Neurodiversity: A Conversation with Barry and Dave

The primary purpose of uniquely human the podcast is to educate and inform. The views expressed during all episodes are solely those of the individuals involved, and do not constitute educational or medical advice. Listeners should consult with professionals familiar with each individual or family for specific guidance. Uniquely Human the Podcast is produced by Elevated Studio. Music is graciously provided by Matt Savage of Savage Records. Music Hi, I'm Dr. Barry Perzant, clinical scholar, researcher, and consultant on autism and neurodiversity, and a Brooklyn boy raised in the big city. And I'm Dave, I'm none of those things, and I grew up on a farm in Illinois. But, being on the spectrum myself, I have plenty of personal insight to lend. And this is uniquely human the podcast, a show that illuminates and celebrates autism and neurodiversity. Well, here we are, Barry. You had a great idea, and you said, you know, we start off every episode with a little introduction by you and me about how this is a program that illuminates and celebrates autism and neurodiversity. And people are understanding what autism is more and more. Then there's this word neurodiversity. It's the sort of thing you hear it everywhere, and if you think about it for 10 seconds, you can kind of deconstruct the word and be like, "Oh, okay, so I guess we're all different in our brains." But that's an oversimplification and doesn't really tell the whole story. So, you said, you know, we've been doing this for 60-some episodes. Maybe we could unpack that word a little bit. Yeah, and especially keeping in mind that we know that many of our listeners are parents of younger kids. And some people might be a little embarrassed to say, "Yeah, what is that term neurodiversity?" And beyond the general sense, as you said, we all have different brains. Right. I have my definition of an understanding of neurodiversity, but like anything, there's an entire social and subcultural thing. There's a ground swell under that word, pushing it into the discourse and the kind of just mainstream talk, right? We hear it on TV now. When you do your talks, when it's appropriate, you definitely dive into this with your audiences. You actually dive into this with when you do your presentations and consulting. And I think it's extremely helpful for the people who have hired you to do just that. And now we get to share it with our listeners and with me and make us all a little bit smarter, a little bit more hip about what this word actually means. So, I think many of our listeners know this information, but others may not. And that is the humble beginnings of the term neurodiversity. And most people credit Judy Singer, who is a sociologist, who is on the spectrum. And I believe diagnosed as an adult or self diagnosed as an adult and just a quick comment here. I actually met her at a conference in Sydney, Australia about five, six years ago. And I was on a panel at that conference and she was invited to be on the panel and a very, very humble, unassuming woman. And I imagine she must be in her seventies now. And she began answering a question, you know, Judy, what is neurodiversity? And she basically said what we said a few moments ago. And that is everybody has a different brain. And because everybody has a different brain and a different neurological system, not even just a brain, they have different experiences in life. And we have to be respectful of that. And that was exactly how she described it. And it did come out of a sociology thesis that she did in Australia that was published in 1998. Our friend Steve Silberman used lead with the word neurodiversity in the title of his groundbreaking book, Neuro Tribes. And so I love that she's this humble woman who did a dissertation at one point in her life who coined this massively important word that we're all using right now. What happened? What has happened with the word sense? Oh my goodness. She dropped this in 1998. Yeah, well, 17 years later, of course, Neuro Tribes was published, you know, with the title Neuro Tribes, the Legacy of Autism and the future of neurodiversity. And at least to my understanding and my experience, that is what really launched neurodiversity into the mainstream because Neuro Tribes is the best selling international book. If you've ever heard Steve speak as we heard him speak on one of our earliest podcasts, he's very, very eloquent. And he came to this, not as he says, I'm no expert in autism. I'm a science writer. And I literally research issues that are important. So he contributed by giving that long history of people who we would consider now neurodivergent and how much they've contributed to society is going back hundreds of years taking us right up to the present and then talking about the future. But I do need to say that there were some other beginnings that were not tied to the term neurodiversity. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes, specifically how a gardener's work in multiple intelligences, which I was exposed to back in the 70s and 80s. But if you bear with me, why don't we just share a definition that I believe we both like. And then what it does for us as we hope you'll see is it allows us to get into a much deeper, more specific consideration of what neurodiversity is. And this is by Samantha Kraft. And it's a definition that she put forth in 2019 and she is a woman on the spectrum. Neurodiversity defined according to Samantha Kraft is as follows, quote, the standard for neurodiversity is recognizing natural variations of human brains and minds as a valuable aspect of human diversity. Neurodiversity promotes the inclusion of all types of minds to break down the barriers of constraint. Just as diversity equates to a cornucopia of differences, neurodiversity is specifically referring to differences in neurology, including the way one thinks, the way one processes, the way one behaves, the way one functions and copes and perceives the