An Introduction to Neurodiversity-Affirming OT, with Dr. Bryden Carlson-Giving

Debbie:
Hey, Bryden, welcome to the podcast.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Hello, Debbie. So honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

Debbie:
Thank you for accepting my invitation, which you told me before I hit record you thought might have been spam, which is not the first time that’s happened. But I saw, I’m sure, some Instagram or some kind of social media sharing about your new book. And I instantly was like, I got to talk to this guy. So I’m going to name the book now. And then I’m going to ask you to kind of, go back and I want to hear a little bit about your story. So you are the editor of a wonderful new resource. It’s called Neurodiversity Affirming Occupational Therapy Empowering Approaches to Foster Neurodivergent Participation. It just ticked so many boxes for me. So I’m really excited to get into it. But I’d love to hear about why you wrote this book and you are so pulled to kind of do this work of changing the system from the inside.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. So and I will say too, I’ll never say it’s my book, it’s ours. It was like a beautiful collective of 50 people. And I was truly honored to even just be the editor and connecting all these wonderful ideas. But as far as my OT journey, I knew I wanted to become an OT in undergrad, I almost became a kindergarten teacher, but I knew I wanted to still dabble in healthcare. And so I don’t have a super romantic like story for how I became an OT. Like some of my friends were like, you know, I discovered OT cause an OT saved my uncle’s life or something like that. I don’t have a beautiful romantic story like that, but I literally just Googled, you know, teaching and healthcare and OT occupational therapy was one of the first things to pop up. And I fell in love with the idea that we get to support human beings in participating in skills and life activities that are meaningful to them and kind of on their terms too. And so that’s the whole thing too with occupational therapy. Like a lot of people think of occupation, like you must teach children how to find jobs. No, no child labor. But what we do instead is we support occupational participation. So an occupation is any meaningful activity. Like we as human beings, we’re occupational beings. We occupy our time with meaningful activities. And so we get to support human beings in their participation in life. And I like to think of OT as like, we’re super duper problem solvers. I like to think of life with anything is like this beautiful interaction of the person, the environment, the activity. And if there’s like a mismatch in some capacity, we get to totally explore how we can make that into a better match. But my first OT job, it was actually an occupational therapist for an ABA clinic right out of graduate school and really knowing nothing at all about the neurodiversity communities feedback on ABA. And it was like three months in. I — cause in the ABA clinic, occupational and speech therapy were kind of siloed away from like the main center. We had our own little universe, our own little world. And so the behavioral technicians would drop off the clients and we would support and work with them. And I remember one time, one of the technicians dropped off a student and they were carrying like this bag of pom poms. And the student, their favorite way to verbalize, communicate their excitement was through one liners or scripting from Thomas the train. And so this behavioral technician told me like, hey, like whenever they start to get really excited and they start scripting Thomas the train, you need to dump this bag of pom poms so they pick up each and every single pom pom in order to get them to stop scripting Thomas the train and instead saying, I’m excited. And I remember thinking in that moment, and I’m just brand new, just graduated in 2018. We were taught, you know, behavioral modification stuff was like best practice for supporting children and youth. I knew nothing about neurodiversity at the time, but even then I was sitting there knowing nothing about neurodiversity or autistic ways of being. I’m sitting here like, what’s the big deal? Like they love Thomas the train. I love when they script Thomas the train. I love when they flap their hands and I joined them in scripting with them because we vibe so well and it’s a way of showing enjoyment. And so I was like, LOLs no, I’m not doing that, like you can leave and I’m gonna do my own thing. But then I remember that night, like Googling, just like scripting autism perspective. And I stayed up all night just learning about what scripting was, what stimming was. I discovered what neurodiversity was and my mind was so blown. And I knew at that moment, I needed to get out of that position. And so I left, I think it was like after six months in, I ended up — I was able to leave and then I was an inpatient and outpatient pediatrics and now I’m in the schools. I love the schools and I’m learning. I feel like in occupational therapy, I can’t speak for other allied health professions, are so quick to kind of put applied behavioral analysis into this universe of like, you know, it’s harmful for autistic and neurodivergent individuals, but everything we do is okay. And everything we do like is affirming and that’s so not the case. And a lot of the work that I do right now is outside of the schools is trying to help support OTs in recognizing ableism influences everything we do from our education, how we evaluate clients, our intervention methods, how we advocate, how we even view what we think their participation should look like. And so that’s kind of probably just info dumped a lot, but that’s kind of where I’m at right now with my OT journey.

