NEURODIVERSITY HUB
Childhood Experiences
Reasonable Adjustments
Reasonable adjustments are changes that your school or family makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage because of your neurodivergent needs around routine and change. You can ask for reasonable adjustments to be made.
Communication
Communication of needs and current family context can be useful in a communication passport or other tool to be able to be shared with school setting, wider family members, medical staff and other support staff involved.
Routines
Make a list or organising specific routine always helps to make us feel calmer. In particular, after school or bedtime routines will help to calm. Include one or two of the calming quick fixes identified below.
Visual supports
When the young person cannot hear what others are saying or cannot focus, a visual timetable or written list of what to do may help as a reference.
Environmental Checklist
Try to consider the young person’s environment and what could be done to reduce possible trigger stressors and help positive experiences. Home, leisure, activities, colleges, clubs etc, times alone and with others need to be investigated. Think about this carefully and it may make a positive difference. Be a detective to look at the environment in the light of sensitivities and preferences of young people.
Challenging environments
The young person may be stimulated positively or negatively just by the environment around them. For all of us the light can be too bright, the room too noisy, the glare of the sun too dazzling, affecting how we feel.
Inside the home
Developing a routine and a consistent way of doing things is really helpful and can reduce the impact of over-reacting. Organisation can give the young person a sense of control over how they plan their day.
- The garden can provide positive experience to give a young person calming times, time alone or with friends or time to ‘let off steam’.
- Remember that when dysregulated, a child cannot access their language as well as usual – reasoning with them does not work.
- When dysregulated, a child will respond best to non-verbal communication eg a kind face, gentle tone of voice, soft touch [if they tolerate touch].
Children/young people might not be able to access and name their feelings when overwhelmed.
Adjustments can be made by;
- allowing children express how they feel through drawing, play and use of toys, using of arts, crafts, music or movies.
- Children/you people can be supported to learn about recognising emotions in themselves and in others – picture or photos can be used for a game of identifying emotions. You can support the child recognising emotions while watching a tv show/movie and bringing their attention to it eg ‘he looks happy’, ‘she looks surprised’.
- Large drawing of a human body can be used to identify and place emotions and bodily sensation on a map, eg heart beating fast, feeling tension in stomach.
For young children or children/young people with cognitive difficulties it is helpful to keep language simple, using concrete and specific rather than abstract concepts. Visual cues, reminders and prompts can be used for those who struggle with memory.
Low stimulus environment can make it easier for children to be able to focus.