world. That's so perfect. And I love how she's calling out brain and mind brain is the hardware thoughts are the software mind is the brain plus the thoughts. Absolutely. And that really gets speaks to the issues of the way we function in every day life and how does our brain support our minds processing of what's going on interpreting what's going on. And also the coping strategies. So you would think that's fairly straightforward, but neurodiversity being a concept that is ever revolving. There are a number of debates and areas of differences of opinion that are important to consider. And one has to do with kind of the boundaries of neurodiversity. I believe that it's been applied primarily and early on to what we consider developmental conditions. So differences in brain and brain wiring and neurological wiring that are present from birth. So one area of consideration now and I'm not saying this is, you know, an issue that has been put to rest, but what about acquired conditions such as traumatic brain injury person who's in a car accident. Stroke. Stroke. Okay. What happens to football players? Yes. For sure. So there are a number and we know this a number of acquired conditions. Do does that fall under the category of these people being neurodivergent and will get to specific definitions in just a minute. What about mental health conditions bipolar disorder? What about schizophrenia? So when we talk about mental health conditions, certainly there's a ton of research now to indicate the neurological differences. You know that underlie what we used to think of as primarily environmental psychiatric emotional and we know that so many of those conditions now. There's clear evidence of differences in neurological functioning. Well, it's interesting. You mentioned mentioning this because if you boil down the word, if you boil the ocean with the word neurodiversity, well now you're talking about. I mean, every human being because everybody's got something they've all got their past trauma. They've all got their their hardwired thoughts that they believe they've all got their genetic predispositions. Are we are people like me, the autism community, are we unfairly appropriating the word and planting the flag on the moon and saying the moon is ours? Or are we just the ones who are kind of catapulting the word and now we need to really collectively look at when we're talking neurodiversity. What are we including and what are we not including because the essence of diversity is inclusion, of course, but it's funny we have to if we're going to have meaningful conversation and meaningful progress in the workplace education, paradigms, clinical approaches, we all really need to understand what we're all saying. Yeah, and we certainly will get to the implications of that for some of those areas that you just mentioned, everything from employment to education and so forth. It's kind of interesting, a little diversion in my thought here and that is as society becomes more respectful of some of these differences, we're seeing it more in the mainstream. So now we see pharmaceutical companies having two people with schizophrenia talking to each other and how much a particular medication has helped them, whereas not too many years ago, you know, to see that of two people acknowledging they have this mental health condition, talking on mainstream television, that was those were the kinds of issues that were hidden away. You just don't talk about those things. Oh, exactly, exactly. And I'm, you know, I'm consulting now on my second major television show with not a protagonist in this case, but certainly with one of the principal characters in the show being autistic Alex Plank is out in New Jersey right now consulting on a big new movie with Robert De Niro and I mean about autism and. So you're right, it is it is it's more that maybe the autistic voices are the ones who are propelling the conversation, not appropriating the conversation. Yeah, and I think it's the autism community rightfully so has been given the credit for putting neurodiversity front and center in mainstream conversation. I believe that clearly is the case. I think Steve Silverman's book had a lot to do with it, but you know your book. Yeah, to some of my book Steve says that my book kind of said, okay, now that we are understanding neurodiversity, what do we do about it? Yeah, and let's look at some conditions, specifically autism a different way. And the lens of neurodiversity, right, like companion books, but yeah, certainly Steve's with the word neurodiversity in the title is for the for the for most of us the first time we saw that word and thought, I like that word. Absolutely. Yeah. So why don't we just spend a very short period of time on the terminology because this is something that I think I hear people using terms in different ways. I think the term the rotypical is pretty much accepted as if you do not have an identified condition and either identified by yourself or by a clinic or a clinician. That you fall into that more center section of the bell curve and you are considered neuro typical that you're within the boundaries of what we consider, typically in brain functioning and therefore in life functioning, if you will, whatever that is. Exactly. Yeah. Neurodiverse. Here's where I see some differences and you know, if you wish you could chime in on how we agree on this in terms of neurodiverse as opposed to neurodivergent. Yes. Yeah. I'll let you frame it and then I'll let you know if I agree or disagree. Here we go. So the term neurodiverse, I see it being used in two ways in one way is outside the range of typicality of neuro typicality. And or the more general senses we're all neurodiverse. Okay. So as I mentioned to you, I don't have a diagnosed condition on that self diagnosed except I am a clut sometimes but I don't think clut is a diagnosis. You're snapping you have a snapping deficiency. Right. A drummer who can't snap his fingers. That's right. In terms of neurodiverse, I