Neurodiversity and Executive Functioning: Session 1

Welcome everyone. My name is Karine Hartounian-Koukian. I've been an SLP for over 20 years with a passion for telepractice across the lifespan. I'm a lifelong learner, a professional development enthusiast, and the current CE here at— CE administrator here at Parallel. Thank you for being here today and spending the next hour with us. At Parallel, we take great pride in nurturing our professional community as well as the broader community by offering innovative high-quality programming for clinicians and educators alike. A few housekeeping items before we start. First and foremost, I want to sincerely thank each and every one of you for the incredible work you do as providers. You are at the forefront making a meaningful difference in the lives of students each and every day. This course is offered for 0.1 ASHA CEUs and 1 NASP-approved CPD credit. If you wish to have us report CEUs to ASHA and/or receive a certificate of completion, please be sure to do the following: attend the entire live webinar. Attendance will be tracked through Zoom reports. Be sure to join with the email address attached to your registration. Make sure that that's the email you have used. No partial credit will be awarded. Complete and submit a self-assessment evaluation within the deadline, and be sure to indicate that you want to receive ASHA CEUs and provide your ASHA ID in the post-webinar survey that you'll receive. We love and encourage questions from participants, and if you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them towards the end during our Q&A. And while it's not a requirement to stay after the completion of the educational portion of Dr. Jordan's presentation, we do have some exciting surprises afterwards. So please do stay on if you can for a few minutes to hear a little bit more about Parallel and how we are supporting districts across the US. And we have also a raffle that you can enter. Now, I'd love— I'd like to introduce to you without further ado, Our Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Jordan Wright. Dr. Jordan is a clinical and developmental psychologist with expertise in psychological assessment. Dr. Jordan is a clinical associate professor at NYU and the founding director of the NYU Center for Counseling and Community Well-Being and is focused on social justice— excuse me— social justice issues in the mental health space broadly. He's conducted research specifically in teleassessment with children and adolescents and has authored the only book on the topic, Essentials of Psychological Teleassessment, widely cited and consulted with on evidence-based psychological assessment practice. And having first authored a recent article on evidence-based clinical psychological assessment and authoring the Handbook of Psychological Assessment, the widely used text on this topic. And now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce today's speaker, Dr. Jordan Wright.

Thank you very much, Corrine, and thank you for joining everybody out there in the ether wherever you are. I can't see you. You can see me. I apologize for that. I would much rather see your faces than talk to right now my face. I— one thing I do want to add, these are, these are some of my favorite topics to talk about.

