Dreaming and Creating Newness around the Reality of a Naturally Diverse Human Population

The topic of neurodiversity isn’t a comfortable one, for anyone involved.

It isn’t the newest version of therapy, one that just requires a few tweaks from where we were previously. It isn’t a modernised re-hashing of any conversation we’ve previously had about supporting needs and it isn’t even about acceptance or inclusion.

The topic of neurodiversity isn’t feel-good.

It’s a socio-political conversation, requiring us to explore within and recognise our inaccuracies in a bid to create cultural change. It requires complete honestly with ourselves.

What are we actioning that perpetuates oppression?

What are we enabling that minimises inclusion?

How are our current and previous pedagogies and frameworks non aligned with best practice?

And perhaps the hardest of all…

How has our parenting, caring, educating, treating and managing caused harm?

If we don’t ask ourselves these questions and sit in the truth of the answers that appear, we can’t fully embody a neuro-affirming approach, because neurodiversity requires of us to look inwards and reshape, not action outwards with strategies and tools.

I have just returned home from a 2-week seminar tour in Aotearoa. 8 x 6 hour seminars across 10 days! (It was wonderful, and also... Hobbiton!)

The topic was ‘Rethinking Neurodiversity’, a topic that requires much critical thinking in the planning. It couldn’t just be a delivery of information.

It required an exploration into normativity/mainstream/average, the way in which the ones who exist effortlessly within these circles are celebrated, and the ones who do not are ostracised, pathologised, criminalised and antagonised.

It required reflections on colonisation, patriarchy, capitalism, racism, sexism.

It required investigation into the trauma that our previous therapy, education and parenting modalities have enacted, and continue to.

None of this is easy, for any of us. But rethinking neurodiversity, which essentially means ‘dreaming and creating newness around the reality of a naturally diverse human population’, is not a topic for the faint hearted.

And there sure wasn’t any handout on ‘ten practical strategies’ or ‘follow these steps’ for an easier life that you can begin actioning on Monday.

Delegates may have come expecting a positive new way, but what they received was an uncomfortable reckoning. And for the most part they loved it.