Dr. Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, Educational & Child Psychologist

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Dr. Saoirse Mac Cárthaigh, Educational & Child Psychologist Educational and child psychologist specialising in autism diagnostic assessments.

Why a toddler's pointing mattersBefore a child says their first words, they often point. Research suggests it is one of ...
10/10/2026

Why a toddler's pointing matters

Before a child says their first words, they often point. Research suggests it is one of the earliest ways they share what they notice with us.

Swipe for what the research shows:
👉 Index-finger pointing typically emerges around 10 months
👉 Infants and caregivers pointed in all 7 cultures studied
👉 Gesture often shows up before new kinds of sentences
👉 Pointing at 12 months predicted language skills 4 to 5 years later
👉 Parents' pointing matters too

Pointing to share interest ("Look at that!") is different from pointing to ask for something ("I want that"), and it is the sharing kind that tells us most about early communication. It is also less common in autistic children, which is one reason early support often focuses on shared attention through play.

At home: follow your child's gaze, name what they point at, and point things out to them often.

Pointing is a sign, not a test. If you have concerns about your child's communication, speak to your GP or public health nurse.

Save this for later and send it to someone with a little one. 💙

Most children study by re-reading their notes or highlighting. It feels productive, because the material starts to look ...
09/10/2026

Most children study by re-reading their notes or highlighting. It feels productive, because the material starts to look familiar. But familiar is not the same as learned.

Research points to a better approach: retrieval practice. This simply means pulling information out of memory with the book closed, rather than putting it back in.

What the research shows:

📖 Reviews of study methods rate re-reading and highlighting as low utility
🧠 Across many studies, testing beats restudying, with a moderate to large effect that also shows up in real classrooms
🏫 One five-year project in real classrooms involved over 1,400 middle school students
📊 In one small study of children aged 10 to 11, recall was 68% after self-testing versus 41% after re-reading

Simple ways to try it at home:
✅ Close the book and ask "What do you remember?"
✅ Use flashcards or a short quiz
✅ Write everything you remember on a blank page, then check
✅ Check answers afterwards, because feedback matters
✅ Repeat over several days

Keep it light. This is practice, not a test of your child, and getting things wrong is part of how it works. Try: "Let's see what stuck."

Know a parent who might find this useful? Feel free to share it.

When people think of autism, they often think of communication, social interaction and sensory differences. Less often d...
07/10/2026

When people think of autism, they often think of communication, social interaction and sensory differences. Less often discussed are the physical differences that some autistic children experience.

Research suggests that:

🌙 Sleep difficulties are common, with pooled estimates of roughly 6 in 10 autistic children
🫄 Gut symptoms such as constipation, stomach pain and reflux are reported more often, although estimates vary widely between studies
🤸 Many autistic children show significant motor coordination difficulties on standardised tests, and these are often not formally identified

These can also occur together. What looks like "behaviour" can sometimes be a child who is tired or uncomfortable.

Not every autistic child will experience these differences. But for those who do, noticing them can give a fuller picture of how a child is doing.

If you are a parent, small steps that can help include keeping a simple log of sleep and toilet habits, keeping a consistent bedtime routine, raising ongoing sleep or tummy concerns with your GP, and asking about occupational therapy for coordination difficulties.

Know a parent who might find this useful? Feel free to share it.

Surgeon Atul Gawande's central argument: experts rarely fail from not knowing what to do. They fail from memory and atte...
05/10/2026

Surgeon Atul Gawande's central argument: experts rarely fail from not knowing what to do. They fail from memory and attention lapses under pressure, skipping steps they know perfectly well.

A simple 5-step checklist for inserting IV lines was rolled out across Michigan's ICUs. Infection rates fell 66% within three months, and stayed down for years.

A 19-item checklist for surgery was tested across 8 hospitals from Toronto to rural Tanzania. 36% fewer major complications, 47% fewer deaths. It worked regardless of how well-resourced the hospital was.

A child with executive function challenges often knows exactly what to do. The struggle is working memory, task initiation, and sequencing, the same gap checklists are built to close.

Building one that works: keep it short and specific, a handful of critical steps, not every detail. Test it with your child, and adjust what doesn't work in practice. Make ticking it off visible, the feedback is part of what makes it work.

A morning routine checklist: get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, pack schoolbag, shoes and coat on. Five steps, posted somewhere visible, ticked off each morning. The same idea works for homework starts, bedtime, or packing for an activity.

For an older teenager, the same principle scales up. An essay proofreading checklist: does it actually answer the question asked, read it aloud, does it flow, each paragraph has one clear point, check spelling and grammar, check word count and formatting. A reusable list beats starting from scratch every time.

Surgeons and pilots use checklists because they work, not because they lack skill. The same is true for a child who needs one.

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There's a surprising overlap between autism and epilepsy, more wiring shared between the two than most people realise.A ...
02/10/2026

There's a surprising overlap between autism and epilepsy, more wiring shared between the two than most people realise.

A systematic review across 74 studies and over 280,000 people found a median epilepsy rate of roughly 12% in autistic people, compared to about 1% in the general population.

Neither condition causes the other. They appear to share overlapping neurodevelopmental mechanisms, similar genetic and brain development pathways, showing up in different ways.

Here's a twist: autism diagnosis itself skews heavily male, but within autism, epilepsy co-occurrence is actually higher in females, the opposite pattern.

When intellectual disability is also present, epilepsy risk climbs to around 21%, compared to roughly 8% in autistic people without an intellectual disability.

This risk doesn't just show up once in early childhood either. Research finds it rises again going into adolescence and adulthood.

Subtler seizure types, like brief absence seizures, can look like daydreaming or inattention. Routine screening is worth discussing with a GP or neurologist.

