It's Autism Awareness Month, so let's bust a pretty common myth about autism...

It's Autism Awareness Month, so let's bust a pretty common myth about autism.
"Everyone is a little autistic."
This is not true... so, let's talk about it.
If you think about the autism spectrum as a line, where on one end you have not autistic at all and on the other end you have very autistic, then I can see why you might think someone with some traits but not all would be a little autistic. But that's not actually how autism works.
Autism is considered a spectrum because every autistic person has a different variation of autistic traits that impact them, and also different levels of support needs.
There are actually 2 main categories of autism, and within those main categories, several sub-categories.
And also, within each of the two main categories, 3 levels of support needs that reflect how much autism impedes daily functioning.
Specifically, the two main categories are...
Social and communication differences and Restricted Repetitive behaviors.
And within each of those categoies we have...
1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity
2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
1. Repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech
2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior
3. Restricted, fixated interests
4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory inputs
So, every autistic person has a different variation of attributes within these categories. However, in order to meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis, a person would need to be hindered by their autistic traits by at least what the DSM defines as level 1 within both categories... in all 3 social communication areas, and in at least 2 of the 4 restricted repetitive behaviors areas.
For example, if someone meets the level 1 threshold within the sensory category but doesn't meet the threshold for anything else, they would not be diagnosed with Autism. In this case, they may get a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder. But since SPD is not currently recognized as a standalone diagnosis in the DSM, an SPD diagnosis can be more challenging to pursue.
Another way of putting it is like this... saying "everyone is a little autistic" is similar to saying "everyone is a little allergic" because everyone at some point in time has sneezed. But that's not how allergies work. And it's also not how autism works.
Just because a person sometimes experiences sensory overload and sometimes doesn't feel like being social doesn't mean they're "a little autistic."
Let me know in the comments if you learned something new from this video...
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