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Transcript:

A neurodiversity affirming approach to supporting people is not saying, oh, I don’t believe you’ll ever learn to do blah. That’s not what we’re saying here with lowering expectations.

We’re saying at a particular moment on a particular day, when there are certain other challenging things going on, asking a child to do a different challenging thing that is extra hard for them may not be the right moment . Lowering expectations is more about reducing demands and being flexible to what is going on for that child in that moment.

Do they have the capacity to try something new, to stretch their skills, or are they at their edge? Are they feeling in sensory shutdown? Are they feeling overwhelmed or anxious? And it may not always be showing on the outside. In which case, asking of a child to do something extra, something stretchy, like try a whole new reading level, or go into a new social situation or eat that new food.

There’s a chance that those expectations may be too much for the child at that time on these particularly challenging days.

Welcome to the Exploring Neurodiversity Podcast for adults who support Neurodivergent children.

I’m Adina from Play. Learn. Chat. I’m an autistic ADHDer, a speech therapist, professional educator, speaker.

This podcast is recorded on the Aboriginal lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people.

As we head into the busiest part of the year with a lot of changes, a lot of unpredictable off routine things, maybe some extreme weather. I wanted to share some of the ways that I support myself and my kids to. Proactively regulate and prepare for big days, difficult days, or potentially difficult days.

What actually sparked this is that today is a very hot day in Sydney, Australia, it’s gonna reach 33 degrees Celsius, which is pretty hot. And even just walking my daughter to school, it was yeah, feeling like a Scorcher. So I had a chat with her this morning and I thought, I am gonna share with you some of the things that my daughter and I talked about.

Now. We spend a lot of time in our house being very, open and conscious talking about our sensory regulation, our emotional regulation, our social capacity, and all things like that. Sometimes I probably forget to recognize that that might not be the conversations going on in every household. So these are tools that are useful for everyone, whether you’re a professional supporting kids, and you wanna help kids feel aware of their regulation state and empowered to find supports that help them to self-advocate and you wanna be able to support them.

To get and stay more regulated. That is awesome. If you’re doing it for the kids good. And if you are here listening for yourself, you’re thinking perhaps you also could take a few tips away for how you could prepare for tricky, busy, difficult off-book times coming up soon. I hope that you take something away from this episode, and please let me know what you’re going to try or, what’s been useful for you to think about in anticipating potentially difficult times ahead.

Now as I record this 26th of November, I am running a week of daily deals each day there’s a different thing on offer for professionals who support neurodivergent children.

If you listen today, when it comes out live everything is one day only. So I’ve got my business boost bundle, which is for allied health business owners, especially those in Australia because there’s quite a bit of NDIS. Support stuff in there. And that comes to you from my business coach Self, from my other business called Differently Aligned Business Coaching.

How many times can I say the word business in a sentence? Anyway I’ve got the link to the daily deals in the show notes. If, of course, you’re listening after this week, so this is going 26th, 27th, 28th of November. If you’re listening after the fact, go to that page anyway, and there’ll be some information about what other ways I can support you.

Let’s head into chat about some of the ways that my daughter and I were talking about anticipating and preparing ourselves for what might be a tricky day. I will say both of us happened to have pretty poor sleep last night, so there was a double confounding situation where there might be a case of poor sleep and very hot weather that might make the day tricky for both of us.

And so one of the key things I wanna share with you is this idea of anticipating what might be tricky. And it’s not to be all doom and gloom and always expect the worst, but I think preparing for. The worst or what might be challenging can be incredibly useful, especially for autistic folks like myself who find it very soothing to be able to see how something in the future may unfold and feel prepared for a few different eventualities.

For anxious folks, this can be very helpful in many situations.

And so while I hope that we all have a good day, and I hope that you have a good day, I’ve started off the day modeling for my daughter and for myself. This idea of being on the front foot with sensory supports.

For me, this looked like picking out some very comfortable clothes my least irritating clothing, and I modeled it for her by showing her how I was choosing that and explaining why I was choosing that clothing. So, you know, the baseline of the day is, getting off to a good start with quite a lot of conscious effort.

When we anticipate that the day ahead might be challenging, we could put into place as many things that we can control as possible. I could control my conscious decision to eat a slightly bigger breakfast than I normally would, and for me that’s something, ’cause I am not a big breakfast person and I kind of struggle to want to eat breakfast.

But today I recognize that needing the calories in me to be able to have that sort of energetic buffer for the day was actually really, really important. So, to some degree I sort of pushed through what I wasn’t that keen on eating, but I ate a little bit more so that I was ready with a little bit more calorie in me earlier on because I know that does help me.

Food is good. And just PS if you’re wondering what that looks like for me some days it’s smoothie. That’s probably my easiest food when I don’t feel like eating anything at all. But I didn’t have enough bananas available for that today. So it’s a muesli bar and I’m trying different types.

One of the ways that my daughter and I prepared for the day mentally, emotionally.

was we each came up with a short list of things that might help us if we start to feel dysregulated.

This is useful for every child. A child doesn’t have to be neurodivergent. Or experience particular challenges for you to build up their capacity to understand what helps them feel good and what doesn’t help them feel good. And PS all of this applies to adults as well. If you yourself don’t really know how you can help yourself feel better when you feel overwhelmed, frustrated.

