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Autism grievance parents keep topping themselves in cynical awfulness, including cozying up to fellow autism disinformation-spewer RFK Jr. So we’ve updated our explainer on how these parents harm autistics, meaning their own kids as well as ours. Thread. thinkingautismguide.com/2022/11/grie... 1/

If you’re the parent of an autistic child or adult, and you are also horrified by MAGA-style disinformation, please know you should be just as skeptical about getting autism information from people I’m going to call “grievance parents.” 2/

Autism grievance parents brand themselves as autism experts, yet promote reactionary ideas about autism and resentment towards autistic advocates—while encouraging followers to become too upset about having autistic children to question autism misinformation. 3/

Knowing how to identify and avoid grievance parents matters, because their efforts limit autistic people’s already challenging lives, instead of enriching or improving them. 4/

Who are these grievance parents? They are generally—like me—parents of autistic children with significant disabilities. Except instead of targeting “the libs,” grievance parents and the forums they run target autistic, disability, and #neurodiversity activists. 5/

It is also painful to see how autism grievance parents deflect queries about their harmful behaviors, by enlisting and spotlighting outlier non-representative autistic adults who agree with their takes. 7/

It’s understandable when parents new to autism to look to other parents for help. But it’s also crucial for those parents to understand that autistic adults are not the enemy. 8/

Like the leaders of any other community your child belongs to but you do not, autistic and disability advocates have beneficial insights and learned wisdom that non-autistic parents simply cannot provide (and that, as a bonus, research supports). journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 9/