Now You Know One Autistic! Podcast
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Music.
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Hi, I'm Moshe, and I'm autistic. I'm Leah, and I'm boring.
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Welcome to Now You Know One Autistic, a podcast about neurodiversity in couples,
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marriage, meltdowns, and making it all work.
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The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect the experience of one couple and one autistic.
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Nothing that you hear in this podcast should be taken as a medical opinion,
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and unless otherwise stated, no one is an accredited specialist in any of the
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many feels that comprise the autism spectrum.
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But as someone who is on the autism spectrum, I feel that my experiences will
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be very valuable to many of you, whether you're on the spectrum,
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a support person like Leah, or just a curious bystander.
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If you think that you or someone you care about may be autistic,
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consult your family doctor.
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Music.
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So moshe this is very exciting it's our very first episode of our very first
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podcast it really is i we've been talking about doing this for a while and it's
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pretty neat that we we get to uh to actually get started on this yeah so what
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do you think that the people would would want to know about us or know about anything, really.
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Well, I think to start off with, we should probably tell them our story.
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It's a very cute story. It really is. Where should we start?
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Well, why don't we talk about, you know, who we are? Who is Moshe and Leah?
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Moshe and Leah are a married and devoted couple. One of them is neurodivergent.
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One of them is neurotypical.
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We're currently raising our two youngest children who are still in the house
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with us. We live in Jerusalem, Israel. That's in the Middle East.
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Moshe works. Leah is a housewife right now. And that's essentially who we are at this time.
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The reason I say this time is because we've had many, many incarnations throughout
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our life, as you'll learn while listening to this podcast.
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For sure. So, we kind of got an idea of who Moshe and Leah are,
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but how did we become Moshe and Leah?
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That's a funny story you have to go back to Montreal Canada circa 1988 I just
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aged ourselves oh my goodness so yeah we were seven years old and we.
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We both came from divorced single moms.
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And I think, were we part of a group or was there something?
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Yeah, we met through the Jewish community. Like, how else were we going to meet?
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Right. So in Montreal at the time, every mom was divorced.
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The 80s, nobody stayed together, really. It was atypical to have a friend who had parents together.
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And the Jewish Community Center, I guess, set up this group for single moms
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with kids. So that they could, I guess, talk about their divorces and the kids could play together.
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Right. So I was, where did we actually meet for the first time?
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So that was the first time that we met? It was, yes.
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I think that was like a birthday party or something like that?
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No, I think it was a get together.
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It was just a get together? Yeah. Okay. That the mom's group was having.
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In so you you you came
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in with your mom and i remember you were we're
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wearing you were wearing this like a
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black dress with like polka dots on it or
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something yellow polka yellow polka dots and
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frilly socks and some kind
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of shoes obviously and i i think i was looking because sammy's was one of those
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places that existed in montreal i don't i don't even know if they're anywhere
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else where it was it was a place where you get like the usual I guess bar food
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like burgers and fries and.
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Breads and yes chicken fingers and stuff why was Sam is unique let's just summarize that quickly it was,
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Made out of an abandoned train. It was. Had just kind of left in a field.
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Like in the middle of nowhere. And they turned this abandoned train into this
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restaurant that was filled with video games to keep bad boys like you off the
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table so their moms wouldn't have to deal with them.
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And they had really good food. They had like rolls and chicken fingers and stuff.
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So it was the place to go before cell phones and Netflix.
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So we had a get together and I was in, I don't even remember where in Sam is
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I was. and you walked into the room and I just kind of stopped everything that
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I was doing and just looked at you.
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And I was like seven at the time.
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It was just, what is this? Like, I don't know what's going on.
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I knew in my own mind, it was like, my life is never going to be the same again.
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As much as it's possible for a seven-year-old to fall in love,
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that was when I first decided I was in love with you. That is adorable.
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I had a very different experience there. But people tell the story. It's like legend now.
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So I was playing with your little sister. Right.
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And she was like my little baby dolly because she was only three at the time.
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So of course, little girls love playing with other little baby girls, right?
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She was wearing this cute little red dress. And you and your friend who I won't
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name, I guess without his permission, came running up to us and he stopped.
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And I was like, oh, look, it's a boy anyway. And I sort of walked away.
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But my mom and your mom used to tell the story that you actually ran up to me,
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stopped, your eyes opened wide, your mouth fell open and went, oh.
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And sort of everybody knew what was going to happen at that point, I guess.
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Yeah so that was that was the first time that we met and then we we used to you know get together,
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either just you and i or you and i and the other guy we go we go for like breakfast
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and our moms would like sit and spend hours sipping coffee for hours you're
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gonna hear a lot about this stuff i think we're gonna reference back to it quite
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a bit when we're telling different stories and talking about different topics
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but yeah we would hang out all the time and.
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Another interesting aspect to our story is that we were both from the Montreal
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Jewish community, but Moshe was actually quite well off, and he went to Hebrew
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day school, where he had more exposure to Judaism than I did.
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And I was not well off, and I lived in a much poorer part of town,
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where I went to a Protestant school of all places, because that was the public
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school at the time, and it was what we could afford.
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And I would often spend weekends at his nice sort of big house in the nicer
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area, I guess, because it was one of those things that my mom wanted for me.
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And it turned out to be a really good influence on my life.
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And also just he and I and his sister got really close.
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Like we were the best of friends for a very long time.
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And we sort of just kind of grew up together. Like I had other friends who went
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to my school or that, that I was associated with.
