Room to Be: Creating Space for Autistic Joy

In this session, author and TEDx speaker Jolene Stockman joins host Mick Olds to talk about autistic joy, the side of autistic experience that gets lost when adults focus only on what is hard. Jolene is an AuDHD instructional designer and the author of two books on autism, and she is pursuing a PhD on Māori Autistic identity from her home in Aotearoa New Zealand.

She starts with what autistic joy feels like: the rainbow on the edge of a bubble, and hours in her nana's warm hot water cupboard with her glow-in-the-dark toys, where no adult told her to come down. From there, Jolene explains why she now tells people that if a place doesn't feel good, it isn't their place, and what adults can do when a child can't leave, from backing her daughter's request to switch classes to being honest when the system is unfair. She and Mick question rules nobody remembers the reason for, from whole-body listening posters to sitting criss-cross on the mat, and Jolene shares her habit of assuming there are always at least seven options. She is candid about the cost of masking, her own situational mutism, and her son being turned away for an autism diagnosis because he didn't have enough problems, which led him to ask whether he could be autistic without the disorder.

Therapists, educators, and parents will come away with a simple way to spot and name a child's joy, questions for exploring what joy feels like for each child, and a reason for adults to model their own joy first. Grounded in Jolene's lived experience as an autistic adult and parent, this session is hopeful, funny, and kind.