Hello, I’m so pleased you’re here.

I’m Jessica Chivers, a coaching psychologist, founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists and author of “Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work”. I’m also mother of two neurodivergent teenagers and I’d really like to know your experience of being a working parent to one or more neurodivergent children.

Here at The Talent Keeper Specialists we are growing our understanding and capability to coach people whose careers and work performance are affected by neurodivergence. Working people who are ND,  line managers of neurodivergent team members and  working parents of children who have ADHD, autism or who are neurodivergent in another way.

Survey to understand the experience of working parents with (a) neurodivergent child(ren)

We would like to deepen our understanding of how parents’ careers, relationships and wellbeing are affected by their child being neurodivergent. We’re starting by inviting working parents to tell us about their experiences via a confidential survey.

The survey has two sections:

1. The first section is quick to complete. It will take about 5 minutes.
2. The second section asks for more detailed reflections from you about your career, wellbeing and relationships as someone raising a child (or children) who is/are neurodivergent. This is likely to take 15-20 minutes depending on how much of what I’m asking is sitting top of mind. You might like a cup of tea and a comfy chair for this bit.

When I wrote my first book I used a survey like this to gather insights before I started writing. People told me they found answering the questions cathartic and looked forward to subsequent surveys gathering their experiences for specific chapters.

My experience of raising a child with ADHD, oppositional behaviours and “atypical autism”

My son was permanently excluded from school four months before his GCSE’s in 2022 for ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. My marriage has been on the brink. And quite frankly I’ve thanked my lucky stars I began working for myself age 25 as I don’t know how on earth I’d have kept earning as an employee these past six years. I LOVE my job but being a parent to an ND child requires higher levels of flexibility and understanding than most employers will give.

I have learned more than I ever would have liked to about how to stay upright and afloat professionally and personally when you’re caring this extra complexity of caring load. School refusal, being called out of meetings, being called into school meetings, fighting for an EHCP (and winning!), cajoling kids for CAMHS appointments, feeling judged by other parents, living with an anxious feeling in your chest…the list goes on.

I was screened for ADHD using the Qb in 2022 and was formally assessed and given a diagnosis of ADHD in November 2023.

(The photo above is from the entrance to a CAMHS space in Hertfordshire at my son’s last appointment July 2024 as he approaches 18).

A few helpful resources right now

• Add-vance.org – The ADHD & Autism Trust supporting parents and carers of neurodivergent children (UK organisation). Has a closed FB group for peer-to-peer support.
• National Autistic Society
• Additude – US organisation with an excellent podcast and lots of online information about ADHD.
• ADHD Women’s Wellbeing podcast with Kate Moryoussef
• ADHD Chatter podcast with Alex Partridge.

Please be in touch if I raised anything in this post that you would like to discuss, including coaching: hello@talentkeepers.co.uk and +44 (0)1727 856169.

Whilst I was peeling carrots last Sunday my daughter reflected on how happy she is that she’s been allowed to drop GCSE Spanish. She’d fallen behind in Y9 after three months medical leave and I mused that it was a shame because she’d always seemed to enjoy it. “No,” came the reply. “I was good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it.” In Strengths Psychology speak this is a ‘learned behaviour’ – something that you’re good at but don’t find energising (at best) and might even feel drained by.

What is a strength?

A ‘strength’ as defined by Dr Alex Linley, the developer of a psychometric called Strengths Profile, is “a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking, or feeling that is authentic and energising to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development, and performance.” Note that word energising. A strength is only a strength of you’re good at it and you feel good when you use it. The Strengths Profile tool distinguishes between Realised and Unrealised Strengths: Realised Strengths are ones you’re making regular use of and Unrealised Strengths are those you never or rarely use in comparison to your Realised Strengths.

Why and when do we use Strength Profile?

When we’re working with coachees on our Comeback Community employee experience programme we invite them to complete Strengths Profile and have a debrief on their profile just before they return to work. It’s a great way to get them connecting with what they are good at and recalling past successes at work. This way our coachees usually feel more ready, able and energised for their return from maternity, sick, shared parental other leave from work.

What are some examples of strengths?

