The Autistic VOICE Project

This week is a mailbag episode, and Erin and Matt take on two common questions from allistic listeners that come up constantly in real life. Both questions sound simple. Neither one is.
Episode highlights:
If ABA is harmful, does that mean all discipline or behaviorism is bad — and what discipline is actually for
Why punishment fails to teach, and how it damages trust, learning, and regulation
The difference between misbehavior driven by dysregulation vs. misunderstanding
Why discipline should mean teaching, modeling, and guiding — not control or compliance
Why Autistic people can be deeply literal and deeply sarcastic (aka snarkolepsy), and why that confuses people so much
Also: this episode includes refrigerator magnets, cuckoo clocks, air fryers, AIC buttons for dogs, Amelia Bedelia logic, Hannah Gadsby wondering how she a box, and a penguin are related, Back to the Future, and a very firm rejection of authoritarian parenting. Matt and Erin don’t get to the rest of the mailbag — including PDA — because these two questions needed the space they took. And honestly, that’s kind of the point.

Note from Erin:
If you're interested in getting started on AIC buttons with your animals, I highly recommend checking out Fluent.pet and HungerForWords.com. They have lots of great info and free resources, even if you don't buy their buttons.
Some of my favorite button-pushers to watch:
Elsie at Elsie wants... (Human: Mary Robinette Kowal who is an incredible human all-around, but also happens to be a Hugo Award-winning author, celebrated narrator, and professional puppeteer)
Twiggy, Odin and Freya at Twiggy and her Cat Cat Friends (Human: Janine Marie Skunk, talking about how she got started here)
Bunny at What About Bunny (Human: Alexis Devine, who is also one of our Autistic neurokin! She tells her story and Bunny's in the book, I Am Bunny)
And, we can't forget the O.G. of interspecies button learning - Stella at Hunger4Words (Human: Christina Hunger, the speech and language pathologist who first noticed the similarities between her puppy and the pre-language toddlers she was working with. You can learn more about Stella's learning process in the book How Stella Learned to Talk)

This week, Matt and Erin slow things down and talk plainly about stress — what it actually does to autistic bodies, and why it hits so hard. From shutdowns and migraines to doomscrolling, snacks, and dogs who run bedtime, this is a lived-in conversation about surviving a loud world.
We cover:
Why autistic stress isn’t just “in your head,” including interoception, shutdown, overdrive, and burnout
How bodies give clues when stress is too much — and how many of us were taught to ignore those signals
Practical, real-world supports: automated routines, snacks-as-care, sleep scaffolding, and letting animals (and people) help
Also included: vestibular migraines, perimenopause realities, surprise chicken strips, revenge bedtime procrastination, vagus nerve tools, cheese as coping (with rules), Google-induced rage, and why silence + snacks is a legitimate love language.

This week’s episode is heavy. Matt and Erin slow things down to talk plainly about safety, community, and what it means to stay human when systems built on control and cruelty become more visible. This is a grounding conversation about fear, responsibility, and why autistic ways of seeing the world matter right now.
We cover:
What it feels like to live under threat — and why many white autistic people are only now feeling what Black and Indigenous communities have lived with for generations
Why autistic justice sensitivity, bottom-up processing, and pattern recognition make this moment especially destabilizing (and clarifying)

Balancing staying informed with protecting your nervous system — including permission to rest, dissociate, distract, and come back

Community vs. rugged individualism: why survival has always been collective, not transactional

Practical ways to engage that don’t require burning yourself out (calls, mutual aid, creative support, resource-sharing)

Repair, accountability, and why changing your mind actually matters — but only if you do the work

Also: snowstorms, go-bags, echolalia, Batman canon, Abed as an autistic icon, consensual licking (yes, really), and a reminder that you don’t have to do everything — just something, when you can.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. That’s not fluff. That’s the point.

Matt and Erin are back with returning guest Maisie Soetantyo for a deeper, wider conversation about what happens after diagnosis—inside families, across cultures, and over a lifetime. This episode shifts from systems to home, from protocol to relationship, and from “fixing” kids to protecting connection.We talk about parenting autistic kids without shame, why reward systems and compliance fall apart in real life, and how culture, gender, and family expectations shape autistic identity in ways the system rarely acknowledges.

Episode highlights:
How early masking is taught at school and reinforced at home—and why it sticks for life
Parenting neurodivergent kids without reward charts, coercion, or constant outsourcing
The quiet harm of being labeled “easy,” “good,” or “low maintenance” as an autistic child
Cultural shame, disability myths, and why many autistic people in Asian communities stay hidden
What actually helps autistic kids grow into regulated adults: safety, interest-based lives, and a home that feels like refuge
This is a grounded, human conversation about raising autistic people—not to perform adulthood, but to survive it with dignity. Real talk, lived experience, and tools you can actually use.

Matt and Erin are joined this week by longtime colleague and friend of the show, Maisie Soetantyo—an openly autistic, multiply neurodivergent advocate with decades inside the autism service system. This episode is a slow, honest unpacking of what it means to start inside ABA, believe you’re helping, and then realize the system itself is doing harm.
We talk about visible “progress,” invisible trauma, and the moment when following the protocol stops making sense—especially when you’re autistic yourself and keep asking why. This one ends on a cliffhanger, because it has to.
Highlights from this episode:
Maisie’s early work in ABA at UCLA, why it looked effective at first, and what those “successes” missed

What happens when compliance replaces connection—and why masking is demanded from both autistic kids and therapists

The long-term impact of training kids to be invisible, including burnout, shutdowns, and after-school collapse

Moral injury, burnout, and why so many well-intentioned providers eventually walk away

Parenting autistic kids after leaving ABA, including sensory-specific eating, regulation, and respecting a real “no”

We stop here on purpose.
Part two is about what comes after—what actually supports autistic people across a lifespan, and how unlearning the system is sometimes the most important work.