Let autistic people use the comfort items we want to without assuming we are 'childish' or 'immature' or have a younger 'mental age'.

Self-soothing is a skill EVERY adult person needs to get a hold of to regulate their emotions.

Our comfort items might be things

more commonly associated with childhood - e.g. stuffed animals, teddies, blankets, even dummies/pacifiers - but that doesn't mean we're become younger every time we choose to self-soothe.

A lot of it is based in sensory comforts - fabrics, and textures, and repetitive movements.

That doesn't mean you should treat us like children, or worse, with scorn.

Using these items in adulthood is arguably a more healthy outlet for ND folk who could, in full adult conscience, choose to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol.

Not that that is automatically bad, but

that we live in a society that tells us burying our emotions in these things is somehow a more "adult" choice than using non-harmful ways to soothe ourselves.

It's absurd. & exactly the reason we have a culture of teenagers thinking they need to dissociate themselves from their

childhood comforts to seem grown and mature, so they drop the things that help with self-regulation for more 'adult' risk-taking behaviours.

A culture of infantilising adults, whether disabled and/or autistic, because of the way they use their personal agency, harms everyone.

#ActuallyAutistic #BlackandAutistic #AutisticwhileBlack #BlackandDisabled