UNDERSTANDING NEURODIVERSITY
Spot the difference How an understanding of neurodiversity helps us be more inclusive When I was little in the 1970s, I joined the ‘Friday Club’ in the local newspaper. Each week, the Deputy Head of my primary school would set challenges for us to solve. Being the child who sat on the ‘top table’ and constantly raised his hand to answer questions in class, I was always trying to win competitions. I got hooked on puzzle books and became a big fan of ‘spot the difference’ and ‘odd one out’ brainteasers. Despite the skills I honed, I never became a detective. I did
become, like many other children back then, rather too talented at noticing when someone was a bit weird or peculiar and, I’m afraid to say, would occasionally tease others for not being ‘normal’. My classmates teased me too – looking back, I was probably bullied for being a swot – and we were rarely disciplined for making fun of other people. Fast-forward many years and the world is more respectful of individuality and the importance of inclusiveness and accessibility. This is certainly the case
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regarding gender, sexuality and ethnicity, but the complexity of how our brains work and develop has perhaps meant that our neurodiversity has been less easy to comprehend and consider. Neurodiversity describes the different ways in which we all think, move, hear, see, process information and communicate with each other. We live in a neurodiverse world where social or cultural norms mean that some people are said to be ‘typical’ and others are said to be ‘divergent’. There are dominant ‘neuro-types’