I—

you're gonna probably hear this loud and clear, but I have an ADHD brain, and it's gonna, it's gonna be loud. This ADHD brain is very, very clear. And I— the disclosures, I am paid by Parallel Learning because I am the Chief Clinical Officer. I don't have any non- financial disclosures to make at this point. But all right, now to the fun stuff. Now to the meat of it. Here's what we're going to be covering this evening. We are going to be first and foremost defining neurodiversity. If you just Google neurodiversity, you're going to find a bunch of different definitions. We're going to use— I'm going to discuss how I like to think about neurodiversity and how I've written about it. I've published a few articles in this space, and we'll talk about where I think definitions diverge and are not optimal and whatnot. We are also going to really focus on the mismatch between neurodivergent students' brains and their environments and how this contributes to difficulties, the presentations that we see. And then we're going to try and focus on concrete actions we can take to improve the lives of our neurodivergent kids that we are working with. And as Corinne said, we are, we are, I am, I'll speak for myself, extremely grateful for this community of providers, of educators, teachers, speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, social workers, the whole gamut. I am extremely grateful. Counselors, for all of you who are enriching and bettering the lives of our kids out there. both neurodivergent and neurotypical. So the first question is, what is neurodiversity? This is a fairly straightforward question. What do we mean by neurodiversity? Well, let's pick it apart. First and foremost, let's talk about diversity. We all know what diversity is, right? Diversity actually just means difference. That's what the word actually means. But when we use it in this context, we're really talking about variation, variation within the larger population. We know it much more generically when we think about it. We think about skin color, race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexuality, all of these things. There are so many aspects of diversity that enrich our world, that enrich our lives, that cause difficulties for some people because of prejudices and biases. But diversity in and of itself just means variation, variation within the population. We're all different. If we weren't, we'd be so bored, right? Then we need to think about what does the neuro half of it mean? And when we think about the neuro half of this word, we think about neurotypicality. And neurotypicality is the way most people's brains interact with the world. We'll talk a little bit more about what I mean by the brain interacting with the world. But here I'm going to really be thinking about sensation and perception, how we are sensing the world, how we're taking in information from the world around us, and how we're perceiving it. That's how we understand the world around us. So when we think about neurotypicality, most people out there, the overwhelming majority of people, brains work pretty similarly. I know there was a big movement to think about like visual learners versus kinesthetic learners versus auditory learners. and that kind of stuff. And it turns out the research doesn't support that. We actually all learn pretty much in the same way. When we are neurotypical, we, we learn things— the, the neural pathways toward learning are pretty similar for everybody, even if we think we learn better auditorily or visually or kinesthetically or musically or all that kind of stuff. We are mostly neurotypical. The world is mostly neurotypical, and that means the world is organized and built around neurotypicality for the most part. So ultimately, when we think about neurodiversity, it is variation in the way people's brains take in information and the way their brains interact with that information. So that is variation. In the way that I sense things and perceive things going on around me, take in information and understand that information. So the definition matters though, right? If you look online, you're going to see neurodiversity is a big umbrella that includes all of these things. If you Google it, there's very little that's not included in neurodiversity. Right? If you're depressed, if you're anxious, if you're bipolar, if you have PTSD, if you have a personality disorder, if you're gifted, all of this is included under the umbrella of the way some people define neurodiversity, because they're really just thinking it's a variation in the way that your brain works, period. Now, this is one way to define it. But if we take a step back, I'm going to be thinking really about the way that our brain interacts with the world. And we start with sensation again. Sensation is the way we are sensing the world, the way that we're taking in information around us. So the world is busy around us. The world is going on. You can't see my hands super well when I have a virtual background on. It's very creepy. That's a sensation. You're watching my hands, and it's— and you're sensing You're taking that information in. Perception is how it then enters the mind, right? So it's how you understand that information. So you're seeing my fingers move and the sensation is like, oh, that's weird. The perception is, oh, but I'm interpreting that as him being a hand talker. And I know what hands do and I know he's wiggling his fingers. That is perception. Because even though this doesn't look normal and human because of my virtual background, you are perceiving it as human because you're interpreting what you are sensing. So sensation and perception have to do with that, what I call liminal space. The liminal space is like that doorway between the world outside and getting the information into the brain. But then there's also cognition, and that's what happens completely within the brain. And that's what I'm actually going to delete from the definition of neurodiversity. When I think about neurodiversity, I'm thinking about sensation and perception. I'm not necessarily thinking about cognition and what happens completely inside my mind, inside my brain. So this is going to rule out things like sadness, depression, Anxiety, because all that's actually happening inside my head, my brain, my body, wherever it's happening, it's happening inside me. OCD, right? Although it's manifesting maybe behaviorally, and I'm acting on it, the root of it is not how I'm sensing the world differently. It's not really how I'm understanding the world around me, though some of it may be. I may be perceiving danger around me where there's no danger, or precarity where there's no precarity. But in general, it's mostly what's happening inside my brain that I'm thinking and thinking and thinking about things. So when I go back to my neurodiversity umbrella, my umbrella, my definition of neurodiversity is going to get narrower, right? I am really going to be thinking about the autistic brain, the ADHD brain, the sensory processing disorder brain, the learning disabled brain, Having learning differences, whatever we are, however we're using the language around it, we're really thinking about, okay, ADHD brains actually perceive the world differently. Autistic brains sense the world very differently. Sensory processing disorder brains sense it very differently. Individuals with learning differences, they're taking in information differently. than the neurotypical brain. So when I think about neurodiversity, I'm really narrowing my definition down to those who are sensing and perceiving the world differently than what is considered neurotypical, than the overwhelming majority of brains out there. In addition to the definition, I'm going to just take a little aside to talk about language. The language we use matters. And here are just a few examples. You're going to hear neurodiverse and neurodivergent. These are a little bit different— neurodiverse and neurodivergent. So neurodivergence is about a kid. A kid's brain is neurodivergent. An adult's brain, my brain, is seen as neurodivergent. The brain is not neurodiverse. Seeing a little bit of chat. I'm making sure I'm checking in with everybody. Is everybody still seeing my screen and my language matters and diversity? Hopefully you are seeing this. If not, I'm just gonna keep talking and, and be very explicit as I talk. So neurodiverse is a group of people. A group of people is neurodiverse. But an individual kid is neurodivergent. So an individual brain is neurodivergent. A group, you might have a classroom that has a lot of neurodiversity in it with kids who are neurodivergent. We also, the neurodiversity movement has moved us away from this more medical model disorder deficit focus when we think about neurodiversity. So instead of thinking about autism spectrum disorder, we don't— we try not to think about it. That is still the language in the DSM-5-TR and the ICD-11. It is still called that disorder. And sometimes when I do an evaluation, I absolutely have to use that language to make that formal diagnosis. But when I'm talking about a kid, I'm going to talk about an autistic kid. When I'm talking about an adult, I'm going to talk about an autistic adult. There will be autistic individuals who prefer person-first language. They prefer a person with autism rather than autistic. But the literature says, and the overwhelming majority of neurodivergent individuals prefer identity-first language, right? Autistic individual, an ADHD person, rather than a person with ADHD or with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Because it is so ingrained in their identity and who they are. They are— we don't say a person with Blackness, right? We say a Black person. Or a— I am a queer person. I am not a person with queerness or something like that. So the identity-first language is our— is right now our go-to. That may change. The winds of what is preferred change. But ADHD, it has that D on it. It has that disorder. We haven't found a better way of identifying it, but I tend to use the ADHD brain rather than the full phrase attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which emphasizes that disorder. There's a lot of debate about learning disabilities versus learning differences versus learning disorders. I like the idea of learning differences. It, it acknowledges that yes, there are some roadblocks for kids who have learning differences, but there are also some strengths that we can capitalize on. This is not just a disability and a disorder that's all negative that you have to overcome. Learning differences means we also need to accommodate. We also need to change some of the way we're educating to align with the way different brains work. The neurotypical classroom is not going to work for a kid with a learning difference. or a learning disability or a learning disorder. But if we adapt the way that we're educating and assessing kids, maybe actually we'll find that their brilliance can shine through. It's not something we need to fix through therapy and counseling and skills and remediation, though some of that we may need to, right? That difference, we may need to get some skills and upskill them.

