World Autism Awareness Day is an internationally recognized day, on 2nd April every year, encouraging people to take measures to raise awareness about Autism, throughout the world.
As a mediator working with young people and families in conflict, sometimes I see the challenges that people with autism can have, whether they be young people, parents or carers. Relationships can be tricky and managing conflict when the challenges of autism are part of the mix can makes things even trickier. When working with young people and families, one of the challenging things that mediation can help with, is about how people respond to conflict in different ways. Some people tend to be more reflective and some tend to be more reactive. Try taking the Scottish Centre for Conflict Resolution’s Monkey VS Lizard quiz here and you will find out how your own brain tends to respond to conflict. For autistic people it can be overwhelming to sit down and have a conversation about managing conflict but the Monkey VS Lizard quiz is a great starting point for highlighting our different conflict response styles. Feedback from autistic people and from other professionals working with autistic people has been that Monkey Vs Lizard and indeed the other SCCR resources helped a difficult conversation to be much easier. For autistic people, and in fact for all of us, using visual images are often a much easier method of engaging and working through a difficult task. Check out the SCCR resources here. Are you a reflective monkey or a reactive lizard?