Debbie:
No, I so appreciate you sharing that. I mean, I think the topic of ABA, we haven’t really talked about it much on the show. We prioritize DIR floor time and kind of, you know, that kind of thing. And it is one of those things just to say for listeners, like, I recognize that is what insurance companies cover like that is and as you said, this is known as like the evidence based best practices and we also know what a majority of autistic adults say about their experiences with ABA and it is such a complex issue. So I just so appreciate your lens and kind of the experience that you had. And I’m just, you know, we don’t — we didn’t plan to talk about this, but I’m just curious, you know, from the inside therapists who are practicing in ABA, you know, centers and things like you had such a strong gut reaction. Do you think that that is the norm? But people are just kind of accepting, well, this is the way that it’s done. And this is the way that we do things. Like, I’m just curious if that tension, do you see it a lot or think it’s really out there?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
I definitely think the tension does exist and I think it all just depends on one’s awareness of neurodiversity and ableism and the roots of and the origins of ABA. I think everyone is on their own journey when it comes to really learning about what neurodiversity is and ableism and how it exists within society and how it influences everything we do. So I feel like it’s a range of, you know, some — many individuals, you know, are taught that ABA is the gold, beautiful standard for supporting autistic and neurodivergent children and youth. And they’ll get an education that is primarily provided by those that are within that universe and have no idea. And then they might read something online about how ABA has been shown to actually be harmful and they’re shocked. And then you have others that maybe are like, if they’re recognizing, yeah, like ABA is harmful or, you know, I am an occupational therapist. I provided a lot of, at the beginning, like positive reinforcement because that’s what I was taught is like being the gold standard for supporting neurotypical social skills training. Because that was the gold standard. And then you look up something online and you realize, oh shoot, I’ve really been missing the ball. I actually have been causing harm. And so do I have it within my own capacity, my own energy capacity to be an advocate and work within this system to minimize harm, or am I going to burn myself out? And you know what? I feel like it can provide more of a difference if I leave and work for a different company or different environments. And I don’t think it’s fair to ever say that if there’s somebody that is a therapist that’s working at an ABA clinic and they want to stay in that to help minimize harm, I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to say that that’s ableist because if you feel like we need those people though too that can be within those systems and structures to help minimize harm and it’s also completely okay to do what I did thinking I can maybe stay for as long as I could but it was like month six I recognized no I’m gonna — I feel like I’m getting overwhelmed by just the constant like the negativity the ableism I need to leave. I think all those positions are valid. In a big, beautiful world, neurodiversity-affirming services would be covered by insurance. And in a dream world, instead of ABA, would be neurodiversity-affirming, holistic childcare, and support for caregivers. But for a lot of communities, especially for BIPOC families who are historically often kicked out of daycare because of racism and because of how behaviors are viewed. And for a lot of families, you know, families need to work and ABA centers are the only places that they can have their children watched over. And so I think it’s also unfair to say we need to completely get rid of all of it without really exploring how to replace it at the same time, if that makes sense too.