In the Strengths Profile tool there are 60 possible strengths that could appear in your profile. Here are some examples:

• Action – You feel compelled to act immediately and decisively, being keen to learn as you go.
• Compassion – You really care about others, doing all you can to help and sympathise.
  Detail – You naturally focus on the small things that others easily miss, ensuring accuracy.
• Humility – You are happy to stay in the background, giving others credit for your contributions.
• Personal Responsibility – You take ownership of your decisions and hold yourself accountable for your promises.
• Strategic Awareness – You pay attention to the wider context and bigger picture to inform your decisions.
• Time Optimiser – You maximise your time, to get the most out of whatever time you have available. (Interesting side note: when the Strengths Profile team analysed 21,000 profiles in March 2021 they found Time Optimiser to be the most frequently occurring Weakness. It appeared in 48% of profiles).

What happens if I’m not using my Strengths at work?

You’re probably not performing as well or feeling as good as you could. Research by the team at Cappfinity (the organisation behind Strengths Profile) finds that when managers emphasised performance strengths, performance was 36.4% higher, compared to a 26.8% decline when emphasising weaknesses. Some more benefits of focussing on strengths at work:

• People who use their strengths more reported lower levels of stress over both 3 and 6 month periods.
• Increased use of strengths correlates with mindfulness which can help control stress and counter depression. (Jarden, Jose, Kashdan, Simpson, McLachlan and Mackenzie, 2012).
• Strengths use supports goal attainment: Strengths alignment increases the setting of personally meaningful goals. (Madden, Green and Grant, 2011).
• Strengths use is a good predicator of workplace engagement and people who use their strengths at work are six times more engaged. (Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002, and Gallup, 2012).

Can strengths help me find my work more enjoyable?

YES and let me tell you about Unrealised Strengths in particular. I’ve had many coachees returning from maternity leave who tell me they stayed in a job they would otherwise have moved on from if it hadn’t been for trying to get pregnant or being pregnant. Strengths Profile distinguishes between ‘realised’ and unrealised’ strengths: strengths you’re already making quite a bit of use of and strengths that you’re not using much if at all. The Unrealised Strengths quadrant is a box of delights when it comes to helping coachees who are bored/tired/less enthusiastic about their role than they might be. Considering how you can make use of Unrealised Strengths in your work can freshen up how you’re feeling and bring a new angle or interest. You’re bringing novelty into your role when you use strengths you’ve neglected or when you consciously use a Realised Strength in a new way.

Why is the world’s most frequently occurring Strength a problem?

When the Strengths Profile team analysed 21,000 profiles in March 2021 they found Humility to be the most frequently occurring Realised Strength. It appeared in this quadrant on 57% of profiles. (The most commonly occurring Unrealised Strength was innovation, defined as “approaching things in ingenious ways, coming up with new and different approaches”). Whilst humility can be a wonderful strength, we need to be cautious of the potential downsides of not owning, celebrating and communicating our contributions, which can include:

• Other people getting the invitations and opportunities that are deservedly yours.
• Your perspective/knowledge/help not being sought.
• Resentment when your contributions aren’t recognised.
• Direct reports modelling your behaviour and experiencing the same downsides.
• And one study found that if a team members feel their boss is being humble towards them because they are an exceptional employee, this can lead to a sense of entitlement and ‘deviant’ behaviour (see Qin & Chen et al, 2020).

If humility is one of your top strengths I invite you to share some of your achievements (that you’ve written in your What’s Gone Well? journal, if you’re one of our coachees 😉) with a team mate or two this coming week.

In HR? Comeback Community employee experience for returning employees

COMEBACK COACH is one part of a broader package of support that we call the Comeback Community employee experience. It’s a blend of online resources, coaching, live expert Q&As, career development tools and line manager support that we deliver in organisations such as CIPD, Lily’s Kitchen, GAM Investments, Federated Hermes, FDM and more. Drop us a line and let’s set up a time to talk: hello@talentkeepers.co.uk.

Returning to work? Comeback Community employee experience for you

You dear Bright Mind are the best possible person to help make the return to work experience where you work, a better one. There’s a simple, straightforward and quick way you can help us to start a conversation with your HR team. Just visit www.comebackcommunity.co.uk/introduce, fill a few boxes and leave the rest to us. And you can join us on Instagram @comebackcommuk for daily inspiration to keep you feeling confident, connected and cared for throughout your leave and return to work.

Until next time,
Stay Bright.

This is the transcript of episode 83 of COMEBACK COACH, the podcast for people returning to work after a break.

Hello Bright Minds, I’m Jessica Chivers a coaching psychologist, the author of “Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work” and founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists. I’m also the developer of the Comeback Community employee experience designed to keep employees feeling confident, connected and cared for when they take any kind of extended leave from work.

