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Ever wonder how kids with autism see the world? That’s all it may take to understand them.

This article originally appeared on 02.19.16 At one of the worst points, she was banging her head on the floor and the walls of her bedroom, raging and crying. And I was doing the same because I just didn’t know what else to do anymore. Something had triggered a full-on, pupil-dilated tantrum for my then-3-year-old,…

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Tana Totsch-Kimsey

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Photo credit: Array – Array

This article originally appeared on 02.19.16

At one of the worst points, she was banging her head on the floor and the walls of her bedroom, raging and crying.

And I was doing the same because I just didn’t know what else to do anymore.

Something had triggered a full-on, pupil-dilated tantrum for my then-3-year-old, Emma, complete with hair-pulling and biting — both herself and me.

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That’s Emma around age 3. That sweet kid having a meltdown? HEARTBREAKING, let me tell you. All photos by Tana Totsch-Kimsey, used with permission.

Feeling just as helpless as I had the last dozen times this happened, I ticked down a mental checklist: Weird food? Wrong clothes? Too hot? Loud sounds? Missing toy? She fitfully stripped down to nothing, finally signaling to me that yes, it was the jammies. She curled up next to me (me, still sobbing) and promptly fell asleep, quiet and stark naked with brilliantly red-purple bruises blooming on her arms.

This is autism. Or one form of it anyway. It has many, many ways of showing itself.

It can be both good and bad. I’ll get to the good.

Fully known as autism spectrum disorder, it’s a neurodevelopmental quirk that results in various shades of social and behavioral issues. One of the most common challenges across the spectrum is communicating with others; people with autism struggle with the give-and-take flow of conversation, understanding how to interact with others, and processing their own or other people’s feelings. They may even seem lost in their own world or unable to express their thoughts or emotions either verbally or nonverbally.

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“Lost in their own world” often looks like this. We took over 100 pictures on family picture day, and this was the only useable one.

I have a non-autistic child, too. She’s five years older than Emma, and I remember my biggest frustration as a brand-new parent was that I just wished she could tell me what she needed. And it wasn’t long before she did: “Mama” quickly became “I have this?” and “Don’t like that” and “I can do it myself” and — now — “Oh-em-gee, Mom, get out of my room, please, GOD, ugh!” She’s 10; it’s fun. She cracks jokes, she rails against gender biases, and she’s lined up for honors classes.

But when Emma came along next with an incessant buzz of energy — ripping pages from books presumably for the feel of it, climbing and jumping off tall things presumably for the thrill of it, eating rocks and grass (and just about anything really) presumably for the taste of it — and all of it without being able to tell me anything at all about what she needed … it took me a long while to understand that autism is not me being terrible at parenting.

What I learned is that Emma calls for a different kind of parenting altogether.

[rebelmouse-image 19515059 dam=”1″ original_size=”735×735″ expand=1]

A typical day at home for us includes peanut butter smearing, cabinet scaling, mud eating, and paper ripping. It’s a little exhausting sometimes.

Progress actually happened when I let go of what was “wrong” with Emma and started figuring out what to do about it.

Emma was nearly 4 years old by the time she was given an official autism diagnosis. But when the panel of specialists finally handed over their “findings” of autism spectrum disorder after a particularly awful six-hour doctor appointment, I distinctly felt at that point (and still do) that I could not have cared less what they wanted to call it.

The moment of the diagnosis wasn’t a big deal to me because it didn’t really change anything. By then, Emma was already in speech and occupational therapy and going to preschool, and all of that was helping some. But the autism label did eventually lead us to a kind of therapy we hadn’t heard about before.

It’s called applied behavior analysis — ABA for short — and that has brought a lot of change.

Some doctors explain ABA as a reward system for when a child does something right, but it’s much more than that.

Behavioral scholars and autism experts date ABA treatments back to at least 1968, when a group of university researchers wrote in an introduction for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis that ABA interventions could benefit individuals and society.

