Are you parenting a child who doesn’t seem to think or act like most children? Is it difficult to keep your child calm and happy? Are you struggling with parenting a neuro-divergent child and aren’t sure how it make it easier?
Even under ideal circumstances, parenting is by its nature a long, exhausting, and at times challenging endeavour. All parents will experience being confused by their child’s behaviour, unsure how to respond, and wonder if parenting has to be this difficult.
If your child is neuro-divergent, these challenges are often even greater.
There are no easy solutions, quick fixes, or universal approaches to parenting that remove the challenges. And when parenting a neuro-divergent child, these difficulties are typically more pronounced, more numerous, and common solutions are less likely to be effective. But the more you understand about parenting, neuro-divergency, and – most importantly – your child, the easier parenting can be.
What is neuro-divergency?
Neuro-divergent isn’t a medical condition or a diagnosis. It’s an intentionally ambiguous term that is used to differentiate between people whose brains work the same way as the majority of other people – neuro-typical, and those whose brains work differently – neuro-divergent.
Since there’s no such thing as a ‘normal’ brain, there are a huge range of behaviours and personality types that can be considered neuro-divergent. Neuro-divergency can involve being diagnosed with a condition, and it can also refer to children who have traits of one or several conditions but don’t meet the criteria for a diagnosis.
The most commonly diagnosed neuro-divergent conditions include:
- Autism
- Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)/Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
- Conduct Disorder
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
- Dyslexia and other learning disabilities
Since not all neuro-divergent children meet the criteria for a diagnosis, having the term neuro-divergent to contextualise your child’s behaviours, personality, and the unique challenges they face can be useful for parents and children. Some people dislike labels and find them limiting, but others believe they’re helpful and provide insight into otherwise confusing situations. Being neuro-divergent can even be a valued part of a child’s identity that they maintain throughout their lives.
Neuro-divergency often causes children to struggle with certain skills or in areas that other children acquire with ease. The most common include building social connections, communication, and managing their emotions, as well as specific skills such as reading or maths. Although these weaknesses can create challenges for them, they often have areas where they excel beyond their peers, such as in creativity, recognising patterns, memory, and more.
Children are the least likely to be significantly disadvantaged by their weaknesses if these are identified early so they can get help. This can come in the form of supports and accommodations at school, such as more time to complete tests and assignments, being able to type instead of write, or having materials read to them. They may also benefit from professional help learning how to connect with others, share their thoughts and ideas, or stay in control of their emotions.
Neuro-divergent children who don’t need professional support or accommodations can still benefit from help from their parents to develop skills they’re lacking. This could be help understanding emotions, practice communicating, developing emotional regulation tools, encouragement to leave their comfort zone to better connect with their peers, and more.
But neuro-divergent children can be hard to reach, even for their parents. This can be deliberate as they want very little to do with you or anyone else, or unintentional: if you don’t understand them – how they think, what’s important to them, and what their greatest challenges are – you could struggle to have a strong and meaningful connection. But even if they act like they want nothing to do with you, all children crave a strong and safe relationship with their parents.
By understanding the challenges your child faces, what they enjoy, what sets them apart from their peers, and what makes life more difficult for them, you can be better equipped to care for and interact with them in ways that improve their childhood while making parenting easier and more enjoyable.
What makes neuro-divergency challenging?
Neuro-divergency can create challenges for both parents and children. Children can often feel scared, confused, and unsafe, while parents can feel overwhelmed by the intensity, unpredictability and inexplicability of their child’s behaviour which can leave them feeling powerless.
Neuro-divergent children typically experience the world differently than other children: they can be prone to sensory overload (being overwhelmed by sounds, lights, smells, or textures), exhausted by processing high amounts of information about their environments, struggle with communication so interactions are frustrating, feel challenged by skills that come easily to other children, and much more. They may also experience their emotions much more strongly than other children, or their emotional responses can be muted.