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And you had, you know, the friends that you were familiar with that were in
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your neighborhood, but then we would like get together and we would just do stuff together.
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Yeah. Our moms would get together sometimes with, with other moms or sometimes just with you and I.
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And it was, it was the eighties. So we just, we, we had, you know,
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we did 80 stuff together. We did.
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Our moms were like the mean girls. They would make fun of all their other friends
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and drink coffee forever.
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It was, it was, it was, anyway, those were the times. So that's how we met.
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Why does this roll into what we need to talk about?
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Well, it's, it's important to know who we are because we are together,
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but we're together in our forties.
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And it's, it's an interesting story because if you look on the list,
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I don't know what, what podcasting app you're, you're listening to this on.
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But if you look at the list of podcasts that are available for neurodivergency
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or for autism or for relationships, a lot of the time you'll talk to experts.
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You'll talk to people with PhDs and sometimes they'll be relationship therapists,
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sometimes they'll be counselors. counselors, and essentially,
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they would be so-called experts.
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They might be in relationships themselves and talk about that,
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or they may have qualifications to talk about relationships,
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or they might have qualifications in psychology or sociology, developmental,
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you know, work that allows them to be qualified to talk about these topics.
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But I don't believe, and of course, I could be completely wrong,
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and I'd love, if you know of any like that, then that absolutely let us know.
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I don't know of any couple that is.
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Neuro that that is mixed functionality neurodivergent and and neurotypical that
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is together that is ha that has the life experience of knowing each other as long as we have.
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And that and one of the most important things
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about that is that a lot
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of these podcasts are very sanitized a lot of these conversations are
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very scripted today we're going to talk about this and this and this
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and this and this and we're going to keep you we're going to keep it
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on the up and up but we i work as leah
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said i work from from home i i have my
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own job i i work for myself and and
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she doesn't currently work so we we can say what we want we're not we're not
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going to we're not going to offend someone in another place and we're in a position
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to talk about these topics in a very open and honest and blunt way and i think
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one of the things as we go through the podcast that we'll discuss more,
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is bluntness and honesty and openness and straightforwardness is really key
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to the way of relating to neurodivergence.
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In a very deep way. We're able to take a very deep dive into a lot of the issues that we've had.
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Neither Moshe and I are very shy people, so we will go there with you.
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I think this is a point in time where we're going to remind everybody that also
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one of the reasons why we're able to do that is because we're not accredited experts in anything.
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So none of us has a PhD or an alphabet soup behind our name.
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We just have lots and lots and lots of life experience. And we're willing to
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share a lot of what works for us, what doesn't work for us.
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It'll just be a fun time. It'll be a really fun time. And as we said in the
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intro, or as the intro said before this episode started, neither of us are qualified
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to give medical opinions.
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Neither of us are qualified to give professional advice.
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What we have is our own life experience. And that sort of leads into the title
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of the podcast, Now You Know When Autistic.
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I was going to ask you about that, Moshe. Why do we call it Now You Know When Autistic?
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So what a lot of
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people don't necessarily know about autistics is
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that we're not monolithic now if you have a
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cold or you have the flu or you have like chicken pox or you have some some
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kind of i don't want to use the word condition but if you have some kind of
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thing going on with you whether it's mental illness whether it's physical disability
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whether it's just some sort of of of sickness.
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It has a certain level of understanding with the symptoms. If you have a cold,
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you have a runny nose, you have a sore throat, you have a cough.
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Sometimes you have a fever. If you have this but not that, then it's probably this but not that.
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If you have depression, then you're going to feel down more often than not.
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You're going to feel like they have these feelings that they express.
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With autism or general spectrum of neurodivergency, there's very few things
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that connect one autistic to another.
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And the title of the podcast is, if you've met one autistic,
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now you know one autistic.
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Because what works for me and what doesn't work for me is not necessarily going
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to be what works for another autistic.
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And and it might be but it might work in
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a different way so what we really kind of
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want to discuss because a lot of these these podcasts
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that that involve people who are autistic or
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videos you look on youtube or instagram or
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tiktok or whatever they have autistic people and they go look at the person
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and is is what what they're doing look at what they're doing or they have these
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videos that if you if you google search what does autism feel like they have
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these you know Here's a typical experience of what an autistic will see or what they'll experience.
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And I looked at those videos. I went through them and I sort of said,
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all right, so I kind of want to feel what I'm supposed to feel when I'm autistic.
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When I'm autistic. And I looked at them and I'm like, yeah, but also no.
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Exactly. So I think what Moshe is trying to say in his really verbose way of
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speaking, which is another thing you're going to notice, is that in our household,
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we discuss a lot about neurofunctionality.
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And the reality is that the spectrum that you'll see online when you research
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what is autism is a very useful tool.
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The symptoms that you'll see online, again, a very useful tool.
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Some of the things that you're going to find when you do research or talk to
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experts on this are very useful tools, but they are guidelines.
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So it would be the same as me saying, I am exactly like every neurotypical.
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Because my brain functions in this way, we all like the same things,
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we all do the same things, the same things work for all of us,
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and that is just ridiculous.
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The only reason why Moshe's neurofunctionality is not typical is because there
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are less people like him than there are like me.
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But it absolutely doesn't mean that he or our son, who's on the spectrum also,
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which you're going to hear a lot about in the coming episodes,
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are the same as each other even, and they're exposed to each other all the time.