Debbie:
Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And I just, let’s talk about ableism a little bit more. So, I think it’s something, you know, we’ve explored ableism on the show before. I’m thinking specifically of the episode we did with Emily Ladau on her book about disability and it was such a fascinating conversation. And a big part of my work at Tilt has always been encouraging parents to kind of uncover their own ableistic kind of point of view that maybe has never been examined before. So could you talk a little bit about that, maybe through your lens, what you see ableism as being and kind of the ways it may exist in our lives or in practitioners lives that they may not even know is going on?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah, totally. So ableism is a system of oppression that essentially prioritizes non-disabled minds and bodies over disabled minds and bodies. And it’s really connected to capitalism and racism. So if you kind of like, let’s see, like for example, at least in the United States, we are taught that we need to maximize how much we produce outside of school like we have to work 40 hours a week, 40 hours a week. We need to work as much as possible. We need to, you know, need to produce as much as possible and this productivity culture, the grind — we have such a fascination with it like it’s so heavily ingrained that I — this is probably one of — I’m working on a million things with my own inner self, but this is like the hardest thing where I make how much I produce like synonymous with my values as a human being. And that’s because of capitalism. And so if you have a disability or if you’re disabled in any sort of way that decreases what society views as what ideal productivity output should look like, that’s bad. So we need to fix it. So then you produce nearly as much. So that then leads into how we work as occupational therapists, because of how ableism is so intertwined into everything, like we prioritize independence over interdependence with our evaluations. We use a lot of norm reference tools where we compare disabled and neurodivergent individuals to neurotypical and non-disabled individuals because being non-disabled and being neurotypical is the benchmark for functioning. It’s the most ideal form of way of being a human being.

Debbie:
Yeah. OK. Thank you for that. It makes so much sense. And I love that distinction, of independence versus interdependence. I mean, it is so, it’s underlying so many things that we don’t question. And so it’s so important to shine a light on these ideas that we might be subconsciously striving for, for our kids or for our families, and be like, wait a minute. Why is this the hill we’re going to die on? Why are these the things that actually matter? The title of your book is Neurodiversity Affirming Occupational Therapy, Neurodiversity Affirming, I’m using air quotes if you’re not watching me on YouTube. I feel like that phrase is everywhere right now. And it’s, you know, I’ve talked with therapy providers in the past. I’m thinking specifically of Dr. Megan Anna Neff and Dr. Debra Brause. She and I, or the three of us had a really interesting conversation about therapy in general and whether or not they are neurodiversity affirming different modalities, and also the fact that that term seems to be really embraced widely without necessarily people really understanding what it means. So would you kind of unpack it for us? What does it mean to you?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yes. Are you okay with before I dive into neurodiversity affirming what that means? Are you — like just briefly talk about neurodivergence real quick? I feel like there’s so many myths and misconceptions about it. Like neurodiversity, as we know, is this really beautiful biological truth that there’s this, there’s an infinite number of ways that we as human beings can experience the world and engage in neurocognitive functioning. Neurodivergence is anyone that deviates from dominating societal norms of what neurocognitive functioning should look like. And that was coined by Kassiane Asasumasu in the 2000s. And so a lot of people think that neurodivergence is synonymous with ADHD and autism, but it’s actually not. And even more so, this is some new learning for myself is that being neurodivergent has nothing to do with the medical diagnosis. So, yes, if you have a change of the brain and if you do have a medical diagnosis, highly likely you are neurodivergent and that includes any deviation. It’s intellectual and developmental disabilities. It’s psychiatric disabilities, it’s schizophrenia, it’s synesthesia, it’s sensory processing differences. It’s acquired — like a lot of people don’t think about — for many of us we will become either disabled or neurodivergent at some point in our lives, even just due to aging. Because neurodivergence isn’t just with what you’re born with. And again, it has nothing to do with the medical diagnosis. So if you are somebody that has a particular way of stimming or just regulating yourself and you are in an environment where you don’t feel comfortable engaging in that regulation strategy, that’s neurodivergence, like that’s how dynamic it is. And so when we think about neurodiversity, it’s really recognizing that neurodivergence and disability, we have our own culture. Like we talk about, like we don’t often talk about disability, we have our own multiverse of cultures. There’s autistic culture, ADHD culture, voice hearing culture, deaf culture, and we have our own norms and characteristics. And for me, with an occupational therapy lens, being neurodiversity affirming means we support neurodivergent individuals and their occupational participation and wellbeing on their terms, not defining their success and participation outcomes by what society tells us it should look like, but from their terms, from their perspective, what is neurodivergent wellbeing and neurodivergent flourishing in life look like for them. If that makes sense.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate that definition. First of all I think language is so fascinating in this space in particular and how it’s changing and evolving. And people are kind of always claiming different language or kind of incorporating and integrating it into their worldviews and experiences in different ways. So to hear you describe neurodivergence as being that’s a more inclusive or broader umbrella than I have heard before, especially that idea of acquiring certain things. So that is kind of a newer lens for me.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah. And like Kassiane like she purposely made the term intentionally super duper inclusive. It was — it’s not meant to be a gatekeeping identifier. It has nothing to do with the medical world. It’s a sociopolitical identity. And that’s like the whole point about it. It’s super beautiful and super cool.

