Callum Selkirk and His Experience With Autism - “She Spoke to Me Like an Individual Adult Rather Than a Child”

Callum Selkirk is a 20-year-old graphic design student at Edinburgh College. He exposes how he has been treated like a child due to his condition alongside the state of ableism in 2024.

Being diagnosed at 15 may come as a revelation to some, but Callum admits this news wasn’t something he carried with great weight. Instead, this began to explain specific characteristics as he grew older. This diagnosis also had little impact on his treatment at home, as a diagnosis does not suddenly change who you are as a person.

He previously attended Gracemount High School, which began offering him further support after sharing his diagnosis. However, this support failed to be substantially helpful in any way. Callum explains the negative experience he faced with a learning support assistant:

Thankfully, he hasn’t experienced any signs of ‘babying’ from any of his other peers. Callum notes that he typically informs people of his autism later into knowing them rather than making it a central point in conversations, as there is more to a person than their neurodiverse condition.

He goes on to compare this experience to his current experience in college, explaining that when speaking to a new learning support assistant, she treated him with a lot more respect and decency: 

“She was a lot kinder about it because she spoke to me like an individual adult rather than a child who couldn’t use their brain”.

Callum shares his thoughts on the prominence of ableist language and slurs in today’s age despite an emerging growth of political correctness online:

He furthers this point by explaining:

“I think it is something that has gotten better with time but it's never going to go away cause that’s just how it is. Every minority always has a group who is attacking them, even if that group gets smaller and smaller it's not going to go away, but I’m sure with time it’ll get easier.”

Callum shares that he’s always had a passion for art, evident in his graphic design work. However, he comments on the potential stereotype that neurodivergent people always thrive in creative fields:

 “I do know some other people that are massively into maths, and that’s obviously the complete opposite spectrum to where art is, and some people are neurodivergent, but they don’t have that thing that they’re absolutely hyper-focused on.”

Callum's Graphic Design Portfolio

However, he follows this up by explaining how hyper-fixations can be common for autistic people and that he wouldn’t view this as a misconception:

Masking is a term to describe the attempt to hide autistic symptoms in public to ‘blend in’ with their neurotypical peers. Although this is more common in autistic women, Callum ends the conversation by explaining how this sometimes impacts him: 

“Sometimes I get facial tics, I will try and mask it if I’m in a big group or sometimes I will try and talk to more people even If I don’t want to. It's things like that where you’ll just deal with it just to get through; for me it’s not been anything too crazy, but I definitely have masked sometimes.”