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And they're certainly not the same as other people that they've met, necessarily.
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Definitely. And another thing that we are going to focus on in this podcast
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that I don't really think that any other podcast is focused on.
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And again, if that's not the case, I'm absolutely okay with being proven wrong.
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Let us know by email or in the comments or by responding if there's like a way
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to do that in the format that you're doing.
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And what we're going to do is actually kind of flip the script a little bit.
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Because all of these autism or neurodivergency-focused podcasts talk about the
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way that a neurotypical can relate or understand or function with or develop
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a relationship with or communicate with or be intimate with a neurodivergent.
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But I am a neurodivergent. Did you know? I kind of knew.
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I did. I apologize if this is the first that you all are hearing about this,
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but I am neurodivergent I am autistic and it's also ADHD and ADHD and.
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A lot of the questions are focused on how, for example, Leah can understand
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me and relate to me and get along with me.
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But what about how I relate to her?
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What about how I'm able to communicate with her?
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And the difficulties that I have with getting my point across,
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with expressing my needs, with showing her that I need certain things and don't
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like certain other things.
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Things because what one of the things that we're going
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to talk about a lot and it's number one
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pet peeve when it comes to autistics and i
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don't want to get in trouble but again it's my word so i can use it which is
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another thing i'm going to say quite a bit maybe we can put it on a t-shirt
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at some point is i hate the term non-verbal because a lot of people throughout
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the the ages have tried to divide autistics into categories.
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They treat autism like it's a substance that you have to stick in a jar with a label on it.
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This jar says high functioning. This jar says low functioning.
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This jar says verbal. This jar says nonverbal. And I'll tell you why I hate the term nonverbal.
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Because, and I just want to say that, I'm just going to give like a quick touch
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on it because we're going to have like a whole episode on communication.
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But what I hate just like Cole's notes as we used to say in Canada,
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about the term nonverbal is nobody, unless they're selectively mute and make
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no noise whatsoever, is nonverbal.
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Everyone communicates in their own way. They might communicate using sounds.
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They might communicate using words.
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They might communicate using a language that only they know,
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but they are always trying to communicate.
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And communication is key. and a
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lot of my struggles both in in
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my own life and also in in my relationship with Leah is
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this is how i feel how can i
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get that across this is what i want how can i get that across this is what i'm
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going through how can i express that in a way that she will understand and i'm
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sure there's a lot of autistics out there who are maybe they're in relationships
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maybe you have an autistic child maybe you have an autistic friend or maybe
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you just know autistic people and you're like how do
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i how do i how do i talk to them well the
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question i want to ask you is maybe they're
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wondering the same thing that is where we're unique because
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of the childhood best friend situation i
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had no issue once we were in a relationship with you going well i can't and
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you have to and and you have to understand me and i had no issue looking at
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you and going well what about you understanding me what makes you so special
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and i think that a lot of mixed couples don't do that because the neurotypical
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doesn't want to feel like,
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I don't want to use this word, like a mean person.
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Let's go with that. They don't want to be judged as being mean or harsh,
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and they don't want to be judged as being...
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Ableistic that's ableistic yeah they don't want to be judged as
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being ableistic so they have to accept all the bad behaviors
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because that's what an autistic is and you
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said something very cool earlier about sort of like your
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grown-up version being you know three midgets in a trench coat right versus
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i would look at you and be like i see you mosha i see you ston that and that
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was extremely useful for us to sort of be able to get through that haze of i'm
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neurotypical am i being ableistic here?
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Can I say this? Is this even okay?
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And I was like, no, what about me? And that honestly really cracked the door
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open to a lot of very useful conversations.
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Exactly. This is probably a good point to mention that one of the things that
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makes our podcast very unique is that we do not censor ourselves as much as we possibly can.
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So if we say something that offends you, or Leah says something that offends
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you, or I say something that offends you, just know that we mean it from the best possible place.
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Place and if you happen to be
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a little person and are offended
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by the term midget then just know
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that we mean it from the nicest place possible and we don't mean to offend you
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but feel free to send us comments indicating why you feel that that term is
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offensive to you and that is that is how we're going to go forward but it is
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going to be a raw podcast you're going to hear some things that
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might not be PC, that might not be woke.
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And that is kind of what makes us unique, I think.
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Yes. And I will apologize publicly to those people and listen to everything that they have to say.
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Fantastic. Because we're very open to criticism. And if you listen to the podcast,
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this is the hook for the end, but we'll say it now.
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If you listen to the podcast and you have comments and you have complaints and
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you have concerns and you have questions and you have conundrums and you have
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queries and you're like, I don't think that what you said was right.
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Great. great, tell us why.
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Or I really, you know, didn't like that you used that word.
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Okay, great. Tell us why you didn't like that word. We can have a communication.
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We are happy to hear from you. In fact, if we say something that really offends
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you, let's discuss it and make it, maybe we can talk about it in a future episode.
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So this person commented about episode whatever and said that we said this thing
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and it was actually really offensive to them.
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Let's talk about that. Because again, also as a neurodivergent,
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something that I've gotten to know about you is things that don't offend anybody
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else really offend you. Yes.
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Things that offend other people, they slide right off of you. So you never know.
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Somebody with a difference, a body difference, a functionality difference,
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a brain difference, might actually just like to own that term.
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I was very, a woman of mass for a long time.
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And I freely used the word fat. So again, you can message me and we can discuss that as well.
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Because when it's your turn, you can do it. For sure.
