Our friends and allies at Randimals have a saying,

We agree.

🦔 Spiky Profiles

Many years ago, a friend dubbed Stimpunk Ryan “Bearmouse”, intuiting a part of his neurodivergent spiky profile.

There is consensus regarding some neurodevelopmental conditions being classed as neurominorities, with a ‘spiky profile’ of executive functions difficulties juxtaposed against neurocognitive strengths as a defining characteristic.

Neurominorities, Spiky Profiles, and the Biopsychosocial Model at Work

Splinter Skills and Spiky Profiles

With their splinter skills and spiky profiles in mind, Stimpunk Inna decided on Bunnybadger and Stimpunk Chelsea decided on Pandillo. Their Randimals evoke their neurodivergent profiles.

Image credit: Stimpunk Becky Hicks

Our Randimals capture our exposure anxiety, social anxiety, rejection sensitive dysphoria, emotional sunburn, very grand emotions, sense of justice, and other neurodivergent traits that manifest through our spiky profiles.

…the psychological definition refers to the diversity within an individual’s cognitive ability, wherein there are large, statistically-significant disparities between peaks and troughs of the profile (known as a ‘spiky profile’, see Fig. 1). A ‘neurotypical’ is thus someone whose cognitive scores fall within one or two standard deviations of each other, forming a relatively ‘flat’ profile, be those scores average, above or below. Neurotypical is numerically distinct from those whose abilities and skills cross two or more standard deviations within the normal distribution.

Neurodiversity at work: a biopsychosocial model and the impact on working adults | British Medical Bulletin | Oxford Academic

Most humans are average in all functional skills and intellectual assessment, some excel at all, some struggle in all and some have a spiky profile, excelling/average/struggling. The spiky profile may well emerge as the definitive expression of neurominority, within which there are symptom clusters that we currently call autism, ADHD, dyslexia and DCD; some primary research supports this notion. In the future, these may shift according to our educational and occupational norms such as social demands, sedentary lifestyles, literacy dependency and automation of gadgets. To elucidate, although there are clear biological markers for those with a spiky profile which lead to observable, measurable psychological differences, there is nothing innately disabling about those differences when we consider a traditional, tribe-based community of humans. Within the biopsychosocial model of neurodiversity, understanding work-related intervention and treatment becomes more about adjusting the fit between the person and their environment than about treating a disorder. Critical review of the extant biopsychosocial research supports the social model proposition that the individual is not disabled, but the environment is disabling.

Neurodiversity at work: a biopsychosocial model and the impact on working adults | British Medical Bulletin | Oxford Academic

🌈 Spiky Profiles Exist for a Reason

ADHD or what I prefer to call Kinetic Cognitive Style (KCS) is another good example. (Nick Walker coined this alternative term.) The name ADHD implies that Kinetics like me have a deficit of attention, which could be the case as seen from a certain perspective. On the other hand, a better, more invariantly consistent perspective is that Kinetics distribute their attention differently.

Bias: From Normalization to Neurodiversity – Neurodivergencia Latina

New research seems to point out that KCS was present at least as far back as the days in which humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies. In a sense, being a Kinetic in the days that humans were nomads would have been a great advantage. As hunters they would have noticed any changes in their surroundings more easily, and they would have been more active and ready for the hunt. In modern society it is seen as a disorder, but this again is more of a value judgment than a scientific fact.

Bias: From Normalization to Neurodiversity – Neurodivergencia Latina

Squiger is Kinetic. Learn About Kinetic Cognitive Style.

If neurodivergence is essentially disablement, why do we keep replicating the gene pool?

Neurodiversity at work: a biopsychosocial model and the impact on working adults | British Medical Bulletin | Oxford Academic

🏔 Learning Terroir

Randimals are expressions of spiky profiles. They’re also expressions of learning terroir. “Bearmouse” captures Ryan’s sensory and social sensitivities and his need for a “cave” archetypal learning space.

The cave is a private space where an individual can think, reflect, and transform learning from external knowledge to internal belief. 

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes

The cave is a private space, where students can find that much needed alone time useful for reflection on their learning or just to recharge. (a necessary space for those students with Aspergers).

Campfires, Caves and Watering holes | Libraries, Youth and the Digital Age

The campfire is a space where people gather to learn from an expert. In the days of yore, wise elders passed down insights through storytelling, and in doing so replicated culture for the next generation.

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes

The watering hole is an informal space where peers can share information and discoveries, acting as both learner and teacher simultaneously. This shared space can serve as an incubator for ideas and can promote a sense of shared culture. It is an informal area, where students can share in collaborative learning experiences.