This short “JUST JESSICA EPISODE” is about managing rumination, how to keep healthy habits going when you’re consumed by work and the psychology of mindful meditation. It’s inspired by a particular coaching conversation I had one Tuesday a few weeks ago. I put these episodes together myself without the lovely Chris cleaning up bumps in the sound or adding in the swanky intro and outro and I hope you get something from it. If you do, I’d love it if you shared it with someone else who you think might like it too.

What’s gone well since last time we worked together?

I start all but the first coaching session with my coachees by asking “what’s gone well since the last time we worked together?” There’s some psychology behind this question that comes from the work of social psychology Professor Barbara Fredrickson. She developed the Broaden & Build theory which says that positive emotions do much more than cause us happiness, joy, and contentment in the moments we experience them. They also broaden our behaviours (or what she calls “thought-action repertoires” which basically means the range of behaviours we can perceive and subsequently decide to take). The more positive emotions we experience, the wider the range of thought-action repertoires we have – in other words, the happier we are, the more flexible and creative we are in the way that we work.

Imagine a communications manager who’s worried about redundancy. She’s unlikely to come up with daring, innovative, award-winning comms because she’s focused on safety and survival, and not much else.

On the other hand, if we’re feeling good, our broadened behaviours help us build rich work-related knowledge, skills and abilities which Professor Fredrickson refers to as personal, physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources. These broadened resources outlast the good feelings that initially helped generate them and they also help us cope better with difficult situations.

So by opening coaching sessions by asking “What’s gone well?” since last time I’m aiming to generate positive feelings. It’s also why we encourage coachees to reflect daily or weekly on this same question using the beautiful WGW journal we include in their Welcome Back Box that greets them when they return to work.

Coaching Charlie who was consumed by work problems

One coachee, let’s call her Charlie, answered the WGW question recently by telling me how she’d got through an uncomfortable time at work managing two people out of her team and was pleased that she’d handled it professionally and with as much care and compassion as she could. Although this was a story about what had gone well, she described how her mind had been completely consumed by the situation. This left her less able to get on with business activities in the way she normally would, distracted at home and enduring broken sleep. Our conversation happened a few days after both individuals had left the business and she was feeling enormous relief, was sleeping better and had got a shedload of work tasks ticked off in the two days since they’d gone.

In coaching time Charlie reflected that she hadn’t realised until after the team members had left just how consumed she’d been with the situation and the effect it was having on her. By consumed I mean constantly thinking about the situation, or ruminating, not working on the activities associated with managing the situation.

Here’s what else was happening to Charlie:

• Not exercising
• Drinking alcohol midweek
• Not eating breakfast or lunch
• Fuelling herself with coffee
• Being distracted and distant at home
• Falling asleep on the settee at 7pm
• Waking up in the night
• An aching, tired body

The problem was, Charlie wasn’t noticing these things. And without awareness you can’t change things. The things are a mixture of causes and symptoms (some are both) and taken together these will have put even more load on Charlie’s mind and body on top of the emotional stress of having to performance manage two team member out of the business.

I wondered whether having a ‘healthy habits’ checklist that Charlie runs through at the end of each day – irrespective of whether she feels she’s having a hard time at work – could be useful to help her in the future. My thinking is that if she gets into the habit of checking in with herself every day, she’ll spot warning signs earlier and be able to course correct.

Daily Check-In Tool

So Dear Bright Minds I put together a DAILY CHECK-IN tool and whizzed it over to Charlie for her feedback and she thought it would be helpful, so here I am sharing it with you. If what I’ve described at Charlie’s situation resonates or you’re simply curious, head to www.comebackcommunity.co.uk/dailycheckin.pdf to get a copy you can print and use.

Now let’s say a bit more about what rumination is and how to deal with it, because rumination is a problem behaviour in itself.

Before I do, if you’re listening to this before 21st May 2024 you’re in time to join our live Q&A with clinical psychologist Michaela Thomas on HOW TO LIVE WELL WITH ANXIETY AND OTHER MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. We call these live live Q&As ‘Comeback Conversations’ because they’re informal chats with experts on topics of interest to people coming back to work from a break. They’re part of our Comeback Community employee experience programme that we deliver in some great workplaces to keep their people feeling confident, connected and cared for when they take any kind of extended leave from work. Once our clients have had first dibs we open spare spots to all absolutely free. Incidentally, you can also hear Michaela on episode 81 talking about perfectionism, ADHD and keeping resentment at bay when partners becoming parents in the context of her experience of returning to work from maternity leave firstly as a clinical psychologist in the NHS and then after her second maternity leave, working for herself.