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So the discussion about comments and replies and maybe making it into a future
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episode is a good segue to discuss the format going forward.
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Word so what's going to happen for for
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future episodes is that it's going to be Leah and i and we might try to get
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guests in on it at a later time and we should probably mention that we have
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a minor bird couple that lives on our deck so if you're getting tweets so just as again raw uncut.
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Unfiltered so we're recording the podcast in our in our apartment currently in jerusalem him.
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And we have lots of birds, and we have a minor bird couple that lives on our balcony on occasion.
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And when they come here, they express their pleasure with the food that we've left them,
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by by tweeting very loudly so maybe
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maybe if you want to discuss uh if you
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have birds that live on your balcony and and if you feed them
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and also why that's not a good thing and and we
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can discuss you know the the wildlife in your city but let's talk about some
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of the some of the topics that we're gonna we're gonna discuss because it's
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gonna it's generally gonna be this it's gonna be Leah and i talking back and
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forth having conversations with each other like i said we We might have people
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on if we can figure out how to do it,
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where we discuss other topics depending.
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And some of the things that we're going to discuss, Lea. So parenting as an
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autistic and parenting an autistic child.
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Right. Those are some of the topics that we find extremely important.
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Communication. Every style and means of communication, as Moshe said about the
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nonverbal versus verbal.
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And double empathy, different styles. If you don't know what double empathy
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is, we'll definitely get into that later.
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We're going to use a lot of terms, a lot of jargon sometimes.
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We try to make things as understandable as possible. But if we use a term that
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you don't understand or don't know, and we don't explain it,
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please feel free to let us know.
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And we'll be happy to discuss it in a future episode or just respond to you
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privately if you have any questions. From our layman's understanding,
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is ASD different than ADHD, Tourette's, global delay, and all the other things
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that are currently under the same umbrella?
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Decision-making, who makes the decisions in the household and why?
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Intimacy and connection, every type of intimacy, including sexual intimacy.
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Yeah, there's going to be a disclaimer on that, of course.
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But again, we leave nothing out. So if you if you do want to stick around for
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a future episode about Leah and I's, you know, sex life, then buckle up.
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Self-care, therapy, to therapy or not to therapy, in which therapies work, in which don't.
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Autism in the wild we're going to try to speak to other autistics and
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see what they have to say about things see how that goes traveling and
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adventures a big topic in
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our household is fleeting fancies so moshe will come home with these bright
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ideas and we have to sort of wait through which ones are just interests of the
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moment or stuff that we should you know chuck it all in and give it a shot right
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being autistic in the jewish community it won't necessarily interest everyone,
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but it's a big part of our lives.
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Yeah. I mean, Leah and I are what you would consider Orthodox Jewish.
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This podcast is not about necessarily our faith or our religion,
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and certainly we don't intend on speaking to dogma or doctrine because we're
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aware that there's going to be people out there of all different faiths,
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but we are going to devote an episode to connecting the two.
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And when we get to that episode... We probably disclaim that one as well.
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Yes, there's strong feelings.
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And I mean, we're happy to talk to people of all other religions.
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So if you do want to be featured possibly in that episode and talk about how
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your religion, whatever it may be, is influencing or influencing your relationship
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vis-a-vis the neurodivergency angle, we can talk about that.
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We're also going to discuss the uncanny valley of autism, where the person sort
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of seems kind of just like you, but they're a little bit off.
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And again apologies if that's offensive to you but it's a reality and we're
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not going to shy away from it right.
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What time means to Moshe. Apparently time passes differently for Moshe and also our son. Yes.
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We've noticed than it does for myself or maybe someone else.
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Liaison with the school, emotional labor, who does, you know,
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a lot of the emotional labor and heavy lifting and how that works.
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And, you know, just anything else that may come up. And we're very open to things
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that people want to talk about from our perspective.
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We are going to do a lot of research and come at you with some facts as well as our opinions.
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I think that's an important thing to say.
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Yeah, this is not by any means an exhaustive list.
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This is our first episode, or as we call it, episode zero, because it's really
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more about introducing ourselves than actually getting into any of the topics,
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which will be next week's endeavor.
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But feel free to leave in the comments any ideas that you have about things
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that you'd like to talk about.
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It may be difficult without knowing more about us and our knowledge and experiences,
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but if you do hear something, you're like, oh, you know what,
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I'd really love to hear Leah talk about this, or I'd really love Moshe to explain this.
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We would love to do that.
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And again, for the second time in this episode, we are not experts.
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We just have our own life experiences.
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But we're not by any means stating that what we're saying is the definitive
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answer for all situations.
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Because again, the podcast is called Now You Know When Autistic,
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not This Is How All Autistics Are, which would be a far different podcast and
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far more controversial.
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An impossible podcast. It would be an impossible podcast and very short-sighted.
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And I think overall, the podcast is generally us, Leah and I, yammering on.
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But it also is meant to be a dialogue. So if you have feedback and if you hear
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something that you have comments on or you disagree with something that we're
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saying, we would love to talk about it.
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Because like I said, we're not experts. We definitely like to hear more about
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your feelings and the feelings of everyone who is listening.
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Absolutely. So one thing that we wanted to touch on in episode zero that we
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had is how you figured or how you discovered that you were autistic.
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Right. So one of the problems with being autistic and also ADHD in the 80s is
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that there wasn't a lot of knowledge with neurodivergency.
