I feel like children are SUCH a good gauge about disabilities on general. "Given the practically infinite diversity of human minds, how can neurodivergence be usefully defined?" to me as a teacher who was in community with other teachers, autism is obvious, adhd os obvious; dyslexia is obvious. and not because we're diagnosing anything-- but because when youre in tune with children's learning needs you sense when you need to employ different strategies. and PART of that sense is identifying the CLEAR MINORITY need, (isolation vs socialization) (audio visual not understimulation) because its often counterintuitive to the more common way of successfully dealing with child needs.
PART of neurodivergance is a basic shared neurology with others that despite being so similar (like all brains are brains) is SOCIALLY (pedogogically/emotionally) so DISTINCT specifically because it deviates from best practices in a statistically significant way. you must know that that kid is 'special' so that it makes sense to everyone else why youre doing A Thing for them, specifically. The special of special needs is also a minority of needs-based best-practice.
I like this as a practical framework for identifying and working with neurodivergent children. I think some of this is also true for people who are trying to figure out their own needs and who might land at a self-diagnosis or at least some form of self-constructed understanding of themselves. They eventually learn that the life advice they’re given, the study methods recommended to them, the suggestions that neurotypical or at least trained-in-neurotypical-culture therapists make for them — that these are different from what works for them personally. And if they persist in using neurotypical frameworks to understand themselves and structure their lives, they may *appear* to get better at certain skills with practice, but at a huge cost to their mental health. The theory around this process has been most elaborated in the context of research on autism, but I think there are a lot of other neurodivergent “conditions” that may or may not currently have labels, and a similar thing applied to them. My bipolar makes it so that a lot of what my mother keeps telling me to do regarding emotions doesn’t work for me. And it also makes it so that I must be more cautious about spiritual activities in order to avoid overstimulation, which may lead to mania.
I feel like children are SUCH a good gauge about disabilities on general. "Given the practically infinite diversity of human minds, how can neurodivergence be usefully defined?" to me as a teacher who was in community with other teachers, autism is obvious, adhd os obvious; dyslexia is obvious. and not because we're diagnosing anything-- but because when youre in tune with children's learning needs you sense when you need to employ different strategies. and PART of that sense is identifying the CLEAR MINORITY need, (isolation vs socialization) (audio visual not understimulation) because its often counterintuitive to the more common way of successfully dealing with child needs.
PART of neurodivergance is a basic shared neurology with others that despite being so similar (like all brains are brains) is SOCIALLY (pedogogically/emotionally) so DISTINCT specifically because it deviates from best practices in a statistically significant way. you must know that that kid is 'special' so that it makes sense to everyone else why youre doing A Thing for them, specifically. The special of special needs is also a minority of needs-based best-practice.
I like this as a practical framework for identifying and working with neurodivergent children. I think some of this is also true for people who are trying to figure out their own needs and who might land at a self-diagnosis or at least some form of self-constructed understanding of themselves. They eventually learn that the life advice they’re given, the study methods recommended to them, the suggestions that neurotypical or at least trained-in-neurotypical-culture therapists make for them — that these are different from what works for them personally. And if they persist in using neurotypical frameworks to understand themselves and structure their lives, they may *appear* to get better at certain skills with practice, but at a huge cost to their mental health. The theory around this process has been most elaborated in the context of research on autism, but I think there are a lot of other neurodivergent “conditions” that may or may not currently have labels, and a similar thing applied to them. My bipolar makes it so that a lot of what my mother keeps telling me to do regarding emotions doesn’t work for me. And it also makes it so that I must be more cautious about spiritual activities in order to avoid overstimulation, which may lead to mania.