For any child, the birth-to-age-5 period is vital to healthy development, but another important period – the transition into adolescence – is an opportunity to support positive developmental trajectories. For autistic children, matching the right intervention approaches to the right developmental period is essential to support healthy development and well-being.
Megan Cherewick, PhD, MPH, assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health (ColoradoSPH), is researching how intervention approaches and resources focused through a more inclusive lens can make a difference for autistic children – especially in parts of the world lacking specialists.
Cherewick’s interest in the field and in the neurodiversity movement – viewing a broad range of brain differences in function and behavioral traits as expected variation in human populations – grew with the birth of her daughter, Indra, who is autistic. Cherewick explained that the neurodiversity movement is reframing common misunderstandings about autism. For example, “stimming,” the repetitive body movements or sounds autistic children often use, is an important self-regulation tool for many autistic individuals and sometimes is simply a means to express feelings – like joy.
“My 3-year-old daughter does a lot of hand flapping. Her teachers affectionately termed her stimming ‘motorcycle hands’. My daughter’s stimming happens when she's excited or anticipating something that makes her happy. I can't imagine a world where I would say, ‘You're not allowed to express your happiness that way. You have to express it this way. You can clap your hands, but you can't wave your hands.’"
In the following Q&A, Cherewick outlines how the field around autism research is evolving, the importance of getting supportive resources to autistic children and how resources can be deployed by non-specialists globally.