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And and again i'm going to
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go into a bit of a controversial subject here but again
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it's it's my life so i can talk about it however i feel like
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in the 80s my experience and
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again this was just my experience as one autistic is that if you had some kind
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of a different functionality be it intellectual be it learning be it developmental
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be it anything you were just called retarded and And that is just the way it was.
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And a lot of people don't like that word, but I would urge you,
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for example, to watch commercials from the 70s and 80s. And that was a word
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that was just thrown around casually.
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And it is the way a lot of people saw me.
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And even those who are very polite, because I'm not intellectually disabled.
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I do know many people or I have known many people that do have certain things
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that have delayed them and that's.
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You know, that's their own story to tell. But I was always different.
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I always had difficulty with my emotions. I always got very lost.
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I'll tell a quick story, just a quick side note, that these podcasts will generally
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be between 45 and 60 minutes.
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So we still have some time. I'll tell a quick story.
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My parents divorced when I was about four years old. My father other moves, I believe, to Ottawa.
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And my mother and I and my sister stayed in Montreal.
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But when my parents were together, I must have been about two or three years
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old. I was always a very early riser.
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Sleep disturbances and difficulties is something that is medically relevant
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to autistics, and it does seem to come up quite a few times. Our son doesn't sleep.
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But I was, yeah, I was a very early riser. So I would get up at 4.30 or 5 o'clock
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every morning, not because there was anything in particularly going on,
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but just because I felt like that was enough sleep for one night.
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And I would go into my parents' bedroom and I would sit on my father's side
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of the bed and just put my face like right up to him and just stare.
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I wouldn't make any noise. I would just stare.
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And he told me that like he would always get this weird feeling like someone
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was watching him and he would open his eyes and my eyes would be like right there.
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The first few times it was very disconcerting but
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after that he was just like okay so you
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you need to not do this give us another two or three
442
00:30:50.870 --> 00:30:53.990
hours then we'll get up so we had this beautiful living
443
00:30:53.990 --> 00:30:57.110
room where my mother put plants and they had these vertical
444
00:30:57.110 --> 00:30:59.990
blinds that were sort of dangling on a string
445
00:30:59.990 --> 00:31:02.950
and they would sort of and the window was slightly open or
446
00:31:02.950 --> 00:31:05.750
there was like a forced air condition and they would sort of
447
00:31:05.750 --> 00:31:08.630
move around and i would sit on on the
448
00:31:08.630 --> 00:31:11.670
couch across from the the verticals and as
449
00:31:11.670 --> 00:31:14.950
the sun would would hit the verticals there would
450
00:31:14.950 --> 00:31:18.030
be shadows and and shades cast on
451
00:31:18.030 --> 00:31:21.350
them and i would actually sit on the couch and watch
452
00:31:21.350 --> 00:31:26.730
the the different you know lights and shadows and and things just go back and
453
00:31:26.730 --> 00:31:31.530
forth and i found it mesmerizing i would make up these pictures in my mind i
454
00:31:31.530 --> 00:31:37.010
recall at one point i was sort of the the the shapes of the shadows turned into
455
00:31:37.010 --> 00:31:38.950
like a horse that was running across the window.
456
00:31:39.170 --> 00:31:42.690
It was actually very surreal. And that was my first indication,
457
00:31:42.870 --> 00:31:45.950
in hindsight, of course, because when you're that age, you don't think about
458
00:31:45.950 --> 00:31:47.410
those things. That was my first indication.
459
00:31:47.530 --> 00:31:49.530
There might have been something a little bit off about me.
460
00:31:50.150 --> 00:31:54.510
I had a lot of difficulties with, you know, being in groups.
461
00:31:54.650 --> 00:31:58.550
Whenever I was put in large groups, I would have what we now know as meltdowns.
462
00:31:58.570 --> 00:31:59.990
They called them panic attacks.
463
00:32:00.350 --> 00:32:04.130
They called them panic attacks. Or they called you just being very difficult.
464
00:32:04.610 --> 00:32:09.370
So I struggled. Throughout your childhood. Go talk to him. I don't know what to do with him. Right.
465
00:32:09.750 --> 00:32:14.770
So I would go through periods of just being very emotional or very like...
466
00:32:16.399 --> 00:32:22.139
And in those days, they didn't know a lot about autism, but they thought they
467
00:32:22.139 --> 00:32:23.919
knew a lot about giftedness.
468
00:32:24.379 --> 00:32:30.239
So there was a period of time when I was probably about five or six that somebody,
469
00:32:30.399 --> 00:32:32.939
could have been a social worker, could have been a psychologist,
470
00:32:33.139 --> 00:32:33.959
could have been a psychiatrist,
471
00:32:34.259 --> 00:32:38.819
could have just been a friend, I never really knew, told my mother that she
472
00:32:38.819 --> 00:32:42.839
suspected that I must be gifted because gifted people are like that.
473
00:32:42.839 --> 00:32:47.519
I couldn't walk until I was probably about three, but I could read.
474
00:32:47.759 --> 00:32:53.039
I would be 18 months old and I would be sitting there just reading books and
475
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:54.779
speaking like actual words.
476
00:32:55.339 --> 00:33:00.419
My mother, just as a quick side note, my mother told the story that she would
477
00:33:00.419 --> 00:33:05.279
walk in, it's like she walked into my bedroom when I must have been just a few
478
00:33:05.279 --> 00:33:07.419
months old, lying on the change table.
