Teach-Primary-18.3

If we want neurodivergent children to be understood and accepted, we have to let their peers ask questions, says Fiona Carswell W ith a little under three years between my boys, the school nursery run with the younger inevitably meant catching sight of the elder in the playground at lunchtime. Always alongside him was his Additional Support Needs worker who is still such a huge part of our lives today. But, as we queued for pre-school, we would pull in quite a crowd at the fence. Classmates of my elder son (then six) physically lined up to ask us questions about big brother: Why did he make that noise? Say that phrase? Far from being annoyed by the many enquiries, I embraced them. Regardless of a particular question and how many times it had been asked by various kids over many, many months, we answered it in the fullest way we could. Every time. You see, those questions – those answers – are essential if true inclusion is ever to work. In every other sphere of life, we encourage enquiring minds and propagate inquisitiveness and persistence. Yet when it comes to something as vital as teaching kids about their neurodivergent classmates, we all too often get bashful. Learning every day If knowledge is power then knowledge denied is surely, what... fear? Perhaps that’s too strong a word. But it’s a sense of incompetence and inadequacy at the very least. Children, like so many adults, can feel inadequate around their neurodivergent peers. Those like my son, who needs something different from those around him if he is to stay regulated, feel safe and be able adequately to function – let alone be his full, vibrant self. There is, in the education system in the UK, seemingly a presumption of mainstream for children with additional needs, even when those needs are pervasive and complex. Of course, there is a sad history of autistic people being locked up, hidden from society and isolated; how truly unthinkable. But additional needs support is not about binaries, and the way to address the truly horrific way in which autistic people were treated in the past is not simply to assume sameness and throw everybody together to prove we are all equal. The fact is, we’re not all the same, and so many times we hear of schools failing neurodivergent children because individual needs are being ignored ina misguided form of ‘inclusion’. Changing lives Inclusion is explicitly not about everyone being the same; it's about recognising a child's individual needs and making all necessary accommodations to allow them to feel safe, secure and understood. A huge part of that involves teaching our neurotypical young people more about their neurodivergent peers and how they can help them. Let’s not get hung up on the semantics of whether somebody ‘is autistic’ or ‘has autism’, or on the ever-changing terminology that baffles and intimidates the most empathetic, kind people into silence. Even my youngest, who has never known anything other than his autistic big brother, still has occasional questions. Yes, even amid his vast, absorbed bank of lived knowledge and overflowing kindness. And it wouldn’t occur to him not to ask. My elder son has attended a specialist school for the last two years. He needs the extra help and attention, expertise and tailored experience, that a special provision offers. He’ll attend a specialist secondary school and will, most likely, never be in a mainstream classroom again. But he is understood so much more by the myriad of other children and adults around him in everyday life because of those snatched conversations with kids hanging over the fence. If true inclusion is the aim, as it should always be, then we have a duty to show children, time and time again, that it’s okay to ask. Answer their questions: whenever and however they come. Child by child, class by class, school by school, lives can be changed forever. TP Fact- FINDING Fiona Carswell's new book, The Boy Who Loves to Lick the Wind, is out now in hardback (£12.99, Otter-Barry Books). www.teachwire.net | 69 S END S P E C I A L