There is an elephant standing in the disability sector right now.
A very large one.
It is standing quietly in the corner while providers redesign their websites, soften their branding palettes, replace clinical terminology with gentler language, add infinity symbols to brochures, sprinkle words like neuroaffirming, trauma-informed, person-centred, strengths-based, rights-based, lived experience, co-regulation, belonging, and autonomy across their marketing materials, and proudly announce to community that they have evolved.
The elephant is wearing a sunflower lanyard.
And somehow, everyone is pretending not to see it.
Because beneath all the beautiful language, many of the systems underneath have not changed at all.
And community is starting to notice.
Maybe you have too.
Maybe you are a parent reading this.
Maybe your child has recently received support through the NDIS.
Maybe someone told you your child’s future is not defined by today’s challenges.
Maybe they reassured you that different does not mean less.
Maybe they said they would focus on dignity, connection, quality of life, authentic relationships, and understanding behaviour through compassion.
Maybe they told you their practice was neuroaffirming.
Maybe they spoke gently about autonomy, emotional wellbeing, sensory needs, and building on strengths.
Maybe they looked you in the eye and said:
We don’t want to change who your child is.
And because all of those words sound safe, you trusted them.
Most people would.
I probably would too.
That is precisely why this conversation matters.
Because there is something happening across the disability sector right now that deserves honest scrutiny.
Something I have increasingly come to recognise as neuro-washing.
And before anyone becomes uncomfortable with that phrase, stay with me.
This is bigger than one provider.
This is about an entire system learning a new language while often preserving the same old architecture underneath.
The wallpaper has changed.
The building remains.
And if you know anything about autistic history, you know why that should concern all of us.
Before I go further, I need to acknowledge something uncomfortable
None of us who work within disability systems stand entirely outside the systems we critique.
Not me.
Not families navigating impossible choices.
Not providers trying to survive inside a funding ecosystem that rewards compliance, measurable outcomes, behavioural documentation, risk mitigation, and institutional legibility.
The NDIS itself is deeply built upon frameworks of functionality, intervention, developmental progression, capacity building, and behavioural governance.
ABA histories sit in the background.
PBS frameworks continue expanding.
Professional cultures still overwhelmingly reward "expertise" that understands autistic distress through observation, assessment, intervention planning, measurable progress, and behavioural interpretation.
So this is not written from a place of purity.
It is written from a place of honest reflection.
Because if neurodiversity means anything at all, then we must be willing to interrogate the systems we ourselves continue participating inside.
Even when that interrogation becomes uncomfortable.
Especially then.
The language has changed faster than the practice
For decades, autistic people were viewed almost exclusively through pathology.
The dominant question professionals asked was simple:
How do we reduce autistic behaviours?
How do we make autistic children sit still?
How do we reduce repetitive movement?
How do we increase eye contact?
How do we improve compliance?
How do we teach socially acceptable communication?
How do we help them function more independently?
The entire system revolved around one unspoken premise:
How do we make this person appear less autistic?
This is not ancient history.
This is now.
This still sits at the foundation of much of the disability support sector.
It is embedded deeply within behaviourist intervention models, professional training structures, compliance frameworks, educational systems, and funding pathways.
And nowhere is this tension more visible than within frameworks like ABA and PBS.
Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support.
Different branches of the same family tree.
And before people rush to defend PBS as somehow fundamentally different, it is worth remembering where these systems come from.
Because history matters.
The behavioural gaze never disappeared. It simply learned softer language.
Autistic scholar David Gray-Hammond has written powerfully about the trauma many autistic people carry from systems that claimed to be helping while fundamentally misunderstanding autistic existence.
What makes this particularly dangerous is that coercion rarely arrives looking cruel.
It often arrives smiling.
It arrives saying:
We are only trying to help.
We are teaching life skills.
We are reducing barriers.
We are increasing capacity.
We are building independence.
We are preparing them for the real world.
We are not trying to change who they are.
It sounds caring.
It sounds compassionate.
It sounds professional.
But autistic people know what this often feels like on the receiving end.
Imagine your child is overwhelmed.
The lights are too bright.
The room is loud.
Their nervous system is flooding with sensory information faster than their brain can organise.