believe you and I agree that we all are if we agree that every single human being, you know, thinks differently, emotes differently responds differently to sensory input. But we may not have identified conditions. So we're all neurodiverse. Yeah. 100% yeah. And some people do use that term in the way that I use the third term we're going to put on the table and that is neurodivergent. Again, whatever the boundaries might be in that bell curve, whether we're talking about language processing, whether we're talking about motor skills, whether talking about ability to dance to play a rhythm consistently, whether we're talking about artistic abilities, whatever it might be neurodivergent would be outside of the range of what we think of in terms of this hypothetical range of typical functioning. Totally agree. And the reason why I think it's important to commit to the notion of a hypothetical range of typicality is because I look around and I definitely see like you said, a bell curve distribution of abilities of processing of the behaviors that come from the processing and and the way people cope with things. And then there are the outliers on the other ends of the bell curve, people more like myself or, you know, whoever, but when when we're talking about neurodivergent, we're not talking about diverging from normal, we're not talking about diverging from proper or right, we're talking about diverging from that center of the curve. And so every system is going to have something that has a distribution of typicality and then quote unquote outliers, right? And so when I talk about neurodivergent, I would refer to myself as neurodivergent, I would refer to my relationship with my wife as neurodiverse. And I would refer to humanity in general as neurodiverse, the same way that we are culturally diverse, socioeconomically diverse, racially ethnically diverse, gender diverse. Any any way that one person is somebody else will be something different. So we're like infinitely diverse in that. If you boil, like I said, if you boil the ocean with it. But for the content and the reason I think it's important to get these words, because I know that there are people right now who are listening who rightfully so are thinking like, man, all these labels screw this like don't put labels on me. We're not all we're basically saying is if you want to have a functional conversation towards progress in your education models, the way education is delivered in the way clinics approach their professional clinical work with, with, you know, treatment with patients. With whoever work place, employment, all of it. Then policy making right at the legislative level. It's really important for everybody to be speaking a common language and to be understanding what the terms are and what their implications are. So I think personally, I think neurodivergent makes sense when we're talking about not the neurotypical and neurodiverse referring to how we all are sort of our brain cultures are all different. So it's no different than cultural diversity. And, you know, that does then beg the question of talking about being neurodivergent in some areas of your functioning as disabling or not disabling. Because certainly, you know, for a person who works in a job that demands a certain ability in motor sequencing and motor planning. And I actually know a young man like that who wanted to diagnose his learning disabilities. And he has some motor issues and he wanted to become an auto mechanic and work on cars. But it was so challenged by the sequencing of movements that were necessary and working on an engine that his neurodivergence became a disability in terms of his not being able to succeed in a job. So I think that's a good example of how to succeed in that job situation. And you know, one thing we did not mention that I want to interject in here is that when neurodiversity was first put out as an item of discussion, it was initially associated with different clinical categories and different diagnoses. And the first came out people said, well, here's what neurodiversity is and there are all kinds of charts. If you look online that defines neurodiversity this way. The neurodiversity is autism, it's Tourette, it's ADHD, it's intellectual disabilities, it's epilepsy, it's developmental language disabilities and other learning disabilities. So it was immediately associated with people who have neurodivergent conditions. But I think as we dig deeper and deeper, one of the contributions of the concept of neurodiversity is we should be looking at a person's strengths as much as we look at their areas of challenge due to their neurological differences in their wiring differences. It does bring me back to what I mentioned earlier and that's Howard Gardner's work of multiple intelligences. And this was initially presented in the 1970s it was with frames of mind. Actually frames of mind was 1983. Is that that long ago? Oh yeah, yeah. I remember hosting Howard Gardner when I was at Emerson College in Boston, we had a speaker series and I invited him to speak at that time. And that was like 1984 or five because frames of mind had just come out. So what are we talking about with multiple intelligences for those listeners who are not familiar with this concept? What he said is enough of this general one number is a person's intelligence and even enough of this verbal intelligence on a test and the performance intelligence or IQ on a test. Yeah. And he said, wait a second. Some of us are very good at language and some of us not so good the way we speak the way we process. Some of us are very good in movement what he called bodily kinesthetic intelligence. And of course a ballet dancer or a hip hop dancer would be especially one who's successful. Yeah, and they're known for their talent. Interesting. There are some areas in Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences where we don't call it an intelligence. We call it a talent. So with music, we I guess it's more acceptable now to