My experience with my kids’ neurodiversity began when my daughter was under two. I was a young mom, with no vocabulary for neurodiversity and only a vague idea of what ADHD was. I was working hard on keeping the kids clean and fed, with little else on my mind. However, the neurodiversity cues kept hitting me over the head.
My young daughter was very vocal and would sing and talk to herself non-stop. She was always making music, either real or pretend. She was quite a ferocious tour de force when it came to will power.
My first cue about her sensitive nature came when she stopped singing. She changed from her normal buoyant self to gloomy, silent and would only hit my leg to communicate. I realized that what she ate was directly affecting how she acted. I decided to listen to this natural feedback, and we began our first restrictive diet. Being a family of two parents, two grandparents and two children, it was relatively easy to limit what she ate as a toddler. She began to sing again, and I trusted that small parenting triumph.
Once they began school, there were so many more cues. I started to have long parent-teacher meetings and was encouraged to take both my kids to doctors. At first, I thought by keeping my kids home, limiting their diets, raising them without screens and focusing on holistic healing modalities would be how we navigate what was becoming, for me, a neurodiversity obstacle course.
Looking back now, I could have been forearmed by a little basic genetic understanding. As I watched my kids navigate life, and as I surrounded myself with other families with neurodiverse kids, I began to learn that my whole family was neurodiverse. My mom, my siblings, my husband and his family. We had created two expressions of neurodiversity that were completely unique in their own experience, but they were a product of us. If I could have had each family member fill out a survey, I might have known a little more about what my children’s needs might look like before they came.
Recognizing the cues became a kind of Dr. Mom routine. I would analyze and then dissect each incident, each diagnosis and every report card. I started to feel hopeless. I felt like I had let them down, not having them diagnosed fast enough, or not being wealthy enough to put them into the best remedial programs. I started to feel separated from them, as if raising them was too hard and I was not smart enough or patient enough or “enough” enough. I remember this as being a dark time for us all, as a family.
Taking advantage of some of the free community counselling helped us. I had a chance to speak to a kind therapist who worked with all kinds of children. He gave me some much-needed encouragement. I took a pause on the self-judgement and did some reflection. We had come so far as a family. I was no longer able to shield them from all negative influences. How could I help them navigate the world, when the world was what seemed so overwhelming?
I remembered the basics. The food they consumed. The media content at home. The expectations of homework. The words we surrounded them with. Everything was important. I changed my attitude away from diagnoses and remediation to acceptance and curiosity. I asked my kids how the words on the page looked to them. I asked them what they heard when the teacher spoke. I asked them if the tutoring was helping. I challenged the doctors’ assessments.
Looking for the cues myself, I could see that there were some responses that I could control. Downtime. Rest. Play. Joy. These were still in my control, and something I could easily and freely offer my kids. The world is overwhelming. There is no way around that. How we approach it can be uniquely tailored to each child. We focused on horses and skateboarding. I stopped reading the report cards. I had frank conversations with my kids’ principals. We responded to the cues.
Neurodiversity is exactly what it says. It is as diverse as the sky is wide. Finding your family’s way through can be a huge gift. Let love lead, and everyone can benefit.
