Parents and Teachers Must Work Together to Help Neurodivergent Kids Shine!

With 18 years of teaching under my belt, trust me when I say that there aren’t many children I meet in a regular classroom that I can’t figure out. I need kids to get into the business of feeling good with me so they can start learning, and I need to make this happen as quickly as possible. Most of the time, I’m able to figure my students out fairly well. When you’ve been teaching for as long as I have, a lot of student needs look fairly familiar.

However, neurodivergent students who are also diagnosed with co-morbid conditions are often the children that I need to work a lot harder to figure out. Most of the time, this has nothing to do with behaviour. With so many complex needs and often quite difficult experiences in classes before they’ve reached mine, there tends to be a lot to uncover before real learning can happen.

“I find they are each their own unique, little puzzle (regardless of whether they share the same neurodivergent condition), but once I am able to crack the code, these are the children that tend to soar.” 

For some neurodivergent children though, figuring them out takes a lot longer and requires more in depth detective work. Some days are fantastic and I think I’ve finally figured it out. These are quickly followed by days where I wonder how I could have gotten it so wrong; which are then followed by the occasional day where I think I should just stop teaching altogether, because I’ve completely messed everything up. But when I am able to solve the puzzle, I mean really crack the code and get to know them well, I can watch their confidence improve, and their achievements rise to levels they never believed possible. Then I remember how much the work matters and I know I’ll do it again. But sometimes understanding the specific neurodivergent presentations along with any co-morbid conditions (that we may or may not even know about!), can take a lot longer to decode. However, there’s still a lot we can do to help them feel successful on their learning journey. 

One story that comes to mind is about a boy named Danny

When I first met Danny at the start of his Grade 5 year (10-11 years old), I liked him immediately. I loved his quirky nature, his attempts at jokes that seemed to get more of an awkward response than a laugh, and the way he expressed himself in a ‘grown up-ish’ manner which sounded more like attempts at masking his insecurities. He was quite interesting, knowledgeable on topics that he found important to him and insightful in the comments that he managed to add in class discussions too. He was an all around creative, both in ideas and the arts, and was genuinely a nice kid. 

But I struggled with Danny from the start. It didn’t matter how much I differentiated or personalised his tasks, he had significant issues with daydreaming and focus so he rarely got anything done (or even started). He looked so drained by Wednesday afternoon, I often feared he would fall asleep before home time. Thursday and Friday tended to be wasted days for us, as he was so tired that focus, interest and the ability to process any new information was near impossible. Danny was disorganised (both with his things and his ideas), struggled with maths, reading, and dysgraphia (to the point where he refused to write) and was slow in responding to questions. In fact, his processing speed was slower than any student I’d ever worked with. The tricky bit in all of this was that his parents were not ready to have him do any assessments, instead invested in extra maths classes and committed to completing homework with him (for him), every night. We were putting bandages on wounds, while not addressing where the wounds originated from, and because of it, Danny and I were getting on with minimal success. 

I knew I desperately needed to build a relationship with Danny. The more I could get to know him, learn what he was interested in and see what he could do, the more I could incorporate these talents and special interest in the class. I hoped to ignite his confidence and sparking some motivation. Building rapport with him would help him see that I cared about him, giving him a safe space try to become intrinsically motivated to work at raising his achievement.

“I knew that if he continued to feel like he was being treated as unintelligent (like he had in previous years), he’d be unlikely to change. By finding time to make the effort for him, I knew he’d be more than capable of some growth.” 

In theory, I knew the importance of building a relationship in my plans for him. In practice however, I was struggling. He wasn’t doing most of my work. I was getting more and more frustrated while he continued to retreat further and further into himself. His wall of resistance was getting more bricks added to it daily, and I was the one putting them there. One day, I gave a task called ‘What I wish my teacher knew’ and I asked him to draw some things he could discuss with me later. When I saw that once again he hadn’t even started, in exasperation, I asked:

“How does it feel to not be able to do anything you’re asked to do?”

He could only muster, “Terrible.”

Now I felt terrible.  

In that moment I had let him down. I was so focused on all he couldn’t do, and he felt that.

“I was reminded that no child ever chooses to disappoint, misbehave, or lose control. We need to look behind the behaviour to address the need. If I could meet the need, I’d solve the problem.”

I knew I had to start taking down his wall of resistance, with more praise, opportunities to succeed and regular conversation so he felt like what he thought mattered too. He needed to know that I was in his corner. I needed to earn his trust.  So that’s what I did. 

When Danny finally received an assessment, it was a bit of a surprise to everyone. He didn’t really get any specific neurodivergent diagnosis, or specific learning disability for that matter, but on any given day he could present as a variety of things. Two neurodivergent conditions that were mentioned were ADHD and ASD. I saw many ADHD inattentive presentations in the classroom, but he was also plagued by some presentations to an extreme I had never seen before: mainly his lack of focus, often impenetrable daydreaming, and his lethargy. They just didn’t really seem to fit ADHD inattentive, but I still tried to help him manage them in class. I also realised that I had to become more knowledgeable at looking at how ASD may present in the classroom too. This way I could effectively support any deficits I witnessed that impacted his learning. 

On top of the neurodivergent conditions, he also still displayed very slow processing speed and challenges with reading and writing. I learned that ADHD was often co-morbid with such neurodivergent conditions like dysgraphia, dyslexia and dyscalculia, but since he wasn’t officially diagnosed with any of those things, I was told he simply had learning challenges. Regardless of any named diagnosis, paying attention to what he could do and creating modifications to the curriculum so that he could successfully access it was my main concern. Sometimes even after knowing all the facts, there are still things that you might discover or see that have to be addressed. You might not get all the answers you hope for, but you still need to do what you think is best to support the child in dealing with whatever symptoms or presentations that are impacting them. 

Danny made huge strides in achievement that year. The more I worked on meeting his needs where he was at, the more confident he felt in trying new things. I began to understand more of the beliefs and challenges that were holding him back and could do more to address them. When we finished the year, Danny was more confident in understanding what he could do, while able to list strategies that helped him work more successfully in a classroom. He felt like he had some control over his learning journey and capable of going into middle school the following year. I was so proud of him but at the same time I was struggling with the fact that some of his more severe presentations didn’t quite add up to anything that I learned about in the co-morbidity of ADHD or ASD. I couldn’t help but feel like there was a piece of his puzzle still missing.