They begin rocking.
Covering their ears.
Avoiding eye contact.
They stop speaking.
Maybe they cry.
Maybe they push away the adult standing too close.
Maybe they refuse.
Now imagine a professional begins documenting this.
Observing it.
Analysing it.
Categorising it.
Determining the function of the behaviour.
Creating intervention plans around reducing future occurrences.
Teaching replacement strategies.
Monitoring outcomes.
Writing reports.
And then calling this support.
Pause there.
Imagine somebody doing this to you.
Not trusting your body.
Not trusting your distress.
Not accepting that perhaps your nervous system is overwhelmed.
But immediately observing your external presentation and beginning a professional process around changing what they see.
How long before support begins to feel like surveillance?
Because that is the elephant standing in the room.
Systems no longer sell compliance. They sell hope.
Perhaps what is most unsettling is how sophisticated the language has become.
Providers are no longer openly selling behavioural correction.
They are selling hope.
Hope to frightened parents.
Hope to exhausted families.
Hope to people desperately trying to do the right thing.
The language now sounds like this:
Your child’s future is not defined by today’s challenges.
Research shows development remains possible.
The brain can change through neuroplasticity.
Potential is not measured by IQ.
Every child deserves the chance to thrive.
And understandably, parents hear safety.
They hear possibility.
They hear compassion.
But history teaches us to pay attention whenever intervention systems begin marketing developmental transformation.
Because underneath the reassurance sits an old promise in new clothing:
Your child can improve.
Your child can develop further.
Your child can become more.
Your child can change.
But autistic community increasingly asks:
Why is acceptance still tied so closely to future development?
Why are disabled children so often valued for what they may someday become, rather than who they already are?
Neuroplasticity has quietly become the appealing language of intervention
This is one of the most concerning shifts happening right now.
Increasingly, providers invoke neuroscience itself.
The brain is capable of change through neuroplasticity.
It sounds scientific.
It sounds empowering.
It sounds impossible to object to.
But neuroplasticity discourse has increasingly become one of the most sophisticated justifications for intervention industries.
Because quietly hidden underneath is an old assumption.
The current state of being is insufficient.
Development can be improved.
Brains can be rewired.
Trajectories can be changed.
Progress can be accelerated.
And suddenly we find ourselves standing dangerously close to the same historical logic that fuelled decades of intensive behavioural intervention.
Just wearing softer language.
Autistic children are still being positioned through future transformation.
And that should make us pause.
“Behaviour is communication” still keeps us trapped inside behavioural frameworks
One phrase now dominates disability services.
Behaviour is communication.
At first glance, it sounds compassionate.
Better than older language about defiance or challenging behaviour.
But autistic thinkers like Fergus Murray force us to examine what assumptions remain buried inside this framing.
Why is autistic existence still filtered through behavioural interpretation?
Why does distress become behaviour?
Why does stimming become behaviour?
Why does refusal become behaviour?
Why does shutdown become behaviour?
Why does autistic nervous system overwhelm become behaviour requiring professional analysis?
Because behaviourism did not disappear.
It simply learned empathy vocabulary.
And that distinction matters.
Neurodiversity was never supposed to become marketing language
Nick Walker’s neurodiversity paradigm fundamentally challenged the pathology model itself.
It did not ask professionals to become gentler while continuing to modify autistic people.
It asked society to reconsider whether autistic people required modification in the first place.
That is radically different.
The neurodiversity movement emerged from a dangerous idea.
Dangerous, at least, to institutions built around intervention.
Autistic people are not broken neurotypicals.
We are not failed versions of normal.
We are not developmental errors requiring correction.
We represent naturally occurring variations in human neurology.
And that means the question changes.
Not:
How do we change autistic people?
But:
Why is society so uncomfortable allowing autistic people to exist authentically?
That question shifts power.
Institutions rarely surrender power willingly.
When “neuroaffirming PBS” becomes a contradiction in terms
Across the disability sector, providers increasingly describe themselves as offering:
Neuroaffirming Positive Behaviour Support.
But these words sit uneasily beside one another.
Because Positive Behaviour Support remains fundamentally behaviourist in structure.