All right.

So here's our first poll. Based on my definition of neurodiversity, how many people in this audience would identify themselves as neurodivergent? How many of you would identify yourselves? I'm hoping Kareem can launch this poll for me. And I don't even think I'm going to be able to see if it's launched, but I'm going to just trust it. Oh yes, I can see it. It is launched. It should pop up in its own box. Our choices are not me, I'm neurotypical as can be, or maybe I'm a smidge neurodivergent, maybe. I suspect I might be, though I think a formal diagnosis would help me confirm it, or me, me, definitely me, right here pointing at me. I'm going to give you about 30 seconds To answer this poll, should have Jeopardy music playing. And we have the results. Excellent. We have you can't. I don't think you can see the results. I can. Maybe you can, but I can. And what we find is a pretty even distribution. We're seeing actually a minority are saying I'm neurotypical. But a full third of our participants are saying, maybe I'm a smidge. A quarter are saying, I suspect I might be, but I have not been formally diagnosed and that would help. And about a quarter are saying, yep, I am neurodivergent. We are seeing— obviously, you know this— we're seeing an uptick in neurodivergence in our world. And some of that may be increased rates. I suspect more of it is just a sensitivity to it. an understanding of it, more people getting— being aware of it through TikTok and whatnot, and getting evaluated, and us probably being better at detecting some of the less obvious signs of neurodivergence. So thank you for engaging in that poll. All right. So I'm going to talk about contextual mismatch. So when we think about the problems, which I'm going to put a little bit of air quotes around, the problems that Neurodivergent kids and adults face. The way that I think about this, the way that I've written about this in theoretical conceptualization, is as a contextual mismatch. It is not that your brain is deficient, right? It is not that you have an inherent disease or problem or medical issue with your brain, and it's defective and it's just not working right. It is the fact that There is a mismatch between the way that your brain interacts with the world and the way that our world is built. So when the world is built and organized for the neurotypical brain, which almost everything is, our work environment, our 9-to-5ers, our schooling systems are mostly built for neurotypical. Most of our world around us are built for the neurotypical brain. But an individual's brain interacts with the world in a different way. in that neurodivergent way, difficulties arise. And I want to be clear, what we're really looking at here are the difficulties, right? The difficulties in functioning, the difficulties in how you feel about yourself, the difficulties in your own suffering, in your own struggles with relationships, with work, with school. We're looking at those difficulties. Those are not the neurodivergence. Those are outcomes of a mismatch. So those challenges that our neurodivergent kiddos face are not because of deficits in the way their brain works, their brains work. Neurodivergent individuals struggle and suffer, and I use those very, very deliberately because I believe in the field of psychology, in education, in speech, in all of this. I'm a psychologist. I should have said that. In the field of psychology, that's what we are looking at. We're looking at struggling, which is your everyday functioning, struggling with academics, struggling with relationships, struggling with the external stuff. And we're looking at suffering, and that's the internal stuff. That's the sadness, the depression, the anxiety, the suicidality, whatever is going on inside. That's the suffering. So I break it down into those 2 things. So neurodivergent individuals struggle Externally and suffer internally because of the way that the world has been built that does not fit how their brains work, their individual brains work within that world. That is why they are struggling. That is why they are suffering. And our education system has explicitly been developed in a very specific way. Overall, right? Most of our schooling looks very similar to each other, and it works for most kids, right? It's not perfect. Schools are not perfect, but most kids are getting through school. They're learning what they need to learn. They're going to college or the workforce or doing what they need to do beyond schooling, right? It works for most kids, most brains, most kids out there, right? It looks like what I'm asking you to do right now, right? A talking person lecturing at you, asking you to listen and absorb information, go home, study that information, work hard on it, come back and demonstrate what you've learned on a test or in a paper or an oral exam or something like that. That is neurotypical schooling. It's very typical schooling in the US and many other places. And it works for most, doesn't work for neurodivergent brains very often. So this is just an analogy, right? Imagine this kid. I— this is an analogy that I like to use and actually came to life for me because one of my doctoral students right now— I'm a professor at NYU— and one of my doctoral students was chatting with me and he was telling me that this actually happened to him. He was born left-handed. And through his early schooling, and this is This is someone who's younger than I am. Everyone's younger than I am. But he is much younger than I am. So this is not that long ago. But through his early schooling, he had to hold his left hand behind his back and learn to write with his right hand. It was drilled into him for years. His handwriting is still very, very not great. That's how I found this out. I was like, oh, I'm seeing your handwriting. What is going on there? He's like, oh yeah, this is why. But we know the left-handed brain has never been inferior to the right-handed brain. But our education systems up until very recently— I hope this isn't happening much anymore. It may still be happening in some places. But our education system absolutely believed that left-handedness was inferior, and we need to undo that. We need to train our left-handers to pretend they're right-handers. Change those neurodivergences. that left-handedness, to pretend to be fully fitting into the neurotypicality, the right-handedness. But that added a layer of distress. It added a layer of problems. Their handwriting now is often not as good, but it also can affect their self-esteem. It can affect their actual academic performance, but it's never been inferior to a right-handed brain. So let's think about this analogy and apply it to ADHD. Our typical schooling, you know, we have our 40, I think my, my daughter is in the public school system in New York City, and they have like 38-minute periods. There are schools I can never wrap my brain around why they have such erratic— I know there are reasons, but these weird things. We have a 45-minute-ish lesson and lecture, and that works for most brains. But actually, the ADHD brain thrives with shorter bursts of learning, much shorter bursts. Typical schooling, we are listening to a person sort of training us to do something like you're doing right now. Sorry. But actually, the ADHD brain thrives on more engaging and hands-on learning. Experiential learning is much better. Typical schooling then sends you off to do independent practice, but the ADHD brain is all about collaborative practice. ADHD brains thrive On collaboration, on cooperation, on working together to solve problems. Homework and studying is very typical, but the ADHD brain is