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes: Educators on ISTE’s Australian Study Tour Discovered How to Create New Learning and Teaching Environments where Curriculum and Instructional Tools Meet the Digital Age

sensory hyperreactivity can greatly impact quality of life and has been found to correlate with clinically elevated levels of anxiety in both autistic children and adults

Autistic sensory experiences, in our own words

Learn About Neuroception, Sensory Load, and Autistic Sensory Experiences

In summary, while some people are highly sensitive (i.e. orchids), the majority have a medium sensitivity (i.e. tulips) and a substantial minority are characterised by a particularly low sensitivity (i.e. dandelions).

Dandelions, tulips and orchids: evidence for the existence of low-sensitive, medium-sensitive and high-sensitive individuals | Translational Psychiatry

🏗 Collaborative Niche Construction

When learning is allowed to be project, problem, and passion driven, then children learn because of their terroir, not disengage in spite of it. When we recognize biodiversity in our schools as healthy, then we increase the likelihood that our ecosystems will thrive.

To be contributors to educating children to live in a world that is increasingly challenging to negotiate, schools must be ​conceptualized as ecological communities, spaces for learning with the potential to embody all of the concepts of the ecosystem – interactivity, biodiversity, connections, adaptability, succession, and balance.

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools

The Cavendish Space section of our site explains the three archetypal learning spaces (cave, campfire, watering hole), and the three sensitivities (dandelion, tulip, orchid). Bearmouse Ryan is a cave orchid constantly constructing compatible niches: from closet sanctuaries and pillow forts as a kid to office and learning spaces as an adult. Like others in the community, Ryan spent decades learning how to change his environment to make himself comfortable, when he was allowed to live by his own rules.

Living by her own rules has had a massive positive effect. She’s constantly making adjustments, finding new ways to make herself more comfortable. “Everything feels different, it really does impact everything. Like my body was masked!” she says. Now that her daily environment works with her body rather than against it, she feels physically and mentally free. Marta Rose writes that divergent design should honor the unique relationships Autistic people have to objects.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity (p. 16

Disability and difference are engines of innovation, collaboration, and collaborative niche construction.

In the field of biology, the term niche construction is used to describe an emerging phenomenon in the understanding of human evolution. Since the days of Darwin, scientists have emphasized the importance of natural selection in evolution-the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. In natural selection, the environment represents a static entity to which a species must either adapt or fail to adapt. In niche construction, however, the species acts directly upon the environment to change it, thereby creating more favorable conditions for its survival and the passing on of its genes. Scientists now say that niche construction may be every bit as important for survival as natural selection (Lewontin, 2010; Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003).

Reimagining Inclusion with Positive Niche Construction

🦸‍♀️ Special Interests Feed Niche Construction

Autistic people created the concept of fandom. In his book NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman describes how Autistic nerds in the early 1900s traveled across the country by car, on foot, and even by hopping trains in order to meet people who shared their niche interests.

Autistic people are also a foundational part of most fandoms and conventions centered around shared hobbies—we devote a lot of energy to finding and creating spaces where we can interact with people who share our interests, and within nerdy fandom spaces, social norms tend to be more forgiving and relaxed. It turns out that special interests aid us in becoming more outgoing, well-rounded individuals.

This frequently plays out in fandoms and nerdy communities, where neurodiverse people with mutual special interests find one another, socialize, and sometimes begin to unmask.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity (p. 153, 218)

I don’t know who invented the phrase “special interest.”  Probably some researcher. Autistic people don’t really love the term because the term “special” has become tied so closely with terms like “special needs,”  which we resent.

Nevertheless, somewhere down the line “special interest,” commonly shortened to SpIn (“spin”), became the term for the characteristically-autistic tendency to develop an obsession with something specific and often obscure.

Some special interests are short lived, and some last the lifetime of the person; but, however long they last, they are intense, delightful, and a vital part of autistic culture.

So integral are special interests to autistic culture that autistic people will post about feeling depressed and unmotivated because they don’t have an active SpIn at the moment.

Other people will post seeking reassurance that they are “valid” autistic people even though they don’t have many, or any, SpIns. They are quickly reassured that yes, they are valid.

SpIns aren’t required for an autism diagnosis, although “restricted interests” is mentioned among the diagnostic criteria. They are extremely common, however, and the majority of autistic people have SpIns at least some of the time.

