What is lilipadding? Navigating life through islands of safety
By Helen Edgar and David Gray-Hammond · From the Re-Storying Autism workbook, Module 1
Traditional advice about “task transitions” barely scratches the surface of Autistic experience. Lilipadding (Conceptualised by Adkin, 2023) expands this into a philosophy of living. Every Autistic person has lilypads; islands of safety, familiarity, interest, or sensory comfort they return to. Moving between lilypads requires time, preparation, and gentle bridging. Lilipads aren’t activities; they’re micro-states of being. The concept itself describes the natural flow and transition of Autistic attention and engagement that Autistic people experience. When we talk about lilipads and lilipadding, we are talking about associative thinking, where thoughts and attention flow naturally via their association to our current focus whether that is cognitive or sensory based. Moving from one thought to another, from one feeling to another, from one sensory state to the next; all of these are transitions. Transitions, no matter how small, require cognitive effort that Autistic nervous systems may not always have. Families who understand this begin to:
- Slow the pace of daily life
- Not fit in too many events in the day
- Use a low-demand approach
- Plan ahead
- Create stepping stones between activities and events in the day
- Use warm-up periods before expectations
- Reduce abrupt changes
- Honour the need for closure and decompression
- Allow people to return to their lilypads without guilt
Lilipadding helps you see your family member not as “resistant” but as someone navigating a world that often moves too quickly for them.
Keep going in the course
This is a short extract. The full lesson in Module 1: Understanding Autistic Experience includes the video teaching, the rest of the workbook text, reflection questions for parents, carers and Autistic people, and progress tracking.