These struggles can cause neuro-divergent children to feel overwhelmed and unsafe. When someone – of any age or neuro-type – feels unsafe, they’re likely to go into survival mode. When someone is in survival mode, they’re not only distressed because they believe they’re in danger, but they’re also incapable of using many of the brain’s higher functions, including reasoning, logic, empathy, and long-term thinking. A survival response is often disruptive and can be embarrassing for the child and their parents.
Neuro-divergent children can also react to challenging situations by withdrawing deep within themselves and becoming quiet and unresponsive. Although they can appear outwardly calm, inside they’re likely experiencing many strong and painful emotions they aren’t capable of dealing with. But since they seem calm, they’re less likely to be given help learning how to move through these emotions. As a result, they can fail to develop emotional regulation skills and instead become dependent on poor coping mechanisms.
It’s common for neuro-divergent children to have an emotional regulation system that is younger than their biological age, despite being more advanced than their peers in certain subjects. As a result, they can be thought of as mature for their age and given less understanding and sympathy when they have immature emotional reactions. This could be a ten-year old doing algebra but throwing tantrums when he gets angry.
Neuro-divergent children can also experience judgement for needing extra help or accommodations at school that help them learn more easily. But children whose difficulties aren’t taken seriously or they’re bullied for needing different tools to learn can struggle emotionally and academically.
Even the strengths neuro-divergent children can possess can create challenges for them. People who have uncommon abilities often don’t realise that what comes naturally to them isn’t as easy or self-evident to most other people. This can make them feel like outsiders and struggle socially, which can be very painful.
The struggles that neuro-divergent children face can easily translate into difficulties for their parents. Helping your child overcome their greatest challenges can be confusing since they aren’t always easy to understand. Your child could have difficulties you’re not familiar with and problems you don’t relate too so you struggle to understand why they’re important.
There can also be different demands for parents, such as needing to argue for your child to receive the accommodations they need at school and helping them practice skills that might not be easy to teach, such as empathy. It can also take more effort for you to engage with your child if they’re often withdrawn.
But the more you understand about your child and their inner world, the more effective you can be at helping them navigate their challenges and encouraging them to overcome their weaknesses while capitalising on their strengths. This isn’t easy and can take more time and energy than what is required from the parents of neuro-typical children. But by spending this time with your child, you’re ideally giving your child greater confidence, self-worth, autonomy and self-control.
Methods for making neuro-divergent parenting easier
Although the parents of a neuro-divergent child are likely to experience distinct challenges, they can benefit from many of the same approaches that can make parenting easier for the parents of any child. These are characterised by nurturing a strong and loving connection between you and your child that makes them feel accepted while providing an environment that is secure and warm.
All children are more likely to thrive when they have parents who are curious about how they experience life, want to encourage their personal development and growth, and are willing to invest in their futures. Because neuro-divergent children often face distinct challenges, they can especially benefit from attentive and responsive parenting within a structured environment.
This can be easier when you practice the following:
1) Learn all about your child
Knowing as much about your child as possible – their favourite topics and pastimes, what they dislike, their dreams, their fears, what makes them upset, what they find calming, skills that come easily for them and those that are difficult and intimidating, and much more – will help you to be a responsive and empathetic parent. This is the foundation that will inform everything else you do to help them.
If your child has been diagnosed with a condition, it’s useful to learn about it, but ultimately your child is the best and most relevant source of information available. How children experience conditions can vary greatly, so using your child as the focus of your research can give you a much more accurate understanding of their inner world, as well as how you can help them feel less afraid and more in control of their emotions.
Increased self-control does make parenting easier, but it also greatly benefits the child. Children who feel overwhelmed by their emotions and have outbursts are very upset and afraid when these happen. And as they get older, they become aware of the consequences, not only from their parents but from their peers as well. So learning skills to help them manages their emotions and stay in control is incredibly valuable for children and their wellbeing.
