 In today's episode we are going to be thinking about how to communicate with neurodiverse children or indeed adults like myself without making their brains melt. Let's get started. Okay we should start by saying that I have broken tip number one rule number one guidance number one whatever you want to call it by suggesting in the intro that we're going to not make neurodiverse people's brains melt. To clarify for any neurodiverse friends our brains don't actually melt but what I'm talking about here is that idea of kind of feeling really overwhelmed by the communications around us feeling unable to process them as quickly as they're coming trying to figure out what on earth is going on and feeling like we're still on step one whenever one else has worked to about step 83 and we're still thinking the brains actually melt then or is that an idiom don't know. So these communication tips are for supporting people who again like me might appear to really know what's going on maybe they're the master of masking maybe they're good at the nod and the smile and they found strategies for making it all kind of work that doesn't mean they're not inwardly really struggling to keep up and also these acknowledge the fact that our autistic our ADHD population community friends family students are not stupid we've just got a heck of a lot going on in our brains so one thing I just want you to bear in mind when communicating with your neurodiverse children friends family students colleagues is that we're doing a lot processing all the time so the kind of the basic tenet of good communication with neurodiverse people is keep it simple basically treat us like we're a little bit stupid and that does kind of work it gets the appropriate outcome but it's the wrong mindset from your point of view what you actually need to remember is that we live in really complicated worlds where you maybe can just focus on the main task in hand we meanwhile are distracted by a faint smell of food cooking three rooms away or the fact that there's a clock ticking that sounds like a jack hammer to us or the fact that the temperature in the room is just ever so slightly changed or the fact that amily over there is writing and her pencil is really really scratchy on the piece of paper or the fact that you just said the word apples and it triggered a whole load of really deep sensory memories for us about that time that we picked apples in our grandmas garden and then we picked one and then there was a worm and did you know that worms it we just have a lot going on in our heads so even quite simple instructions and communications can trigger lots of stuff that we're having to process and think adds to all that the fact that every time we're having any kind of conversation and interaction we're generally trying to second guess how to make that work because we don't understand the rules completely in sort of intuitively as other people might do so we're thinking am I holding my body right am I making appropriate eye contact did I say a totally socially inappropriate thing was that a joke am I meant to laugh all that's going on as well says loads going on okay so the context is we're not stupid there's a whole tonne going on in our head there are things you can do to help us here's what you can do I'm going to share six ideas they're super simple and I will also make a little kind of print off a ball downloadable summary of these six should you want it something pretty you know I love to make something pretty so number one use concrete language so I said in my intro I broke rule number one by saying that we're going to avoid brain melt okay we're going to avoid brain melt by using concrete language we are going to say what we actually mean we're not going to use any kind of language that has any possibility of being misinterpreted if at all possible so taking an example I'm doing some work at the moment around death and dying we would not talk about someone passing away going to sleep being lost kicking the bucket any of these things we would instead say and I think this is really good practice with every child not just those with special needs we would say this person is dead this person is dying this is what our neurodiverse children need to hear in order to actually understand what you've said now the tricky thing with this is that in everyday life there's a whole tonne of stuff that we say that we don't mean and you will if you become more aware of it notice that you do these things all the time and some of them it's okay we learn them over time but for you know to be as helpful as you possibly can try to avoid using anything that's not literal where you can it makes life just so much easier for us if you just say what you mean sounds simple right okay so that's number one concrete language say what you mean number two is to keep things short and simple if you are going to issue me with some instructions perhaps you're my teacher and we are going to be making something and you're going to tell me how to make that thing I need to know in the simplest possible way broken down into very short simple steps exactly what I need to do I need to know nothing more than that because every additional word or superfluous instruction or embellishment that you give me gives me more stuff that I've got to analyze interpret work through make sense of so we break it right down to the very basics what's the absolute minimum that you need to tell me think about it like you are going to do a presentation and you'd think about what you would put on your PowerPoint slides so everybody knows though not everybody does it everybody knows that a great PowerPoint slide has got very few words on it but they're really clear it's really obvious what it is that they are saying they'll be short succinct to the point they say exactly what needs to be said but they don't say anything more that's exactly what we're looking for when you're giving instructions or explaining something to a neuro diverse child to keep it short and keep it simple and chunk it down into steps so short simple chunks so far so good so we're keeping it concrete we're saying what we mean we're keeping it in short simple little chunks number three is talk and then stop well that was awkward wasn't it it feels really awkward when it goes silent and the thing is that for you that that silence feels like it needs to be filled but for the child it's unlikely to be silent I say the child these tips are just as applicable when working with adults talking to adults that silence will be filled by our heads by the constant questioning and wondering and general processing that's going on in our heads so our heads are noisy all the time we're not going to be worried about that silence other than that you providing that silence you stopping after you speak will give us some sort of opportunity to catch up to what you were saying and if you