The treatment is highly individualized, with analysts measuring specific behaviors for each patient, crafting trials to change variables in controlled environments for each patient, and evaluating outcomes for each patient. It’s used for both children and adults who have intellectual or developmental issues, and it can help them gain skills in language, socialization, and attention as well as in more educational areas, like reading and math.

[rebelmouse-image 19515060 dam=”1″ original_size=”735×491″ expand=1]

And this kid is gonna need more skills than taking selfies … although she’s quite amazing at them, IMO.

ABA is complex stuff. But put super simply, it’s empathy on an ultimate level.

It involves patiently observing and trying to understand what a person — often one who can’t fully communicate (or even necessarily process the things going on in the world) — feels and thinks.

ABA is putting yourself in that person’s place, realizing what is motivating them, and then tinkering with those behaviors using positive encouragement and reinforcement. These are “rewards” of a kind, but not necessarily tangible ones; Emma’s greatest motivators are hugs and kisses, high-fives, and tickles.

[rebelmouse-image 19515061 dam=”1″ original_size=”735×455″ expand=1]

And wagon rides. And a mom deciding that chewing on a piece of grass to satisfy a sensory need is not so terrible in the big picture.

Even though ABA isn’t a new treatment, it’s gaining attention recently because of how life-changing the empathetic perspective can be. Agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health (and several autism-research organizations) recognize ABA as an effective treatment for autism. Plus, access to ABA experts is expanding: Clinics with extensive ABA support and research existed mainly in larger cities for many years, but now services are being offered in places all over the country.

For me, an intensified effort to understand Emma through ABA, and to help her understand her world, changed everything.

She’s almost 6 years old now, and these days, she charms just about everyone she meets. She’s still mischievous and daring, but she also runs into a room and gives out hugs to everyone there. (Even strangers! It’s actually really awkward sometimes.)

[rebelmouse-image 19515062 dam=”1″ original_size=”400×225″ expand=1]

Seems like a small thing, but she sings about how Old MacDonald has a cow that moos. (You should hear “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman” … adorbs!)

She can pick out her own jammies and a book to be read and a toy to keep her hands busy and the perfect spot to cuddle while she winds herself down to sleep. She giggles and beeps noses and plays chase with the dog and likes to announce, “Happy Tuesday!” She’s even learning to read and write, which blows my mind when I think of those long nights spent banging heads on floors.

Emma still has autistic-meltdown fits, of course, but I get it now.

Even I have moments where I just can’t even. It’s really not that hard for any parent or person to relate to that. What’s great, though, is that I’ve noticed how people outside the ABA therapy world — teachers and family and even total strangers — use the therapy, sometimes without even realizing it.

They change how they do things to adapt to what it must seem like from Emma’s perspective, and that’s how they end up really connecting with her. I find myself, too, exercising those empathy muscles with people other than Emma, and it makes me wonder sometimes:

What if we all did?

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    “To me, it represents hope,” Dalton’s mom told Upworthy. “It’s something that we can look forward to and know that each year they can forget about all their worries. They can just be children.”

    St Jude Children’s Research Hospital patients walk the red carpet for the the annual Teen Formal on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Memphis, Tenn. St. Jude helps their patient enjoy milestones such as the end of the school year tradition for high school students.

    Inside the venue, they stepped into a “Cloud 9” dream. Cloud-themed decor covered the entire space, complete with cotton-trimmed porticos and metallic streamers. Guests first enjoyed a sit-down dinner.

    @popculturememphis

    On Cloud 9 at @St. Jude teen prom! ☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️ #popculturememphis #stjude #memphis #prom #balloons

    ♬ drop dead – Olivia Rodrigo

    Afterwards, it was time to bust a move under a cloud-covered dance floor. Hits spun from the DJ, and the teens danced all night. The event’s coordinator, Kenny, shared some behind-the-scenes looks at the event on TikTok:

    @mybrainbow

    St. Jude Teen Formal 2026 was a success #prom #oncloud9 #gifting #swagbag

    ♬ Venus and Flower – Austin Farwell

    She explained that each attendee also got to visit a gifting suite, where they could personalize a bird keychain with their name. Once finished, they could take the keychain over to a wall where they were able to hang it on a dove that lifted it to the “sky” before returning with a swag bag full of goodies.

