Nurturing Neurodivergence

As a student, I raked through papers I’d shoved into my schooldesk, searching desperately for my homework. My 4th grade teacher loomed over me. “Class,” she announced, “You’ve heard of Eveready batteries, right? Well, Danielle, here, is a Neveready battery!”?

As a parent, I appeared in truancy court when my teen couldn’t yet hack her fight or flight response to overcome the sheer terror of entering her suburban middle school. With every conceivable community support already in place, the judge looked at us incredulously. “So, I understand you’re a certified Principal?” he asked. “Yes, your honor,” I replied. “I understand well the legal responsibility for compulsory school attendance. What I need is for someone to convince my teen’s amygdala that school isn’t a threat.”?

And just last year, after an especially intense elementary IEP meeting, my younger child dejectedly asked, “Why can’t the adults just help me be a better me instead of trying to make me into someone else?”?

Neurodivergent people, young and old, have similar indelible themes in the coming of age story they call school. As a career educator, I know most of my colleagues would move mountains to make things better for their students. So, why are schools such challenging environments for students with Autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent identities??

To date, I have attended hundreds of child study, student support, 504, IEP, and gifted team meetings at public, private, parochial, and charter schools in five different states in the roles of student, teacher, parent, administrator, and advocate. Across miles, decades, and contexts, each one brought adults together to solve the problems that arise when the needs of the learner and the typical learning path are in tension. The regulatory rhythms and predictable procedures leave little time for deep-feeling learners with slower processing speeds to express their needs. So, inevitably, the mostly neurotypical adults (who don’t know viscerally what it's like to live in an ableist world) ask: What goals and specialized instruction will help this child overcome challenges and meet expectations?

What if we asked new questions that challenge fundamental assumptions and have the potential to nurture Neurodivergent identities?

Do trusted educators know deeply this student’s strengths, passions, and needs?

Beginning with and centering designed experiences on a learner’s strengths may seem obvious, but sticking with a strengths-based approach beyond the perfunctory adult generated description of strengths is rare. Ask students what makes them feel confident and powerful in learning, and listen. Passion matters in learning for everyone, but is critical for Neurodivergent learners. Cognitive scientists know that piquing interests catalyzes learning for youth with ADHD, and leveraging ruling passions is the best way to engage an Autistic person. While special educators have rightly focused on meeting the needs of Neurodivergent learners, too often what the student feels they need most is left out of the conversation. This is why trust is not a bonus prize – it’s essential. If teachers know learners and learners trust teachers, they are both empowered to co-create a plan that works.

Does the student find flow in learning?

As a Neurodivergent professional, I crave moments when I am deeply immersed in and hyper-focused on worthy, self-directed work in my domain of expertise that feels, at once, challenging and effortless and seems to make time stand still. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, a noted psychologist, named this optimal experience flow more than 30 years ago. Classroom flow, and its correlated intrinsic motivation, is every teacher’s dream. Yet, Neurodivergent students rarely find it in classrooms that prioritize compliance over engagement. An undue, deficit-focused emphasis on remediating stubborn lagging skills instead of accommodating them does significant damage to a Neurodivergent child’s self-concept and limits joy. If instead we accommodate our learners by removing obstacles and harnessing intrinsic motivation to prioritize practicing those skills for which they now see a need, flow will manifest.

Does the student glow in an inclusive learning community through care and acceptance?

Neurodivergent learners thrive when they believe that:

• Their unique brains, traits, capabilities, and contributions are valued and embraced
• Their struggles to self-regulate, communicate across neurotypical social norms, and learn in different ways will be met with grace
• They can safely unmask and show up as their true selves without fear of bullying or ridicule

When they thrive, they glow. You see happy stimming, spontaneous smiles, unmasked exuberance, and evidence of learning. When they don’t, you know. For Neurodivergent learners, who have very different physiological and emotional responses to stimuli, no amount of extrinsic motivators or SEL programming is enough to prevent a reactive nervous system response. If educators create a culture of care and teach neurotypical people how to make learning spaces safe and welcoming for those with sensory differences and how to accept that empathy and social interactions look and sound different for Neurodivergent people, the entire community benefits.

Does the student grow skills and knowledge that matter for a hopeful future?

With Neurodivergent students, growth is way more important than expected proficiency on a rigid timeline. Because time awareness and time management are often late blooming cognitive skills for Neurodivergent learners, that relentless feeling of being hopelessly behind, socially inept, and imperfectly aware is one of the most expressed childhood traumas by Neurodivergent adults reflecting back on their school days. Believing in a learner’s boundless potential and flexibly adapting time-bound, developmental expectations away from neurotypical norms towards the student’s optimal pace of growth can help educators channel our urgency for powerful learning into experiences that help Neurodivergent learners gain new tools and techniques that build confidence and hope.

Feeling known and glowing with the sense of belonging that authentic care and unconditional acceptance bring, then finding flow and growing skills and knowledge to actualize one’s unique talents is desirable for any student. For Neurodivergent students, however, it may be the only destination that protects their highly vulnerable self-concept against adverse mental health outcomes. When schools can answer “Yes!” to the questions above, more stories of Neurodivergent learners will have happy endings.?