Back to school tips for neurodiverse learners.

This time two years ago, I had a neurodiverse teenager starting College (high school in America) and a neurotypical 11yo starting Intermediate. It was a busy time and really stressful for my neurodiverse learner. So much so, that we had a period of cognitive overload which resulted in a prolonged period of restraint collapse. If any of you watched the video on Facebook from Brain Chat about the Hulk and Bruce Banner and the stress on the pre-frontal cortex, we definitely had the Hulk in the house.

Looking back on things, I definitely could have handled the transition to College better with him. I’ve set out some tips based on our experience, and I have expanded on them slightly in this dialogue.

1. Liaise with the school: remind them your learner is diverse, or if at a new school, get to know the Senco and work closely with them. I found (and find) a quick email does wonders when I could see the stress building, allowing the Senco to touch base and check in with my son.

2. Get prepared with the uniform and shoes: If kids don’t feel comfortable at school anyway, at least let them be comfortable in the correct uniform that fits well and is not too big or too small.

3. College here in New Zealand is generally always going to be a new school. Get familiar with the layout of the school, download a map and do a walk around. Send them off to find a classroom by reading the map. Talk to others who know the school well, and find out about how things run – like where do you get changed for P.E?

4. Ensure the correct resources are on hand. If using Assistive Technology, allow practice time to build familiarity. Touch base with schools with a ban on phones during class time- can a phone be used to take photos of notes to convert to word documents? Can a teacher pre-prepare notes for reading?

And finally, 5. Keep up to date with neurodiversity news. The more we know, the better we can understand what is going on with neurodiverse minds and I would like to say, perhaps the better we can handle the various curve balls that may be sent both ours and their way!

Do you have other tips? I would love to hear them, comment below! Please feel free to share this graphic and my blog post if you find it useful, and add your own dialogue to your post.

#neurodiversity #backtoschool #dyslexia