Did you know that it’s neurodiversity celebration week?
When my son was diagnosed as autistic in 2009 I couldn’t have imagined that we would have neurodiversity celebration weeks and I am so glad that the times are shifting and we are starting to wake up to the fact that different thinkers are essential for all our futures.
The term neurodiversity was coined in the 1990s by Judy Singer, an actually autistic academic. She wrote, “Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general.”
I suspect that Judy may be more correct than she ever knew. As we face the climate crisis and see that the economic systems are no longer working for a great many people we are going to have to find all kinds of new solutions to do things differently in order to find our way through.
We need our different thinkers.
Our problem solvers.
Our dreamers.
Our creatives.
Our innovators.
We need neurodivergent people to be enabled to thrive, succeed and fly.
That starts with accepting who they are, working with them to overcome or find a way around any challenges with organisation, communication, and regulation and start focusing on what they do well and allowing them to do more of it.
I’ve just come across this fantastic video on the Genius Within Website which perfectly sums up what I’ve been thinking about for the past few years.
I hope you have time this week to watch it – it’s short and sweet. 2 minutes to be exact.
If you are a parent of a neurodivergent child they might love to see this clip too.
