Around the office, people clutch coffee like a life raft, waiting for their brains to come online and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they got in early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out-this time. Now: which person are you? The early riser, or the one watching them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour no matter how hard you try?
At the start of this year, I went back to contracting, and then I learned I had prostate cancer. It was stage one, and I was on active monitoring for six months. I did some more contracting up until July, when I was told I needed to have treatment. So, I had treatment, and all the signs were good. In August, I thought, 'OK, I can start looking to go back to work.'
"I feel like there's a narrative sometimes that our little actions don't matter," Neurodiversity Alliance CEO David Flink said. "That's just not true. And this proves it. Lots of little actions that happen every day in our work, collectively over time, reached the ears of folks like Lauren and Jeff."
The hook for Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks is meant to be that many of the 37,000 sketches left behind by the great British painter JMW Turner have rarely been seen and never been filmed; therein may be hints at the nuances of his elusive character that his main oeuvre kept hidden. Equally remarkable, though, is the documentary's bold choice of contributors. As well as the art historians and present-day British artists who would dominate a standard art film, there are famous laymen, from the obviously somewhat qualified Timothy Spall played the artist in Mike Leigh's biographical film Mr Turner; Chris Packham is well placed to comment on Turner's reverence for the natural world to the more surprising hire of Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones.
When your child hears 100 times a day, again and again and again, what they do well, what they do well becomes the memory that they have in their brain and body, and they do it more because they've had so many experiences of having it reinforced,
Mistakes, whether spoken or promised, are universal. The feeling of "putting our foot in our mouth" arises from a key executive function that our brain controls: stopping ourselves. However, the knowledge that response inhibition is an executive function skill is not universal. Executive function skills are brain-based skills that help us get things done (or not). Many of us who are neurodivergent have an uneven executive function profile; some executive functions are significant strengths, while others pose substantial challenges.
All people have strengths and resources. Assess for, and focus on, these strengths and resources, and not on weaknesses and deficits. Utilize and leverage them when designing interventions. Each person is a unique individual. Each person has their own goals, values, and ways of experiencing and being in the world, along with their own unique sets of strengths and resources. Individualizing interventions is key.
Last year, I worked with a boy who dreaded school so much he would sometimes vomit on the drive there. His anxiety wasn't about tests or teachers in the usual sense. It was about the environment itself-the noise, the lights, the pressure to sit still in a classroom not built for how his brain works. His parents tried everything from walking him into school to rearranging schedules but nothing helped.
we noticed we'd buy a bunch of groceries, only for them to sit in our fridge and spoil (but not because we didn't want to eat them - we just literally forgot they were there). You see, we're both neurodivergent and tend to struggle with object permanence. Essentially, if something is out of sight, it's out of mind. So we started printing out a physical menu and hanging it in our kitchen - as if we were dining at our very own private restaurant each week.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Khanmigo are rapidly proliferating and becoming integrated into nearly every aspect of life, including education. Although critics argue that these tools may replace traditional education, when used appropriately, they can complement teachers by serving as powerful educational partners. The diversity among learners often necessitates levels of support that a teacher alone cannot provide, underscoring the potential role of Gen AI in offering such assistance.
It was commissioned by the Artistic Director of Nottingham Playhouse, Adam Penford, after Penford heard the story of how, in 2011 in Nottingham, a teenager (Dunne) threw a punch that resulted in the unintended death of a young man, James Hodgkinson. Punch is dedicated to James, and all victims of one-punch, a term for legal cases where a single punch has unforeseen fatal consequences and the perpetrator is convicted of manslaughter.
Over the past few years, the topic of neurodiversity in workplaces has shifted from a niche topic to a mainstream, ballooning conversation. More people than ever are seeking and receiving diagnoses as neurodivergent. Social media has opened up spaces where individuals confidently share their lived experiences, providing the examples and guidance previous generations never enjoyed. Today, younger generations in particular are growing up with a language for difference that simply did not exist at scale before.
I recently met Billy, a 12-year-old boy with severe autism. He had been growing well but, at around age 3, he became increasingly delayed in speaking and walking. As he got older, he would frequently scream inconsolably when upset. and have temper tantrums and meltdowns, spilling and throwing food all around him, and difficulty understanding spoken language or learning. Eventually, testing showed that he had an IQ of 70-in the category of intellectual disability.