Even in its gentlest forms, PBS still begins with one central premise:
Something observable is happening.
Professionals must understand it.
Professionals develop intervention strategies.
Outcomes are measured.
Progress is documented.
Support is adjusted accordingly.
The individual remains under observation.
The professional remains interpreter.
The system retains authority.
You can replace punishment with compassion.
You can replace consequences with relationship-building.
You can focus on environmental adjustment rather than overt correction.
But behaviour remains the organising principle.
You cannot dismantle pathology frameworks by simply painting them in neurodiversity colours.
The independence trap
Robert Chapman’s work cuts even deeper.
Disability systems consistently frame independence as the ultimate goal.
Independence.
Capacity building.
Reduced reliance on supports.
Employment.
Functionality.
Participation.
Productivity.
It all sounds empowering.
Until you realise these goals often reflect broader capitalist assumptions about what makes a life valuable.
Chapman reminds us that disabled people are frequently supported only insofar as they become manageable inside systems designed around productivity and normative functioning.
But what if independence is not the goal?
What if interdependence is equally valuable?
What if needing support forever is not failure?
What if communication differences never change?
What if autonomy means refusing the goals professionals think are important?
Can systems tolerate that?
Or does support remain conditional on progress toward neuronormative ideals?
Community has learned to recognise the costume
This is where many providers misunderstand what autistic adults are saying.
We are not rejecting kindness.
We are not rejecting support.
We are not demanding perfection.
We are asking for honesty.
Because many autistic adults survived childhoods spent inside systems that insisted interventions were “for our own good.”
We remember being taught eye contact because it looked socially appropriate.
We remember being rewarded for compliance.
We remember being praised when we stopped moving the way our bodies needed to move.
We remember learning to mask so effectively that adults called it progress.
And then we spent adulthood trying to recover from what that cost us.
So when providers suddenly begin using words like:
affirming
safe
inclusive
trauma-informed
neurodiversity
belonging
co-regulation
lived experience
quality of life
authentic relationships
strengths before challenges
…community listens carefully.
Because we know language can become camouflage.
And we know systems adapt faster than power structures do.
The question providers should be asking themselves
Not:
Do we sound neuroaffirming?
But:
What happens when an autistic person refuses?
What happens when compliance disappears?
What happens when somebody does not want independence?
What happens when distress becomes inconvenient?
What happens when communication is non-speaking?
What happens when autistic autonomy conflicts with professional recommendations?
What happens when families want normalisation but autistic people want authenticity?
What happens when lived experience directly challenges professional training?
Are you willing to change practice?
Or only language?
Community deserves more than prettier coercion
The disability sector is changing.
That part is true.
But language changing is not the same as power changing.
And autistic people can feel the difference immediately.
So here is the uncomfortable truth.
If systems historically built on observing, interpreting, modifying, documenting, managing, normalising, and intervening upon autistic behaviour suddenly begin calling themselves neuroaffirming…
Community has every right to ask difficult questions.
Because phrases like:
“We honour neurodiversity.”
“Different does not mean less.”
“We don’t aim to change who your child is.”
“Success is measured by quality of life, not comparison.”
“Your child’s future is not defined by today’s challenges.”
…coming from within systems still fundamentally shaped by behaviourism should make all of us pause.
Not because the language itself is harmful.
But because history teaches us to examine what sits underneath language.
Autistic people have become experts in recognising when acceptance is conditional.
And we know systems do not always abandon harmful frameworks.
Sometimes they simply become fluent in the language of trust.
So perhaps this is where we leave the conversation.
Not with certainty.
But with a question.
If this was happening to you…
If professionals spent years observing your distress, analysing your body, documenting your responses, shaping your environment around behavioural goals, teaching you socially acceptable ways to exist, rewarding compliance, measuring your progress, speaking gently about autonomy while quietly retaining professional authority, promising your loved ones that your brain could change, reassuring your family about your developmental potential, and calling all of this empowerment…
Would you experience that as freedom?
Or would you eventually realise that someone had simply found a gentler way to ask you not to be yourself?
Because there is still an elephant standing quietly in the disability sector.
It is wearing a sunflower lanyard.
And pretending to be neuroaffirming does not make it disappear.
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