much more adept at projects that apply their learning to actual practice. And then typical schooling, demonstrating knowledge on tests, papers, and that kind of stuff. But the ADHD brain can get way more creative in the way that we can show our learning, show our knowledge. So this is a mismatch. The ADHD brain is no less able to learn though, right? We can take in the information, we can learn the information, we can use the information just as well as non-ADHD brains, provided we learn it, right? Provided we can attend and focus and learn it. This is something that I have become really, really fascinated with. My husband is from the UK, and their education system is quite different, and they specialize earlier on. They start whittling down in what is the equivalent of our middle school to fewer subject areas, so they can actually give up math if they're not good and don't like math. They can give it up much sooner than we can here in the US. Um, but our schooling rewards generalists, right? Those valedictorians, those people getting into the best colleges, are the ones who excel across all their subjects. They have to be good at reading, math, writing, science, social studies, history, languages, right? They have to be good at all of those things, even though that's actually not always useful for the future. The real world rewards Specialists. I often think about the fact that I'm probably— I'm definitely way dumber than I was the day I graduated from high school. When I graduated from high school, I went to this rigorous high school, and I did really well in certain ways at this high school, and I had so much useless information in my head that I have now replaced with very specialized information in psychology and education, right? I have tons of great useful knowledge for what I do now. But I've lost Latin, right? I took— I ended up— I took 13 years of Latin, and now I've lost most of that Latin. I don't know any Latin anymore. I know little bits here and there. Helped me on my SATs. But I, I don't know that anymore. I'm not a generalist anymore. In the real world, I have succeeded because I have drilled deep down into one specific area, and the hyperfocus of ADHD brains, autistic brains, excel in this specialization side of learning and knowledge and demonstration. So that is another mismatch, right? They may thrive in these very specific and particular areas of interest, and that should be an amazing thing, but it tends not to be rewarded in school, right? We tend to focus on where are you deficient. Well, yeah, but your math sucks. Right? You may be such an amazing brain when it comes to reading nonfiction. My daughter is obsessed right now with the Holocaust period, and she's reading historical fiction and nonfiction around the Holocaust, and she's just got this deep dive into it. And luckily, she has some teachers who are really championing that, and they're like, amazing, let's give you more books to read in that area. Not focused on like, okay, but maybe you're not so good at math. Like maybe algebra is, is a little bit tougher for you. So let's throw all our resources on that. All right. So let's talk about the executive functioning mismatch. Those are general mismatches with what school looks like, what the world looks like, and the neurodivergent brain. Let's talk about executive functioning specifically. So first and foremost, what is executive function? Executive functioning in the literature, we sometimes talk about it as self-regulation. I like to think about it as your brain's control of your brain. In Psych 101, we often think about a homunculus. Homunculus, in my, in my mind, it's like a little monkey sitting in your brain controlling the levers of your brain. It's your brain's control over your brain. We obviously don't have a little monkey sitting in our brains. I don't think we haven't found one yet. And we also haven't really found a particular area of the brain that does this except for the prefrontal cortex, especially pointing as if you can see my brain. The orbitoprefrontal cortex right in the front there tends to be where our personality is and all of our executive functioning. And this includes skills like focus, attention, organization, planning, and working memory. Working memory being Your ability to take in information and manipulate it, like mental math or multitasking. All, all very important for learning. It also includes impulse control. It also includes emotion regulation, like regulating our emotions, calming ourselves down in the moment is seen as an executive function. It all happens up here in our orbital prefrontal cortex, right up here, sequencing all of these things. So when we think of our schools and what we're expecting of our kids in our schools, we're all, we're thinking about learning. How do our kids learn? How are we going to get the information and display it, right? We typically measure that learning through tests, right? Those tests require rote memorization, right? We have to learn. We have to go home and study and study and study and study so that we can regurgitate some of these facts. I don't know if you ever remember going back. I can remember in 7th grade, I was born and raised in Texas. We had to take a full year of Texas history because why wouldn't you? And my Texas history teacher was big on dates. We had to memorize dates of when, of like what year different things happened, different battles and different wars. And there were 6 flags over Texas, and we had to know which dates were all the 6 flags. We had to sit down and memorize those. Oh, I don't need those now. I have purged those from my memory. But we had to do that. Neurodivergent brains, though, often struggle to focus on rote memorization, especially on those topics that are not of interest. Those boring topics like— shouldn't say this— Texas history for me was not super intriguing. So I had a really, really tough time making myself sit and focus on this and learn those dates. So maybe we need to rethink, are those dates Super useful for this kid in their lives, in their education, in even those standardized tests that they're going to have to take— the SAT, the GRE, whatever we're taking later on. Are these dates really going to be useful? Now, I know some of those history teachers are going to say, yeah, but it's not about those particular dates. It's about can you learn dates? It's about learning to learn. I appreciate that. But when we ask our neurodivergent kids to sit and memorize and then come back and regurgitate it on a test, We are not capitalizing on the way their brains can best learn. Papers. Papers are a go-to. I love papers. I'm a writer. I write textbooks. I write other books, and I love it. I love sitting and writing. So I always loved when, when they wanted me to do papers. But they do require a lot of planning and synthesis of information, and even more so The, the boiling it down to these take-home messages, right, that we want to see. So let's think about the neurodivergent brains, which are often very getting— like, they, they're great at synthesizing and getting these creative links between ideas, but they may struggle to plan, organize, and boil down that information into the take-home messages. Projects. Projects are great in a lot of ways. But they require a lot of longer-term, multi-step planning, organization, initiation of the different processes, stages. And often you were asking kids to do this independently, and neurodivergent brains often understand that material and can display that material. But the execution of the planning organization is, is a struggle for these brains. So when schools are wedded to teaching kids in