Author Daniel Smeenk will be speaking at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library this Thursday about his book, Autistic Adults: Exploring the Forgotten End of the Spectrum, a subject he understands from first-hand experience.
Diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum at age three, and reassessed at 11 years old, Smeenk discovered that his experience of being an autistic adult varied greatly from that of autistic adults a generation before.
“A huge difference between me and them was that I've known my entire life that I was autistic. They could not have known because the knowledge of autism and the diagnostic labels which came to them were not available yet.
“The majority of autistic people are autistic adults,” said Smeenk, and “a lot of people don't know enough about that.”
Smeenk found little research focussed on adult autism, and most service providers support autistic children. “It's actually broadly agreed upon, certainly within the autistic community, that the cutoff date for services for autistic adults is age 18,” he said.
In his book, Smeenk explores behaviour which “sometimes may be excused a little bit more in children because people expect children to be, and I put this in quotes, ‘immature.’”
“But autistic adults are often not given the benefit of the doubt,” he continues, “because we typically expect adults to be more mature.”
Whether or not that person may be autistic or is neurodiverse in some other way, because of how they behave around other people, “they still get a lot of the judgement and rejection.”
Smeenk, a St. Catharines resident, has a degree in history and political science. He started his career in journalism as a PR writer, and began writing this book during COVID.
“The thing that initially got me writing about the subject was that autism tends to run in families. It's a highly genetic condition. And there were a lot of older people in my life who had a very different experience than me.”
Written for a popular audience, and from multiple perspectives, Smeenk’s book looks at how the needs of autistic adults are distinct from children. He offers suggestions for neurotypical people to interact positively and supportively with autistic people and also tackles concerns such as employment and public perception.
On Nov. 9, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., Smeenk will give a brief overview of the book, and then open up the session for questions. “I can't guarantee I'll provide satisfactory answers. I don't know everybody's individual circumstances, but I can definitely try to help.”
Smeenk hopes his audience will leave with “an increased ability to think about the lives of autistic adults. If there is a change in awareness and acceptance of autistic adults, and if more people accepted them for who they were, that alone would make an enormous difference in the lives of these people.”
Register for this event on the library’s website, notlpubliclibrary.org.