A Girl Living with AuDHD: A Journey

Raising a child can be tough.  Raising an individual with a disability is harder.  I have no experience as a parent, but I have seen people raise children with and without disabilities.  I can only imagine the amount of stress parents have when raising a kid with developmental challenges.   I have taken numerous classes on what it's like to be a parent of a child with a disability.  You go through so much being a caregiver of any level offering support, care, love, and assistance to the individual with a disability.   Just like anyone on this earth, people with disabilities grow up out of being a child and grow into adulthood.  For some individuals with disabilities, they might not fully develop mentally into their biological age.  However, this doesn't mean we can't give them any autonomy or independence.  I have been part of the beautiful disability community for almost three years now and I've noticed a lot of what's called, infa...

  Connor Tomlinson, age 26, from Atlanta, Georgia, known for being on the Netflix reality show Love on the Spectrum .  Connor's debut on the show started on season 2.  During season 3, Connor had more time to shine which is probably what gained him popularity online. Connor lives with his mom Lise and step-dad Tony Smith, and brothers and sisters Ben, Jack, and Anna Tomlinson.  Connor is currently dating Georgie Harris. Today, I would like to talk about how much I love Connor as a content creator in the autism community.   I've watched Connor's seasons on Love on the Spectrum,  and I'm pleased to say that he's one of my favorites on the show.  I've admired his charm as well as his growth from season 2 to season 3.  His mom is probably my favorite parent on the show.  I love how she is supportive with Connor's endeavors and how patient she is with him when he is overreacting over certain topics that they are discussing.   Connor...

  Nestled in the town of Aurora, Colorado lies the cute Autism Community Store.  On Saturday August 23rd, 2025, I decided to take a day trip with my parents to visit this store after stumbling upon it online a while ago as part of my growing advocacy content creating journey. Anyone in the autism community knows how hard it is to find things like fidget toys, fidget devices, sensory toys, and learning games.  The Autism Community Store offers an abundance of things you might need as someone who is autistic or friends and family members of someone who is autistic.   They have a small area of their store, which is what they call their Sensory Room.  They have a small seating area in it with a light fixture, a small bean bag-like pillow, and some pillows.  I like this idea because I feel like most places need an area like this for people with sensory needs.   Let's not forget the events they host every Saturday.  Before I made my trip out, ...

  Do you ever wish with a hidden disability that people would understand what you're going through instead of trying to relate to you?  Do you ever wish that you could be understood?  Having a disability that isn't visibly seen is hard when the world doesn't know what to do with you.  Sometimes I wish that with the information we have on disabilities based on research and experience, the world would appreciate, understand, and accommodate people with disabilities more. When you have a disability like ADHD and/or level one low-support needs autism, it's hard to tell if someone has it.  When you spend your whole life struggling to make and keep friends in school and in your neighborhood's church group, you feel like the outcast.  I know because I have been there.  I was able to make friends in school, but I struggled with fitting into my neighborhood's church group of kids my age.  When you struggle with socializing by trying to relate to the group ...

  Many times people tell me, "oh I don't need a diagnosis for probably having ADHD, autism, and/or both".   When people say this, it makes me wonder why they haven't gotten a proper diagnosis.  Most of the time, I hear older adults tell me that they're not diagnosed with something like ADHD, autism, or anything else.  It's common for adults to go through life without receiving a formal diagnosis of any neurodiversity when it is apparent that they have a diagnosis. Autism and ADHD are both diagnoses that have been stigmatized for many years.  If you have ADHD, some people think that you're just really hyper and have a lot of energy.  Sometimes that isn't the case.  Did you know that ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD are the same thing?  In 1987, the revised DSM-III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) merged the two together.  In 1994, ADHD was classified into three different types: inattentive, hyperactive-imp...

  Have you been wanting to watch a show that has good representation of neurodiversity?  I will say this, the amount of proper autistic representation in the media is and can be hard to find.  I was fortunate at the beginning of the week to come across a post on Instagram that talked about female representation of autism on TV shows and movies.  This post mentioned a Netflix show that I had never heard of before called, Geek Girl .  I looked up the premise and decided to watch it after I saw that it was written by a woman on the spectrum and the main character is acted by a girl on the spectrum.   ***WARNING: DO NOT READ THE REST IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS!!!*** The show Geek Girl , currently has one season and ten episodes out. It is a show that is based in the United Kingdom and is about a teenage girl, named Harriet Manners.  Harriet is a 16-year-old girl who is in secondary school and unintentionally ends up being discovered as a model at her...

  The good old days.  As someone who is autistic and has ADHD, there are moments where it's tempting to want to go back to a simple time.  It is always when we think about the good old days, we are suppressing living in the present moment and we loose sight of what we have.  It's good to have simple reminders of why sometimes having a reminder that even though reality is a pain, there are things we can gain from every moment we are in.  Thinking about the "Golden Era" of thinking made me think back to my senior year of high school in my English class.  We discussed the themes in the book Great Gatsby  (Fitzgerald, 1925) and one that stood out was the illusion versus reality and nostalgic aspect of the book/movie.  In high school, we watched the movie and read excerpts from the book because of some of the explicit content that was mentioned in the book.   I never understood the concept "golden age thinking" when we discussed it almost 10 ...

  Have you ever seen a game of ping-pong be played?  The ball goes back-and-forth between the two players until it stops.  This is what it's like to have a conversation between two people.  Having a back-and-forth conversation is the most effective way to foster any relationship.  When you struggle with socializing and communication, this is when the ping-pong technique comes into play. Effective human communication is transactional.  This means that when we communicate with others, we send and receive messages simultaneously (Beebe & Masterson, 2012).   When we communicate with someone, there are two main parts to the conversation, which is the sender and the receiver.  The sender is the person who is the one giving the information to the receiver.  This can be anything from talking in-person or communicating via text messaging or emailing another person.  The receiver  is the person who is the listener who interprets the...

  I stated a couple days ago that I was dry on topics to write about.  Today, that changed a bit.  I have been contemplating on what to write about for the last couple of days.  I have had the unfortunate chance of being faced with a difficult moment in one of my relationships with one of my friends.  This caused me to think about the complexity of being an adult and having autism and how those come into play.   When you have a disability and that disability is autism, you have the typical social and communication challenges.  Now, add the complexity of being an adult.  Everyone knows that when you're an adult, you go through different kinds of relationships such as romantic and platonic.  This is a normal concept.  I'll say this: I've never been in a romantic relationship at all.  I've only been on three dates.  My last date was January 2019.  I've been single my whole life (27-1/2 years). That being said, I've gone ...

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