Category: Neurodiversity-Affirming
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Challenging Outdated Practices in Behavioral Assessment: A Call for Change
In an era where education must rise to meet the needs of all learners, the recently released guidance titled “Using Functional Behavioral Assessments to Create Supportive Learning Environments” (November 2024) fails to reflect approaches grounded in trauma-sensitive care, neuroscience, and neurodiversity-affirming practices. The guidance reinforces outdated frameworks that prioritize managing behavior over fostering safety, connection,…
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Accommodations Prepare Children for The Real World
October 2023 was very different from October 2024. My children were enrolled in public school in a small town in Connecticut, and we were all feeling miserable. My oldest son, Frankie, was in second grade and struggling tremendously. We had yet to have an IEP meeting after nearly two months of school. His anxiety was…
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Be Curious and Dig Deeper
Struggles with non-preferred tasks. How many of us have read this sentence about our child? How many have written this sentence about a child we work with, or had it written about you? I heard this sentence in my son’s annual IEP (Individualized Education Plan) review meeting and am still kicking myself for not addressing…
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Becoming Neurodiversity Affirming: Listening to Autistic People to Inform our Approaches with Neurodivergent Students in Schools
Autistic people are advocating for changes in how we support neurodivergent children in schools. Instead of trying to make Autistic students conform to neurotypical expectations, we need to better understand and accommodate them. The neurodiversity paradigm views autism as a different way of being (Houting, 2019). Autistic people may think, process senses, move, communicate, and…