Hi, I'm Emilia Isabelle

Advocate, Not Apologise

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My son has a diagnosis of autism and we’re currently awaiting the ADHD assessment process. Like many autistic children, he stims. This is particularly present at home  but sometimes at school too.

We call it his “flappy”.

It usually looks like rigorous hand flapping, sometimes when he’s sitting still, sometimes when he’s running back and forth. To an outside eye, it might look distracting, excessive, or seem odd. To him, it is regulation. It is calming, and it is how his body releases energy and settles his nervous system.

Recently, an incident happened at school.

During assembly, he was flapping and his teacher told him to stop not realising what being able to do this means to him. Whilst there was no malice in it, the impact mattered more than the intention.

He came home and cried. Proper, gut-deep sobbing. He told me his friends had laughed and told me how distressed it made him feel.

We sat and talked it through slowly. I asked him something important:
“Does other people laughing stop the flappy doing what it needs to do for you?”.

He thought about it and said no, he explained that the flappy still helped him feel calm. The problem wasn’t the flapping, the problem was how others responded to it. After that conversation, he asked me to speak to his teacher.

I agreed but with an important condition. I told him I would absolutely support him, but he needed to provide the detail. He needed to explain what happened, how it made him feel, and what flapping actually does for him not because I couldn’t advocate for him but because one day, I won’t always be there.

Into adulthood, there will be workplaces, relationships, and social situations where he will need to navigate how he calms himself. It may be flapping or it may be something else entirely, either way, he needs to be able to say:

“This is what I need.”
“This helps me regulate.”
“This isn’t optional for me.”

Autism advocacy isn’t just about educating teachers or correcting systems. It’s about empowering autistic children to understand themselves deeply enough to speak clearly about their needs.

I don’t want my son growing up thinking he has to suppress himself to make others comfortable. I want him to know that clarity is kinder than masking, and that self-advocacy is a life skill, not a confrontation.

In a world that continues to misunderstand autism, we don’t need to be quieter. We need to be clearer. In order to do that, we need to educate. My job isn’t to make him fit in at any cost. My job is to help him understand himself well enough to stand in who he is. If that starts with flapping in assembly, difficult conversations, and learning to use his voice, then that’s exactly where we’ll start.