not the greatest method there. but there are red flags that we can also teach our kids about those who approach them.
What are some of the red flags that you think is especially important to teach children with autism when they’re meeting someone new or they might not? be around apparent like complete essence.
Wenn He/Him
Yeah. And maybe red flags isn’t okay for an adult term, but not to use that for our kids. So again, it’s allowed and not allowed. If someone comes up and wants to show you something, talk to you, take you somewhere, it’s not okay without mommy and daddy knowing too.
So this is a simple thing, but people will. They’ll offer lollies and they’ve got kittens to show you and puppies and all sorts of things that might attract us or might not. But it’s that someone talks to you, someone comes towards you, somebody asks you to go with them, someone, any of those sorts of things, it’s not allowed. And then you tell Mummy and Daddy or whoever you’re with so that can be monitored too.
Sometimes they’re people we know and we’re used to being around in the big family. But when they want to take us somewhere private, they want to take us for it to show us something that nobody else is allowed because our secret, not okay.
Kim Pitsko
I appreciate you correcting me with the red flag terminology and I also like your take on the secret because I think one thing that is also a common thing that parents do, and adults do in a very innocent way, is we’ll say things like, Okay, you can stay up laid, but don’t tell dad it’s our secret. Well now you’re teaching them that it’s okay.
Wenn He/Him
Please avoid that terminology, that’s not good.
Kim Pitsko
I used to do it, I’m not gonna lie. And then I was speaking with another BCBA about this topic and I immediately realized wow like I’m creating a big problem for my kids if I continue this kind of don’t tell it’s a secret. You know, no it’s not a secret, we’re just having fun. Okay, so any other final closing thoughts on this topic, Doctor Lawson, that you have?
Wenn He/Him
Practice what you preach or preach what you practice. So check in. Do you really want your kids to model this?
If you don’t, don’t do it. Remember that we’re really mono, very literal. So did you really mean that metaphor when you said that? Or, you know, which implies something else.
If you imply something else, say what you mean, mean what you say, say what you mean, mean what you say, or else don’t say it. Avoid metaphor. Yeah, do lots of talking, chatting conversations over and over and over, checking all the time. Because otherwise, what happened yesterday was yesterday’s stuff and that doesn’t apply to today.
Yeah, those sorts of things are really important.
Kim Pitsko
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Dr. Lawson, I cannot thank you enough for the knowledge that you have shared today.
I think this is a very difficult conversation to have, but very, very important. and I hope that those who watch and consume this content you know, get some good nuggets of wisdom as they continue their summer schedules and even beyond the summer season.
Wenn He/Him
Yeah, there is a website called notthenorm.com.au and that it has a whole heap of resources, parent tip sheets you can download for free, a whole heap of resources that help with starting the conversation. So parents are uncomfortable starting a conversation. It’s really important if you’re working with autistic kids, start where their attention is. So if they’re into Lego, puzzles, particular TV, characters, cartoons, whatever it is, you start the conversation with whatever it is.
And it helps you connect the dots for them via what they’re interested in, which will then make much more sense than if you come at it outside of an interest and there’s nothing they can connect it to. need scaffolding and interest in autism is the scaffolding for building and understanding.
Kim Pitsko
Love that. Thank you for that. I’ll make sure that there’s a link to that resource. Anything else that you would like to, you know, plug or share?
Wenn He/Him
My, yeah, just my YouTube channel has lots of short videos and longer ones on a whole heap of topics. And the book, the particular book is the very secret diary of Jesse Jones, the very secret diary of Jesse Jones, which is on Amazon. And that’s written for kids 12 to 16 probably.
Kim Pitsko
It does.
Wenn He/Him
It’s a story and it’s based on my life as sexually abused kid. But it’s put out there without anything too graphic or, you know, some beautiful illustrations, but they’re not in anything connected to anything sexual, any of that nature. But it’s a story of a young girl who’s a young non binary person, working through their autism with their cousin Johnny, connecting to things at school and around. They’ve been being abused, and they’re working out how to deal with that. So it’s not not a usual story if you like publishers don’t like to put books out of this nature. So important for our kids to have something that they can read and model their connections to because it’s written from an autistic point of view.
Kim Pitsko
I’m getting that book for sure. That sounds amazing. And I’ll make sure all of these links are available for everyone. all right.
Well, that concludes our episode today. Again, thank you so much for everything that you do for our community. and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule for us today. Absolutely.