79. RTD | Navigating Social Situations, with Anthony Ianni, Sangeeta Jain, and Vanessa Lista

Discover what’s possible when everyone gets a chance.  This week’s episode is a recording of one of our Global Autism Community exclusive events. The topic of this roundtable discussion was Navigating Social Situations, and its diverse panel included Anthony Ianni, Sangeeta Jain, and Vanessa Lista. Anthony is an autism self-advocate, a former NCAA Division 1 basketball player, and a motivational speaker; Sangeeta is the mother of an autistic young man and she is also our Global Autism Project partner in Chandigarh, India; and Vanessa has an autistic brother and is a kinesiology and psychology student.  Other community members who participated in this event were Mary Johnston, Andrew Bennett, Priya Vijayan, Beverly Sujit, Happy Arora, and Anshul Sharma.  As with previous community events, we hadn’t originally planned to produce a podcast episode from this discussion, but we later thought it would be great to make this conversation available to our podcast listeners as well. We apologize for the inconsistent sound quality, but I assure you that the stories and perspectives shared by our guests are really worth listening to.  In today’s conversation, we discuss:  Strategies to mitigate misunderstandings in social situations Respecting personal space and boundaries Teaching social skills to young autistic children Teaching peers how to communicate with autistic children Action steps towards true inclusion  To learn more about the panelists in this discussion, please visit: Anthony Ianni Sangeeta Jain   Vanessa Lista  Roundtable discussions like the one you’ll hear today are open exclusively for members of our online Global Autism Community. We select a different theme each month, and our moderators monitor posts daily to ensure that our online space remains safe and respectful. If you’d like to attend and participate in any of our future events, you can sign up today at community.globalautismproject.org.  ----more---- We appreciate your time. If you enjoy this podcast and you’d like to support our mission, please take just a few seconds to share it with one person who you think will find value in it too. Follow us on Instagram: @autismpodcast  Join our community on Mighty Networks: Global Autism Community  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: Global Autism Project  We would love to hear your feedback about the show. Please fill out this short survey to let us know your thoughts: Listener Survey