say, you know, his musical intelligence is really high level or not so great. But again, we think of that as a talent, especially if it's if it's high level logical mathematical intelligence Einstein, for example. And then one then when we talk about the social piece, what about interpersonal intelligence? Yes. So I'm able to engage in a conversation, excuse me read another person's intentions, being sensitive to that person. In terms of how they're feeling, what they're communicating that overlaps with linguistic intelligence. But there's also interpersonal intelligence. How much are you aware of who you are as a person? What about your self regulatory abilities? How do you manage your own emotions and recognize your own emotions and feelings? And then finally, I'll toss another one out actually there's a few more but visual spatial intelligence. A person who just really, you know, either can create beautiful things visually or is very, very aware spatially and an example I read years ago, it might have been in his book of people in tribal societies and Indonesia. How they could go out amongst thousands of islands and be able to look at the stars and always navigate know exactly where they are. Space. That's my dad, my dad in a fishing boat will never get lost. And I should say I participated with Howard Gardner. He actually evaluated me. Wow. And he found no discernible intelligences. I completely blew this whole theory apart. He almost quit the business. Intelligent less. That's right. He was like, my God, this you are the exception that makes the rule you, you have no intelligences whatsoever. I couldn't believe it. I beg to differ. I'm just kidding. I've never met Howard Gardner. So here's a great quote from from him. And I think it moves us into talking about what does this all really mean and real life. Okay. He says it's not how smart you are that matters. What really counts is how you are smart. Yes. That's so perfect. And that's on one of your slides that you present. And I remember I've taken pictures of that slide before because it's how you are smart. We are all smart in a way. Some of us are the gifted kids who are apparently smart in every subject, all A's, and they can do it all. But that's not all of us. And by the way, the fair to say the public school machinery doesn't reward how you're smart. It rewards how smart you are. So a lot of us fall through the cracks in public school systems because you got to get an A in every class. It's like, well, I'm not good in every subject. And neither are you, by the way. And I think it is true, even with the awareness of different intelligences that we all have and how that's related to being neurodiverse. We still overly value spoken language intelligence and logical mathematical intelligence. That's why anything having to do with the arts is the first thing to be cut when a school budget is stressed. And that is why and hopefully our listeners have heard this on our podcast with non speakers. That is why people who don't speak are not given a break at all at really trying to understand how intelligent they really are. And we don't see that until they have a modality to let us know that doesn't involve speaking or minimally speaking. Jordan Zimmerman, who was like, I was just, I was written off my entire elementary middle school and most of high school career as I recall. And then she was like, but I want to go to college because I see my brother going to college and that looks cool. And now she's just crushing it as a, I think she's a grad student. Well, she's graduated. Oh, she is graduated. Okay, as graduating, she actually is leader in a number of national disability rights organizations. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got her timeline all wrong. Yeah, no, you're right. So, and that's the thing is you, when you see how someone is smart, then you think, oh my gosh. And I don't want to get ahead of the conversation. But once we start talking about workplace things, that's where how you are smart can really be rewarded. Yes. If you've got the right employer. Yes. And I think so many people still believe that our, especially our public educational systems, militate against the how you are smart. Okay. It's what do we value to measure that allows us to say, oh, he or she's very intelligent or he or she is less intelligent. So it's fighting that battle all the time. And I can see why I mean with the, as the, when the industrial revolution comes along, right, and it changes human sort of trajectory from you can, hey, if you're a great painter, be a painter. If you're a philosopher, be a philosopher to, no, no, no, we need you to operate the machines. We need you to keep the books accurate. We need you to sell the widgets. That's, that's, to me, as a, as a product of a public school system, to me, that's what it felt like I was being geared towards. It's like, here's how you do the math, not why you do the math. Here's, here's the mechanics of how the mathematics works. So you can go and sit down at a desk and do it when somebody tells you when to do this math. But we don't, we don't need to tell you like what's under the hood of the math. And if I'm teaching you math one way and it's not making sense to you, do I keep pushing on that same way to teach the math such as worksheet after worksheet and talking math to you and using language to try to get numeracy concepts across to you. Or do I totally change and do we look at the math concepts through building a project or cooking and measuring and so forth. And this is what brings us right back to practicality and efficiency. Neurodiversity does not harmonize well always with efficiency because if you're a, if you're a classroom teacher, 30 kids, you gotta teach to, I mean, I'm not a teacher so I shouldn't be saying what you gotta do and lead, but I'm imagining what you have to do is teach to those 25 kids who are all pretty similar. And those other five kids are like, I guess the two-week gifted kid, he can do this little