Open Society

Embodied People + Environment = Regulated Outcome & Potential to Thrive Beardon's (2017) famous equation, 'Autism + Environment = Outcome, ' is really important to consider when working specifically with autistic people but I think a version of this can be applied to everyone. If people are embodied and their environment meets needs there is a better chance of people being regulated and being able to thrive. Offering spaces and bubbles of co-regulation throughout the day in ways that work for and with people can help create a sense of safety and belonging. Being regulated and feeling connected is a human need we all have and deserve so we can thrive.

Parallel play and joining in an activity alongside another person (child or adult) can be a really nice low-demand way of showing an interest in another person's activities. Parallel play and sharing penguin pebbles can create a sense of belonging, mutual understanding and love. Sharing things that bring you joy and sharing things that you know also bring another person joy is a way of connecting. Examples of penguin pebbling include finding little things that bring you joy to share with someone else. This can be anything from twigs or stones that you come across on your walk to listening to music together, sharing memes online or creating time for your child to share their junk model creations or to watch their new gymnastics or dance shows. Creating little bubbles of co-regulation in the day together can help restore and rebalance everyone's sensory system and energy levels and support regulation.

For people who may be feeling dysregulated, co-regulating needs adults to be a 'space holder'  Aldred (2023) for their children. Offer space and time for them to be with you in a way that works for them. Being with people may have a different meaning for neurodivergent people to a neurotypical understanding of what 'being with' someone means. For neurodivergent people, 'being with' may not mean actually being with that person in a shared space; it may not mean playdates, meals out, or organised activities together. Being with someone may be more of a felt presence that some one 'gets them' rather than an actual activity for some people. Co-regulating with people means being with people in ways that work for their physical, social and sensory needs. It may be more a shared knowing and understanding that another person is 'with them' although not necessarily next to them as that may be overwhelming for some people. For example, joining an online game, sharing music in a chat room or knowing you are each happy being in your own dens/spaces in your house can all be meaningful ways of co-regulating. For other people and younger children joining in alongside one of their favourite activites, TV programmes, sensory play activities can be really helpful. Being with people is about understanding people's true needs for their own time and space and each person knowing they are there for each other. Co-regulation needs to happen throughout the day and not be used as a behaviour management strategy only when a person is in crisis. Co-regulation is not just about adults being calm around children who are dysregulated, although that certainly helps! As adults, we need to try and offer moments of being with children in ways that are meaningful for them throughout the day to increase togetherness time, which will support regulation, reduce crisis and also bring some glimmers and joy into the day!

The all-autistic groups reported the highest mean-level rapport on three rapport items (Enjoy, Successful, Friendly), with significantly higher rapport than the mixed groups on Enjoy and Friendly. At the individual level, autistic participants expressed more ease and enjoyment when interacting with other autistic adults relative to non-autistic adults, and their rapport declined as more non-autistic participants were included in the group. In contrast, rapport for non-autistic participants remained relatively consistent regardless of group composition. We discuss potential reasons why autistic participants were more affected by group composition than non-autistic participants.

Reagan’s “new conservative” movement hearkened directly back to the campaign of Barry Goldwater, taking Nixon’s conservatism to the next level. Not only did Reagan champion the law and order movement beyond any that had gone before, but he perfected the rhetoric of Southern segregationists like George Wallace. (I’d argue that, with only a handful of deletions, Wallace’s entire Inaugural Address could have been delivered by Ronald Reagan, and quite probably was delivered multiple times in aggregate over the course of his political career.) Every theme discussed above—states’ rights, federalism, radically free enterprise, freedom of association, increased privatization, the mythic view of American meritocracy, and opposition to public assistance, all couched in the polemics of anti-communism and civil religion—were the bases of his fabulously successful 1980 and 1984 campaigns. And, for the most part, these themes were successfully cast in the “race neutral” language of “equal protection under the law” and “color-blindness,” solidifying a new post-civil rights era compromise, viz., the commitment to an idealized formal equality absent the goal of substantive equality.

When everything is a monoculture, diversity can look scary, wild, out of control. It’s understandable, but it’s unsustainable. To reconnect with diversity, we need to expand and rewild our thinking, and change our practices on a fundamental level. We need to notice and challenge the things that we take for granted.