speak and then you stop count to ten slowly if you speak and then you stop and I've got some chance of understanding point number one before you get to point number two otherwise and this happens all the time what happens is you've made point number one and I'm there I really want to get this right I'm focusing on it I'm trying to learn from you and I've got it and you're on point four and I've missed two and three in the meantime and it's not because you've explained them badly that you've done anything especially wrong it's just it takes me a little bit longer and so I just need a moment so speak and then stop try to resist the urge to jump in and fill that gap the world does not need to be continuously filled with our voices she says recording a podcast where she speaks all the time I am aware of the irony klaxon that should be going off here but speak and then stop count to ten slowly would be my tip number four is it's okay to repeat what you say so you might need to you might need to tell us more than once the same instruction in order for us to actually hear what you've said to clarify it to really understand it so it's okay to repeat things it's okay to repeat things many times we won't find that offensive generally although you know once you've met one neurodiverse person you've met one neurodiverse person do check that you're not annoying or offending the person that you're working with but generally speaking repetition is okay we may from the first time you said it I've been just so focused on a smell in the room that we didn't even really hear it the first time or you know it's okay to repeat stuff it might drive you a little bit mad and it might make you feel like you're treating us like we're stupid which might seem disrespectful but sometimes just repeating something is the most useful thing you can do one of the reasons why I like creating online content that can be kind of captured and recording is because I learn by watching and rewatching and rewatching stuff like I read intensely all the time but I read and reread and reread it takes me just a few more attempts at stuff to kind of process and get it than it does for other people and that's a mixture of autism and dyslexia at play there and you know many of your neurodiverse children adults friends whoever will have complex profiles where all this stuff interacts I have a feeling that like in 10 20 30 years we'll look back at this time and go oh how quaint they didn't understand how all the neurodiversities interacted because so many of us have a whole bunch of them and there's got to be reasons why and we will understand that interplay a lot better one day but the thing for you to know right now is that you may be working with someone supporting someone who's got a whole bunch of different stuff going on and this need to support with their processing may be multifaceted so we are going to repeat as we need to it's okay we don't mind and check for understanding so one of the temptations when you're communicating with someone who doesn't seem to be quite getting it or who you worry about whether they're going to get it is to say something to give an instruction or an explanation and then right away if they don't reply or they didn't seem to have got it to explain that in a different way and for some people that's a really helpful thing for many of us who are neurodiverse it's a really unhelpful thing because now not only am I trying to process what you said the first time I'm now also trying to process what you said the second time and if those things are a bit different I'm you know that doubles the workload for me so I'd much rather you repeat exactly what you said the first time you might repeat it more slowly you might give a little bit more space you might say does that make sense to you would you like me to explain it in a different way and if we say actually yeah I didn't really get that can you explain it in a different way or can you repeat it then by all means please do so one thing I would say here when we're checking for understanding we need to work really hard and this is over time not an instant thing but we need to work really hard to create an environment where it's okay for the person that you're talking to or teaching to say yeah I didn't understand that actually can you help me because we need to be able to ask you to repeat to ask you to rephrase to ask you to clarify or what have you and that can feel difficult if you're in a relationship where there's a clear hierarchy maybe you're the teacher or teaching assistant and I'm the student I might feel that I can't question you I might feel that it's not okay to say what you said wasn't good enough basically I didn't didn't get it I don't understand and so I might do the thing that we all do every day and mask and nod and smile and pretend it's all right and it might only become apparent to you that I've not actually understood when I fail to do the thing that you've asked me or my understanding does not come through in the next bit of the learning or I seem to be struggling as the conversation goes on so trying to create an environment where you welcome that feedback from the person that you're talking to where you say you know I I hope that I've explained that right but I don't always so if you need me to repeat it or if you'd like me to clarify it just let me know just being open to it and then also role modelling that so sometimes when they're talking to you saying oh I really want to actually like properly understand what you're telling me but I didn't quite get that last bit would you mind telling me again or can you rephrase it a little bit or can you explain a bit more about x show them the behaviour that you would like to see from them in the other direction role model it so it's okay to repeat it's okay to check for understanding invite them to let you know if they've misunderstood and if you kind of agree between you then you might rephrase things but don't automatically do that because it gives us more to process what was still working on thing one okay so we've had our concrete language we're saying what we mean we've kept it short and simple we've spoken then we've stopped we've repeated what we are saying many times if we need to and we've checked for understanding number five is to share our communications in multiple formats so what can be superbly helpful for our neurodiverse learners is not just to have verbal instructions but to have those verbal instructions accompanied by an oh this makes me smile because it makes life so much easier some written or visual instructions a list of what we need to do that we can see and hold will make life so so much easier for us i totally get that it's extra work i do totally get that and it does make life just a little bit harder what i would say is that you're not doing this just for one or two kids that might be in your class for example