This connection is well established in research, but rarely something parents are told to watch for. Now you know to ask.
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30/09/2026

Greta Thunberg was diagnosed with Asperger's, the term she uses, alongside OCD and selective mutism. Her mother shared the diagnosis publicly in 2015 to help other families.

In a 2018 talk she explained her selective mutism simply: "I only speak when I think it's necessary."

She has said being different is a superpower, given the right circumstances. The key words are "the right circumstances."

She has described intense focus and a direct, black and white way of thinking as things that work in her favour.

She has also said her diagnosis "has limited" her before. Real support needs sit alongside real strengths.

By speaking openly about her diagnosis, she became a role model for many autistic people and showed others what autism can look like.

Strengths and support needs sit side by side, and the right circumstances matter.

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Sight, sound, and touch aren't the whole picture. There are three more senses that rarely get talked about, and they mat...
29/09/2026

Sight, sound, and touch aren't the whole picture. There are three more senses that rarely get talked about, and they matter a lot in autism.

Interoception is the sense that tells you you're hungry, thirsty, too hot, tired, or need the bathroom. It can be genuinely harder to read for many autistic people. Difficulty with toileting, eating, or sudden meltdowns can trace back to not noticing hunger, fatigue, or a full bladder until it's already urgent. It's also how we notice a racing heart or a knotted stomach as anxiety. If that link is weaker, the feeling can arrive without a name.

Proprioception tells the brain where the body is in space and how much force muscles are using. Differences here show up as seeking deep pressure, or misjudging how hard to push or grip.

The vestibular system tracks movement and balance. Some children seek out spinning and swinging, while others fear heights or resist movement entirely.

"Apparent indifference to pain" is a listed feature, but research is mixed, some studies find typical pain thresholds, others find heightened sensitivity. It's not one simple story.

A few things help build body awareness: name body signals out loud together, "your tummy's rumbling, that's hunger." Build in scheduled breaks for water, food, and the bathroom, rather than waiting for a cue. Offer movement and deep pressure activities as regular, planned parts of the day.

Sensory differences in autism go well beyond noise and light. The senses you can't see are just as real.

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Sensory sensitivity isn't a footnote in autism, it's written into the diagnostic criteria itself. Since 2013, the DSM-5 ...
27/09/2026

Sensory sensitivity isn't a footnote in autism, it's written into the diagnostic criteria itself. Since 2013, the DSM-5 has explicitly listed hyper- or hypo-reactivity to sensory input as a core diagnostic feature, not a separate or secondary issue.

It's also more common than people realise. Estimates vary across studies, but most converge somewhere between 50% and 70%.

It isn't just one thing either. Hyperacusis means everyday sounds feel too loud or intense. Misophonia is a strong negative reaction to specific trigger sounds. Phonophobia is a fear response to sound itself. And sensitivity isn't always about sounds being too loud, some autistic people are under-responsive to sound instead, the DSM-5 criteria explicitly cover both directions.

One study found something interesting: the same individuals showed heightened sensitivity to simple sounds like pitch changes, but reduced sensitivity to complex ones, like emotional tone in speech. The wiring isn't simply "too sensitive" or "not sensitive enough."

A child covering their ears with no loud sound nearby isn't being dramatic. Ordinary background noise, overlapping voices, or a fridge hum can genuinely register as overwhelming.

A few things actually help. Warn before loud sounds, a hand dryer, a vacuum, a fire alarm test. Offer ear defenders or noise-cancelling headphones as a genuine tool, not a last resort. Build in a quiet retreat space at home and, where possible, at school.

Auditory sensitivity isn't fussiness, and it isn't something to push through. It's a genuine sensory experience worth taking seriously and planning around.

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Empathy isn't one skill. It's several.Cognitive empathy means understanding someone else's perspective intellectually, w...
26/09/2026

Empathy isn't one skill. It's several.

Cognitive empathy means understanding someone else's perspective intellectually, without necessarily feeling it yourself. Emotional empathy means actually feeling what someone else feels, as if it were contagious. Compassionate empathy means understanding and feeling, plus being moved to actually help, often described as the most complete form because it drives action, not just insight or feeling.

Cognitive empathy alone, without emotional empathy attached, can enable manipulation rather than connection. Research links this specific pattern, high cognitive empathy and low emotional empathy, to psychopathy.

Perspective-taking is a genuine, well-documented area of difficulty for many autistic people. Feeling others' emotions is a different story, and a much more mixed one. A 2025 meta-analysis reviewing 226 studies and over 57,000 people tested the belief that autistic people lack empathy. In the highest-quality studies, differences in feeling others' emotions disappeared entirely. Differences in perspective-taking did not. Much of the old narrative traces back to flawed measurement, not a genuine empathy gap.

Cognitive empathy suits negotiations and difficult conversations. Emotional empathy suits close relationships. Compassionate empathy is the balance that actually tends to drive helping behaviour.

A diary study tracking everyday interactions found people report more cognitive than emotional empathy, and more emotional than compassionate empathy. Understanding is common. Being moved to act is rarer.

"Empathetic" isn't a single trait someone has or doesn't. These systems can move independently, worth remembering, in yourself and in others.

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Can you read a mind from just the eyes? The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test shows just the eye region of a photo and...
24/09/2026

Can you read a mind from just the eyes? The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test shows just the eye region of a photo and asks you to pick which word best fits the feeling. It's a genuine measure used to study Theory of Mind.

Reading subtle mental states from the eyes alone can be a real area of difficulty for some autistic people. Autistic people score lower on this test, on average, than non-autistic people, part of why it was originally developed to study social cognition.

Three examples to try. What are they feeling? We've kept the answers off this post on purpose.
Want to know how you did? The real test has 36 items, and it's free to take properly online. See your actual score, not just three examples, at embrace-autism.com/reading-the-mind-in-the-eyes-test.
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