Anxious. I want you to do some work to find out and even make yourself a little list. Could be visual, could be a little list in your phone of three things that help you feel better fairly quickly. Maybe it’s having a snack, maybe it’s putting on a very specific song that helps you kind of shift your mood a little bit.

Maybe it’s having a sip of cold water, whatever it is, it’s very individual. I want you to build your toolkit and you need to be supporting the kids around you to build their toolkit. The toolkit can be like a literal set of objects, but it doesn’t have to be. It really should be a set of ideas, of possible regulating things, and it does not have to be long, long. Could be overwhelming here.

So it’s really worth spending the time figuring out what is your toolkit and what is the toolkit of the individual kits that you support.

And then just having a toolkit doesn’t really get any change happening. Reminding the child or reminding yourself about the strategies that support you or them to feel more regulated is super important. So having visual reminders is important, but continuing to talk about it, plan for it ahead of time, practice it.

That is what really, really helps and individual figure out, okay, this is what helps me feel better, and this is when I might need to use it, and this is when I might want to use it.

You might be heading into a set of completely turned upside down school days. There might be, you know, special events and assemblies. Rehearsals and performances and planning days and all kinds of things that happen at this time of year. And while some of them can be very exciting, they can also be very disconcerting.

So please do remember, especially for autistic children, but it can be for everyone. These changes in routine and these unexpected, sometimes last minute shifts to what normally happens. It can feel incredibly dysregulating, for any kids, and especially any neurodivergent kids that you’re supporting. If you can anticipate that these days might be particularly challenging for them, you can put things in place. You can discuss the strategies ahead of time, you can practice them.

There’s two more big ideas that I wanna share with you before I close off this episode.

One is the idea of lowering expectations. Some people misinterpret this. Sometimes a neurodiversity affirming approach to supporting people is not saying, oh, I don’t believe you’ll ever learn to do blah. That’s not what we’re saying here with lowering expectations.

We’re saying at a particular moment on a particular day, when there are certain other challenging things going on, asking a child to do a different challenging thing that is extra hard for them may not be the right moment . Lowering expectations is more about reducing demands and being flexible to what is going on for that child in that moment.

Do they have the capacity to try something new, to stretch their skills, or are they at their edge? Are they feeling in sensory shutdown? Are they feeling overwhelmed or anxious? And it may not always be showing on the outside. In which case, asking of a child to do something extra, something stretchy, like try a whole new reading level, or go into a new social situation or eat that new food.

There’s a chance that those expectations may be too much for the child at that time on these particularly challenging days. So I’m here to remind you that it is okay to reduce expectations. This is not a lifelong overall thing where we’re not expecting people to grow and shift. Absolutely. That’s not what I’m saying.

This is about being flexible to the situation and attentive to the particular individual that you are supporting, whether it’s a child or whether it’s yourself. And noticing what is within their capacity and when is it a moment to back off and just work on existing, surviving, thriving feeling, okay in our bodies and minds.

And this might well be the time of year to just step back from some of those expectations and step into comfort, connection, understanding.

The last piece I’m gonna touch on is around self-advocacy. So once you’ve built this groundwork of supporting a child to understand themselves, understand their toolkit, what helps them. You are building the capacity for self-advocacy. But that doesn’t just magically happen. They don’t just magically put their hand up and say you know, Hey, teacher, I’m feeling really anxious.

Can I please go for a walk in the hallway? That might take practice. It takes confidence. It takes a sense of feeling that you’re going to be believed and that your needs are going to be honored and supported. And it takes experiences, positive experiences of having self advocated and having somebody, usually a grownup believe in you and honor that request that you asked for to get your needs met.

That is a lifelong learning. I’m still learning it. I’m still learning how to self-advocate. So again, model self-advocacy for the kids you support. Give them permission to self-advocate. Give them the words to self-advocate, and do make sure that you’re connecting with all the other grownups around a child, whether you’re a teacher, connecting with parents, whether you’re a therapist, connecting with a teacher, however that looks for you.

Make sure that there’s a team around the child sharing these concepts and the strategies that we’re seeing work. And communicating about the supports that a child may need, because they may not show up in all of these settings

in the same way a child might mask how they’re really feeling and their sensory needs throughout the day at school, and then melt down at home or shut down at home, and with better communication across all settings. You’re gonna have a better chance of understanding what might really be going on for that child.

And PS, please do ask the kid as well. But that takes relationship. That takes time. That’s probably a conversation for another day.

I hope that this has been helpful , being proactive.

Looking ahead, planning ahead practicing is always gonna be better than being reactive. But yes, sometimes you need to react as well, and that’s okay. But when you’re very proactive in putting supports in place,

the amount of reactive support that’s needed reduces greatly. That is really the goal here. Please feel free to get in touch with me and let me know what has been helpful. And as I said earlier, go and check the link in the show notes if you’re listening. On the 26th to the 28th of November 2025 .

I have a fresh offer every single day for professionals who support neurodivergent children, so you can keep your neurodiversity affirming practice learning going. Thank you for being open to learning and unlearning and to listening to the perspectives and experiences of Neurodivergent folks.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend, share a screenshot on Instagram, pop a five star rating and a review in your favorite app. And join me on Instagram and Facebook.

I’m @play.Learn.chat. Have a beautiful day. !