Final thoughts from the Editors

And so we have come to the end of this special edition. We have had the most wonderful time building these pages and co-produced these final words from a beach hut by the sea, warmed by the late September sun and the joy of a day spent in glorious neurodivergent conversation. We are so proud of what we have created here, and any little change it might inspire.

But we remain aware of the enormous challenges our profession needs to overcome to truly meet the complexity of neurodivergence. We wanted to model not having the answers yet; sitting together in uncertainty, and that being okay. So in our final words, we wanted to share what remained on our minds once we pieced this edition together.

First, our collective consciousness went to considering children in the landscape of neurodivergence. Often our conversations about neurodevelopment centre on children, but our conversations about related mental health and inequalities focus on adults. We would like to see the profession move meaningfully towards early prevention of poor mental health in neurodivergent people, or, further, towards active cultivation of good mental health.

This means really considering the environments we expect our children to function in; it means questioning how meaningfully inclusive our schools really are, at what expense we push for blanket 'attendance', and why meeting the needs of children so often continues to rely on diagnostic systems. It means acknowledging the enormous stress in every part of the system, and recognising that our neurodivergent children take this on as their own. It means holding parents on their way into the community of neurodivergence, containing, validating and travelling alongside and allowing them to grieve if they need to. There is nothing neuroaffirmative about denying them the ups and downs of this journey.

Next, our thoughts turned to what society values, and the ableism inherent everywhere we work. 'Productivity' is the neuronormative model of success, but do we accept this metric to measure the inherent value of human beings? Many perceive neuroaffirmative practice to be 'sugar-coating' reality by dismissing difficulty. This ignores the fundamental core of the neurodiversity movement. Who gets to judge which way of being in this world is right? Which type of occupation marks sufficient contribution? Which way of expressing joy means someone is 'doing well'?

This ableism remains pervasive across diagnostic practice and tools, in the language of research and models of education. Perhaps it is most pertinent in the domain of learning disability, but these messages apply across neurodivergence. When we say 'severe' or 'low functioning' we apply external values based on structures of power. In this way, we also assume homogeneity, assuming we can define a group under one umbrella and take one aspect of a person's self as shorthand for their whole.

Let's flip the narrative. We do not need to position ourselves as judging or seeking to change people's inherent neurodivergence; can we not just strive to take away how hard things are? Our authors have written repeatedly about how difficulty associated with neurodivergence exists in the transaction between people. But let's hold the 'both, and' here too; we can believe all this and still acknowledge how hard things are for so many trying to get by in this society.

Finally, a theme that has emerged throughout this edition is coloniality. We set out seeking to address intersectionality, as neurodivergence does not exist in a vacuum, and people's experience is tangibly impacted by so many other areas of their identity and, indeed, our global environment. However, contributors have pushed our emergent thinking further, to consider that neurodivergence itself needs to be viewed through a colonial lens, characterised by structures that need dismantling by a process of decolonisation.

We went in thinking about social justice and came out speaking about civil rights. To some, that might sound abstract or alienating. To others, that might tap into an existential exhaustion. If this is a civil rights movement, then change is urgent and imperative, but it will also be seismic and so, inevitably, slow. So, for those of us who live and breathe this field, who feel exhausted and burnt out by 'changemaker fatigue', perhaps this moment in time is a much gentler call for action, so we can go on gently making change, contributing to a generational shift together?

This edition has been the greatest learning experience for us all; we hope you might have taken something too. We did not cover everything we intended to in nearly enough detail, with areas such as eating disorders, 'personality disorders' and gender tightly linked to neurodivergence but inadequately covered here. We have instead ended up exploring the foundations of thinking about neurodivergence that we hope might apply the most broadly within the field.

We feel so lucky and privileged to have been able to collect value from so many, often speaking from the heart as much as from their professional position. Together, we are grateful for being offered this platform, and for all who joined us here to co-produce it. We are grateful because being neurodivergent can be intensely isolating, but this process offered the restorative power of community.

We are grateful for getting to do this authentically, working in a neuroaffirmative way to facilitate the inclusion of many, many neurodivergent contributors by simply asking 'What do you need?'. This area is always complex and often challenging, but for us, it is a shared and passionate special interest. So we will sign off for now, looking out to sea; together we are making a wave of change.