The Messages Neurodivergent Kids Internalize: Why Can't You Just Be a Normal Human Being and Stop Moving Around?! by Lisa

Last week, my son attended his regular swimming lesson. His new instructor has seemed annoyed with him from the first lesson. I teach my child to begin from the assumption of positive intent for all people. However, as the weeks passed, my son’s thoughts went from “maybe the instructor was having a bad day”, to “if it was a bad day, why does he seem only irritated at me?” to “I’m trying my best, but it doesn’t seem to matter.” This descent into hopelessness isn’t uncommon for neurodivergent kids (or adults!) and it reflects the reality of how one is treated. I spoke to the swim school when my child told me the instructor was holding him/letting him go roughly, and that his neck got hurt when the instructor moved it to correct positioning. Things got better - for one week. 

Two weeks later, my son was characteristically bouncing up and down, waiting on the submerged platform for his turn. Though all children find it difficult to wait and have various strategies to do so (I constantly observe children in the pool submerging themselves repeatedly, turning around, hanging off the edge, splashing and pushing each other etc.), my son’s hopping seemed tame. This day, his toe had been pinched accidentally by another child, so he was holding it while hopping. 

Though my son had not delayed or disrupted the progress of the lesson, and had not engaged in any unsafe behavior, the instructor, visibly annoyed, came over and said “Why can’t you just be a normal human being and stop moving around?!” (My son, to his credit, and despite his shock, defended himself (and others), saying “being a human being and not moving around aren’t the same thing.”) 

I won’t lie. When I heard about this, I was livid. 

Not only did this instructor, from a position of power, dehumanize my child publicly, but he also missed an opportunity to praise a child who had found a good self-regulation strategy to patiently wait his turn in a loud and over stimulating environment. 

The instructor denied that he said this, of course, but I believe my child. When I spoke to the school about the ableism and a lack of professionalism demonstrated over weeks, they pointed out that he was one of the most senior instructors. I asked how much experience and training he had with neurodivergent children, and there was no response. 

Because neurodivergent children have traditionally been grouped together in segregated classes historically within schools, there is a long history of particularly well-trained instructors who specialize in teaching those classes. This allows others to spend years gaining experience but never with a wide spectrum of children. With more inclusive forms of education, it becomes imperative that all those teaching children understand the wide natural variability in child development and learn instructional and pedagogical strategies to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to learn. In the case where one neurodivergent child is a small group of  children (in a family, a school classroom or swimming lesson), their differences are more obvious, and, to an untrained instructor (or uneducated parent), those traits might be interpreted as laziness because of a moral failing, getting distracted due to a lack of self-control, not following instructions due to defiance. The adult, who doesn’t understand the neurodevelopmental differences interprets this as lack of will-power, and a moral failing or character flaw, and gets annoyed at having to repeat instructions, or find different ways of capturing attention. 

During the weeks leading up this event, the instructor’s body language and facial expressions, his abrupt, flat tone and curt speech were subtle signs of which my child was acutely aware. He became hypervigilant, monitoring the instructor’s face and hoping for one small smile, but even when he did well in class, it didn’t come. He could sense his instructor’s low-level continual irritation under the surface from the moment he walked into class and had to endure being both metaphorically and physically shoved away. 

This treatment is unfortunately also common in experiences at school, in the community, and at home, and one of the reasons that neurodivergent children internalize negative social messaging and develop less self-efficacy very early in life. From this point of view, it makes sense to stop trying, because you’ll never be given a fair shot - it was too late from the very beginning. And then of course the resultant messaging of “not working up to their potential”, “needs to put it more effort” punish children and simultaneously obscure the root causes of this behavior, the systemic negation of their personhood as worthy and equal. I spend time every day counteracting these messages with my child and modeling how we treat people and talk about people. 

Though I have emphasized the need for this school to provide training for their instructors, the fact is that most training on the matter still approaches neurodivergence from a deficit position, based on a medical model. In this model, a child who doesn’t develop in a linear fashion, or whose test scores fall outside “the norm” marks them for life based on a very narrow understanding of ability. (The history of these models and tests merits scrutiny, if that interests you.) 

Neurodiversity-affirming education (and therapy, and workplaces!), ideally created by neurodivergent individuals would be a much better option. The neurodiversity paradigm views the differences in how human minds develop as natural and necessary to have a rich and thriving society. We owe many human advances to neurodivergent individuals because of their unique perception, ability to connect seemingly disparate things, ability to generate novel ideas quickly and frequently, creativity, hyperfocus and innovation. 

However, one’s “productivity” in society should not be the criterion by which we value someone’s humanity. Different ways of perceiving, behaving, communicating and “being” in this world are natural reflections of the beautiful multiplicities of the human experience. Disabled or not, neurodivergent or not, we are all “normal human beings”, and should be treated as such.