weird project that he found in a book somewhere, but the other, the other five, they're just going to kind of slip through a little bit here and they're not going to move on. So it's, it's, you can't always fault, you can fault the system more than you can fault the individuals who are participating in the system, I think. Well, having said that, I beg to differ slightly on that. If you have a teacher who understands that kids process information differently and you use multimodal methods of teaching. So if you're trying to lecture to get information across and it's not quite working, okay, are you using a lot of visual supports? Are you doing hands-on projects which get at some of the same understandings? Rather than teaching facts about history, do you have the kids come up with little plays about certain things that happen around the Boston Tea Party? Are there many, many different ways to engage the kids that you're betting will tap into a different child who has different processing strengths and challenges? And at its best, it's everything you described. At its worst, you've only reinforced in multiple modes now through multiple modes, the lesson for the kids who get it the first time. So everybody benefits from this multimodal teaching to the diversity of the classroom, not to the center of the curve. So when I go and do my talks, a lot of times I'll really my experience, my lived experience in the classroom as sort of the outlier kid. And I think educators have benefited from that as well, but I always give the example of my first ever diagnostic label, whatever was twice exceptional gifted, I was a two-week gifted kid. And the joke I always make about myself is that twice exceptional means you're exceptionally talented in one area and exceptionally not talented in the rest of life. It's not accurate, but that's that was my experience. And what you all, it's so funny when you were just describing multimodal education delivery, I always give the example in my talks of if the program or if the assignment was we're going to make kites today to familiarize ourselves with the classroom environment where everything is right and just to just to kind of make kites together because it's fun. First grade, right? So we're going to make little construction paper kites and get the get the here the steps, you need to get the paper, the glue, the popsicle sticks and the string and then follow the instructions on the sheet. And all the other kids, most of the other kids in the classroom were like, God, we're going to go make kites right and they just got to work making kites and I would just sit there like. I know I should be making kites, but I don't know what that means, even though the teacher just said it's then she looks at me and she says, OK, well, I better write this on the board because you know Mr. two we gifted back there can can't compute this so she writes it on the board. And I read it on the board, but I'm kind of distracted now by her handwriting because it's not the same way that. It's like she would use this really loopy handwriting, but I would look around and be like she's been grilling us on this is the way you write a capital A and a little A and a capital B and a little B when she's writing her instructions on the board this and how she's writing. So now I'm like, is she in some kind of advanced now my brain is completely off of kites and into her handwriting. And it's all these other distractions and things going on and I could look like the world's most frustrating defiant student but not intentionally not willfully it wasn't until the teacher came to me and put her hand over hand right like hand on my hand is it like here's where some construction paper is now wouldn't that make a nice kite now here's where the popsicle six or here's where the glue is and here's the instruction sheet I gave you Dave. Would you follow steps one two three four five with these supplies and tell me what we can make and when she did that I was like oh you want us to make kites you should have said so. Write it on the board you know give me a clue and that's what you're describing is a teacher like I had angel teachers every now and then who would do that Mrs. Prassy was the one who I'm describing my first grade and she would she would do that she when I wasn't engaged she knew it wasn't because I was. She knew it wasn't because I didn't want to be or because I couldn't be is because something wasn't getting through and she would take an extra couple minutes once the rest of the class was going she'd come over to me and say like alright and then I would go and do it and I would get like I would do it awesome. I just needed someone to grab me by the cheeks and tell me what to do yeah and she was actually teaching you through experience by kind of moving you through the steps but you also was providing an executive function support. By laying out clearly what the steps were and making it digestible for you as opposed to from a distance at the front of the classroom just going. Yeah yeah the Charlie Brown Trombone teacher that's right that's all I heard until she was directly you know and I was an adult I can I can watch something on a YouTube video okay and I can go do it but but when I was a kid the classroom environment was so different from growing up on the farm. That I needed extra attention and I'm glad I got it because if she had written me off in first grade who knows what you know I probably wouldn't be the genius mogul that I am today. And you know one of the things you alluded to which I don't want her to escape us when you said what you frustrated and I mean kind of the mental health implications of somebody trying to have you learn or perform. In a way that's not a good match for your brain. Yeah and and I gave the example in a recent podcast of the young man who couldn't do the motor planning for the morning exercises so we watched all of his friends in class doing the morning exercises led by the teacher and he got so frustrated