one way and evaluating kids in one way, in that one particular way, it actually undermines neurodivergent students' actual understanding and ability to take in that information, learn it, and apply it. They may have that information in their brains, and they may be able to apply it in ways that you didn't even imagine. But some of those ways might not be a multiple choice test. And this in turn undermines self-esteem globally and academic self-efficacy specifically, right? These kids start to think about themselves as like, oh, I can't learn. I'm a terrible student. I am a bad learner. Not just that my brain doesn't jive with the way that my teacher is asking me to learn this. So quick poll. Have you ever had to demonstrate your learning in a particular way, but felt that the outcome just didn't match your actual knowledge, your actual learning? I'm gonna ask Kareem to launch this for me. Thank you. We'll just give you 30 seconds. Nope, I've slayed every single assignment I've ever been given in my entire life. Sometimes, but I'm usually pretty solid. Absolutely. Or I'm even struggling to focus on this presentation right now. My feelings won't be hurt, I promise. Be honest. Have you ever tried to demonstrate what you've learned and it's not gone the way that you actually think is reflective of your real learning? I think of licensure exams. All right, let's maybe close down this poll. Oh, 1% said, nope, I've slayed every single assessment. And over 50% said, absolutely, absolutely, I have tried to demonstrate my knowledge and it did not go the way that I think my actual knowledge went. That should tell us something. How effective our ways of measuring learning are. Mostly effective, but sometimes they're not. Thank you. All right, so what can we do? We can CARSQ. If you ever forget what you need to do, just say CARSQ. It's a terrible acronym. Terrible acronym. Sorry about that. First, collaborate. We need to collaborate with Families, teachers, our special ed departments, and kids themselves to understand the neurodivergences. This is, for me, the most important thing. It's why I do assessment. It's why I care so much about assessment is because I, you know, I was a middle school teacher for a while and I could be like, oh, this kid is struggling. I don't know exactly why. Get that assessment, collaborate, and figure out exactly where their strengths and difficulties lie so we know where we need to accommodate, where we need to support, where we need to champion them. Advocate. This is for especially my like related service providers out there. We need to work with our educators to change the ways they're working with and evaluating these students. Teachers are heroes. Teachers have way too— they're way overloaded more now than ever. We're asking them to be therapists. We're asking them to be police. We're asking them to be Guardians, we're asking bodyguards, we're asking them to teach as well. And they're overwhelmed. And I hate to ask them to like teach kids in these— obviously they want to differentiate learning, but like get really individualized with each kid. I hate to ask them to do that. But maybe we can get creative in the ways that we're offering options for how to learn the material and demonstrate it. And we need to advocate with our educators and work with them in professional development to understand that they can get creative and help them think about creative ways. Accommodate. Do what you can to ensure that the arbitrary roadblocks are lifted for these students. Some kids with learning differences, learning disabilities, are going to struggle with reading, and they need to read. Reading is actually one of those things we all need to do and learn to do in our lives, and that is not an arbitrary roadblock. That's a real roadblock, and so we need to That's not something we can like, don't learn to read. That's, that's a roadblock. But there are a lot of roadblocks that are completely arbitrary. So we need to limit the rote memorization to only what's truly necessary for deep learning. Less homework. The homework should really just solidify learning. Allow preferential seating, brain breaks, fidgets. I'm a fidgeter. I'm holding a pen right now and I'm twisting it. You don't know that because I'm on Zoom. But I'm a fidgeter. Let them fidget. On tests, allow that extra time. We spend way too much effort, energy, resources, money, time restricting kids from getting extra time on like high-stakes tests or stuff like that. I think it's silly. There are very few jobs out there where you need to do something right now and really fast. Yes, if you're a surgeon, you need to do that right now and really fast. I'm a therapist. There's not much I can't repair. If I, if I'm like, oh, I don't know, I can tell one of my clients, I don't know, I'll go look it up. I can go and take my time. Use noise-canceling headphones, give them a separate room, all these things. And allow alternative ways to demonstrate learning whenever possible. If writing an essay is a huge barrier and the actual writing is not what you're evaluating, if you're evaluating what they've learned, Let them talk to you. Let them say it out loud. Let them learn to write an essay when learning to write an essay is what's being evaluated. Resource. I'm using this as a verb. We need to resource our students with extra supports to allow them to learn more effectively and succeed. For example, sticky notes. I love sticky notes. It's like, I think of the old Microsoft Word that had Clippy with little reminders popping up. If there are multi-step problems and projects, use a little sticky note on that exam and say, remember, This is a 2-step problem, or remember, the actual question at the beginning is not everything that you have to answer at the end. Use those sticky notes with some kids. Pre-filled out calendars with steps for longer-term projects broken down. Planners with visual cues. And then assistive technology. Assistive technology solutions are out there, and we need to be taking much more advantage of them. I tend to work in this virtual space. I love working in this virtual space because we can build in assistive things into the virtual space in a way that I had a much harder time doing in person when I was working with kiddos. Scaffold. This is about sitting down and working closely with kids side by side through their zone of proximal development. I'm not going to get into this because I'm going to run out of time. The idea is figure out where a kid can work independently. Where are their executive functions great and good enough to handle it independently? And you help them with the next level up. You sit down and you work it through with them. Okay, you broke this project down into its component parts. Excellent. You did that independently. Now let's put it on a calendar with dates. Let's do that together because that's the part you didn't do. That's the part you need help with. That's scaffolding and helping them grow that skill and learn the next step up with their executive functions. And celebrate. Celebrate and reward the small wins in the process. Not just the final product, not just the grade on the exam or the paper. Celebrate the fact that they got the paper in on time, even if it was a C paper. Celebrate that. That is a win for a neurodivergent kid who struggles with deadlines. Celebrate these kids. See, Karsk couldn't be easier to remember, right? So our last poll. Who remembers what Karsk stands for? Gonna ask Kareem to launch this poll. Of course, I'm amazing. I have a photographic memory. I'll say yes, but the truth is no. That's mean and frankly not neuroaffirming. That's why I did this.