When you know what your child is struggling with, you can be a compassionate ally. And if you understand their dreams and their strengths, you can help them discover ways to be the person they want to be despite the challenges they experience.
2) Adopt a healthy and structured lifestyle
Children do their best when they have energy form a nutritious diet and sleeping enough. This is important for all children, but those who have the additional demands neuro-divergency often presents can especially benefit.
They also have more energy, patience and resilience when their lives follow a consistent and predictable routine. Routines give stability in what can often feel like an overwhelming and unpredictable world because they remove much of the uncertainty that can characterise children’s lives. This can help them feel calmer and more capable of dealing with challenges.
3) Aim for constructive responses to bad behaviour
How and when you respond to a child who has acted out or broken the rules is important. Some parents will try to immediately correct or punish a child who is still upset and unable to be reasonable or learn.
All children can fail to realise why they shouldn’t do something, and neuro-divergent children can be especially prone to misunderstanding what is and isn’t acceptable. But when children are in emotional states, which they often are when they’ve misbehaved, they can’t learn because they’re still too emotional. Therefore, it’s valuable to wait until your child is calm and receptive to talk about why what they did was wrong and potentially how they can make amends.
Consequences should be as natural as possible – a toy they broke stays broken – and ideally restorative. This could be helping them clean up a mess they made (but not making them do it alone because this can cause shame).
The goal is to help your child understand why they should want to avoid repeating the destructive behaviour and motivate them to behave differently in the future, so consider the best ways to help them learn after they misbehave.
4) Make home a place where they want to be
While it’s important for all children to feel accepted for who they are by their parents, this can be especially meaningful for neuro-divergent children since they’re more likely to struggle with being accepted by their peers.
An effective way to help a child feel accepted is spending time with them doing what they like. Some neuro-divergent children don’t enjoy the same pastimes as neuro-typical children, and they can be much more antisocial. You may have tried to engage them by doing traditionally fun activities, but these won’t always appeal to a neuro-divergent child. For these children, doing what they enjoy will be much more meaningful, such as sitting quietly with them while they play a computer game or letting them teach you about dinosaurs.
It’s also important for children to have their emotions validated. Everyone, regardless of their age or neuro-type, wants their emotions to be accepted as real by those around them, especially the people they care about. You might not understand where your child’s emotions are coming from, but you can accept that their anger, sadness, or excitement are very real feelings. You don’t have to approve of their response to their emotions, especially when it hurts others, but you can recognise that they were angry or afraid when they behaved that way.
5) Be honest with them about who they are so it doesn’t become a secret shame
Most children, even from a very young age, will realise if they’re different from the majority of their peers. If you refuse to acknowledge their distinct characteristics and the uncommon challenges they face, they can feel even more isolated and confused.
Being honest with your child that they have to work harder to learn some things that come easily to other children while also making sure that they’re aware of their strengths can help them feel more confident and accepting of who they are because their parents are doing the same. Teaching them that they don’t have to be ashamed of being different and that it has its advantages can be an invaluable skill as they navigate childhood and later adulthood.
Discovering how to engage with your child, what you can do to calm them down, how to teach them important skills, and much more will often require trial and error, which takes time and energy. For these reasons, some parents prefer to work with a mental health professional to develop healthy and effective methods of parenting. Specialised professionals can help you consider your parenting styles, identify changes you could make, habits you would benefit from building, and how a shift in mindset could improve your experience of parenting.
But your child isn’t the only person whose wellbeing you should care for – you also have needs and challenges that should be accommodated. Parenting can be easier when you recognise and respect these.
Taking care of yourself
Many parents – especially those raising neurodivergent children – can find it hard to make space for their own needs. With so much of your time and energy focused on supporting your child, it’s easy to forget that your wellbeing matters too. Looking after yourself isn’t about achieving some ideal version of “balance” or adding another thing to your to-do list – it’s about finding small, sustainable ways to care for your mind and body so you can keep going.
