I fell down a rabbit hole today, and I'm still thinking about it.
Bees that are less socially responsive
I learned that some honeybees are less socially responsive than the rest of the hive, and that their gene activity overlaps with genes linked to autism in humans [Shpigler et al., 2017; Crespi, 2018]. They aren't "autistic bees," of course. But the overlap made me stop and think.
Here's why it caught my attention. I've worked with neurodivergent children for over 15 years, and I've been learning from the Dogon people, an indigenous community in West Africa. Along the way I've noticed something: the way my Dogon teachers understand the traits we call autistic is very different from how modern society classifies those same traits.
Nothing is useless
At the center of what I've learned is a principle that nothing is useless. Everything and everyone serves a purpose. Think about it: every variation of a human being, every trait, quirk, perspective, and yes, every disability, leads to a different way of seeing and moving through the world. Which means the range of what each person can offer is practically endless.
What makes an ecosystem thrive
This connects to a question I asked in a recent workshop: what makes a thriving ecosystem in nature? It's definitely not homogeneity. It's the opposite. An ecosystem needs variation to thrive, and the same is true of a society.
Now, back to the bees. In his paper on the shared genetic basis of honeybee behavior and autism risk, biologist Bernard Crespi asks whether these less socially responsive bees might be specialized for less social tasks, such as foraging, cooling the hive, or navigating space. It's a question, not a conclusion. But I find it a compelling one. It suggests a hive where the differences between bees aren't flaws to fix. They're part of how the whole thing survives.
Belonging, not productivity
From this perspective a person's worth was never meant to depend on how productive a person is. What I've learned from the Dogon is something deeper: a community that understands itself as an ecosystem has no category for "useless" at all. Everyone has a place because they belong, not because they've earned a place through productivity.
From what I've learned, people we would label autistic would not necessarily be seen as disordered in a community that lives this way. They would simply be part of the whole, with a role no one else could fill.
A different question to ask
So I keep coming back to a different question. What if, instead of asking "what is wrong with this child?", we asked "what is this child's place in the hive?"
As a parent of neurodivergent children, and as a neurodivergent person myself, I've found that this perspective helps me extend grace to my children and to myself. It has also shaped the kind of educational setting I choose for them, which I'll write about in a later post.
If this way of seeing your child resonates with you, it's also how I approach social communication support in my practice: starting from who your child already is.
Sources
- Shpigler et al., 2017
- Crespi, 2018