479
00:33:07.419 --> 00:33:10.579
Table and again we know you're not supposed to leave the baby unattended
480
00:33:10.579 --> 00:33:13.399
on the change table but again it was the 80s and if your baby died
481
00:33:13.399 --> 00:33:16.379
i guess they weren't meant to live or whatever but she
482
00:33:16.379 --> 00:33:22.719
walked into the room and and i was just lying there playing with my feet and
483
00:33:22.719 --> 00:33:27.079
she was getting ready to change me and she would and she said i looked up at
484
00:33:27.079 --> 00:33:30.819
her and i had these big blue eyes then which i still do and i said mommy i'm
485
00:33:30.819 --> 00:33:35.019
filthy and she just about fell through the floor she she
486
00:33:35.219 --> 00:33:41.839
was like, this baby was just articulating to me these complex thoughts.
487
00:33:42.359 --> 00:33:47.959
Not I'm messy or undirny. No, I'm filthy. I am filthy, mummy.
488
00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:52.379
So she changed me. So anyway, back to the gifted story.
489
00:33:52.719 --> 00:33:56.899
So they put me in a day camp for gifted kids.
490
00:33:57.379 --> 00:34:00.259
And I walked into the classroom one day and there
491
00:34:00.259 --> 00:34:04.119
was like these toddlers doing complex calculus on
492
00:34:04.119 --> 00:34:07.119
the blackboard and someone was like painting this
493
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:12.059
masterpiece on an easel and this other guy was like doing rubik's cubes and
494
00:34:12.059 --> 00:34:16.919
putting together puzzles and and i and i would just walk in looking at all these
495
00:34:16.919 --> 00:34:20.819
things going i don't know what's going on here and then the kids would like
496
00:34:20.819 --> 00:34:24.619
approach me and be like well what what's your favorite theoretical physicist?
497
00:34:24.819 --> 00:34:28.399
And I was like, I like dogs. I like horses.
498
00:34:29.019 --> 00:34:32.179
I like cats. I can color. I know colors.
499
00:34:32.859 --> 00:34:34.219
Do you know colors?
500
00:34:34.919 --> 00:34:41.499
So all the kids would approach me and try to connect with me on their hyper-focus or their passion.
501
00:34:42.279 --> 00:34:47.159
And I just didn't know. It took a few days of me just kind of standing around
502
00:34:47.159 --> 00:34:52.439
going, I don't know what's going on, before the person who ran the camp looked
503
00:34:52.439 --> 00:34:54.239
at my mom and said, yeah, I don't think he's gifted.
504
00:34:55.059 --> 00:35:00.039
So they took me out of there. This is a common story from back in our day, by the way.
505
00:35:00.119 --> 00:35:04.559
A lot of autistics, who we now know are autistic, were putting gifted programs,
506
00:35:05.179 --> 00:35:09.859
mostly because I think that the social pressure was off so they would function better there.
507
00:35:10.566 --> 00:35:15.106
So this is where I'm going to step in. And I'm going to talk about very quickly,
508
00:35:15.246 --> 00:35:20.466
my mama bear side is coming out right now, because this is a prime example of
509
00:35:20.466 --> 00:35:25.186
why functionality labels are trying to understand the functionality of anybody
510
00:35:25.186 --> 00:35:28.266
really, but especially an autistic is so, so damaging.
511
00:35:29.666 --> 00:35:36.126
Because neither Moshe nor our son would actually have met the criteria for autism
512
00:35:36.126 --> 00:35:41.286
long ago. and everybody says to me all the time, what, they're so functional.
513
00:35:41.446 --> 00:35:46.826
Wow, they read so well, they're so articulate and our son is so popular.
514
00:35:46.886 --> 00:35:48.466
He's so popular, he has so many friends.
515
00:35:49.106 --> 00:35:54.866
I had no idea. And I'm just sitting there going, yes, but I struggled to get
516
00:35:54.866 --> 00:35:57.686
our son to take a shower and clean his room today.
517
00:35:58.226 --> 00:36:02.226
He is low functioning in the things that don't matter to other people.
518
00:36:02.446 --> 00:36:05.066
And that's what is very, very, very damaging.
519
00:36:05.326 --> 00:36:08.226
So they're like, yeah, you're his mom And you can do that when he's out in the
520
00:36:08.226 --> 00:36:11.646
world. He's cute and he's happy and he's funny and he's got, again, big blue eyes.
521
00:36:11.746 --> 00:36:16.826
And, you know, he smiles and he's functional enough and he doesn't have so much
522
00:36:16.826 --> 00:36:19.306
intellectual delay. So we don't see him as an issue.
523
00:36:19.666 --> 00:36:21.746
And he's not an issue. He's a human.
524
00:36:22.446 --> 00:36:25.526
No, right. He has issues. And that's the point.
525
00:36:25.666 --> 00:36:30.546
If he's going to function as a human being that gets older, he's going to have
526
00:36:30.546 --> 00:36:35.386
to be helped in those areas where he's less functional. And the same thing is with you.
527
00:36:36.006 --> 00:36:42.126
Right. because this is why when people say autism is a spectrum, it's a spectrum.
528
00:36:42.306 --> 00:36:46.326
And a lot of people hear that and they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense,
529
00:36:46.366 --> 00:36:49.186
but definitely a spectrum. But what is a spectrum?