Debbie:
So how are people misusing, if that’s the right word, the term neurodiversity affirming when they are, maybe they do have an occupational therapy practice or other sort of therapeutic practice that’s supporting families. And they say, we’re neurodiversity affirming, but they’re kind of sticking it there. But it may not be actually in line or aligned with what the services they’re providing.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah, I think so a lot of people — what I’ve been seeing — I like to believe well-intentioned, you know, best interests at heart always. And especially with the conversations around neurodiversity becoming much more prominent. I think it’s — it’s really catchy and people want neurodiversity affirming services and supports and so I think what I’ve been finding and what I’ve been seeing is even just maybe switching language. Like I’ve seen organizations that have historically published literature that is not very affirming. And so they’ll just use identity first language when talking about autistic individuals, which at large, a lot of autistic individuals prefer identity first language, but then they’ll think that’s it. Like they’ll just change the language on their website and like, okay, that’s all the learning on our end. We don’t need to do anything else. It’s a lot of people — what some of us will call like neurodiversity light, where maybe your services, you don’t force eye contact, you don’t work on neurotypical social skills, and you don’t do hand over hand. So therefore I am neurodiversity affirming and I no longer have any more work that I need to do. For me, neurodiversity-affirming means we really go beyond like these superficial adjustments to really deep diving into our work and really recognizing how ableism influences everything we do and we really unpack that really tough stuff. And it’s lifelong. Like, you’re not going to take like one training or read one book and be like, okay, I’m neurodiversity affirming forever. Like, I don’t have to do anything else. But even for myself, like I’m multiply neurodivergent. I’m an autistic ADHD with depression. And every day I’m still making mistakes. And I’m still unpacking my own internalized ableism. And that’s the hard stuff that we really need to be navigating if you really want to be neurodiversity affirming.

Debbie:
Yeah, and I think it takes so much intention, right? It’s because, again, it’s so kind of ingrained in the water we’re swimming in. And so it does take work, I imagine. And to unpack all of that takes commitment and access to resources, which this book is one such resource. But what is it like out there for practitioners who are having this discovery and they want to change course? Like, is it hard to find access to training or resources that would help them along this journey.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
I think it’s much easier now than it was four or five years ago. I do think a lot of the resources out there are very focused on pediatric, like children and youth like neurodivergent children and youth. We still have very little, very little resources for neurodivergent adults or even the transition age from like public education and into the world. And that was also why — with our book, because we had to cut down so much. I think the original book was like 550 pages and the publisher was like, no, we want this to be really accessible. It’s not a formal textbook. And so like one of the downloads, it’s like a bonus chapter of case studies of different neurodivergent OTs. It’s like, because being neurodiversity affirming is a true art and it’s different how every person embeds it within their practice. And so we have a bunch of case studies, but I think no, four of the five are adult specific for that very reason because there’s very little resources for supporting neurodivergent adults.