while he was watching from the sidelines that he took a computer and he threw it across the room. So you know and so many of us know people if not yourself who've been in work situations and Dave you know what you felt like throwing a person across the room or or something across the room because people were either interacting with you or having expectations of you that we're not a good match for how you could feel competent and be successful. We'd like to take a moment to thank you for listening to uniquely human the podcast. It is so gratifying to hear that so many of you find value in what we share. It is gratifying and it's so much fun making this show together Barry. Being able to meet with you every week and all the guests and listener support that we've received it's such a joy to make this show and of course we are commercial free. But Barry and I would invite you to support this show in a number of different ways that could be buying our books or even inviting us to speak live or virtually to your organization or to your community. To learn more about all of this you can of course go to our websites BarryPresent.com or David J Finch.com to learn more about our speaking topics and how to work with us and all of the consultative services that we provide. And we also want to know how we're doing. We are in a constant quality improvement mode here. So please make sure to leave comments and ratings suggestions on social media. Contact us directly on the links on our website and recommend uniquely human the podcast to those in your lives. In conclusion we are so grateful to you are uniquely human community for your support and loyalty and we'll be keeping at it. Yes, thank you all so much. Now back to the show. My experience being the neurodivergent employee and even manager like a leader of a large team in the technology sector. So in the for profit sector, you know, I've mentioned this before I worked in the corporate world for over 20 years. The reality is if the essence of diversity is inclusion, then the essence of harnessing diversity and its benefits would be cooperative learning and equity in roles of leadership and cultural shifts within the organization. And so if I'm a contributor, a neurodivergent contributor, hopefully one of many in an organization, it's not just enough to get me in the door and say like, good, we hired some neurodivergent folks. We checked the box. It's now how are we going to learn together and and stitch together a corporate culture from all these different neurological cultures that we've hired. And really listen to that and share in the share in the decision making and the power distribution as well. You know Dave, I think what you're you're saying is it goes so so much more beyond just let's put a team together. Yeah, but let's understand how the team fits together, which I imagine would involve some kind of disclosure of the team members about what they're good at what they're not so good at. And understanding that you know the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Exactly. And that's in the workplace and then in the classroom, it's it's again, it's not enough to have kind of integrated learning mainstream classroom, whatever opportunities. It's more like what I would I think is going on with programs like nest in New York and these other programs, which is let's create a hole that is greater than just the sum of the parts. Let's let's create a classroom culture around the diversity, not let's have a diverse classroom. And that's when we talk about what neurodiversity is and what potential neurodiversity has. Those are two different things. And I think and by the way, I should mention too that I've got right now. I've got the world's greatest co worker, which is you. So I don't have to. I've like you don't make me do corporate team building exercises because you hate those things too. I also am aware that not everybody gets to be very presents, you know, co worker. So it's we we need to be culturally or societally looking at workplace classroom and healthcare and saying it is a diverse and neuro diverse species in all the other ways that we are diverse neurodiverses yet another. But it's the cooperative learning it's meeting people understanding where people are and understanding how they can contribute to what we're trying to do here as a group. And also respecting the differences that you do see when you say understanding where people are. So you know when Roz Blackburn, one of our previous guests says, you know, I'm not going to go out to dinner with everybody tonight because I'm not in the mood to do social. Yeah, we don't say Rosas anti social. So it's a healthy amount of respect for the differences that play out when a person either is on various ends within the neurotypical population or beyond that where it becomes, you know, over the boundary a little bit but understanding that I mean that's one of the important. And I think that's one of the issues of disclosure that if you can say like Carly Ott, one of our previous guests said, you know, in her bank work, I can't work in a noisy kind of open room format and I can be much more efficient at home and you know brilliant mind when it comes to finance and she could demonstrate that more effectively. Than she can in that setting. So this is a whole other issue that we've discussed in previous episodes with Steven Shore and with Carly and other people and that is not only being aware of your own differences. Which is expressed in some cases in either neurodiversity or neurodivergence, but being comfortable enough to share that when you need to share that with others. Right. Safe and that's something else that employers and educators can do and families. I mean, God getting together Thanksgiving, but is creating a safe space to be divergent. Yes. All right. So what we haven't done in a while because our conversations, we just keep forgetting to do it because we're so in the moment with our guests. We have not done a Barry take away sort