Abstract
As critical scholars, we are interested in the social construction of ‘normal’ development in children and how this operates discursively through the construction of ‘other’ childhoods that are seen to be different from the norm. Ideas about ‘normal’ development are naturalised in and through psychological descriptions of children’s behaviours, particularly in the appeal to childhood as biologically constituted, and produced through an evolutionary process (Brownlow & Lamont-Mills, Chapter 13, this volume; Burman, 2008; Morss, 1990; Rose, 1989a).
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Recommended reading
• Davidson, J., & Orsini, M. (2013). Worlds of autism: Across the spectrum of neurological difference. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Lawson, W. (2008). Concepts of normality. The autistic and typical spectrum. London: Jessica Kingsley.
• Armstrong, T. (2010). Neurodiversity: Discovering the extraordinary gifts of autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other brain differences. London: Da Capo.
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© 2015 Lindsay O’Dell and Charlotte Brownlow
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O’Dell, L., Brownlow, C. (2015). Normative Development and the Autistic Child. In: O’Reilly, M., Lester, J.N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_16
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