it's actually something that will likely help many many children none of these ideas do any harm for anyone for what it's worth but you might find that quite a lot of kids would benefit from this kind of thing or even just noting in very very short sentences on the board what you're saying if you're a teacher just sort of preventing us from having to only hold it in our head is really helpful and it just gives us the space and the time just to process them in our own ways and we might also welcome the opportunity to have it as a handout so we can kind of write on it draw on it annotate it our own way as well to help us to make sense of it but having multiple formats of the same thing will increase our likelihood of being able to grasp what it is that's being asked of us or being explained to us if you can and this sounds like it's just one for teachers and teaching assistants but it's actually something that can be really useful for those of you who are listening and wondering about how to support your child at home as well if there are kind of instructions or explanations that need to made with your child again think about whether you can show them as well so you might with small children you can use things like role play with toys to demonstrate things as well as just speaking them again you can write things down or create little handouts for them some of you will be using lots of visual type aids which can really help with this as well we have a whiteboard at home and we'll often write on there kind of what's happening and what's expected so rather than just telling our children and expecting them to remember and to hold that we have it written down so everybody can see what the expectation is and it's really really clear but finding different ways multiple formats of sharing the same thing will make it much more likely that you will be understood and that the children or indeed adults that you're supporting will respond and develop in the way that you're hoping the final idea that I want to share number six is give me time so as the neurodiverse person that you are caring for working with teaching talking to I just need a little bit more time than my neurotypical peers so don't move too quickly on it just might take me time and do you know what if you give me time I might just be brilliant I might do an amazing job but you might need to temp your expectations a little bit on how much I can get done for many neurodiverse people we do better when you expect fewer better things of us so allowing us to go deep to really grab on to that understanding once we have it and to really run with it get into the flow and really go with it rather than keep on keep on keep on moving us on it's one of the reasons why school I think is such a challenging place where we're always moving from one thing to the next to the next to the next when you think about some of the processing challenges that we've touched on in this episode and you think about what that looks like when you're going from half an hour of math to an hour of English to half an hour of science to break where we've got all those questions of what's going on in the world too to then going into I don't know reading session and then we've got life skills and then we've got an on and on and on I mean it's just moving from thing to thing to thing to thing and probably I'm still thinking about what happened in the very first lesson of maths maybe there was a social interaction that happened and I'm still dwelling on whether I got that right whether I came across as a weirdo whether I made appropriate gestures and eye contact and everything else is kind of passing me by and I'm gradually getting to a point of overwhelm to give me space give me time please don't kind of pressure and push me to hurry up but that is the worst thing when you feel that pressure that you've got to get through this more quickly your brain goes into that kind of trauma response fight flight freeze faint and it tends to be then that our speaking thinking brain kind of shuts down all the processing of what you've said to us has kind of gone on the back burner because we're ready to run or we're going into shutdown or something so hurrying us tends to trigger that kind of anxious trauma type response and it's totally totally counterproductive I'd have to say as a mother of amazing neurodiverse children when you have things that need to be understood need to be done need to be followed places to be it's very tempting in all of our day to day interactions just to try and hurry them up it can be enough to make you feel quite on edge yourself but experience tells me that the best way is to be calm to be consistent to be caring and to give them space and generally they will do these things more quickly than with repeated reminding and hurrying and hurrying much as the repeated reminding and hurrying and hurrying comes very very naturally so there we go six ideas to support your neurodiverse children adults people in your life when communicating with them so their brains don't melt and remembering that that breaks rule number one so we're going to use concrete language we are going to say what we mean we are going to keep it short and simple we're just going to say what we actually need to and no more and we're going to break it down into little chunks we're going to talk and then we're going to stop and create some space we're going to repeat what we've said if we feel that that's necessary and we're going to check for understanding only rephrasing what we've said if invited to do so by the child we're going to share what we say in multiple formats so the child has different opportunities to process things in different ways we might use visual or written communications as well as verbal communications for example and finally we are going to just alter our expectations a little bit of what our neurodiverse person can get done in a given timeframe and we're going to give them a gift of time expecting them if possible to do fewer things better rather than many many many things hopefully there are some ideas in here that you can pick up and run with when supporting the neurodiverse people in your life or maybe there are some ideas that as a neurodiverse person you can share with others to help them to help you i originally started putting these ideas together to support support staff with the children in their classrooms but as i wrote it i realized these are things that bosses need to hear when working with their autistic employees for example as well or that friends need to hear when out with their ADHDF friend there are so many of us that can benefit from communicating in this way i believe good luck with it as ever contact me on the socials at pookieh to let me know your ideas what would you add how did you use it and so on and i look forward to seeing you hearing you talking at you again next time over and out