Fixing Neurodivergence Misses The Point - Inadequately Supported

On August 18th, 2025, there is an article in phys.org 

This article speaks about Neurodivergence and fixing it misses the point. At the beginning of a school year neurodivergent students, it marks a beginning of another year of being misunderstood. As most people know these students struggle with transitions and change, get overstimulated and are deemed disruptive in the classroom. We find these students fall through the cracks of our ill-equipped education system. This system causes these students to be inadequately supported early on and can affect them later on into adulthood which affects the quality of life for the individual. 

Although awareness of Neurodiversity is growing many children are diagnosed too late to benefit from early intervention. Phys Org states that: 

"According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, while the median age of autism diagnosis is around 3.7 years, only 54% of children are diagnosed before age five, meaning nearly half miss the most critical developmental window.

But diagnosis is only part of the issue. Many neurodiverse children are never identified at all, either because their behaviors are misread or because their families face systemic barriers to health-care and assessment services."

Educators should approach Neurodiversity as a difference to understand. Fidgeting, Stimming for instance is seen as expressions of cognitive needs and self-regulation. Schools are not built for Neurodivergence or in a diverse way, 

The traditional approach to educational inclusion often relies on identifying individual student "labels" or diagnoses to provide accommodations, a model that can inadvertently perpetuate a sense of "otherness" and delay necessary support. Instead, a more effective and equitable strategy involves a proactive, systemic shift towards designing learning environments that inherently cater to a wide spectrum of cognitive and sensory differences from the very beginning. This approach, often rooted in the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and neurodiversity-affirming practices, ensures that all children, especially those from racialized and underserved communities who frequently face compounded marginalization, feel a profound sense of belonging and are empowered to thrive academically and socially.

There is an article that touches on this point too on msn.com, it its titled 

'Fixing' neurodivergent kids misses the point—it's the schools that need to change. It is worth a read at https://www.msn.com/en-us/education-and-learning/special-education/fixing-neurodivergent-kids-misses-the-point-it-s-the-schools-that-need-to-change/ar-AA1KK4Tv