On Neurodivergence and Children

I love ND kids and ND adults. It makes me sad when kids are punished for being who they are. They are not bad. They are smart and caring and want to be loved and fit in with all of the other kids. I have seen kids bullied by teachers for wearing flip flops in winter, not using the “right” colors on a picture, not sitting perfectly still, not being able to walk in a straight line, having a messy desk. These things would send some of my elementary school teachers into a rage.

People in general tend to pathologize everything that kids do and if kids are even the slightest bit different, they are tested, assessed, analyzed and pressured to conform, instead of letting them be who they are. I am not saying that they should be running into traffic or breaking rules (just the stupid rules) but if they want to wear socks with sandals or make bad jokes or stand instead of sit or color the sky green, who cares? 

Labels. Diagnosis. IEPs, service plans, treatment plans, behavior plans. I would love to scrap all of it but that is impossible. If we didn’t have all of those things, people would continue to “do it wrong”. I will rant about each of these things at some point but now right now. Right now I just want to think about how much trouble families have to go through to get people to treat their kids like humans.

Maybe would should flip the script and conduct a functional environmental analysis to determine how disabling the environment is, including the people. Really get to the “root cause” of the purpose it serves to force conformity on kids who could not care less about being like everyone else. Some of the kids are not even aware of an “everyone else”. 

For many ND kiddos, their world is insulated from social pressures, competitiveness, social pecking orders, popularity contests or behaving the way others think they should. Why is the function of making them more like us. Shouldn’t we try to be more like them? 

For other NDs, they are scolded for caring. They are chastised for trying to save the world, criticized for being too sensitive and for not accepting that “it’s just the way it is”.  These kids will save the world if we don’t ruin them before they have a chance to try. 

Let’s examine the environmental factors (people) that refuse allow differences to interfere with the status quo and the way children “should” behave. Let’s find out what supports are needed, develop some strategies, write up a plan, test it out, have a big meeting and make a list of all of the mistakes they made, describe in detail all of the the the things they did wrong, and explore ways to offer more “support”, more confinement, and fewer interaction with their peers, until they get it. 

 

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