Greg Siegle is a Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Translational Sciences at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and he’s spent 25 years exploring rumination. That’s a lot of thinking about thinking.

Rumination

Rumination is defined in the Oxford dictionary as thinking deeply about something. I like to ruminate, may you do too. But the concept of ruminating doesn’t have particularly positive connotations – we tend to think of it as a problematic behaviour. And rumination becomes a problem when you’d like to stop thinking about something but you can’t. You might be familiar with replaying an embarrassing or hurtful conversation in your head, mentally dissecting what happened, considering what the consequences might be, why you didn’t do things differently and just going round and round in this horrible loop that takes you nowhere and leaves you feeling sh1t quite frankly and totally drained.

There’s a collection of areas of the brain that have been labelled the Default Mode Network which neuroscientists have found are active when we’re awake but not directing our attention to anything in particular. For example when we’re sitting on a train gazing out of the window day-dreaming. The flipside is when we’re concentrating on something specific such as giving someone directions or explaining to a colleague what to include in a client report, the Default Mode Network is less active.

And why do I tell you this? Well the Default Mode Network has been found to be more active in people who are prone to unhelpful rumination – and by that I mean rumination that gets in the way of daily tasks, our ability to concentrate, connect with others or to experience positive emotions. People who have a clinical diagnosis of depression are likely to have higher levels of DMN activity.

Distraction as antidote to rumination

So what’s the answer? Well according to our friend Professor Siegle from the university of Pittsburgh its DISTRACTION. Distraction is the number one way to move ourselves on from unhelpful rumination he said in the New York Times earlier this year and there’s good evidence for that. And that makes sense because when we’re actively engaged in a task that needs a lot of concentration we’ve reduced the activity of the Default Mode Network, that functional collection of areas in the brain that’s more active when we’re ruminating. Still with me? I hope so.
Right, let’s talk about meditation and how that links to all this. Meditation has been shown to reduce the activity of the Default Mode Network and to be a super helpful way to reduce rumination. Meditation exercises are essentially ways to focus very specifically on the here and now. In mindfulness meditation, we’re learning how to pay attention to the breath as it goes in and out and notice when the mind wanders. This practice of returning to the breath builds our ability to concentrate as well giving us a break from whatever has been racing around our minds. I also like using meditation mantras from the kundalini yoga tradition and I’ve included links to a couple of tracks I find myself returning to time and again.

I’ve put a link in the show notes to a very readable yet packed-with-research references link to an article about meditation and the DMN on the Mindfulness Association’s website.

As with all the episodes of COMEBACK COACH I hope you got something from what I shared today and if it’s left you with questions or wanting to make a comment please do come and talk to me. You can reach me by e-mail jc@talentkeepers.co.uk or on Instagram using the handle @comebackcommuk.

Comeback Community employee experience

COMEBACK COACH is one part of a broader package of support that we call the Comeback Community employee experience. It’s a blend of online resources, coaching, live expert Q&As, career development tools and line manager support that we deliver in organisations such as CIPD, Lily’s Kitchen, GAM Investments, Federated Hermes, FDM and more. You dear Bright Mind are the best possible person to help make the return to work experience where you work, a better one. There’s a simple, straightforward and quick way you can help us to start a conversation with your HR team. Just visit www.comebackcommunity.co.uk/introduce, fill a few boxes and leave the rest to us.

Until next time,
Stay Bright.

For International Men’s Day we asked Ian Dinwiddy, specialist fatherhood coach in our executive coach team, for his reflections on why men don’t take Shared Parental Leave. We also spoke to new father Phil Bush from Euromonitor who took a sabbatical to help support his partner’s return to work from maternity leave, instead of taking Shared Parental Leave. Here’s a snippet from our conversation with Phil on episode 75 of COMEBACK COACH.

Why do businesses who have a female attraction and retention issue need to focus on men?

A paper in Harvard Business Review reports men and women equally ambitious, but the drop-off is faster for women in organisations where gender diversity isn’t valued. 80% of men become fathers and if we encourage men to take Shared Parental Leave we start to see men in a very different way; we start to change what success looks like in the workplace. Importantly, if employers can’t tell which individuals are going to take leave (women taking maternity or men taking Shared Parental Leave) we start to change the expectations and the culture within business. We make gender diversity and equality more likely.

