note: 'hyperfocus' strikes me as derogatory so I have just called it focus
Raising neurodivergent children is as simple as accepting how their brains work and allowing them to function as nature intended. They have a more intensive computation cycle than average so you need to allow them time and space to process.
The cycle does not need to be super-rigid but it helps to understand how it works. It can be boiled down to:
collection
focus
regulation
safety
sleep
expression
They gather data from their world, which involves heightened D1-type phasic dopamine activity, then consolidate it with D2-type tonic mechanisms through regulation and focus.
Focus also allows them to develop the sustained attentional capacity to stay in control when things get tough. They then export their thoughts in the form of creative pursuits.
Collection
A dysregulated child will tend to see the trees instead of the forest because exaggerated phasic dopamine signalling encodes lessons hard and fast.
School, social situations and emotional faces are harder to process because they cannot consolidate thoughts as rapidly as someone with more average dopaminergic signalling. The exaggerated learning also means that they are more likely to wind up with genius level intellect, but the consolidation needs to be more intentional because the individual lessons are more intense.
They will reach a point of overwhelm when they have too many data points, which will manifest as a meltdown or shutdown. You can prevent this by allowing focus and regulation.
Focus
Focus functions similarly to meditation in promoting sustained attention and learning consolidation. It is sustained attention on an object of interest to the exclusion of all other stimuli. This has the effect of a) increasing tonic dopamine and b) increasing sustained attentional control.
The increased tonic dopamine will allow the child to consolidate the trees into a forest, the faces into emotions and the lessons into understanding.
The improvement in sustained attentional control will enable them to better restrain themselves when the going gets tough and they are overwhelmed in the future, reducing incidence of meltdown and 'manic' presentations.
It is important not to exert too much control over what the child focuses on or you will increase D1 phasic dopamine dominance by instilling feelings of craving and aversion. You need to let them decide their own form of focus, but you can encourage certain modalities by curating the environment. Leave slow-paced active outlets like lego, music and turn-based computer games within reach and avoid phasic-spiking and passive outlets like youtube and television.
It is important that you allow focus and regulation before pushing them into doing homework or chores so that their dopaminergic environment can settle from the data collection they did at school. Forcing homework and chores first simply increases D1 salience encoding and makes the micro-thoughts stronger and harder to consolidate.
Regulation
Bodily movement and vocalisation are incredibly important for a dysregulated child. They have the effect of increasing D2 dominance and enabling them to consolidate thoughts and emotions so they do not vibrate apart at the seams. You must allow your child to run around and skip and jiggle and be weird because this is their body releasing the somatic charge of the deep learning of the day.
There is strong evidence that trauma is stored in the body. Intense neuronal encoding is analogous to trauma encoding and needs to be released in a similar manner. The scowl from a friend or the super-tasty ice cream are all carved deeper in the dysregulated mind-body system and the child must be allowed to move to release the emotional charge that comes with the learning.
This goes for school too, but the education system is rarely so understanding and your responsibility as a parent is to take the extra burden and allow them to jump around and move and release the pent up learning from their hours doing the social dance.
Safety
Dopamine and norepinephrine interact closely and heightened stress or dysregulation can affect both systems.
This means that your child may have a heightened fight-or-flight response and be sensitive to rejection and fear. You must hold your child and soothe them and assure them that everything is alright and that they are safe. This will lower norepinephrine, relaxing the mind so it can better consolidate thoughts, and generally make them happier and healthier as they grow.
You must not scold your child for things like wetting the bed and must not wake them if they sleepwalk.
Sleep
Sleep will be difficult at times, and more difficult if your child has not been allowed to focus and regulate. If they have been able to regulate naturally then it will tend to be easier, but it will always be less reliable for the dysregulated mind.
Sleep is where the mind does the final flushing of thoughts and consolidates them into understanding. The more consolidating, the more tossing and turning, the more toilet breaks, and the more bedwetting. This is natural and good and you need to let it run its course.
If you continue to provide the child with focus, regulation and safety then their sleep will gradually improve. If you do not, it will gradually worsen. Sleep is where the brain re-wires and the amount of re-wiring necessary can be lowered by allowing regulation and focus during the day since they have a similar effect on dopaminergic tone.
Expression
When your child wakes, or after a particularly good focus session, is when you want to encourage them to draw, write, dance, paint, play music, and other such things. This should be freeform and self-guided: don’t have them rehearsing scales on the piano but rather let them play whatever they feel like, regardless of how it might sound.
This is the export of their consolidated insights and how they solidify their neural network so they are ready to repeat the cycle of data collection and learning.
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Every child is unique and you will need to figure what works for you and yours. The objects of focus are important but you cannot choose what will pique their interest and if you try to force them into one modality or another you will wind up causing them harm on a neuronal level.
What you can do is curate the environment for them. Remove phasic-spiking activities like social media and youtube. Remove real-time computer games and replace them with slow-paced RPGs and puzzle games. Encourage them to come outside for walks in nature when you can. Do not force them to ‘be productive’ all the time or they will end up neurotic like me. Ha.
Allow your child to be. That is all.
They are different and that is good.
They learn fast and hard and it causes them pain. You can alleviate that pain by allowing them to self-soothe with motion and focus, and by holding them when they need to be held.
These children have the potential to become the Einsteins of the next generation, but only if you allow them to continually consolidate minima and wash away the learnings of the day.
What’s more important, anyway? Keeping up appearances of your child being ‘normal’, or allowing your child to grow into a happy and healthy person?
Let them be who they were born to be.
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