Huh?

I did this to demonstrate that we all learn in different ways. I gave you a terrible acronym, CARSQ. Who remembers what it means? Give you another couple seconds. Genuinely interested in the results. I want to see who's been paying the closest attention and has a neurotypical brain and is really good at remembering things immediately. I think we can close out this poll maybe. And oh, 10% of you remember what CARSQ means. I'll take it. I will absolutely take it. The rest of you are like, I don't know. I have no idea. Whatever. That's fine. I'm fine with that. You can revisit this. We will— this will be recorded. You can revisit CARSQ anytime you want. You can maybe help me come up with a better acronym. So that we can all remember it, right? My neurodivergent brain, I'm looking at this screen and literally I don't remember what CARS stands for. And I wrote it and practiced it and just said it out loud. I don't remember. Thank you for indulging me. We have a little bit of time for some Q&A, and I'm going to call out the, this QR code here. I have written a white paper. White papers, for those of you who are not familiar, are just a synthesis of the research. They're just me pulling together What we know about the research. And I wrote this paper on neurodiversity and neuroaffirming work, which has some of this information in it, but a deeper dive because it's in writing and has some pictures and charts and stuff in it. So I encourage you, I invite you to download that neurodiversity white paper. But I am actually going to invite Corinne to come back and ask me some questions that you have hopefully put into the Q&A. And thank you very much.

Yeah, definitely got some comments about the, the really good information, and I just wanted to also reiterate that this will be recorded and uploaded onto YouTube. So you are going to be able to watch this again. And please do put some questions in the Q&A if you can think of some. I will kick us off with a question. What role does emotional regulation play in executive functioning, and how can we help neurodiverse individuals improve emotional control? For example, managing anxiety during sessions when we're doing something challenging.

