The Neurodivergent Learner: A New Approach to Your Child's Success in the Classroom and Beyond

School Readiness and Fit

“My school feels good to me.”

As a child psychologist working with neurodivergent children, my goal is never to make a child more neurotypical. I don’t believe that ADHD is something to be fixed or that autism is something to be cured. As human beings, we are meant to be biologically diverse, and that includes our brains. Yet we have been led to believe that there is one way for children to be successful: through academic achievement. In order to successfully achieve, we have to pay attention, follow directions, complete assignments, and make good grades—all tasks that neurodivergent learners struggle with because they involve emotional regulation and executive functioning skills.

Over the last twenty years in my work with neurodivergent leaners, rather than “fixing” neurodivergence, I have focused on helping these uniquely complex children recover from the anxiety and sadness they experience growing up in a world that wasn’t built for them. There are countless ways they’ve redefined and found success, and I’ll share many of those in this book. However, I always come back to the external stressor that I can’t control from inside the therapy room, and an area where I know so many parents of neurodivergent children need extra help: school. School is hard for neurodivergent learners, not because they aren’t trying hard enough—quite the opposite. These kids are often expending most of their energy to remain still and pay attention amid the pace, noise, seatwork, testing, and socialization that comes with learning in a classroom. As parents, we want our children to feel happy, included, and confident in the classroom, but many aspects of the general education classroom are misaligned with how our kids learn. If we respond by teaching them strategies to manage their anxiety about school but not by changing the underlying cause of why school is hard for them in the first place, neurodivergent learners will continue to struggle. I believe we can change the system from the inside out by staying curious and collaborative with teachers, following our kids’ interests, and celebrating their individualized successes along the way.

Our first assignment as parents of neurodivergent kids is to find the best learning environment we can for them. Let’s start with the story of Micah and his mom, Laura, who called me perplexed by her son’s distress about school.

Micah’s Story

I first met Laura in the waiting room of my therapy office after we had spoken on the phone about Micah, who had recently started kindergarten. Laura was at a loss as to why her son seemed to do fine once he got into school but had melted down at home every morning and afternoon since the school year began. “He never did this in preschool,” she explained. “We were in a great routine, and he never resisted leaving me at drop-off.”

As I thumbed through Laura’s intake paperwork, I saw that Micah had attended a half-day preschool, so he had some prior school experience. When I asked Laura to picture the morning and the school day from Micah’s perspective and describe the differences she noticed between preschool and kindergarten, her words described two very different learning environments. Preschool had been a four-hour school day housed in a cozy church full of familiar people, multiple recess opportunities, and hands-on learning. Kindergarten consisted of several classrooms in a much larger building, new people, frequent transitions, and more noise.

I could see the realization unfold on Laura’s face as she explained the difference in environments: Kindergarten was more of a sensory processing load for Micah, who had always struggled with sensory demands. We dug into Micah’s developmental history of not sleeping through the night until he was a year old, having trouble tolerating abrupt noises as a toddler, experiencing tactile sensitivity to clothing, and struggling with independent toileting. Micah was likely overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the school day and anxious the next morning about what was to come. The good news was that once Micah was in the classroom, he did well, but his stress before and after school indicated that his efforts during the school day left him little energy for anything else. While he had settled into a rhythm at his preschool by four years old, the transition to an elementary school building was proving more difficult. After school, he needed time to recover with his mom at home, where he felt safest.

I wondered if Micah was struggling because he was not developmentally ready for the demands of the environment around him, while Laura felt he needed to start school because he was academically bored in preschool. Herein lies a common dilemma for parents raising neurodivergent children with uneven skills: they are ready to learn, but not always within the overwhelming environment of a traditional school building. Many neurodivergent learners are not yet able to identify or communicate what feels overwhelming to them. And most general education teachers don’t have the training to identify the sensory overwhelm and anxiety that can be mistaken for oppositional behavior. Laura and I began discussing what support would help Micah not feel so overwhelmed at school, because before he could effectively learn, he would need to feel relaxed in his body and safe with the people around him.

Accessing Support in Public Versus Private School

In public school, your child may qualify to receive support through a 504 plan or an individualized education plan (IEP). Students identified with a disability who qualify for a 504 plan may receive accommodations like extended time on tests, taking tests in a separate setting, or preferential seating. Students who need a higher level of support, such as specialized instruction with a special education teacher or flexibility on the part of the general education teacher to modify the curriculum, may qualify for an IEP. These decisions are made by school-based teams in public schools, which you are a part of as the parent.

Private schools may offer learning support plans, but they are not required by law to educate everyone regardless of ability, and it is not guaranteed they will have staff trained to meet your child’s needs. That means that private schools can ask your child to leave if they don’t feel they can support them. The exception here is private schools that specialize in educating neurodivergent learners. These schools, however, are not required by law to educate everyone, and they may have limits for supporting a child who is physically aggressive, for instance. But most specialized private schools have smaller classes and teachers trained to understand autism, ADHD, or learning disabilities.

Laura’s story is similar to my own. My son had been successful in preschool programs with minimal support. We knew that kindergarten would ask more of him, yet even with all the accommodations we had in place, the sensory demands of the elementary school building overwhelmed him, and he was often in a state of fight-or-flight. Through many IEP meetings, additional evaluations, teacher conferences, and therapist consultations, we were able to find the best learning environment for him in a smaller classroom within our public school district.

As you will learn throughout this book, in order to effectively access the skills needed to learn, a child must feel safe in their environment, in their relationship with their teachers, and within their own body. When parents of neurodivergent kids talk about a school, activity, or person being a good “fit,” what they mean is that their child’s skills and strengths are aligned with the setting and the relationships around them. This goodness of fit is important because neurodivergent children often have more sensitive nervous systems and are corrected more often than their neurotypical peers, which can lead to feelings of hypervigilance or frequently believing they are in trouble. Our primary goal for children, but especially our neurodivergent learners, is to help them feel safe, connected, and trusting of those teaching them so they are more available to learn. That’s why we need their school to feel good, and safe, to them.

Lived Experience

“The extremely bright fluorescent lighting in the hallways and classrooms during the early morning hours creates a significant challenge for me in terms of maintaining focus and concentration.” —Nolan, age nine

“I think the fire alarm is one of my least favorite things about school. Unexpected fire drills can make me agitated and always impact the rest of the day. At lunchtime there is also the problem of the many smells; the different foods all mixed together make me feel overwhelmed and sick. It can often upset me for hours after.” —Alicia, age eleven