This informal CPD article on Neurodiversity and Labels was provided by Toni Horn at Think Differently Coaching, who offer educational and neurodiversity workshops, training packages for organisations looking to understand the strength of neurodiversity and upskill their workforce.
Neurodiversity and Labels
I hear so much (I don’t want my child to have a label). My first question is why? Why are parents so concerned with their child being placed into a protected characteristic?
Here are some possible reasons:
- I don’t want my child to get lumped into a category.
- I need them to be “normal.”
- We don’t want to believe it.
- I don’t want to be perceived as a ‘bad’ parent.
- He/ her is not that bad. He’s just having a bad week/month/year.
- I didn’t plan this into my life.
- It’s just a phase, and he’ll grow out of it.
- Our doctor advised us to “wait to see.”
- The unknown is terrifying.
The real reason is due to past Decades of stigma and misinformation have left many confused about what it means to be neurodivergent in comparison to being neurotypical, which is an umbrella term for anyone whose brain is built and/or functions differently than what is considered average - or typical.
We worry about the kind of label our children will get when they’ve just received their neurodivergent diagnosis because we also have a way of labelling it. We hope that how we label it will be accepted by everyone else, but we know how some schools can be. Not everyone will see our children the same way we do, and that’s a scary thought, especially since now that diagnosis makes them even more differentiated from their peers.
Labelling can be positive or negative, but both shape how people perceive themselves and others. Negative labels can often build barriers between people who are actually very similar to each other by highlighting differences rather than similarities. Positive labels can help a group to bond and feel valued and included, such as a football team’s supporters whom all wear the team’s kit and colours to a match.
We all use stereotypes to make sense of the world. We create ‘shortcuts’ based on our past experiences in order to make day-to-day living a bit easier. If we had to evaluate each and every person, and each and every situation based on their unique characteristics, we would be evaluating each other all the time.
Stereotyping is part of an important process called generalisation. Just about everyone has this ability to generalise. It is an involuntary, subconscious process that learns from our experience in order to predict the future. However, our experience might be based on wrong information, incorrect judgements, ignorance or negative and unbalanced opinions, so we must be careful about how we process our perceptions. All neurodivergent individuals are different, and they can have a range of associated characteristics. These will vary from individual to individual. It is important not to stereotype and assume something about someone. For example, not all autistic people are maths geniuses, and it’s not true that all people with ADHD can’t sit still.