Some parents may also be navigating their own mental health challenges, trauma, or neurodivergence, which can add another layer of stress and complexity. If that’s your experience, know that you’re not alone – and that your needs are just as valid and important as your child’s. You deserve care, patience, and support, too.
You don’t need to follow a perfect routine or tick every self-care box. Instead, think about what feels doable and helpful in your current reality. For some parents, that might mean getting to bed a bit earlier a few nights a week, drinking a glass of water before coffee, or taking a five-minute breather during the day. These aren’t luxuries – they’re small ways to recharge, which can make a big difference over time.
It’s also important to hold onto a sense of yourself beyond being a parent. This doesn’t mean carving out big chunks of time – sometimes, it’s about staying connected to something that brings you joy or helps you feel more like ‘you’, even briefly. Reading a few pages of a book, listening to a favourite song, or having a cuppa in peace can help shift the dial just enough.
Some parents of neurodivergent children struggle with accepting their situation for what it is. You may wish you were a better parent, had an easier child to raise, or feel that you’re missing out on many of the experiences you assumed you would have. These thoughts and feelings can create conflicting and confusing emotions that you may feel ashamed of. But judging yourself only adds to your mental burden. You may find you have more mental energy if you practice acceptance – both of your situation and how it makes you feel.
Accepting your emotions instead of keeping them at arm’s length can make them less overwhelming. Telling yourself you “shouldn’t” have certain thoughts stops you from exploring where they come from, how accurate they are (just because you think something doesn’t mean you believe it or want it), and whether there’s anything useful to take from them.
Coping with a child’s intense behaviours is often highly challenging, and it’s normal to feel a wide range of emotions, including harsh ones directed at your child. However, managing these emotions can be easier if you develop strategies to regulate your own responses. These are often very personal, but many people find a version of the following steps helpful – both for calming down and for learning from what happened:
- Remind yourself of your child’s positive qualities – You can still acknowledge how challenging the behaviour was, but remember that your child has traits and habits outside of those behaviours that make them lovable.
- Try to understand the motivation behind their behaviour – What triggered them? Misbehaviour is often rooted in fear, unmet needs, or past experiences. When you understand what’s driving the behaviour, you’re more able to meet your child where they’re at and help them feel safe.
- Consider their intentions – What were they trying to achieve through their behaviour? Once you’re both calm, you can help your child learn better ways to express what they need and manage their emotions.
If you have a partner, nurturing your connection as a couple can help reduce the isolation that sometimes comes with parenting. This doesn’t mean planning elaborate date nights (unless that works for you) – it could be as simple as sharing a moment of humour, chatting over a cup of tea, or watching a show together. Even small moments of connection can help you feel more like a team.
Parenting a child with additional needs can be deeply rewarding and incredibly taxing – sometimes at the same time. When you’re tired and overwhelmed, it’s okay to pare things back to the basics. Let your version of self-care be flexible and forgiving, and know that doing “enough” is more than okay.
Self-care as a parent isn’t about doing more – it’s about gently making space for yourself in ways that feel supportive, not stressful.
Parenting is by its nature challenging, confusing and exhausting, and parenting a neuro-divergent child often brings even more challenges that you can struggle to navigate and understand. Other parents might not be sympathetic or fully comprehend what you’re going through, which can be confusing and frustrating. There are rarely easy solutions, but you can improve the situation by adopting healthy parenting practices and taking care of yourself as well.
Although it might not always be obvious, neuro-divergent children aren’t trying to make your life difficult through their behaviours, needs and habits. They’re trying to navigate a world they experience in ways that can make them confused, uncomfortable and afraid. As their parent, you can help them feel safe and in control so they feel less of a need to lash out and/or shut down.
Consistently being calm, considerate and responsive to your child isn’t always practical as there will be times when this feels impossible. But if you can make life as easy as possible for you and your neuro-divergent child by understanding what will upset them, how they can calm themselves down, and how to make them feel safe and loved, then parenting can be easier and more rewarding.
