Neurodiversity Affirming Language
Speech and language pathologist Jacqui Jebian Garcia joined me on the Reframing Neurodiversity podcast this week to discuss the sensory world of neurodivergent children, the unseen triggers that can make them feel safe or threatened, and the ways our verbal and non-verbal communication can help.
Jacqui takes a neurodiversity-affirming approach to her practice — I love how she brings the sensory experience and her expertise about the nervous system into the work that she does. It is such a necessary component in understanding and truly supporting our neurodivergent kids.
Melissa: I’m so curious about why, as a speech and language pathologist, you're feeling this need to shift the lens in how we support kids with the sensory experience work that you do.
Jacqui: Well, I've been a speech language pathologist for 10 years now. Seven years ago I became a mom and just two years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. So I really dove into the sensory world because of my children — wanting to understand them better and wanting to co-regulate with them in the way our bodies needed.
The sensory experience work became a passion on steroids because it was all based on my personal experiences.
Melissa: I so get that. As professionals in the field, so often we learn things in a book. And then you walk it in real time and have these experiences in your own life with your own children. That’s really a moment where we reflect and realize there's a bit more to it.
Jacqui: Exactly. My lived experiences led me to really expand and unlearn what we learned in grad school. The deficit-based models never really aligned with my heart, I just didn’t know that there was another way.
My whole personal experience was such a powerful healing journey that I just wanted to share it with the world and give neurodiverse parents and kids the tools not only to advocate for themselves but to begin healing too.
Melissa: I think that’s such a strength of the neurodivergent experience. There’s this passion and this sense of justice of wanting to expose something that's not right and make it right.
And there’s also the intuition. You said you always knew in your heart that something was off with what you were being taught, but you just didn't have the language or the resources to understand it yet.
How we may unintentionally be minimizing a child’s intuition rather than affirming it
Jacqui: That little gut feeling of knowing we were right this whole time is actually interoception. It's a sensory system. And the reason I’ve done certifications in sensory trauma and somatic trauma therapy is because of how we store the trauma from those lived experiences.
We've stored it as, “Oh, no, the music's not that loud. You're fine.” When actually you’re like “Oh, no, actually I am not fine. I'm sensitive to auditory simulation.”
“They feel like there’s a lion in front of them, but no one else even notices the lion.”
That minimizing of our experiences taught us not to listen to our body.
Somatic trauma therapy is really like getting in your body again and realizing, “I need to get my loops and just put them in and then I’ll be fine.” There's nothing wrong with that. But we grew up thinking why does it bother me and not them? I should be fine, why am I not?
In that moment, kids feel like there’s a lion in front of them, but no one else even notices the lion.
Melissa: It’s recognizing and acknowledging that they feel threatened by the situation. And it’s honoring how we aren't all experiencing the world in the same way.
So somatic therapy is all about getting in tune with our sense of interoception? Can you talk a little more about that?
Jacqui: We have the five external systems that we learned about in school: sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing. Then we have three internal senses, and interoception is one of them.* It’s your awareness of your internal organs, like needing to go to the bathroom or feeling hungry.
*Jacqui: We also have proprioception, which often feels like seeking that deep pressure on our joints. So for example if your child is crashing or jumping on the couch they're really seeking that proprioceptive input.
Then there's vestibular, which encompasses head movement. If your child is spinning around they're really seeking that vestibular input.
When we’re aware of these internal senses, we can see their behaviors and recognize what their body is seeking in that moment. It’s reframing from “he doesn’t want to sit down” to “his body is asking him for something it needs.”
Somatic therapy is all about getting in tune with that sense of interoception.
Melissa: That’s why I love your approach so much. Kids and parents need neurodiversity-affirming professionals like you who can be like yes, those feelings are valid, and here are some things you can do that are going to help you stay regulated.
We talked about threats earlier, and I know you also talk about the verbal and non-verbal communication we can use to help bring a child back to a place of feeling safe.
Jacqui: So we usually communicate using “WH” questions — who, what, when, where, why. Those are imperative sentences. There’s actually an implied demand from asking questions that way, and sometimes it can feel threatening to a child.
So instead of asking what do you want to play with or what do you want to eat for breakfast, I just spend the whole day using “I wonder”, “I notice”, and “I see” — just changing out the WH words.
Learning about declarative language changed my ability to co-regulate and connect with my kids and then also my clients. Because it removes the threat of the demand from a question.
Melissa: That’s so important — when we don't feel safe we're literally unavailable to learn. So as parents if we understand that a child may actually feel threatened by those WH questions, we can adjust and respond more appropriately.