Why don’t men take Shared Parental Leave in our business?

In a nutshell, men need their own protected period of leave, not a piece of their partner/spouse’s maternity leave. It needs to be well paid and men need to be actively encouraged to take it.

In 2017, two years after Shared Parental Leave was introduced to the UK with little success, coaching psychologist and founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists, Jessica Chivers, wrote on LinkedIn what employers need to do to encourage men to take it.

How to get men to take SPL in a nutshell

Ask expectant fathers to tell you they are an expectant father.

Jessica writes:

If employers really do want fathers to take-up SPL they need to start asking these employees to let them know that they are expecting (a voluntary “DADB1” form alongside the “MATB1” form women are given by the NHS to pass to their employers?). This is the start of cultural change and can be achieved through some simple internal comms, including stories of high profile men in the organisation or wider industry who have taken time out. This raises awareness of what SPL is, that it’s OK to take it and how it could be of benefit to the individual. Women returning from maternity leave are fresh, motivated and come with new perspectives and solutions to their organisation’s challenges – and with support they quickly return or exceed their previous peak performance. They’re assets and it’s about time we treated them as such and encouraged fathers to get in on the act too.

We can’t afford to extend our paternity leave offering, what else can I do to support our new dads?

How can line managers support new fathers in their team?

The main things:

1. Show an interest.
2. Make no assumptions.
3. Know the daily pressure points for the father(s) in your team.

Coaching fathers for sustainable performance & wellbeing

Talk to us about coaching fathers and small group workshops and webinars: hello@talentkeepers.co.uk and +44 (0)1727 856169.

Caring for employees with neurodivergent children is close to my heart, writes Jessica Chivers, coaching psychologist and founder of The Talent Keeper Specialists.

“Last year my son was permanently excluded from school four months ahead of his GCSEs for ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ and six weeks later my daughter was diagnosed with anorexia. My son was diagnosed with atypical autism, ADHD and secondary anxiety when he was 11. He smashed his GCSEs and my daughter is back in the right weight for height bracket…and I’m on my own journey to a probable ADHD diagnosis this autumn”.

That’s how I opened the session I did last week with one of our client organisations for their employee resource group (ERG) for colleagues with neurodivergent children. What follows are the notes I prepared for myself in response to some of the questions that were sent in advance.

This is a picture of me and my son on GCSE results day on holiday in Kos. I posted his story – with his permission – on LinkedIn the same day and the response was phenomenal.

Line manager trust & WFH = two vital ingredients for employees with challenging home lives

What emerged in the Q&A, which was extremely well-attended might I add…more employees are affected than you might think, is the career-changing magic of a line manager who trusts you to get your job done and a culture which is supportive of WFH.

When the sh1t hits the fan at home and you’ve got the ability to WFH + a line manager who trusts you, the Sh1t doesn’t smell as bad, doesn’t take as long to clean up and doesn’t derail you as much as it otherwise might.

The Economist reported last month that whilst latest research on remote workplace productivity shows a decline when working from home, there is more to work (and life) than productivity. I quote: “Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees.”

7 Questions from employees with neurodivergent children

• How do you stop that moment impacting your whole day, whilst trying to be there for them but also knowing that she needs to get to school and I need to get to work and not all be late?
• How do you get ready mentally after a busy day at work and need the energy to parent when there are other challenges awaiting for you at home
• What advice would you give to parents when their child goes mute and won’t communicate in any way?
• In your opinion what is the best way to communicate with a child’s school?
• How do you make sure you have time for yourself?
• What do you say to people when they say “But isn’t everyone a little bit autistic?”
• Anxiety and being Neurodivergent seem to go hand in hand, why do you think that is?

Due to many reasons my mornings might not go to plan, something might throw me off like suddenly the PE shorts that my daughter has been wearing feels too uncomfortable and can result in overwhelm whilst trying to hurry out the door. How do you stop that moment impacting your whole day, whilst trying to be there for them but also knowing that she needs to get to school and I need to get to work and not all be late?

