Neurodivergent Voices: Seeing Differently After Becoming a Parent, Coach, and Educator

Last week, I attended a parent evening with my 14-year-old neurodivergent teenager.

As I listened to teachers’ feedback and watched how comfortably he responded to their questions, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. He was calm, present, and completely himself. There was no need to perform or mask—just a young person engaging in his own way.

It was the kind of moment I had quietly dreamed of.

Not because everything is now easy, but because it reflected a journey. A journey shaped by patience, understanding, and learning to see beyond behaviour.

Before I became a parent, a coach, and an educator, I thought I was good at understanding people.

I listened carefully. I noticed patterns. I believed I was open-minded and compassionate. And yet, it wasn’t until I began holding these roles at once—parent, professional, and learner—that I realised how much I still didn’t see.

It wasn’t a single dramatic moment, but a series of quiet ones.

- Moments where a child didn’t respond the way the system expected.

- Moments where “simple instructions” weren’t simple at all.

- Moments where effort was mistaken for defiance, and overwhelm for lack of motivation.

As a music educator, I began to notice this in rehearsal rooms and lesson spaces too.

- A student who couldn’t perform in front of others when very well prepared.

- A child who needed more time to put both hands together.

- Someone who understood the music deeply, but struggled to show it in the expected way.

Music taught me something powerful: learning is not always linear, and expression does not always arrive on cue. Sometimes regulation comes before rhythm. Sometimes safety comes before sound. And sometimes the most musical thing a learner can do is pause.

As a parent, I learned that behaviour is communication—especially when words are hard to find. What looks like resistance is often anxiety. What appears to be disengagement is frequently overload. And what seems inconsistent is, in fact, a nervous system doing its best to cope.

As a coach and educator, this understanding challenged me.

I had been trained to support progress, structure goals, and encourage independence. But neurodivergence asked me to slow down further—to listen not just to words, but to pacing, tone, energy, and recovery time. Much like in music, it asked me to attend to what sits between the notes, not just the notes themselves.

It also asked me to question timelines, expectations, and the idea that there is one “right” way to learn, regulate, or succeed.

What changed most was not my toolkit, but my beliefs.

I stopped asking, “Why aren’t they doing this?”

And started asking, “What might be getting in the way?”

I began to see how often neurodivergent children—and adults—carry invisible effort. Masking can look like competence. Compliance can hide distress. And praise for “coping well” can come at a significant cost.

Parenthood, in particular, stripped away any illusion that progress is linear. Some days are about growth. Other days are about survival, connection, and rest. And all of those days matter.

This has deeply shaped how I now coach and educate. I place less emphasis on fixing and more on understanding.

- Less on outcomes and more on capacity.

- Less on behaviour, and more on context.

In music education, as in life, when we allow different tempos, different expressions, and different ways of participating, something remarkable happens: people begin to feel safe enough to be themselves.

Neurodivergence is not something to be managed—it is something to be understood, respected, and supported. When we shift our perspective, we don’t just help neurodivergent individuals thrive; we create environments that are more humane for everyone.

If there is one thing becoming a parent, coach, and educator has taught me, it is this:

People are not broken because they move differently through the world. Often, they are simply responding to a world that hasn’t learned how to listen yet.