One of the themes that I’ve sought to emphasize in my work in the field of neurodiversity is the idea that whether a person will be labeled as disordered or gifted may have more to do with when and where they were born rather than anything intrinsic to them as an individual.  I’ve found it...Read More

When children are diagnosed with special needs (e.g. dyslexia, ADHD, autism etc.), the initial efforts to support them almost always revolve around helping them to fit in with the environment around them.  This of course is very important, but it leaves out a much-needed corollary to these efforts and that is:  changing the environment to...Read More

Nothing has been more disconcerting to me in my forty-five years as an educator than to ask a parent or teacher:  ”What is your child’s (or teen’s) strengths?” and have them answer:  ”He hasn’t got any.”  I’ve actually heard this several times in my career.  It was such responses that motivated me to come up...Read More

Here’s an article that I did as a guest blogger for National Autism Resources, an organization that provides tools and products to help make the world of kids diagnosed with autism more in sync with their unique challenges and gifts.  In it I describe a new way of explaining to kids with brain differences how...Read More

Any time you mandate that kids must do something, ANYTHING, you’ve automatically created a special category for those kiddos who don’t or won’t – and that’s how labels are born.  Before reading was mandatory for kids, there weren’t any reading disabilities.  Before we descended into this ”short attention span culture” of ours, we didn’t have...Read More