What do we actually mean by neurodiversity?

I’ve been thinking recently about how often the word neurodiversity comes up in conversation now, and how, while it’s becoming more familiar, I’m not always sure we’ve had the chance to slow down and really sit with what it means. So for the next few weeks, we will have Siobhan Campion, an autistic adhd advocate, and psychologist with EPT Clinic delivering key masterclasses and workshops on Thursdays within the membership. Thanks Siobhan!

It can sound like quite a big word, or even a clinical one, when in reality it’s something much simpler and, I think, much more human. Neurodiversity is really just the idea that there is natural variation in how all of our brains develop and function. The way we think, process, communicate, relate, regulate, and experience the world is not identical from one person to the next, and it was never meant to be.

When we talk about autism or ADHD, for example, we are talking about ways of being in the world that sit within that natural variation, rather than outside of it. And I think that shift matters, because it moves us gently away from seeing difference as something that needs to be fixed, and towards understanding it as something that needs to be understood and supported. 

That doesn’t take away from the very real challenges that can come with it, both for children and for parents, but it places those challenges in a different context.

Not as something wrong with the child, but as something that exists in the interaction between the child and the world around them.

Over the next few weeks, we'd like to explore what it means to move from knowing about neurodiversity, to actually accepting it in a way that feels real in day-to-day life.

Inside the membership this week, Siobhan will go a little deeper into how our ideas of “normal” have been shaped over time, often without us realising.