[swiggy]

An autistic here coming in regarding the neurodiverse chat.

Let’s clear up some terminology.

Neurotypical – someone who brain functions under the expectations of society.
Neurodiverse - a type of brain functioning that is not neurotypical.

It’s not inherently wrong or bad to say neurodivergent, but It’s better to use neurodiverse over neurodivergent. “-divergent” and “atypical” implies there’s something wrong or abnormal about the person. There’s a movement in the neurodiverse family, mostly in the autistic community, trying our best to advocate for the use person-first language.

Listening over the many years… Keith, have you ever looked into dyslexia? I might be misremembering so correct me – in your youth, weren’t you in a program to assist you with your speech? The whole beer/bear thing? Did they test you for dyslexia at that time? There are also sub-types of dyslexia – information we had growing up about it has changed. Maybe they missed it.

People who’re dyslexic also have difficulty with directions – referred as directional dyslexia – but it’s not dyslexia itself. It’s a symptom of the sub-sets of actual dyslexia. It’s the difficulty memorizing sequences, and since knowing the directions from A to B is about memorizing a sequence of actions—'Left at the store, right at the school then left again at the park'—it's possible that the problems getting lost are really just a particular example of a problem with sequences of information. You also mentioned the whole north, south, east, west issue: again it might be a sequence thing.

The only true way to know is to get tested. Please know though that this process can be time consuming, and costly. It can also create stigma since most diagnosis under the neurodiverse family tree are considered “alienating conditions”. Thank you for thinking we’re cool - I hope more people listen to that specific message.

Okay, at this point I’ve probably info-dumped too much… Which Keith mentioned he doesn’t particularly mind, so again thanks for that as that’s an autistic trait not many people like.