Summary of Laura Kerby’s talk

The even fuller full write up from can be found here

At our parent and carer support group in March 2024, we were delighted to welcome Laura Kerbey, an expert in the field of Autism and ADHD. Diagnosed with ADHD herself, and self-diagnosed autistic, Laura has two children with SEND including autism.

Laura talked us through current and recent developments in autism presentation and assessment. The first thing she emphasised though was that although autism is classed as a disability, it is often an autistic person’s environment which is the disabling factor.

She feels that the official figure that 1/100 people are autistic is misleading – they are the ones who are diagnosed. There may be many, many others who are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, particularly older people, girls, and women. She recommended writing by Catherine Asta, The Late Discovered Club which tackles this issue. https://www.catherineasta.com/work/thelatediscoveredclub/She talked about the spectrum as a colour wheel with autistic people presenting with different strengths and challenges and that to label someone ‘High’ or ‘Low’ functioning is to do them a disservice.

Laura also talked about the theory of Monotropism which is a relatively new but important area of research in Autistic presentation. Monotropism, literally translated means ‘Single Tunnel of Interest’ and was developed by the late Dinah Murray. Her son, Fergus Murray has continued research into this field and his writing is recommended.

https://monotropism.org/about/

Laura talked us through the various presentations of autism such as being unable to see someone’s point of view (It’s not stubbornness, which implies a wilful decision NOT to see another person’s point of view) and not being able to see the bigger picture, difficulties with generalisations and imagination. She recommended writing by autistic people Ros Blackburn and Dan Beadle and explained that Ros’s comment ‘I can’t imagine something I have no experience of’ taught her a lot about the challenges autistic people have with imagination. https://uniquelyhuman.com/.../logically-illogical-an.../

One important thing Laura talked about was eye contact, and how it is an unreliable indicator that some is autistic or not. Her company do not use it in their assessments as it can change over time, depending on circumstance, and vary from individual to individual. I know some of our families are still meeting this hurdle in some NHS assessments so it was good to hear this from Laura (but very frustrating!)

Amongst other possibly familiar presentations, Laura talked about an autistic person experiencing Alexithymia, difficulty recognising emotions, not being able to tell the difference between, for example, anger, excitement, and anxiety which can lead to confusion and misunderstandings.

Laura described that there is a big crossover between Autism and ADHD and many of the 5% of the population who are diagnosed with ADHD are also autistic. There are three presentations of ADHD – Hyperactive, Attention deficit or a combination of the two. The most common is the combined diagnosis.

One important aspect of ADHD that Laura was keen to discuss was Rejection-Sensitivity Dysphoria. This means that individuals with ADHD are highly sensitive to criticism - even slightly negative comments can be devastating. This means that people with RSD are also sensitive to disapproval, have raised anxiety and become people pleasers, which means they are very vulnerable. It can affect their self-esteem and lead to feelings of hopelessness and a fear of failure, and in turn to avoidance of social situations. It can also lead to emotional outbursts and aggression following feelings of hurt and rejection. In relationships there can be an anxious attachment style, where the person with ADHD can appear to be very needy which results in them pushing people away.

Laura shocked us all by saying that there is evidence that children with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative comments by the time they are twelve, than their neurotypical peers. 20,000. You read that right.

Laura then took questions on a range of topics such as eye contact, medication, and masking. You can follow Laura on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/LauraKerbeyPast