WORDS BY RACHAEL DUPREE
uring the Autistic Rights Movement of the 1990s, a new term was coined to describe the brains of people with neurological differences. First used by Australian autistic sociologist Judy Singer, the term “neurodiversity” became the springboard of what we know today as the Neurodiversity Movement.
WOR D S M AT T E R Neurodiversity in and of itself isn’t a new or contestable concept. It’s the scientifically backed idea that there are infinite variations within the human brain and how it functions. When people’s neurocognitive functioning falls within societal norms, they are known as neurotypical (NT), and when they don’t, they are neurodivergent (ND). Neurodivergences can be innate — as in with conditions such as autism, dyslexia and ADHD — or they can be the result of an experience, like a traumatic brain injury or a long-term meditation practice, writes autistic scholar Nick Walker, PhD, in his blog
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ohParent.com I August 2021
Neurocosmopolitanism. Being neurodivergent, he says, isn’t in and of itself negative or positive, but depends on the person and their condition. On the other hand, the neurodiversity paradigm — the concept on which the Neurodiversity Movement was built — is an emerging viewpoint that these neurological differences are normal and valuable. According to Carrie Steenbergen, a speech language pathologist and owner of TherapyWorks Cincinnati, the neurodiversity paradigm helps put the focus on the person and not the disability label. “With labels, comes assumptions and stereotypes about those diagnoses,” she says. While the neurodiversity paradigm is becoming increasingly accepted by those within the neurodivergent communities, as well as within the community at large, it is still a fairly new concept that not all have aligned with.
