When Australia published its National Guideline for Learning, Participation, and Wellbeing of Autistic Children and their Families (Trembath et al., 2022), I took note. The title included wellbeing, which Australia has integrated into its educational system for many years (White & Kern, 2018). Last year, the Australian government released Measuring What Matters: Australia’s First Wellbeing Framework, to measure and understand how Australians are faring beyond traditional large-scale governmental metrics such as Gross Domestic Product.

The United States has produced some standards of care for autistic children in youth, including the American Academy of Pediatrics Identification, Evaluation, and Management of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (Hyman et al., 2022) and the Evidence-Based Practices for Children, Youth, and Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Steinbrenner et al., 2020). However, wellbeing is not named or well-represented in these reports. Indeed, searching for the term “wellbeing” comes up blank for both reports developed in the US. The Australian guidelines reference “wellbeing” 134 times in the 146-page report. Frequency of word usage is not an ideal evaluation method, of course, and arguably, the effective services and support to autistic individuals outlined in the two US documents do contribute to wellbeing. Still, as the Australian Government stated with their Wellbeing........

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