Having a special interest is like having a crush or being newly in love. It is consuming and delightful. We love to share our special interests and a common example of autistic empathy is encouraging others to talk in great detail– “infodump”– about their SpIns.

It is considered a sign of caring and friendship to encourage someone to talk to you about their SpIn– whether or not you actually share their interest– because nothing makes an autistic person happier than discussing, learning about, or sharing about, their SpIn.

It is also quite acceptable in autistic culture to “infodump” on a topic whenever it happens to come up. To autists (an insider short-hand for autistic people), the sharing of knowledge and information is always welcome.

Forget small talk.

Let me tell you about Giant Squid. Then you can explain the London Underground to me and we’ll both have a wonderful time.

7 Cool Aspects of Autistic Culture

🌈 Neurological Pluralism

Randimals evoke spiky profiles, learning terroir, collaborative niche construction, and special interests. Understanding these is critical to fostering neurological pluralism.

ANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer in the Netherlands named Martijn Dekker set up a list called Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum, or InLv. People with dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, and a myriad of other conditions (christened “cousins” in the early days of ANI) were also welcome to join the list. InLv was another nutrient-rich tide pool that accelerated the evolution of autistic culture. The collective ethos of InLv, said writer and list member Harvey Blume in the New York Times in 1997, was “neurological pluralism.” He was the first mainstream journalist to pick up on the significance of online communities for people with neurological differences. “The impact of the Internet on autistics,” Blume predicted, “may one day be compared in magnitude to the spread of sign language among the deaf.”

The neurodiversity movement: Autism is a minority group. NeuroTribes excerpt.

Randimals foster the ethos of neurological pluralism.

What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.

🦄 Let’s be weird.

👏 Let’s be proud of what we are.

Finding our community, our mob you might say,
This is our family, where we can work and play.
Here among these people, as aliens we bring,
This is where my heart can rest, and my soul can sing.

Yes I am autistic, ADHD too,
Yes I am dyspraxic, and I just may do.
But even if you're not like me,
Even if we don't agree,
We can be friends in this place,
It's called acceptance of our race.

Acceptance of our culture,
The way we operate,
The way our passions give us joy,
The way we love and create.

It might be different from others,
It might not be for you,
But this is where we thrive and give,
Where in relationship we live.

Come Join Me!

Belonging Mutants Seers and me

🫀🧠 Difference Is a Teacher

I seek a reconceptualization of cognitive difference, to the end that those who bear now-stigmatizing labels of “deviance,” “disorder” and “syndrome,” may live and manifest their individuality, distinctive interests, gifts and capacities with integrity, in a manner that comes naturally to them, free of pressure to become people they are not, free of the automatic assignation of inferior status; and that they may enjoy the respect of their fellow citizens, rather than disdain and exclusion.

neurodiversity.com | the autistic distinction

Re-conceptualize. Learn about us, from us.

∞ Weird Like You and Me

Thanks to the folks at Randimals for helping us tell our story and have some fun. They’re weird like you and me, they honor neurodivergent people as a “foundational part of most fandoms“, and they “honor the unique relationships Autistic people have to objects“.

Most of us have a favourite soft toy from childhood. A silent ally who over time becomes sidelined and left on a shelf. But for some adults they remain an essential presence never leaving the side of their owner.

Jamie’s coping strategies include eating the same meal every night – filled pasta with sauce – and having Lion at his side, no matter where he goes.

Carrying an object around brings some structure and consistency to his environment. The toy lion has a familiar texture and smell which helps in those moments when he feels “overloaded”.

Jamie and his Lion: The adults who take their soft toys to work – BBC News

You're my half brother and my fully-fledged friend!
We're buddies forever from beginning to the end
Nobody's a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me!

Don't have to look beside me to know that you are there!
If two things act as one are they still a pair?
Nobody's a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me!

I'm the sugar you're the lemons we're a weird lemonade
But you're the brothers that I'd never trade
Nobody's a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me!

You're my right hand guy and the shoulder that I cry on
My brain when I'm confused, an arm to lean a while on
Nobody's a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me!

You can walk, run, swim, roll, hop, skip, or fly
If we're going different ways, you're my kind of guy
Difference doesn't matter, if nobody's the same
There is no two clouds alike in the great big sky

So don't be scared to come out your shell too
There's always someone out there to love the real you
Nobody's a nobody
And everybody is weird like you and me

You can walk, run, swim, roll, hop, skip, or fly
If you're going different ways you're my kind of guy
Difference doesn't matter, If nobody's the same
A space for every star in the great big sky