I wanted to explore briefly today about autistic people like me and our processing speed. So I often teach about how autistic people have a slower processing speed often and so we need to simplify instructions, break them right down, perhaps present them in a written or pictorial form as well as verbally and we need to provide space for people to process those instructions before giving the next one. So we've got to kind of like, dumb it down, basically I kind of teach people, treat autistic people as if they're stupid, which I think is perhaps a little unfair. I don't think that we are slow. I think we're just processing a whole bunch more than our neurotypical peers. So I just wanted to walk you through the kind of typical thing that would happen if someone were to give me directions, just to help you understand how it feels like from my point of view and perhaps motivate you to slow down when giving instructions to autistic kids. So, okay, normal direction giving scenario. So I ask some guy for directions, actually I would never do this because of what you're about to see, but you know, how do I get to the chemist? Right, walk to the tree at the end of the street, so is the guy. Perfectly reasonable instruction so far, so good, pretty simple, right? He's telling me to walk to the tree at the end of the street. I'm thinking, ah, he means that massive horse chestnut tree. It had the greenest leaves. They were catching the light just so beautifully earlier in the golden hour light. Ellie loves the golden hour. That's when she always takes her photographs for Instagram and I love conquers. Conkers are so smooth and so shiny and they feel so good in the inside to the cases. Oh, fluffy and lovely, like a little nest for a little mouse and he smells kind of good. Is that, I think it's sandalwood. I think it's sandalwood. Maybe it's like his soap or his aftershave or something. Yeah, he smells, he smells pretty good, but how is he wearing that jacket? It looks so itchy, except the elbows, which look like they might be kind of smooth. I bet that feels a bit weird though. Drinking it feels weird wearing a jacket that's part itchy and part smooth on your elbows. I don't know, maybe, maybe it does. I'm not sure if he does smell good though. And then, do you think he thinks I'm weird? Do you think he thinks I'm strange? Do I remember to nod and smile? Was I polite at the beginning of this conversation? Have I made appropriate eye contact? Do you think he's judging me? This is what's going through my head when he's told me to walk to the tree at the end of the street. The problem is, meanwhile, he's been raviting on about the rest of these directions that I need. So he's probably said, and then you're going to turn left and then you're going to walk up to the blue door on your right and then you're going to make a right there and then you're going to walk down the alley until you get to the third street on your left. That's Gideon's street. And then you're going to do, and I'm just hearing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I'm still thinking about conkers and elbow patches and the smell of sandalwood and my thoughts at elsewhere. I've got a lot of other stuff to process before I can move on to the next thing. But he's moved on. And it's directly on your right, okay? And I'm like, okay, conkers are shiny. It's not, I'm not stupid. I'm not stupid. I just have a whole lot more processing to do. So when we talk about autistic people having slow processing speed for some of us, for those of us who are like, I, a sensory and taking in the world all the time all around us, I really think it's not necessarily that our processing speed is slow. It's just that you might be processing one thing, walk to the tree at the end of the street. I'm processing like 8,000 other things that that thought has triggered. So I'm not processing slowly. I'm probably processing really, really fast. I'm just processing a whole bunch more info than you are. So I'm not slow. I'm not stupid. I'm just working through a whole bunch of stuff before I can move on to the next instruction. So how do we use that to help us? Firstly, hopefully this just helps you to step into my shoes, the shoes of autistic people, the shoes of people who overthink things a little bit and understand things from our point of view. And so how you can help just slow down, slow right down, really simplify those instructions, chunk them, only share what you really need to. I don't need detail. I just need to know the absolute basics. No fluff please. Space time in between to process. Think about conquers and elbow patches and sandalwood. And if possible, please write them down so I can refer back to them because no matter how slowly you go, no matter what happens, I'm likely to be thinking about other things and being able to refer back to them will be super, super helpful. Finally, never worry about repeating yourself. That's fine. Check I've understood, check I've heard. We are so used to masking, pretending that everything's fine and that we're going along with things and it's all right. We're actually going, no idea, no clue, absolutely, no clue. So do check and try to make it safe for us to admit that, no, don't really know what you want me to do. I'm really, really sorry. Hopefully that helps a little bit. A little step into Puke's brain there. That's really quite a lot going on, not all of it's relevant. Hope it was helpful. Until next time, over and out.