For me at this time, being out in nature became how I learnt to gradually reconnect with myself, and find solidity in the person that I am.

Many states report school performance grades as a way to inform the public about school quality. However, past research has shown that when these grades drew largely on proficiency-based measures, they served to capture variation in school and community demographics rather than school quality.

Drawing on school accountability grades from Florida combined with school and community demographic data, we find that more than half the variation in multidimensional measures of school quality can be explained by observable school- and county-level factors outside the school’s locus of control. Together, our findings show that even school grades that draw on multiple measures misattribute the contribution of demographics and socioeconomics to school quality—but subcomponents based on learning gains perform better than those based on proficiency. We conclude with policy implications and recommend that states focus public reporting on school quality measures that driven less by out-of-school factors and more by the school’s true contribution to student outcomes.

You may notice that the needs have been depicted here as a wheel or a spectrum, and not as a hierarchy, as is common with needs following Maslow’s famous theory. As a result, it is depicted as such because all human beings experience all of these needs to differing degrees at all times. The intensity of these needs differs from person to person due to their own personal neurology, and from moment to moment as situations change and as needs are left more or less met. My preferred way to represent this in the Wilding theory, is to show a spectrum of needs where complex balances occur. This is regularly depicted as a wheel. Having said this. it is true to some extent that a hierarchy can play a role in how we prioritise behaviours that seek to address imbalances. When trying to regulate in a given moment, we are more likely to prioritise some needs over others initially. However, there are many occasions when the hierarchy just doesn’t represent the complexity of human behaviour and so is not helpful. Both depictions can be useful.

Autonomy Our brains are wired in such a way that we have a deep sense of self that is unique. This drives us to seek out autonomy. Our need for autonomy includes the need to: Have personal freedom, and therefore make our own choices. Be self directed, including being able to acting for ourselves. Express a distinct personality that gives us a sense of individuality. Have our own ideas, and to hold our own personal values.

Human beings are a nervous system (including a brain), being carried around by a body that allows us to interact with the world. So essentially, we are brains that behave through our body. Behaviour is initiated or inhibited in the brain in order to meet the needs of that system. Neurological = brain and nervous system Psychological = behaviour

Humans are complex, and our brains are unique in many ways. In order to look at human needs and behaviour holistically, we must look at all five systems that directly influence our behaviour. These are interdependent. They interact with each other consistently: Physical regulation (body) Cognitive regulation (mind) Sensory regulation (sensation) Emotional regulation (feelings) Psychological regulation (drivers of behaviour) Needs for things such as nutrition, hydration, temperature etc. Our need to be able to think clearly, and make choices. The need to feel comfortable in our environment and within our own body. Our need to experience emotion, but not feel overwhelmed by it. The regulation of our behaviour requires that the above elements are regulated as well as the drivers mentioned below. These are the broad categories that explain what our brain is wired to make us do beyond the regulation of the above.

When we consider our most basic human systems, we can notice a pattern that nothing remains static. No aspect of being human (and no aspect of nature in fact) is still. That is to say, everything operates most effectively when it fluctuates between states, and this is easy to observe in considering our physical needs. We need enough nutrition but not too much. Our breathing rate needs to change and adapt in different circumstances and then re-balance into a usual rhythm. Moreover, I could describe every element of our basic needs this way. When you look further into each of the areas described above, this pattern is still present. We need sensory input, but not too much. Our emotions are essential, but we need to feel them without being overwhelmed. We need to be able to take in new information but if we take it too far, we will need a lot of rest. This realisation let me to my first breakthrough. Fundamentally, humans need regulation. All of our behaviour is driven by us seeking relative balance depending on our own personal neurology, and our current circumstances. We, as humans, function best when we are wholly well regulated, in the five broad areas above.

To be psychologically regulated means to be acting to support the wiring of our brains. Our behaviour is driven by all of the above aspects, so we act to keep ourselves physically, sensorily, cognitively and emotionally regulated. Those aspects impact our psychological regulation (shown on the wheel in red). Further to this, there are six drivers of behaviour that our brains are wired for.  These are: Protection Predictability Connection Recognition Autonomy Novelty