530
00:36:49.506 --> 00:36:54.186
Because essentially, if you're looking at autism from like this one,
531
00:36:54.446 --> 00:37:00.106
like a scale of zero to 10, zero being non-functional and 10 being fully functional,
532
00:37:00.306 --> 00:37:06.106
then you're going to end up with people just being, they're falling through the cracks.
533
00:37:06.106 --> 00:37:10.606
But if you look at it as like a whole broad picture, what you will find,
534
00:37:10.646 --> 00:37:17.406
like in my case, my special talent or passion was articulation and reading.
535
00:37:17.906 --> 00:37:23.186
My mother used to get very frustrated with me and she used to drop me off at the public library.
536
00:37:24.133 --> 00:37:29.813
For long periods of time. And I would just walk into the kids section and just read every book.
537
00:37:29.953 --> 00:37:34.633
I would be sitting there, like she would drop me off and she would come back
538
00:37:34.633 --> 00:37:40.173
a few hours later, and I would still be in the same spot with just piles of books all around me.
539
00:37:40.433 --> 00:37:45.253
And that was my ability. It made you quite predictable as a child,
540
00:37:45.293 --> 00:37:51.653
because the thing about you and also our son is, is if you look away for a second, they're gone.
541
00:37:52.113 --> 00:37:56.053
So as a child, when we would go to big shopping malls, for example,
542
00:37:56.053 --> 00:37:59.313
I would know he'd be in one of three stores, and I could always find him there.
543
00:37:59.413 --> 00:38:02.533
And our son, very much the same, you know, he's going to be in one of a few
544
00:38:02.533 --> 00:38:05.853
parks or a couple of friends' houses, and we can find him there.
545
00:38:06.013 --> 00:38:10.593
So predictability is actually something that goes so well with the.
546
00:38:11.413 --> 00:38:14.513
What's the word that, you know, like stubborn, what's the other word I use? Rigid.
547
00:38:14.873 --> 00:38:18.613
Rigidness, yeah, exactly. Exactly. The rigidity, because you can predict what
548
00:38:18.613 --> 00:38:20.233
your person is going to do.
549
00:38:20.573 --> 00:38:24.773
But it comes with understanding them and knowing them. And that was what happened
550
00:38:24.773 --> 00:38:28.853
with me, was everyone couldn't handle me. I can't handle it.
551
00:38:28.913 --> 00:38:31.493
Everyone always used to say, I can't handle it. I don't know what's going on.
552
00:38:31.513 --> 00:38:33.353
Something's going on with him. I don't know what's going on with him.
553
00:38:33.493 --> 00:38:36.533
And it got worse as I got older, because again, I was never diagnosed.
554
00:38:36.893 --> 00:38:42.153
I went to regular school. They had a school for autistics in Montreal.
555
00:38:42.633 --> 00:38:45.453
They still do. they still do but I wasn't autistic
556
00:38:45.453 --> 00:38:48.913
I was they would just come up with different he's an absent minded professor
557
00:38:48.913 --> 00:38:54.613
he he's just he's very he's very sensitive that I got every label except the
558
00:38:54.613 --> 00:38:59.093
ones that I needed and this continued all the way through elementary school
559
00:38:59.093 --> 00:39:03.373
and high school and of course this is just a like a surface view we'll get into
560
00:39:03.373 --> 00:39:05.393
the deep dives about my experiences,
561
00:39:05.933 --> 00:39:10.713
in future and later episodes because there's a lot to unpack and hopefully it'll
562
00:39:10.713 --> 00:39:11.813
be interesting and helpful.
563
00:39:12.133 --> 00:39:16.073
But eventually, I just kind of went through my whole life, missing opportunities,
564
00:39:16.493 --> 00:39:18.673
struggling, being unable to express myself.
565
00:39:19.313 --> 00:39:23.073
And again, a lot of stuff happened, which we will get into in future episodes,
566
00:39:23.193 --> 00:39:25.793
until the point when I was in my 40s.
567
00:39:26.193 --> 00:39:31.853
And I actually turned to Leah one day and I was like, I think I might be autistic.
568
00:39:32.153 --> 00:39:32.833
Do you think I'm autistic?
569
00:39:33.233 --> 00:39:36.273
And I said, yes. And I got diagnosed.
570
00:39:36.853 --> 00:39:41.713
And when you're diagnosed, again, and we can look into this in a future episode
571
00:39:41.713 --> 00:39:47.953
too, but I will say that as an adult diagnosed autistic, when you get that diagnosis,
572
00:39:48.413 --> 00:39:53.613
it's like it's cathartic because it's like you can go back over the course of your entire life.
573
00:39:53.613 --> 00:39:59.193
And you just let out this big, oh, and everything makes sense.
574
00:39:59.433 --> 00:40:04.553
All the memories from my past, that time when I was in grade six and I would
575
00:40:04.553 --> 00:40:05.913
just stand there with a gold necklace
576
00:40:05.913 --> 00:40:08.633
and spin the charm around and the teacher's like, what's he doing?
577
00:40:08.773 --> 00:40:11.293
I don't know what he's doing.
578
00:40:11.793 --> 00:40:16.953
Or that time in grade four where I stood in the puddle in rain boots and just
579
00:40:16.953 --> 00:40:21.793
splashed over and over again because I liked the sound and the feeling of the water.
580
00:40:22.531 --> 00:40:26.031
Or when I would throw my books out the window just to see what would happen.
581
00:40:26.711 --> 00:40:29.351
And like these weird things that I would used to do.
