We are thrilled to announce that as of October 2022, autistic advocate Niko Boskovic has joined Autism Empowerment as a contributing writer for Spectrum Life Magazine and our Spectrum Life blog. Niko is 21-years-old and lives in Portland, Oregon. He is nonspeaking and uses a letterboard to communicate.
Niko’s goal is to shed light on the realities of being nonspeaking. He is excited to share his experiences and is passionate about advocating for the potential of nonspeaking autistics. Niko is very interested in hearing from other nonspeaking autistic people and their parents.
Niko first appeared on the cover of Spectrum Life Magazine in Fall 2022. In our feature interview, Niko Boskovic – Letterboarding Leader, readers learned about a number of Niko’s passions, including poetry, disability history, family, nature, and advocating for the potential of nonspeaking autistics.
What topics will Niko be writing about?
When we asked Niko this question, here was his response:
There are so many topics I am interested in exploring with you. For example, making friends with other people and dating is a topic of great interest to me because those social connections were all around me in high school, yet they were impacted by ableism and teen angst.
Then there are common misconceptions about nonspeakers that are pretty harmful, like notions about our ability to empathize or take someone else’s perspective. We have been assigned a lot of hard-and-fast truths about autism that aren’t actually accurate, and I hope to help evolve the current narrative to be a little more representative of those of us who use letterboards to communicate.
I am especially interested in hearing from parents of nonspeakers because there’s a lot I’d love to tell you that might shed light on why your child might be doing something in their autistic way that confuses you or causes you both stress. All told, I hope to share my experiences and help make our little corner of the U.S. a welcoming community for autistic people and their families.
Niko is an experienced blogger, having previously written a monthly blog for the Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities from July 2019 through September 2022. (You can read his past work at OCDD here.)
Spectrum Life Website articles
Navigating with Niko: A Case for Paid Parent Support Workers (page 12)
Ask Spectrum Life/Navigating with Niko (page 26)
Navigating with Niko monthly blogs: (click each link to visit that article)
November 2023: Sensory Sensitivity and the Evolution of My Palate
October 2023: Navigating with Niko while Navigating the World
September 2023 (also in Spectrum Life): Person-Centered Planning for Self-Directed Living
Fall 2023: A Question about Incontinence
July 2023: The Importance of Stimming and Crip Time
April 2023: Hiking with Sam – Nature is our Sanctuary
Blogs from Earlier in 2023:
Making A Case for Paid Parent Support Care Workers
Stimming & Self-Regulation: Respect for Decompression = Validation
Musings on Mental Health ~ Sounding off in a vivid, noisy, beautiful world.
Niko Boskovic – Letterboarding Leader
Additional blog posts will be added most months.
To find Niko’s interview and most recent work, search “Niko Boskovic” at SpectrumLife.org or bookmark and visit this link.
Niko Boskovic is a 22-year-old autistic adult from North Portland, Oregon who uses a letterboard to communicate, advocate and share his passions and ideas. He graduated in 2019 with an Oregon high school diploma and currently takes classes at Portland Community College in writing and history. Niko is passionate about poetry, nature, family, and disability justice and is very pleased to be able to share his thoughts and experiences with youth, adults, and families in autism and neurodiverse communities through his monthly blog at Autism Empowerment and Spectrum Life, Navigating with Niko.
Connect with Niko via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikoboskovicPDX/
Pictures courtesy of Loreta Boskovic
last updated 10/07/2023