If it takes a village to raise a child, that’s doubly true if the child is neurodivergent.
Dr. Narinder Dhaliwal spoke to about 20 parents and caregivers Jan. 26 at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art about how to navigate the world of education and development with a child on the autism or attention deficit disorder spectrum.
Autism and ADD are neural conditions that affect how people experience sensory input, and their ability to communicate, process change, socialize and focus. They’re not the same condition, but they share many symptoms, and people can occasionally have both.
Learning to manage the symptoms is a lifelong challenge, but it starts as early as preschool. Babies don’t come with instructions, and adding elements like autism or ADD can make childrearing even more confusing.
Dhaliwal has studied child development since 1999 and became interested in neurodiverse children’s growth through her doctorate in applied behavior analysis at the University of Washington. She is now an autism behaviorist and consultant on BI, and she works with parents who need help teaching their children life skills.
“I’m not saying everybody has to go be in the middle of a social event, but they should have enough social skills that if they want to go to a movie, then they have the opportunity to do that. If they do want to go to a social event, they have the opportunity to know how to navigate that. It’s just about access points,” Dhaliwal said. “Whatever your child’s path is, you have to have enough skills to access that.”
Dhaliwal said that often students with autism or ADD have relatively low support needs — meaning they can attend grade-level class with the larger student body and are eligible for college, but may struggle to stay on task or run into sensory issues in the classroom. That can be swept under the rug when it comes to skill development.
In Dhaliwals’ experience, parents new to raising a neurodiverse child can be underinformed about what the child’s capabilities are, and who is responsible for cultivating them. Sometimes, parents expect the school system to handle a child’s growth, but it’s not that simple, she said.
“It can take up to 900 hours of practice to master one skill — say, handwriting. The school doesn’t have 900 hours to sit with your child, right?” Dhaliwal said. “It’s a three-pronged stool, if you want to call it that: school, therapy and home; home being the biggest, strongest pillar that drives the rest of the program. Your child spends more time in the home setting, so the naturalistic setting where the child learns the most is the home.”
Dhaliwal said parents can decide what learning priorities matter for their child at school. She also recommends self careself-carefor parents.
There’s no two solutions alike for families struggling with a child on the spectrum, but in general, parents should think long-term, Dhaliwal said.
“I think academic success looks like when they can self-regulate and self-advocate, or tell you what they need, and when there’s a transference of skills such that your children can generalize those skills,” she said.
“Maybe there’s a lot of difficulty to start, there’s a lot of emotional outbursts at home, but slowly over time, with consistency and strategies, they might be able to manage it without having those responses. And I think that’s very important because this comes up all the way through your educational process into college.”