This book offers a unique approach to the study of disabled children's views, articulating methodological reflections, findings and experiences from a study conducted with children with diagnoses of autism and their parents. The reader is invited to engage with the ways the children reclaimed their social agency and multiple ways of knowing and being, through creative encounters where mattering and autonomy were protected. Weaving together arts-based research, art activism, multimodality and Gramsci's study of language and social hierarchies, the analysis unpacks the oppressive systems that serve to dehumanise and stifle children's identities and agency, reshape parenthood and obscure capabilities.

The author addresses the need for autonomy in ethical research with disabled children and communities to encourage scholars, community-responsive practitioners, educators and artists, to think critically about freedom and the directive practices that pervade children's lives. This is an urgent call to question the ways disabled children's freedom of expression is easily sacrificed, enmeshed in rhetoric, bureaucracy and habit. The dialogue between the narrative and the artworks open up diverse channels for hope, respect, and attentiveness towards children's self-expression, inviting adults/educators/researchers to be present, to problematise and resist direction in research, education and other interactions.

Brings a novel approach to disability studies and childhood scholarship.- Offers practical tools addressing the need for autonomy in ethical research with disabled children.- Develops an original take on Gramscian thought for disability research, with an arts-informed and post-human ethos.