Advocate for Inclusion and Neurodiversity

THE DOUBLE EMPATHY PROBLEM The Double Empathy Problem was coined by  Dr Damian Milton . Dr Damian Milton is an autistic person who is an Autism Knowledge and Expertise Consultant, along with other official appointments he holds in the autism space. He holds a number of academic qualifications in a range of subjects: Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, Education. The Double Empathy Problem is explained in this  National Autistic Society's page . You can also find a summary for non-academics  on the "Reframing Autism" website. A watered down explanation would be: Much as people say autistics have difficulty understanding and empathising with neurotypicals (NTs), a concept commonly referred to "Theory of Mind", NTs have equal difficulty understanding autistics. People with different life experiences and wiring of brain experience and process the world differently. but one is no less than the other, it is just different.  It is funny how people assume the autistic is...

Ms Nur Sarah Qistina’s letter ( A smile can help ease the challenge of looking after special needs kids , Nov 11) burdens my heart. Even with collective efforts in spreading autism awareness, Ms Qistina’s experiences, sadly, remain common occurrences. She is not alone ; I had witnessed special needs families’ struggles, such as a mother saying “Sorry, he is special needs”, to deflect unwanted public stares at her son’s behaviour. I quietly thought “she should not have to apologise for who her son is!”. Clearly something is amiss in our society. Being born in the early 1990’s, an era when autism awareness was lacking much more than today, I was often a victim of public stares. My parents constantly suppressed my so-called undesirable behaviours and chided me for causing embarrassment. If society were more accepting and less judgmental, my parents would not have had to resort to this nor be overly-conscious of public perception. Instead, our unaccepting society deprived me of a healthy p...

Inferiority Complex is Valid I nferiority Complex : a real and valid thing affecting many people. Even official sources like American  Psychiatric Association (APA) explains it. Inferiority Complex is NOT Pride Yet some dismiss inferiority complex it as "Not true" and wrongly attribute it to a pride problem. What warped and ridiculous thinking. What's worse, these guys are spiritual leaders... must be narrow-minded ones. Perhaps they grew up in environments where they hardly needed to suffer from inferiority complex, and/or the "sin of pride" is a concept so ingrained in them that they apply it wrongly to situations --> if so, that reinforces my hypothesis that they are narrow-minded - they see things through a single lens and only through those lens. They misled me to believing other fallacies too, such as seeing autism books as idolatry (it doesn't matter even if I got obssessed over the books and the topic of autism, it does NOT mean it is idolatry)....

In 2018, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Member of Parliament Rahayu Mahzam spoke on an I NCLUSIVE EDUCATION SYSTEM for children . She gave very good suggestions/proposals, all of which are still relevant today and in the future. I can sense the sincerity flowing from her, as she is speaking not only as an MP but also spoke from her heart as a mother herself of her special needs son with Down Syndrome. She also hit the nail on the head that these will benefit not only special needs students but also ALL STUDENTS and SINGAPORE AS A WHOLE. Among other things, two benefits stood out to me personally: All students get to learn values of empathy, kindness and compassion. They also make meaningful friendships they otherwise would not have. Enabling special needs students to have a good education to become working adults who can contribute economically, and this will lessen the need for resources (and thus the cost) needed for support structures that will be needed if they are not co...

Preamble International Women's Day (IWD) has gotten a lot of attention this year (2021) in Singapore. In fact,  The Ministry of Social and Family Development has dedicated 2021 as the Year of Celebrating SG Women . As a believer of Equality, Inclusion, and Fairness for all, I find this inspiring. More importantly, I find many fundamental principles/values and attitudes on which this concept of gender diversity operates upon, which I feel can be emulated and applied to disability inclusion , including Autism Awareness Day   coming up next month (April). 2nd April was declared as Autism Awareness Day by the United Nations General Assembly A bit of History 8th March is International Women's Day (IWD) . Officially recognised by the  United Nations  since  1977 , today it is celebrated by many countries globally. The Women’s Rights Movement  dates all the back to 1848. Readers keen to read more history may refer to the links appended below in the Appendix...