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Celebrating Neurodiversity: An Often-Overlooked Difference in Group Work

For many years I worked in a children’s mental health center, supporting children and youth with learning disabilities, and their families. To qualify for services, the children and youth had to be officially diagnosed with a learning disability, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in addition to struggling with psychosocial issues. These diagnoses offered confirmation to families that something was “wrong” with these children. The majority of families brought their children to the center to address what were seen as “deficits,” to improve social skills, or to address behavioral problems, essentially to “fix” their children. Therefore, as a member of the agency’s staff, I was part of those who thought we should be “fixing” these kids and helping them socialize, communicate, and ultimately behave “like everyone else,” despite the strengths-based approach of the programs offered by the center (weekly groups, summer camps, and individual and family counseling). During the 20 years that I worked at the agency, quite a bit changed in the field of disability. Although disabilities were once seen through the lens of the medical model, as flaws or imperfections that required fixing; nowadays the lens of the social model is prevalent, which views disability as part of the diversity of the human condition. This has expanded to include the neurodiverse, who identify as having neurological, cognitive or behavioral differences, in particular ASD. Applying the social model of disability to the children I worked with at the agency did not happen when I worked there, however it has led me to rethink a group experience that took place almost 20 years ago in the children’s mental health center that I described above. The group was offered for boys with learning disabilities, psychosocial struggles, and features of ASD. At the time, there was far less known about ASD, diagnosis was imprecise and included a number of different labels. Children with features of ASD were often poorly understood, socially excluded, and unable to find peers who would understand and accept them.