582
00:40:29.411 --> 00:40:34.691
And that story of when I was just like a baby, like a toddler sitting on the
583
00:40:34.691 --> 00:40:39.051
couch in my mom's living room and just watching the shadows go across the verticals,
584
00:40:39.071 --> 00:40:40.931
getting the diagnosis. I think you're autistic.
585
00:40:41.531 --> 00:40:47.211
I was like, oh, now it all makes sense. Actually, you came to me with that first.
586
00:40:47.371 --> 00:40:48.591
And you said, do you think I'm autistic?
587
00:40:48.791 --> 00:40:50.931
I said, yes. And I also think you have ADHD.
588
00:40:51.371 --> 00:40:55.431
Right. We have to really just drive home very quickly. Again,
589
00:40:55.511 --> 00:40:56.531
it's almost time to wrap up.
590
00:40:56.651 --> 00:41:00.871
But that motion monitor, his life has no diagnosis, no medication,
591
00:41:01.151 --> 00:41:05.451
being very significantly affected by both autism and ADHD.
592
00:41:05.991 --> 00:41:10.811
And then people sort of looked at him and wondered why he wasn't actuating correctly.
593
00:41:11.291 --> 00:41:16.831
Right. That was a very, very difficult thing to have to go through, I'm sure, and I saw.
594
00:41:17.011 --> 00:41:21.891
It was painful. It was difficult. And again, opportunity. If you are also an
595
00:41:21.891 --> 00:41:26.551
adult diagnosed with autism or ADHD or both, because it usually comes,
596
00:41:26.671 --> 00:41:29.811
the two of them kind of come packaged together, which we will discuss later.
597
00:41:30.615 --> 00:41:34.395
Then let us know in the comments or email us and let us know your experiences.
598
00:41:34.475 --> 00:41:40.175
Or alternatively, if you also have a child like our son who was diagnosed from the beginning.
599
00:41:40.375 --> 00:41:42.595
Four and a half. Yeah, four and a half. But we had to fight.
600
00:41:42.795 --> 00:41:47.855
Who, you know, how that helped you or hurt you or what his experience or their
601
00:41:47.855 --> 00:41:50.975
experiences or her experiences are with that.
602
00:41:51.395 --> 00:41:56.015
And whether you feel, because I was told when I said I'd like a diagnosis of
603
00:41:56.015 --> 00:41:57.755
autism, people were like, why?
604
00:41:57.835 --> 00:42:00.775
You have a job. You have a family. why do you
605
00:42:00.775 --> 00:42:03.935
need a diagnosis in your 40s they said it's
606
00:42:03.935 --> 00:42:06.935
not necessary it doesn't do anything for you and we
607
00:42:06.935 --> 00:42:09.775
said no it is necessary because it it
608
00:42:09.775 --> 00:42:12.835
it actualizes every experience
609
00:42:12.835 --> 00:42:16.115
that i ever had so if you were
610
00:42:16.115 --> 00:42:18.895
told something similar then that absolutely let us
611
00:42:18.895 --> 00:42:21.895
know in the comments or send us emails about your experiences we'd love.
612
00:42:21.895 --> 00:42:24.955
To hear about them oh yes we'll be there for you here and we will back you
613
00:42:24.955 --> 00:42:27.835
up because yeah it is absolutely an
614
00:42:27.835 --> 00:42:30.655
important thing before we wrap up was there anything else
615
00:42:30.655 --> 00:42:33.615
you want to mention i did want to mention the one thing that
616
00:42:33.615 --> 00:42:36.655
you are not do have in common in terms of your
617
00:42:36.655 --> 00:42:40.095
functionality if you want to put it that way is that you
618
00:42:40.095 --> 00:42:43.315
both have very significant processing
619
00:42:43.315 --> 00:42:46.415
delays and that itself is going to be a whole episode processing
620
00:42:46.415 --> 00:42:49.115
the licensing yeah but just to put a picture in your
621
00:42:49.115 --> 00:42:52.295
head it's it's very cute so you can see you know this
622
00:42:52.295 --> 00:42:55.035
very smallish five foot six
623
00:42:55.035 --> 00:42:58.295
woman going to this largest you know six foot
624
00:42:58.295 --> 00:43:01.975
man and going now moshe we're going
625
00:43:01.975 --> 00:43:04.595
to process through this now we got to go quickly we're in
626
00:43:04.595 --> 00:43:07.475
a rush and you know there have been people who
627
00:43:07.475 --> 00:43:10.175
sort of stopped us and i think is he okay is she doing
628
00:43:10.175 --> 00:43:12.915
something to you sir so that's also one
629
00:43:12.915 --> 00:43:15.895
of those awkward things that we're we're going to discuss but the processing
630
00:43:15.895 --> 00:43:18.835
delay is is is huge because it's invisible
631
00:43:18.835 --> 00:43:21.595
visible yeah and of course we we will talk about it
632
00:43:21.595 --> 00:43:24.635
in a future episode but i uh i guess that's
633
00:43:24.635 --> 00:43:29.135
it's going to be all now so thank you for listening well that's
634
00:43:29.135 --> 00:43:32.135
our show for today now you know one autistic just a
635
00:43:32.135 --> 00:43:38.595
little bit better so something you may not know about some autistics is that.
636
00:43:38.595 --> 00:43:45.355
We often struggle with ending social interactions so Leah all right Moshe
637
00:43:45.355 --> 00:43:50.735
i'll take care of it thank you for listening to now you know one autistic see you next week.
638
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:58.714
Music.