Yes, Corinne, you and I were just talking about, um, working with a kid in a challenging situation and doing stuff they hate, um, which we have to do a lot of the time. And I will— I just, to the point of this being recorded, I tend to talk fast. That's my ADHD. I know it. You can play it in 0.75 speed and slow down some sections if you need to. Emotion regulation is seen as an executive function. We know ADHD kids struggle to regulate their emotions. We know autistic kids have very different emotional worlds than neurotypical kids. We know that. We know that anxiety, especially learning and test anxiety, plays a big role, and in a cyclical way, with kids with learning disabilities and learning differences. So in my mind, I always think of the cycle, right? I always think of that cycle of when you struggle in school for whatever reason, behaviorally, academically, when you struggle, it is going to feed the negative emotions, that anxiety, the self-esteem, the getting down on yourself, that is in turn going to make it harder to succeed in school, to regulate your behaviors, to do well academically. It is a vicious cycle. Now, how do we help kids learn emotion regulation skills and practice emotion regulation skills? I'm glad you asked that question because it gives me an idea for a next webinar. Like, that is a big topic. Of teaching, learning, and reinforcing emotion regulation skills. It is super important for kids to be able to regulate their emotions in order to take in information and to not be so anxious that they can't demonstrate that information. And when I think about school, I think about learning, and I think about demonstrating that learning. And emotion regulation and dealing with anxiety is super important and too much for me to give you an answer of how to do it. I will say, look to your expert colleagues, those clinical psychologists, school psychologists, SLPs, social workers, right? We learn to do this stuff, to train kids in emotion regulation skills, probably in a deeper way than teacher education programs have the time to teach, right? Teacher education programs, even in the special ed tracks, don't have enough time. They're just too short, and they have so much to pack in. that they can't train you well enough in that. So lean on your colleagues on how to teach, learn, reinforce those emotion regulation skills, and maybe we'll throw together a white paper or a webinar to help you all with that soon.

We've got some— that was very helpful. Thank you. We've got some really great questions coming in. One of the participants is asking, is it typical for a neurodiverse student to complain of being bored and always needing to be awed by what is going on in the classroom? And how would you handle it when you run out of surprises to keep the child's interest?

Oh yeah, good luck. I'm just going to raise my hand because that's me. I was diagnosed too late with ADHD. I was diagnosed in college. But I was also diagnosed as twice exceptional. For those who aren't familiar, twice exceptionality is giftedness, like high IQ. This is the worst brag in the world. I apologize. It's really high IQ and a neurodivergence. So I have high IQ and ADHD. People can have high IQ and autism or a learning disability or whatever. All of those are considered twice exceptional. And this is something you find very often in twice exceptional kids. Is that boredom, right? So I need a shiny object. I need something. I need multiple jobs and multiple projects going on at all times. I learned really fast. So my teachers growing up were teaching to the class. They weren't teaching to my brain. So I would learn it fast. I'd pick it up. I'd be like, okay, moving on. And I'd be really, really bored in school. So it wasn't as much about, do I need something surprising and shiny? It was, how can I occupy my brain in those moments? Right? So how can I have in my pocket the enrichment work? Right? How can I have something in my pocket, the extra little assignment that they can do in the moment if they don't need to be paying attention to the lesson that I'm doing right now? That's a big if. If they do need to be paying attention, if this is really just their ADHD flaring up and they're like, I need to be paying attention, I haven't learned this yet, but it is so boring the way that you are teaching it. Yeah, you can't do a song and dance every single time for those neurodivergent kids. You just, you would get exhausted. You are not a clown. You didn't go to clowning college, right? Some of you may have. But you need to again go back to CARSQ, that first C, collaborate. Collaborate with that kid. Even the youngest kids. I see kids in first grade who are restless and bored with doing their work or listening. You can sit next to them at some point when they're doing their independent work and sit next to them and be like, you know, your brain is awesome. You're learning this super fast. But when I'm talking, I notice you have some trouble. What would help you? What would help you? Let's collaborate. And it doesn't just need to be the kid. How can you collaborate with the other people who interact with these kids and see what they've done that works? See how they've done it. In reality, you are not going to be able to engage every single kid 100% of the school day. That's unrealistic. I'm a big believer that actually kids need to be okay being bored sometimes. That is a skill. It's a skill we're losing with social media and TikTok and all that kind of stuff, right? Whenever a kid's bored, they get to like just swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe. So they're not super good at it. But actually, I think it's a skill and it's okay for a kid to be bored as long as they're not being disruptive for a little bit. You could then champion that and acknowledge, celebrate it. That last C in the CARSQ, you can go and say, I know you were bored. I saw you, but you didn't disrupt. That's great. You're going to be bored sometimes. That's cool. Way to be bored.

Thank you so much. We have some really awesome questions coming in. I'm not sure if we'll get to all of them, but I do see some common themes. So I wanted to highlight one on neuroaffirming goals, how to write them. How to make them measurable. This could potentially be another white paper, I think, or an article. But do you have any, like, quick tips on that or some thoughts?

