“Don’t buy him letters.” That’s what a professional told Cari Ebert when her son Aaron was two. He was “obsessed,” they said, and needed to be moved toward more appropriate play.
Cari ignored them. Those letters were how Aaron showed joy, and how she connected with him. Nearly two decades later, that same deep interest in letters, numbers, and dates is what landed him a job he loves.
That moment is the heart of today’s episode, because it’s exactly what happens when we treat autism as a journey instead of a tragedy.
This is Cari’s keynote from this year’s Preschool Autism Summit. She brings two lenses to it: 30+ years as a pediatric SLP, and 21 years as mom to her autistic son. Together they make a case that so much of what we were taught to fear, grieve, and “fix” was never the problem. The problem was the language, the linear milestones, and the compliance-first thinking we inherited.
Cari walks us through Aaron’s whole story, from spelling words before he could speak, to teaching himself to tie his shoes at 20, to reading bedtime stories to his baby nephew. Along the way she gives us a clearer, kinder way to talk to families and a real shift in how we show up for autistic children.
We’ll talk about:
- why the child is exactly the same the day after a diagnosis, and it’s the adults who need to shift
- the power of first messages, and how “red flags” teach families to fear a diagnosis
- deficit-based language versus affirming, neutral, strengths-based language
- what autism is not, and what it actually is
- the spiky, non-linear developmental profile
- reframing the spectrum into a support-needs profile
- honoring autistic joy as the doorway to connection and learning
Because we don’t get to decide where an autistic child’s journey ends. Our job is to keep believing there’s more ahead.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn
- Why autism is a journey, not a tragedy, and what changes when we lead with curiosity instead of fear
- How deficit-driven language sends the message that something is “wrong” with the child, and how to choose affirming or neutral language instead
- Why autism is not a delay, a disease, or something a child outgrows
- What a spiky developmental profile is, and why milestone charts don’t fit autistic development
- How to give families space to grieve their expectations, not the child in front of them
- What presuming potential looks like in real life, including how video modeling helped Aaron learn a skill on his own timeline
- Why deep interests, from Metallica to NASCAR, are the way in, not something to redirect
Key Takeaways
- The diagnosis doesn’t change the child; it changes how the adults see and support them
- Regulation creates the conditions for learning, and connection comes before communication
- All behavior has meaning; it’s a clue, not a problem to extinguish
- Progress isn’t linear, and growth continues across the whole lifespan
- Communication is a right, not something a child has to earn
- Autistic children are different, not less
- We stretch strengths instead of fixing deficits
- Families are the experts on their child, and the most important members of the team
Try This
- Take one traditional IEP goal and ask AI to rewrite it in neurodiversity-affirming language, without percentage-of-accuracy measures
- Swap deficit words for neutral ones this week: “deep interests” instead of “obsessions,” “prefers consistency” instead of “rigid”
- Learn one child’s deep interest, and use it as your starting point instead of redirecting it
- Reframe a behavior you’d usually try to stop, and ask what it’s communicating about the nervous system
- Notice a child’s glimmers, the small things that bring them micro-moments of joy, and make room for them
- Start with connection before you ask for a single communication skill
Related Resources & Links
When we treat autism as a journey instead of a tragedy, we stop asking a child to prove they’re worthy of our belief and start offering it from the very beginning. Cari’s son didn’t become worthy the day he got a job or gave a keynote. He was always worthy. Once you see every autistic child that way, it changes everything about how you teach.