of set the ball down and on the tee and just tee off for us like what if we want to take this thought provoking conversation about neurodiversity and have some key takeaways that are. Maybe both philosophical and practical. Like why we're talking about all of this for the last 45 minutes or however long. Could you do that for me? Could you crystallize this into a few key takeaways for us? Sure. Yeah. I think first of all, we really need to put a lot of energy into understanding what every person is challenged by. What every person shows particular skills or shows particular strengths in again, that could be an artistic domain. That could be an academic domain. That could be an athletics. That could be in employment settings and being very conscious and intentional about understanding that for each person. And when it comes to things are not so good at being willing to accept that because everybody's good at some things and not so good or other things. So, you know, I'm even though I'm a good drummer, I'm a terrible dancer and I try to avoid situations even though my wife's a wonderful dancer. I'm not too pleased when I get up there and look like a clutch and no matter how much I try, I know I'm not that good. But it feels okay to say that and to put it out there juxtaposed with things that I know I'm good at. So it's not only awareness of another person or another team members abilities, but it's that self awareness that underlies that, which is very important and being respectful of those differences. And by the way, I'm right there with you. I can't I can't do it. Like you could you could physically move my hands, feet, hips where they need to be on a beat by beat basis and I'll still get it wrong. It just doesn't make sense to me. What you said earlier about it's not how smart you are. It's how you are smart. Yes. Neurodiversity at its core is inclusion, but really harnessing neurodiversity is all about understanding how people are smart. Yes. And finding it and working with that. Not an insistence that they have to be smart in a certain way. And for those listeners who have younger children say, well, you know, I really can't see anything yet that looks like how my son or daughter is smart. What they're drawn to. What are they enthusiastic about? So sometimes those are the earliest clues that we tend to be drawn to things that we feel competent doing or what interested in doing something we're fascinated by. It really kind of grabs our attention and maintains our attention. Those could be some of the earliest clues and especially when it becomes it comes to people who are more challenged in communication where it may not be so readily observable. Let's just we have to become interpreters and filters for understanding, okay, what could I go with with my son or daughter? What could I nurture? What could I help support? And the nice thing about that is you you don't need to be a child development expert. You just need to know your child well enough and observe them and the child will definitely show you what their enthusiasm is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the nurturing part is important. You know, creating many, many experiences. I don't care if you're in middle school high school or if you're a three year old. You know, kind of creating those opportunities and those experiences for the person to evolve in that area where they're very good or they're very interested. Absolutely. And haven't you noticed that even if it's not about the enthusiasm per se, the child's engagement in what their enthusiastic about reveals what some of those other hidden sometimes hidden talents are. Absolutely. You know, so let me give you an example where that may not happen, but it's an opportunity. You know, I've heard this many times over the years, especially with very, very young kids who may not be speaking yet. And a parent says to me, you know, I could pick up some of the melodies. I think he's humming some songs that we play. It might even be a symphony by big. Oh, the part of that. And sometimes when we see those emerging abilities that have to do with the person's neurological endowment and what they process, sometimes it's seen as a curiosity. Kind of curious that he does that or it's kind of curious that he he sees signs and you know, oh, mobile. Oh, Texaco and he labels those words, it's called hyperlexia when kids pick up the form of words and memorize those words early on, which evolves into functional reading if it's treated well. The point is that we shouldn't just look at those as curiosities. We should say, okay, what opportunities does this open for us? Very important. What I will say personal lived experience. If you've got a kid who was like me when I was a kid, it can be hard to find the wheat in the chaff. I'm pushing myself around the farmhouse on the floor with my forehead against the floor pretending to be a bulldozer. That might not be the thing that you put all the bets on. But once if I'm doing that, it's probably to get myself regulated. And when I'm done doing the bulldozer exercise, look at what I'm doing after that. Maybe that's what I'm going in making the best diorama in the world of, you know, a colosseum. Yeah, or something like that. Sometimes we do our best work after our most bizarre things. And so you always kind of have to be looking because we are not like the traditional gifted kids who will just show up and be like, here's something awesome that I did perfectly with no weirdness. It's kind of hidden in there sometimes. Yes, and that goes back to the Samantha craft definition early on. That's neurodiversity and understanding people as neurodivergent in some cases may affect coping strategies and the term that we would use is emotional regulation strategies. So having a neurodiversity lens to look through also respects the fact that people cope and regulate differently. So a person who needs to pace back and forth in the classroom and take breaks, but still could process what the teacher saying, why