Sarah Wild Says Autistic People Need ‘Fewer Adjustments.’ I Spent 20 Years Vomiting From Fluorescent Lights Because of That Logic.
A recent article titled ‘Ditch the ear defenders: head equips autistic girls for real life‘ with the subtitle “Sarah Wild, who leads Britain’s only autistic girls’ school, says mainstream teachers should make fewer adjustments and tell children it’s OK to feel uncomfortable“ has been making the rounds recently.
The article states: “Many mainstream schools are making too many adjustments for neurodivergent children, including a reliance on ear defenders and a different uniform, according to the head teacher of the UK’s only autistic girls’ school.”
As an Autistic person, who was greatly harmed by teachers who had similar beliefs when I was growing up, I would like to tell Sarah Wild to “shut up” – because advice like this is dangerous, because it applies a behavioral lens to sensory distress.
Sensory distress is not behavioral; it is neurological.
We wouldn’t ask non-autistic children to sit on a chair made of razor blades all day, to teach them that “it’s OK to feel uncomfortable”….
Still, with Autistic people, there is a toxic attitude that “the world isn’t sensory friendly.” This paints us as the problem, instead of challenging the systemic flaws and barriers that make life for Autistic people more difficult.
These “adjustments” that Sarah Wild is so against are disability supports, accommodations that Autistic people need to thrive and be our best selves, that are legally protected in many parts of the world.
Would we tell a child who needs glasses they need to “learn to see without glasses”?
Too many teachers, like Sarah, have adopted toxic attitudes that Autistic people must somehow learn to ignore our sensory needs, and fit ourselves into a world that is unwilling to flex to meet us where we are.
In my opinion, people with abusive attitudes like this shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Autistic children.
I am Autistic, always have been, always will be, even though I did not know it for the first 29 years of my life. This means that my life and my lived experiences have always been filtered through an Autistic lens, despite not having the language to describe these experiences.
Once I was diagnosed as Autistic, a few months before my 30th birthday, in the fall of 2016, I was finally granted a language to describe my experiences, and all of the thoughts I’d kept to myself for most of my life started flowing out.
Viewing myself as ‘Autistic’ and through the Neurodiversity paradigm, so many things started to make sense.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I started to see clearly why I’d struggled in some environments more than others, due to one key difference in how I, and my needs, had been treated in various spaces I’d entered over the years.
Teachers, with ablist attitudes, like Sarah Wild’s, were a big part of the problem.
Looking back at my nearly 30 years of life, post Autism assessment, one thing that stood out to me was how significant the impact of being blamed and treated like a problem to solve and forced to assimilate into the spaces around me had on me over the years.
It started when I was very young.
From the moment I entered the public school system, my teachers’ approach was to mold me into their system, like a star-shaped peg, violently hammered into a triangular hole.
My needs were not to be supported; rather, treated as behaviors to be eliminated.
Because nobody knew I was Autistic, the expectations were that I be and do as my peers did, staying quiet and visibly attentive in class, and not miss more than 12 days a year (even when I was in pain and physically unwell from the stress of being pushed into an environment that wasn’t designed to hold me).
I learned it was more than “OK to be uncomfortable” – that it was my responsibility to ignore my own discomfort, so it wouldn’t bother the people around me.
I was instructed to ignore painful headaches and nausea (which I can now attribute to sensory overload) because, according to the school nurse and my teacher, since my sickness wasn’t catching, and I didn’t have a fever, I “needed to stay in class.”
The school’s rule was that ailments that weren’t contagious weren’t acceptable reasons to miss lessons.
To make matters worse, outside of school, the doctors confirmed my stomach problems “weren’t contagious,” suggesting it would be best if I “attend class” even if I was uncomfortable and feeling unwell (because according to “professional opinions,” my ailments were due to me “not liking school” and trying to “avoid class”).
Nobody checked my neurological function; they only looked at my digestive system and diet.
I was prescribed antacids, anti-nausea medications, and muscle relaxers for my digestive system, which didn’t seem to help at all.
Because these medications didn’t help me, it was assumed my stomach was probably fine, and my symptoms were deemed “psychosomatic,” and as something I’d started doing because I “didn’t like school.”
One thing the doctors, school nurse, and other educational professionals didn’t seem concerned with was finding out “why” I hated school so much, because in their eyes, “lots of kids hated school, but still had to attend.”
Because medical professionals couldn’t easily pinpoint a physical cause for my sickness, the school’s position was to treat it as “bad behavior,” which shouldn’t be enforced, even going so far as to threaten my mom (a single mother at the time) with truancy charges for allowing me to miss too many days.
My “school refusal” was to be treated through a prescription of “not enforcing it” and “ignoring it until it went away.”
The thought was eventually, once I learned “being sick” wouldn’t get me out of class, it was assumed, falsely, that I would somehow stop “getting sick”.
With the school weaponizing its power, my mother didn’t have much choice but to send me to school, even on some of my sickest days.
My teacher wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom when I was feeling unwell, instead placing a trash can by my desk, forcing me to be sick in front of all my peers, because she thought allowing me to go to the bathroom would enforce my “bad behavior” and that the embarrassment of puking in front of everyone would act as an aversive, discourage my habit.
In the end, the planned ignorings and punishments didn’t work, and I kept getting sick (though I did stop asking to go to the nurse or to call my mom whenever I felt unwell).
Sarah Wild is telling teachers and others that “it’s OK to abuse Autistic kids”. She didn’t use those words, but that’s the implication of her statements.
I never told my mother about what happened to me in school, because at the time, I didn’t know it was abuse.
Still, now that I finally understand myself all these years later, I can clearly see that the school system, my teachers, and even my peers were abusing me openly.
Because the abuse happened in front of so many eyes, and nobody stepped in to stop it, I eventually began to believe I must be the problem, and that I deserved the horrible way I had been treated, learning to ignore my own needs.
Had I come from a wealthy family, with more power to fight back and had other options for my care and education during the workday, I might not have been forced into the abusive system that demanded I learn to suffer in silence.
I still felt sick, but I did my best to keep that pain to myself so that it wouldn’t disrupt or gain unwanted attention from the people around me – just as Sarah Wild seems to think Autistic children should learn to do.
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