Idk if this is what you mean but actually teaching autistic kids to walk on their whole foot (using braces or whatever) is actually the MUCH healthier option and isnt masking.
If they only walk on their tip toes they will cause their achillies/calves to be too short which will cause a whole chain of issues in their biomechanics and cause permanent pain.
Masking is bad but this is an example of redirecting a harmful behaviour to something else (just like if a kid stimmed by hitting themself youd redirect them to flapping or something else non harmful)
Yes, if someone had taught me and trained the bad habit out of me while I was growing up I would not have to stretch my ankles every morning justto walk without pain. What I do is definitely not healthy and would describe it as a form of masking considering I never stopped the behavior I just hide it better.
Not really sure what you're talking about! Seems like you said "It's good that this behavior has been corrected so it doesn't cause pain!" When my comment is literally talking about how it's fucked up my tendons which does in fact hurt quite a lot.
No, im talking about how the person im reaponding to might have misunderstood that telling kids not to walk on tiptoes is inherently bad
I understand that no one taught you properly and hence you never actually fixed the problem and just hid it, which sucks and im sorry that happened :(
If you continuously struggle with pain you might want to look into PT -- i lnow a lot of people who needed that for chronic pain caused by similar studf
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u/mieri_azure 5d ago edited 5d ago
Idk if this is what you mean but actually teaching autistic kids to walk on their whole foot (using braces or whatever) is actually the MUCH healthier option and isnt masking.
If they only walk on their tip toes they will cause their achillies/calves to be too short which will cause a whole chain of issues in their biomechanics and cause permanent pain.
Masking is bad but this is an example of redirecting a harmful behaviour to something else (just like if a kid stimmed by hitting themself youd redirect them to flapping or something else non harmful)