• My approach was to start building in buffer at the start of the day in case something went wrong. When we’ve been through our worst times I would get my PA to start my day at 9.30am so I had time to soothe myself, re-do make-up if there’d been tears and just get my head together.
• I think it’s good to have someone you can be really honest with and who can perhaps speak for you on these occasions – this is someone you can call and say “I’ve had a shit start, I’ll be in at X time and I am fine and don’t need to talk about it OR I’m not fine but I don’t want to talk about it.” This person can then do that necessary communication for you.
• It’s worth taking 5-15 minutes longer than you need to get your head together before going into work. I think it’s better to be fractionally later than you need to be and present yourself in a better state than get there 5-10 minutes sooner but still be mentally jangling.
• Journalling, singing and dancing, walking and some vigorous cleaning have all been my quick go-to solutions to getting my mind in a better state.
• In this specific situation about the shorts, I learned that when things like this happened to be able to quickly think of two options that are both palatable to you:
• “OK, I hear you and we can get new shorts at the weekend. Today you’ve got two choices: 1) you can wear those shorts for your PE lesson for 50 minutes even though they’re a bit tight OR you can wear your tracksuit bottoms and I will send a note. I’ll give you five minutes to decide.” This would have worked with my son because I: a) acknowledged him, b) showed I understood where he was coming from, c) gave him some power and d) showed him a solution was coming and when it was coming.

How do you get ready mentally after a busy day at work and need the energy to parent when there are other challenges awaiting for you at home with a child that has masked all day, tiredness, sensory issues.

Give yourself a physical and mental breather before you enter your home or step out from your home work space.

With young children as soon as they see you they think you’re available so it’s probably easiest if you take your rest before you enter your home (if you’re working outside of home) or if you’re working at home, to take it inside the room you’ve been working in. Or sneak out of the front door!

With older kids you can ‘train’ them to understand and respect that although you’ve finished your work, it’ll be X many minutes until you’re ready to come and give them your attention. This is then your space to leave the house for a walk; go into the garden to pull some weeds or do something else to refresh and reset yourself – like lying on your bed with your eyes closed with a meditation app or some music.

What advice would you give to parents when their child goes mute and won’t communicate in any way?

I can’t speak to this I’m afraid – The National Autistic Society could be a useful port of call.

Speaking to school about what they notice there is probably a good idea.

Is there someone in the family or a friend that the child is communicating with?

In your opinion what is the best way to communicate with a child’s school?

Honestly, as frequently as need, with respect, acknowledging what they HAVE done that’s been positive; be clear about exactly what you want to happen (if you know what that is). I fell into a bit of an apologetic pattern with my son’s school and felt terrible about the amount of time the DH was spending sorting situations out, thinking “Imagine if every child was like mine and he had to do this much work for every child?” but of course my son was an outlier, the school wasn’t dealing with 200 kids per year group like my son.

I think documenting everything is a really smart idea. Follow-up in-person meetings with an e-mail saying thank you and bulleting key action points or agreements.

How do you make sure you have time for yourself?

If you have a very, very difficult situation at home it’s vital to build in time for you to be away from the complexity and the burden. I have learned this through experiencing times when I didn’t feel good at all. Taking time out can mean the difference between life and death at its most extreme. Less seriously it can mean the difference between staying married and getting divorced. It can mean the difference between staying physically and mentally well and using wholesome coping strategies and becoming addicted to alcohol, drugs or food as a comfort.

What do you say to people when they say “But isn’t everyone a little bit autistic?”

I say that’s not true and it’s called Autistic Spectrum Disorder because the severity exists on a spectrum. The spectrum doesn’t mean everyone is on it. I think people who say this are well meaning and they’re trying to be inclusive but it’s not true and I don’t think it’s helpful.

You might have heard of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – this is the ‘Bible’ for psychiatrists and psychologists and sets out the criteria for a person being diagnosed with any mental condition.

You’re not on the spectrum until you hit certain criteria.

Anxiety and being Neurodivergent seem to go hand in hand, why do you think that is?

Trying to fit into a neurotypical’s world.

Resources

A flavour of resources we flagged in the session:

• The Explosive Child by Dr Ross Greene
• Diagnostic & Statistical Manual
• What is an EHCP?
• National Autistic Society
• QbCheck for ADHD

How can we help you?

Q&As like the one we were part of at Stantec is great for building a sense connection between colleagues. As the number of children being diagnosed grows (because of greater understanding and recognition) the more this is a matter of interest to your parent employees.

Parents who have challenging circumstances do well to have a listening ear open to them. If you’d like to find out about hiring some of the team to provide ad hoc coaching sessions one day a month, please get in touch. There are three of us who are very well versed in the challenges of parenting non-neurotypical children.