Supporting neurodivergence

Speech is how we say something, language is what we say.

Speech involves saying sounds accurately without hesitating, prolonging or repeating words as well as using expression, pitch, volume and intonation to add meaning.

Language refers to understanding and making sense of what people say, using words to build up sentences which are used in longer stretches or spoken language to build conversations and finally putting information in the right order to make sense.

Communication means being able to communicate to people and take turns as well as change to suit the situation. Non-verbal communication, for example eye contact, gestures and facial expressions is also important as well as being able to consider another person's perspective, intentions and the wider context.

Resources to support:

• NHS resource page - downloadable reward charts, visual supports, developmental norms charts.
• I CAN for researching speech and language.
• Lily, a young woman with developmental language disorder (DLD) explains what it is like to live with this condition in this video.
• The Speech and Language Therapy Team provides treatment, support and care for children and young people who have difficulties with communication, or with eating, drinking and swallowing.

Some children are more active and need to be moving around more while others are less active or can sit still for longer periods of time.

Resources to support:

• The Sleep Charity has tips to help children have healthy sleep.
• NHS sleep diary
• Information and strategies for parenting high energy children.
• Video: Understanding Hyperactivity in Children
• Find out more about the differences between ADHD and high-energy kids (non-ADHD) 

Attention is someone's ability to focus. This includes paying attention and listening to instructions while tuning out distractions; the ability to hold more than one instruction at a time in their mind and execute a set task; the ability to focus on details and to check for mistakes.

Focus can be too high as well as too low. If it's too high, they may show differences in their ability to speed up, adapt to new information, and make successful transitions from one task to another. If it's too low, they may  get distracted easily, not follow instructions and not complete tasks.

Impulse control is the ability to think before acting; being patient and waiting their turn. When it is too low, people can jump to conclusions, make decisions too quickly without thinking about the consequences, be focused on here and now and not be able to think and wait for rewards in the future.

Resources to support:

• Video: looking at nonviolent communication which is a technique of interacting with one another in a way that allows everyone's needs to be valued
• Video: five games to teach self-regulation and control 
• School resources pack for attention (Solent NHS)
• Article with videos explaining ADHD and stereotypes

Emotion regulation is the ability to manage our emotions. Some people tend to experience few emotions and when they do, they are not experienced strongly which can be mistaken for a lack of empathy. At the other extreme, some people feel emotions intensely, quickly feeling overwhelmed which has an impact on thoughts and behaviours. They might show extreme displays of anger and aggression, anxiety and avoidance, sadness and despair, as well as extreme feelings of happiness and excitement.

Consideration should also be given to a child’s ability to identify and describe their own emotions. Alexithymia would make it more difficult for a child to manage their emotions as they are unable to identify them. Please also see the section on sensory skills for information on interoception differences.

Resources to support:

• Zones of regulation - visual worksheets to support the development of self-regulation in children.
• Your Hidden Chimp: cartoon video on why emotions are hard to manage.
• Short video with tips to help parents manage behaviour.

Physical development means being able to move to do things you want to do including:

• gross motor skills e.g. holding a cup, holding a pencil, throwing and catching a ball
• fine motor skills e.g. handwriting, sewing, colouring within lines, using gaming controllers.

Physical development needs and skills will change over time as will what is required of the child, for example the ability to dress themselves as they get older.

Resources to support: 

• Information and a video to support movement and coordination skills.
• Sensory activities - to help with motor development
• Solent resources for gross motor skills (pack one) and developing gross motor skills (pack two)
• Solent resources for fine motor skills.

Information is registered through our different senses including sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, position in space (proprioception), balance (vestibular sense), and body function (interoception) for example feeling hungry or full. This information is used to understand the world, adjust what we do and how we respond.

Children and young people may respond to sensory information in different ways.

When this information reaches our brains sometimes it switches on a response - such as flinching when stung, sometimes it compares the information to what you already know and decides it is not important - like the buzz from a light fitting - and stops us from responding. There is a balance to responding in the right way and at the right time. This is often described as modulation.

As children and young people's nervous systems are less mature than adults, their responses to sensation is often more extreme. This is why children tend to run around and enjoy playground activities that many adults find very challenging, for example roundabouts. Sometimes people may appear to be over-responsive to sensory stimuli which others can usually ignore e.g. loud sounds, buzzing lights, bright lights, the touch of clothing, particular tastes and smells.

Other children may seem unaware of ordinary sensory stimulation and appear to under-react and be unresponsive, for example they don't hear their name being called, their clothes might be messy, they may have food left on their face after eating, or they might not realise how they have bruises or cuts. These children can be 'day dreamy' finding it difficult to follow a lesson.

Resources to support:

• Sensory therapy resource pack exploring sensory differences and challenges
• Sensory processing disorder website
• A video of sensory processing disorder
• A day in the life of a child with sensory processing struggles
• Do it resource: A collection of one-page tips to support parents to work with neurodiverse differences and challenges
• Video: How to teach interoception.

Flexibility is the ability to choose from a range of options to achieve an outcome. Adaptability is a person's ability to cope with changes that are imposed on them.

Resources to support:

• Helping children deal with change from BBC's CBeebies.
• Helping children manage transitions from the Child Mind Institute
• How can we help children deal with change
• Handling transition and change from the Skill Building Buddies
• Strategies for back to school transitions for children with autism.

Empathising is about being able to put yourself someone else's situation and feel what they might be feeling.

Systematising is making sense of the world in terms of logic, rules and systems. It's about the drive to analyse and construct systems to explain and understand other's behaviour or to understand how things work. Systemising people see the logic of the world, they focus on facts, pattern and rules. People with high systematising qualities may be more interested in their own feelings than those of others.

People generally prefer either empathising or systematising ways of seeing the world. Sometimes people can both systemise and empathise to a high degree and other times the preference for either one or the other is very obvious.

Resources to support:

• • The importance of empathy - exploring how we can try to understand how other people experience the world
  • Video explaining the theory of mind.

Cognitive skills help us process information and solve problems. Cognitive skills are not the same as educational attainment. There are lots of ways to succeed or fail in education and cognitive skills are just one element of it.

Resources to support:

• NHS resources - downloadable resources to support children's cognitive development.
• Video: Cognitive skills and how they work explanation
• The 'TEACCH' approach - a structured teaching method to support the learning and development of children with social, communication and interaction differences.