should that person have to sit still when he or she can't process as well as they do when they move because that person's a kinesthetic learner. Right, exactly. And there's a difference between a kinesthetic learner and a kid who's abusing the privilege. And I think that's also part of diversity is respecting what somebody isn't and trying to lay claim to. So as we as we wrap up here, I want to do something quick. Let's take what you just said as the takeaway, which is essentially respect our mutual differences in how we XYZ. So let's fill in the XYZ using Samantha craft definition everything after the basically the word, including in her definition like harnessing neurodiversity and advancing as a neurodiverse species together comes down to respect. What how a person processes their experience information in their experience, how they process language and how they are able to formulate what they wish to say so many autistic people, for example, say either speak more slowly or put it in writing for me, make it visual for me because that will be very, very helpful. Also, as we just discussed how a person behaves when we observe the behavior of a person we look through a neurodiversity lens that goes back to asking, you know, the uniquely human why question why is this person rocking why is this person looking at his or her fingers? Because it may be the result of different brain wiring that requires different actions that other people may not do, especially overtly and in social situations. And that relates directly to Samantha crafts notion of how a person copes. Okay, so the behavior is what we see the purpose the why the reason is the underlying purpose and let me just say something that usually parents are very good at describing that to new people, especially if they are good observers of their child and they see how that helps their child. So, yep, maybe bulldozing on your head, you know, kind of really puts you with all that input, you know, puts you in a state of really being able to make a project or do whatever you're doing much more successfully afterwards. Yes. And speaking from the autistic corner of the tent here, everything you just described in how we process and experience the world, how we cope and regulate. That's the essence, I think, a lot of times of the autistic experience is processing coping, regulating, right? And the results that people see on the outsider, maybe behaviors or patterns of behavior. But for all that neurodiversity can include when you're dealing with somebody on the autism spectrum, know that they're processing, they're trying to stay regulated one way or another, they're coping. And so asking the underlying why truthfully and trying to really understand it goes a long way with your relationship with somebody on the spectrum. Absolutely. And you know, one other point that was part of some at the craft's definition that I want to make sure we really nail. And that is how a person perceives the world. A lot of that is how a person processes sensory information. And within the so-called neurotypical population, you know, for example, my wife has acute olfactory sensitivity. I mean, she a lot of smells in the environment that she sees as aversive, but not just as aversive. I mean, if there's a flower, you know, within 100 feet of us, she's running there and smelling it. And I am more in the kind of center of the bell curve range, I believe, even though she says that I have weak smelling sense. But it really impacts our life. For example, some people wait a couple of days to throw the trash out, but in our house, if we make anything that has a slight odor to it, my wife wants to take that plastic bag and take it out immediately, even though I say that's not the best conservation is kind of approach to life. You want to fill those landfills right away with plastic bags. I'm sure people are going to say, why don't you compost? Yeah, yeah, we're going to get, but you guys are the essence of neurodiversity right there. Yes. And it does demand negotiation. And it does demand recognition. And quite honestly, I've learned over the years, you know, I shouldn't say, oh, come on, it's not that bad. You know, I just should respect it and say, okay, if you need to get it out here, let's get it out of here, even though the trash bag, which is three feet tall, has about three inches of trash. You know, one optimistic point we could kind of conclude on is society's recognizing this, but much too slowly, because that's what sense referendly films are about. That's why, yeah, architectural applications that are more comfortable for people who are neurodivergent in various ways are about. That's what curb cuts are about for people who have mobility issues. So society is making these changes, recognizing that there are neurological differences that play out and interfere with access to community environments that interfere with access to cultural events and so forth. But I think many, many people would say we have to really accelerate that. And it's happening too slowly. Silver lining, it's happening, but, you know, totally agree. Wow, all right, well, how's that for us? That was a nice, very nice way to spend an hour talking. Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's a complex issue and hopefully this will help to generate a lot of discussion on the part of our listeners. Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of that, if you, if anybody wants to kind of chime in on this, I'm sure we'll be posting about it on social media. You can jump in there, but also you can go to uniquely human.com and find, find the form there to contact us and in the spirit of benefiting from neurodiversity. I'll say definitely want to hear lots of different opinions on this because for every human out there, there's going to be a different opinion on what neurodiversity is, what it isn't, and what we, what we can do better as a neurodiverse species. Yes, very much so. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]