Yes, and I'll be very brief. I know we only have a minute or 2 left before we need to get to all the housekeeping stuff. I will try and be brief. My first question I ask myself when I, like, I look at IEPs all the time. I see IEPs. Some are written really well. Some are written terribly. It's the Wild West out there when it comes to IEP goals. Y'all know that. The first thing, the first question I ask of every single IEP goal is, is this goal trying to train a neurodivergent brain to pretend it's not neurodivergent, to pretend it's neurotypical? Right? So I will use an example that may or may not be fresh in my mind. But when we have a speech goal with an autistic kid that says we need to get them asking inquisitive questions about the other person's interests. Okay, we could train them to do that in a very rote way. We could have them script it, right? They could script it out of movies, and we know autistic brains can do that. They can script it, and we can train them to do that. I think that's a terrible use of speech therapy. I think it's a horrible use to train them to pretend that they are neurotypical in that way. Because they're not genuinely interested necessarily in the other person's interests and perspective, right? So that goal is not neuroaffirming. And in fact, I would say it's against neuroaffirming. I think, I think it's neuro non-affirming. I don't know what the right word is for that. There can be better goals for autistic kids that acknowledge that their way of communicating will always be different, and that's okay. Maybe they could still gain some skills in being a little less blunt, right? In not hurting the feelings of someone else. But asking questions about someone else's interests is not really a useful goal. So ask that question of the goals. It's a silly thing to say you're asking a goal a question, but ask yourself a question about this goal. Is it really just training their brain to pretend as if? Or is this a real skill that they could learn that will upskill them and help them function better in our neurotypical world?

Thank you so much. I will say our Q&A is blowing up because this is a really hot topic. I'm going to end with one question, but promise the participants and audience that we will take a look at these questions and definitely plan future webinars or materials to answer these. I'd like to end with a question regarding resources on the overlap of autism and ADHD. Do you have any suggestions on any further reading or any kind of resources?

Yes, it's colloquially known as AuDHD. This is new. The literature on it is new. You can look up papers on comorbidities is what they call it, or co-occurring. autism and ADHD. I think it's all problematic. I think the literature is problematic. The assessment literature, the real psychological testing and assessment literature, is just starting to dig into this when attention problems with autistic kids are actually just their autism and when attention problems with autistic kids are co-occurring autism and ADHD. There are some hallmarks and little markers that we can tease apart With assessment, with neuropsychological assessment, but it is not easy to tease apart, and we're just at the precipice of really understanding this. So I don't have great resources for that yet, but we are working on it. Researchers, nerds like me are working on it. And with that, I know we are almost out of time, so I am going to say thank you, and I'm going to let, I believe, Kareem and Blakely close us out. So thank you.

Thank you. This was amazing and hopefully the beginning of an amazing series and also Maybe future webinars. So thank you so much. And with that, I'd like to say that this does conclude the educational portion of our webinar available for ASHA CEUs and NASP-approved CPDs. As a reminder, you will be receiving a survey tomorrow by email, and please be sure to answer all the questions and complete the survey within the deadline allotted. And before we end, I'd like to introduce now Blakely.

Hi, everyone.

Who has a few more special announcements on ways to partner with Parallel.

Well, hello everyone, and thank you, Jordan and Corinne. Jordan, I loved your story about left-handed. I'm left-handed and had to learn how to play tennis right-handed, and still am a terrible tennis player to this day. So first, I just want to say a really special thank you and appreciation to all of our Parallel providers and all of you that work in special education. Thank you for all that you do to support students, and thank you for being with us here today. I think that we are still sharing the presentation because there's— if we can still share it, there's a few more slides.

We're still sharing.

Oh, perfect. Well, for some reason—

We're looking at a relaxation kit.

Oh, okay, great. So I would like to let you know that there's 3 ways that you could participate. You may be happy In our raffle, um, basically we would like to offer you a relaxation kit, and the 3 ways that you can enter the raffle are in either you can scan the QR code to refer a district. You may know a district that is overwhelmed, understaffed. Parallel partners with schools and districts to provide elevated special education support. We offer a range of services from speech-language pathology, mental health counseling, specialized instruction, and we have— we're backed by a top-tier team of clinicians. A lot of you are here with us today, so thank you. And then if you're a provider, you may want to refer a friend to Parallel who may be looking, so I encourage you to scan that QR code. We do offer a referral bonus if you are to refer someone and hire. Them and they get hired. And then the next thing I want to say is, um, please come back to our fall provider training series. Um, we will be having 2 more sessions, um, Thursday, October 10th and Thursday, November 14th. So another chance for you to earn free ASHA CEU credits and NAS-CBD credits. Um, so we encourage you to join us for those next 2 sessions. And then I also put in the chat just a little bit ago, um, please follow us on YouTube. We'll put the recording of today's meeting in there. And also, we have— we're very active on LinkedIn, so please follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. Again, I want to thank everyone for being with us, for being here with us today. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Jordan, for your incredible presentation. It's always a treat to get to hear you speak. And Corinne, thank you for moderating. Thank you, everyone.