    “I wanted to make the whole night a really memorable experience for our teens,” she shared in the video. “And I think they all loved it!”

    Keep Reading →
  • 8-year-old prevents flight from being diverted by soothing unruly passenger with ‘Dance Monkey’ song
    Photo credit: The Rose family courtesy of BelfastLive – Phoenix Rose, 8, is a great soccer player and plane-passenger soother.
    ,

    8-year-old prevents flight from being diverted by soothing unruly passenger with ‘Dance Monkey’ song

    He sang to and talked down an unruly passenger for three and a half hours.

    Erik Barnes

    Being on a plane can be a nuisance on its own, but when there is an unruly passenger, it goes from an annoyance to a potential danger. On a Jet2 flight, a passenger was so belligerently drunk and rude to the staff that the plane was going to be diverted. Then hope arrived in the form of an eight-year-old soccer fan.

    Phoenix Rose and his father were cutting their vacation in Turkey short. They had to catch a flight home to Manchester due to a family emergency. During the flight, a passenger had too much to drink before boarding. She even had her open bottle of whiskey confiscated. This caused the irate passenger to disrupt the flight, shouting and swearing at the flight attendants. The passenger became so unruly that the flight attendants made an announcement: The flight would be diverted to remove her from the plane.

    And a child would lead them

    Phoenix was desperate to get home to deal with his family emergency. He didn’t want the flight to be diverted and cause a delay. On a whim, he asked a flight attendant if he could sit next to the angry passenger. He asked for only 30 seconds.

    The flight attendants gave Phoenix a chance. They switched his seat to one next to the unruly passenger. And it worked.

    “He just took all the control,” James, Phoenix’s father, told BelfastLive. “Phoenix, he got his cards out, he started singing to her this Dance Monkey song.”

    “She’s screaming, she’s shouting, she’s still being irate. And he starts singing to her, he starts talking about his football to her, talking about her family, asking her about her kids,” James told BBC News. “I’m sort of sat there in the end and I’m thinking to myself, thank god that Phoenix is with me because if he wasn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to handle it.”

    The young master of de-escalation

    Knowingly or instinctively, Phoenix practiced effective de-escalation techniques while talking to the passenger. This included finding common ground, listening to her talk about her family, and using several other strategies.

    Phoenix even calmly reminded her of the consequences. He told the passenger that she could be arrested if she couldn’t calm down, but quickly encouraged her to talk about her kids.

    For three and a half hours, Phoenix chatted with the passenger. They discussed his love of soccer, his YouTube channel, and their families. Phoenix also showed her his trading cards of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. An eight-year-old accomplished what a plane full of adults struggled to do.

    After the plane landed at its destination, the pilot and flight attendants thanked Phoenix for preventing a forced flight diversion. That would have been costly for both the airline and the passengers in terms of time and money. The passenger was taken into custody by authorities.

    A spokesperson for Jet2 thanked Phoenix and rewarded him and his dad with free flight vouchers.

    A little bit of kindness and the wisdom of a young kid were all it took to ease an intense and volatile situation.

    Keep Reading →
  • After daughter’s death, Martin Short says he understands mental illness can be ‘terminal’
    Photo credit: Library of Congress Life (public domain) – Martin Short at the Kennedy Center Honors Medallion Ceremony in 2021.
    ,

    After daughter’s death, Martin Short says he understands mental illness can be ‘terminal’

    “She was just saying, ‘Dad, let me go.'”

    Annie Reneau

    When we talk about someone having a “terminal illness,” we generally mean an incurable, progressive disease that will eventually end someone’s life. Advanced cancer, end-stage heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and many other diseases are widely accepted as terminal in modern medicine.