A compassionate way to advocate for the support your neurodivergent child may need in the classroom
Melissa: Do you have suggestions for parents — once we’re understanding how to support our kids like this — how to communicate with their teachers and other professionals that are there to help? How do we get everybody on board?
Jacqui: It’s a gentle approach all around. You don’t want to make it personal with them. You want to be gentle while still being assertive and clear about what your child needs. For example if you child needs a fidget toy in order to do a worksheet, then make sure you’re clear that it’s an accommodation they need during the worksheet, not as a reward after.
Melissa: That's the whole shift away from the deficit model of having a single right way to be neurotypical and rewarding for being that way.
It’s respecting the kid and the way they’re wired. It’s showing them that their needs are valid.
“The deficit-based model tells kids if they behave in this neurotypical fashion — here’s your treat for masking and conforming to societal expectations. The shift we’re advocating for is instead asking about what’s causing these behaviors and what does the child need in order to do the task.”
But it can be so tricky to bump up against other people's beliefs and egos. I know I navigate this a lot with trying to educate about what my children need in a way where the teacher doesn't feel attacked. It's really a dance to educate while having compassion and empathy for how they're doing their best, but at the same time bringing this new awareness to them.
Jacqui: Vulnerability is one of the most powerful tools you can have for overcoming pushback in this moment. Sharing the vulnerable moments for you or your child can help a teacher understand their responses and have those aha moments without feeling attacked.
How can we affirm a child’s internal feelings rather than react to their external behaviors?
“When we aren’t emotionally regulated, we really aren’t available to learn or to communicate.
So when we’ve got a child who’s dysregulated and we’re trying to solve a problem while being dysregulated ourselves, we’re coming at it from an irrational space where we can’t get curious, we can’t learn, and we can’t communicate. It ultimately starts with us as the adult.”
Melissa: These discussions are also an opportunity to shift the lens of what is a negative behavior. It’s the bottom-up approach of understanding what’s going on inside first and seeing the external reaction as valid, instead of the top-down approach of making judgments based on external behaviors.
Jacqui: Right. They're not behaving that way on purpose. They just don't know what they're even feeling in their body. And so at that point they're not in control. It's our jobs as adults to co-regulate emotions with them.
But if we as adults don't know how to self-regulate, then how are we going to co-regulate? That is such a big part to this shift: us doing our work to learn our nervous system and what our body needs.
Melissa: Yes, and I think it's about getting curious rather than immediately judging a behavior because it's inconvenient for us or it's triggering us.
That's why I just love that you're bringing these components into the work that you're doing, because the model we've all been trained in has been the flip. It's been about putting a bandage on the behavior and labeling the behavior as bad, leaving adults totally off the hook.
Jacqui: I’d also like to mention narrating as a co-regulating tool too. You and I both know, as highly sensitive people ourselves, that we feel other people's emotions at the same intensity. If not more.
Showing that authenticity and narrating what is going on inside for us is so helpful for kids to understand our reactions. Because what happened to you and I when we were kids? You immediately feel like your parent’s reaction is your fault, right? At least for me I felt like that.
So when I say things like “Mama's feeling like my heart is going really fast right now, and I'm feeling anxious because we're late,” I say it because I don't want them to think it’s because of them. I don’t want them to internalize that it's their fault.
Melissa: And as highly sensitive people, we tend to take things on like that. If nothing's being explained, we tend to make it about us — it’s me, I’m bad, I’m wrong.
Jacqui: It also works to narrate what's going on in their body too. “I notice you are having a really hard time right now because your socks are bothering you. I wonder how we can solve this? Let’s do it together.”
It’s making sense of the lion they see in front of them. It’s preventing them from having the negative self-talk of “why can't I just not be bothered by the socks” and feeling bad about themselves.
Melissa: One hundred percent. The old version, the outdated model that we were raised in was to dismiss the feelings, right? Like: you're fine. Your socks are fine. Don't be ridiculous. This shouldn't bother you.
But the child internalizes that as, “something's wrong with me for feeling this way,” and that perpetuates the negative self thinking and the low self esteem.
The more we can intercept that negative internal messaging and talk through things, the more powerful it becomes for both the parent and the child.
More Resources Mentioned in the Episode
Connect with Jacqui! @createyourselfco on Instagram and createyourselfco.com
Manage Big Feelings With Tapping: how your child can tap on different parts of their body to calm their nervous system
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Still curious about anything we mentioned today? I'd love to hear what's on your mind.
It's really a dream come true to have a platform to discuss these issues that are so near and dear to my heart with you. And I'm just so grateful that you're here with me today and ready to support each other on our journeys.
