BY MARTIN CLAFFEY
A BANDON woman working to change attitudes about autism is holding a neurodivergent session for parents and carers who are waiting on a child’s autism diagnosis.
Evaleen Whelton is the founder of AUsome Training. She discovered she was autistic as an adult in 2014.
Before she discovered she was autistic, she would use ‘masking’ to fit in, which many autistic people engage in as a survival mechanism, acting in a certain way to fit in. ‘That can be really stressful. You’re always people-pleasing,’ said Evaleen. ‘I remember if someone asked me the simplest question – “what’s your favourite film?” – I’d lay out all the scenarios to try to give the best answer I thought the person wanted.’
After her own diagnosis, Evaleen, who had worked as a speech and drama teacher, had sought out more and more information from autism communities. Eventually it became her job, as she set up AUsome Training.
Now AUsome Training provides training courses and mentoring tailored for professionals, as well as providing supports for parents and schools. All of the staff of AUsome Training are autistic parents themselves, and Evaleen’s company now offers courses to clients as far away as the US, Canada, and Australia.
‘What we know about autism and how we diagnose it has changed so much in the past few years,’ says Evaleen. ‘But there’s still is a lot of misconceptions out there about autism. We’re trying to change that, that it’s just about changing the environment.’
When Evaleen talks about ‘environment’, it’s not usually a physical environment – although many autistic people do have light sensitivity – but more the environment around the person that they feel comfortable to be themselves.
On Sunday November 19th, AUsome Training are hosting a special neurodivergent session for parents and carers who are waiting on a child’s autism diagnosis. The free event will take place from 2pm to 5pm in Cork in Ballyphehane Community Centre and will offer parents tips and insights to help understand, support, and advocate for their children.
For parents who have a child diagnosed with autism, there is often a fear of the unknown about what that means, says Evaleen, with the term autism often used in a very negative way. She’s wary of the idea of an autism spectrum of mild to severe, because she believes that is to treat it as a straight-line condition.
‘There’s a lot of things that are bundled together into the term autism. With a lot of the behaviour associated with autism what you are seeing is the actions of a stressed child.’
Evaleen pointed out that 80% of autistic people suffer from anxiety, but points out that this often comes from the environment they are in. ‘If you don’t feel safe, you will be anxious,’ she says. ‘A lot of stuff that autistic kids do when they are stressed is completely normal, it’s because they are stressed that they are acting in a certain way.
‘If everyone had a better understanding of autism, it would change perceptions.’
In recent years, she believes change is happening with how we view autism. In recent years we have also seen the emergence of positive autistic role models, from environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg to footballer James McClean.
The traditional attitude pushed the idea that autistic children ‘had difficult with social communication’ instead of communicates differently. Slowly but surely, Evaleen believes there is less ‘othering’ of children, and more of an acceptance that people are just the way they are.
The parent event in Cork is free but it is necessary to register. See https://ausometraining.com/