    Most medical institutions don’t include mental illnesses in that category either, for understandable ethical reasons. But as actor Martin Short shares from firsthand experience, viewing treatment-resistant mental illness as “terminal” can help families process the loss of a loved one to suicide.

    In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Short compared losing his 42-year-old daughter, Katherine, to suicide in 2026 with losing his wife, Nancy, to cancer in 2010.

    “You know, it’s been a nightmare for the family,” Short said when asked what he wanted to share about Katherine’s death. “But the understanding that mental health and cancer, like my wife, are both diseases. And sometimes with diseases, they are terminal. And my daughter fought for a long time with extreme mental health, borderline personality disorder, other things, and did the best she could until she couldn’t. So Nan’s last words to me were, ‘Martin, let me go.’ And she was just saying, ‘Dad, let me go.’”

    Adding nuance to the “suicide is preventable” conversation

    Short is speaking a hard truth that goes against the unequivocal messaging that suicide is preventable. As with so many human realities, conversations about mental health and suicide require nuance. Those who have seen a loved one through every available treatment, medication, therapy, and program, only to lose them to suicide after trying everything, play an important role in that conversation.

    We understand that many deaths from cancer and heart disease are preventable, but not all are. While mental illness may not be directly comparable to those diseases, the reality is that some illnesses, both physical and mental, resist even the best and most effective treatments.

    As Sophia Laurenzi shared in her Time essay, “The Problem With Saying Suicide Is Preventable,” the blanket message that suicide can be prevented places an unfair burden on individuals and families.

    Acknowledging the complex reality of suicide prevention

    “Though well-intentioned, the truth is that not all suicides can be stopped, even with the best efforts,” Laurenzi wrote. “But right after my father’s death, everywhere I looked I read that suicide is preventable. This instilled an immediate, unconscious conviction in me of a double failure: my father, who had not done enough to save himself, and those of us who loved him most, who had not done enough, either. Collectively we could have deterred his death. But we did not.”

    This feeling of failure and guilt prompted Laurenzi to dive deeply into suicide education and advocacy. That deep dive led her to the conclusion that while suicide prevention efforts are important, so is acknowledging the complex reality that a 100% success rate on that front is not currently possible.

    “The crux of the issue with blanketing suicide as something that can be stopped is that it flattens one of the most confounding psychological, medical, and philosophical questions of being human into something simpler than its reality,” she wrote. “Perhaps one day we will be able to say that, with the right blueprint, suicide is preventable. But we do not have the knowledge, let alone the resources, to make that true now.”

    To be clear, acknowledging that suicide isn’t always preventable is not the same as saying suicide is inevitable. Most suicides are preventable, and people should absolutely exhaust all preventative measures and possibilities. Knowing typical warning signs, having access to mental health treatment, limiting access to firearms and other highly lethal methods, and following other best practices are vital to giving someone the best chance of surviving a suicidal mental illness.

    Keeping hope in the balance

    Acknowledging that mental illness can be “terminal” also doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t have hope. Many illnesses that used to be terminal diagnoses—HIV, cholera, and more—are now totally survivable thanks to advances in medicine. Just because some people’s mental illness resists all known treatments now doesn’t mean we won’t find more effective treatments in the future. Most mental illnesses, even many serious ones, are currently treatable.

    But in some cases, for some people, having all the access in the world to resources, support, and treatment may not be enough. Just as doctors can exhaust all treatments for physical illnesses, people can also exhaust all treatments for mental illnesses. That doesn’t mean anyone should ever give up hope or stop trying. It means that families and friends who did everything they could, and who knew their loved one fought as long and hard as they were able to, can find peace in understanding that their loved one who died by suicide was dealing with a terminal, treatment-resistant illness that ultimately took their life.

    Short shared that he’s gotten involved with Bring Change to Mind, an organization started by actress Glenn Close, which he said is “taking mental health out of the shadows.”

    “Not being ashamed of it, not hiding from the word ‘suicide,’ but accepting that this can be the last stage of an illness,” said Short. “That’s my approach to this.”

    Watch Short’s full interview:

    Keep Reading →
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