“I am a massive fan of labels. If you don’t give someone a label like autism or ADHD, they’ll give themselves a label and it will be so much harsher.”
That insight was one among many astute views that Jessie Hewitson, award-winning journalist and author on the topic of neurodiversity, shared with a 300-strong audience in north-west London yesterday.
Speaking at the packed Belonging Matters neurodiversity conference, a JC-partnered event, Hewitson explained that neurodiversity was “the fact of a variety of brain types, which challenges the assumption that there is one ‘correct’ type of brain.
“The language is changing and I think people often feel nervous about getting it wrong. But simply, the movement just says the world is a better place for having a variety of brain types.”
The term “neurodivergent” is used to describe people whose brains function and process information differently to those who are considered “neurotypical”, and includes autistic people and people with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder).
Hewitson, who is both autistic and an ADHDer, has written two books on her experience raising children who are also neurodivergent.
“I actually found out [that I was also neurodivergent] from writing books, which is a fairly niche method of self-discovery,” she remarked.
Her personal experience clearly fed into her well-informed, lucid perspectives throughout the discussion with JC community editor Gaby Wine.
“I realised I’d been masking unconsciously my entire life. My dominant memory of school is not knowing what I was meant to be doing,” she said. Now, she has the labels and therefore an explanation for these feelings, she said.
Hewitson challenged the claim from some people that labels were nowadays being overapplied – especially from older generations, for whom autism and ADHD were not prevalent features of their childhoods.
“I don’t think ADHD and autism are as rare as we once thought,” Hewitson said. “I wonder why the people who think we’re over-diagnosing believe there’s some limit which we’ve already passed.”
During the event, which was organised by Norwood, the United Synagogue and Gesher, Hewitson also questioned the blame being placed on screens for the rise in the number of ADHD diagnoses. “Are screens making our children unhappy, or are they unhappy and using screens to feel safe and regulated and cope with mainstream life?” she asked. “I think these conversations need to be more precise in that detail.”
In any case, a diagnosis of ADHD or autism was not an inherent cause for concern, Hewitson clarified, referencing her first son.
“I went through the process of realising that being autistic isn’t a problem – I was worried about him being unhappy, not the autism itself,” she said.
“Once I figured out how I could make him happy, my fear about him being different vanished.”
“But,” she told the audience, “there is no magic formula while we’re working with such rigid structures in place”, referring, among other things, to how the education system, the workplace, and social settings function.
Hewitson, who is also the SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) agony aunt for the Times and the Sunday Times, ended the conversation with her thoughts on what could be done in the workplace for people who were neurodivergent.
“What I find time and time again is that key conversations are ducked because the managers don’t know how to have those conversations,” she said.
“And it’s the same in schools – we expect managers and teachers to know how to support neurodivergent people, but they haven’t been given the tools to do so.”
While training is important, a change in approach is a good place to start. “What you need to do is be open, ask questions, and be respectful of the response you get,” Hewitson said. “Small adjustments can really make a big difference.”
Autism: How to Raise a Happy Autistic Child
ADHD: How to Raise a Happy ADHD Child
Both by Jessie Hewitson
Available on Amazon
Jessie is offering a free training day to a school. Click on the link to enter your school.
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