What Do You Need To Be Aware of When Working With a Neurodivergent Person?
Your input is requested for an important section of our book!
It’s full steam ahead as we are now in a book contract for Lens Not Label: How to Work With Neurodivergent People More Effectively (working title).
You can expect more frequent updates, starting with this one, where we’d love to get your input to help us with an important section.
The part we’re currently writing answers the question:
What’s useful to know, notice, and be aware of as you work with someone who is neurodivergent?
We three have our own ideas this, but we’d love to hear yours. In fact, it’s critical that we do!
We invite you to leave your comments and participate in a poll at the end of this post.
Before we do though, we want to share some of our thinking on awareness in general, and especially when working with neurodivergent people.
What is awareness?
We think of awareness is a gentle reminder. A nudge. Like having a post-it on your monitor.
Often, a reminder is enough. You may find over time that the post-it is no longer necessary. The idea has moved from an external thought in writing to a core concept that lives in your head now.
Regardless, awareness is that bit that helps you notice. It keeps you in check. It allows you to respond effectively to what’s happening in the moment. That’s why it’s so important.
What should we be aware of?
From our experiences and research so far, we’ve highlighted several areas that we feel it could be helpful to be aware of when working with a neurodivergent person. We’ll likely pick three to expand on in the book. The rest will be touched upon, but not explored as deeply.
So far, our shortlist includes:
Masking in social interaction
A person’s sensitivities
Possible responses and reactions
A person’s capacities and limitations
The broader context, e.g. what else might be going on?
What have we missed?
And which do you feel are the top three to be aware of? Leave a comment and let us know!
Lastly, please take our poll so we can learn which one interests YOU most to learn more about?
Thanks for informing our writing! We look forward to sharing more with you soon.
While it's really important to be aware of all of the above when working with a neurodivergent person, the key thing for me is remembering that everyone is unique. I try to drop all my assumptions and expectations, really listen and then meet people where they are. Best of luck with the book!