Part of providing respectful and affirming support for autistic people with motor challenges (and anyone experiencing physical disability, really) is giving people autonomy over their bodies. One piece of this is giving people autonomy in choosing what aspects of their movement or motor skills they would like to change or seek support for, and what aspects of their movement they feel are “good enough.”
Many of us as autistic people experience some degree of motor developmental disability at some point in our life. It’s not uncommon for autistic folks to need to reflect on what they feel “good enough” motor function might wind up looking like for themselves, given their individual circumstances.
A 2023 study by Gowen et al. explored the perspectives of autistic adults with coordination challenges and highlighted some of the factors that might influence people in deciding what is “good enough” movement for them. Many autistic adults who experience coordination challenges have never received formal support for their motor disability, and wish they had been able to access support, as coordination challenges can affect many domains of our lives.
We often are motivated to work hard at developing the movement skills that are meaningful to us, even when our coordination difficulties make it so that we need to spend much more time practicing a movement than the average person might. With enough practice, we often can and do improve our motor skills. But for many of us, there can be certain activities that always remain challenging, even after extensive practice.
So, what do we do when that situation arises? As the participants in the study shared, we learn ways of coping and working with the movement that we have. Essentially, we often wind up needing to accept that certain aspects of our motor function are “good enough”, and find alternative ways of doing what we want and need to do.
We might find that we need to embrace interdependence and ask for assistance with certain activities. Of course, this interdependence, or need for support from others, is something we share with every other person on the planet, and certainly shouldn’t be a source of shame.
Nor should we feel shame about any other ways we might adjust our lives to cope with our movement challenges.
We might need to modify our setup in the kitchen—maybe we need to pour liquids over the sink to avoid making a big mess.
We might need physical support from handrails to keep our balance in certain situations, or support from braces or canes when walking due to pain associated with hypermobility or other conditions affecting our muscles and joints.
We might use our utensils in an unconventional manner, or we might find that eating with our hands can be a better fit for some foods. We might learn to wear dark colored clothing when eating, to accommodate the eventual stains that come up.
We might spend years practicing exercises and adjusting our posture or gait pattern to reduce pain that’s come up, from it being difficult to feel where our body is in space. Perhaps we might get to the point where we’re pain-free. But perhaps we might improve but not eliminate our pain with these efforts, ultimately decide that we’re satisfied enough with how we feel, and as such, come to accept our current way of moving as “good enough”.
Two people could have the exact same motor challenges and each make different decisions about what is “good enough” for them, based on who they are as people and what their individual life circumstances are at the moment. Any number of factors might influence this decision making process, and ultimately, any factors that feel meaningful to a person are valid.
It’s also important to recognize that what we feel is “good enough” can evolve over time, and we can choose to adjust our goals for our movement as our life circumstances change. The movement that works well enough for us in childhood may be different from what we need at any given point in our adult lives. We might feel the need to update our movement-related priorities, learn new skills, or implement different accommodations for ourselves as we go on in life.
For those of us who work in professions like physical and occupational therapy and support people with motor disability, honoring each person’s decision making around what is “good enough” is part of providing non-judgmental care that affirms our patients’ lived experiences with movement.
And for those of us who move differently, sometimes we find that our atypical ways of moving through the world, the ways that work well enough for us, can help improve our well-being and be parts of ourselves that we embrace.
References
Miller, H. L., Licari, M. K., Bhat, A., Aziz-Zadeh, L. S., Van Damme, T., Fears, N. E., Cermak, S. A., & Tamplain, P. M. (2024). Motor problems in autism: Co-occurrence or feature?. Developmental medicine and child neurology, 66(1), 16–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.15674
Gowen, E., Earley, L., Waheed, A., & Poliakoff, E. (2023). From “one big clumsy mess” to “a fundamental part of my character.” Autistic adults’ experiences of motor coordination. PloS one, 18(6), e0286753. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286753
Petty, S., & Ellis, A. (2024). The meaning of autistic movements. Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 13623613241262151. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241262151