Debbie:
So I would love it if you could walk us through the Empower model, which is a neurodiversity-affirming OT framework. Would you kind of talk us through that?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yes. So the Empower model was — yeah, it was actually kind of an accident. So a beautiful accident. In 2023, I graduated with my post-professional doctorate in OT from Boston University. And my doctoral project was creating a neurodiversity affirming toolkit for OTs to really kind of unpack, essentially unpack ableism throughout like this anti-ableist OT process, and then also what they could do in practice. And as a part of the doctoral project, you have to have a model or framework to be the center of it. And there are a lot of really great holistic occupational therapy frameworks. But none of these frameworks either focus on what participation looks like for a neurodivergent person, and none of them really require us to really reflect on our own ableism and how that impacts us as OTs. And so I already did a literature review for another part of my project where I basically explored what neurodivergent advocates want out of therapy. And I remember my husband and I, we were huge reality TV fans. I think we were watching The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City at the time. That’s what was really big for us at the time. And we were talking and I remember mentioning to him my frustrations of like, I’m having a hard time picking a model because it’s not really what I’m looking for. He’s like, well, you already did like the review. Like, why don’t you just give it a go? And I’m like, really? He’s like, yeah, like your advisor will just tell you if it’s not good or not and they’ll provide feedback. And so then I basically — that’s where the Empower model came from. So basically I did this literature review where I didn’t just do research because neurodivergent individuals, marginalized individuals are often excluded from peer reviewed published literature. So I actually prioritized resources and blogs that were created by neurodivergent individuals. And there were common themes that were found for what’s considered neurodiversity affirming practice. So that’s what leads us to like the four foundations around the outside. So it’s strengths based approaches, anti racism, disability justice and trauma informed care. And then they’re all kind of connected by like these bonds of lived experience. I’m like a huge video gamer, science nerd. And so the Empower model looks kind of like a distorted atom. And then in the center of it is what I like to call the anti-ableist occupational therapy process. And so it’s this cycle that’s critical reflexivity, inclusive evaluations, affirming services and supports, neurodivergent outcomes and advocacy. And so essentially this — the EMPOWER model is designed as this practical framework to really provide a structured approach for how OTs can integrate the principles of neurodiversity affirming practice into their therapy work, if that makes sense.

Debbie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you mentioned inclusive evaluations. And I actually kind of want to do a wee little detour over there to talk about that, because that’s something that comes up a lot in this process. It’s something most parents of a neurodivergent kid, they’re going to go through one or multiple assessments with their children. So could you describe when you say an inclusive evaluation, what would that actually look like or how might it differ from your kind of standard assessment?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, so I’m just gonna — because most of my current experience is school. Like, for example, in the public schools, so like, maybe a more ableist deficit based OT evaluation would be we send out — we do maybe a norm reference sensory assessment where we ask teachers to basically fill this questionnaire to see how quote unquote bad a student’s sensory processing experiences are or how far they deviate from the norm. And then we help maybe collaborate on writing goals that are super not affirming, where maybe we talk about where the student has to do like size of the problem and stuff like that. Or maybe we don’t even ask — well, actually, the biggest piece that would make it super deficit based is we don’t even ask the student for their own lived experience. I think that was the one thing I was very surprised about when I came into the schools is we have, you know, individualized education plans, we have evaluations within special education, they’re all about the student and yet the student’s voice is rarely if ever incorporated. And so for me, what I do is I first off, like always do a strengths based student interview. So I love asking students like, hey, what are your favorite parts of school? What parts of school are really, really hard? What is something that you’d really love to — what’s another skill you’d love to learn about? What do you want to be when you grow up? And then, I always love to ask them too, hey, we’re going to be writing an IEP, like a plan to basically support you. What do you want to be on your IEP? I’ll go through all the different areas that an IEP can entail. The student will kind of pick, I want to work on my reading skills. I want to work on making more friends. Those are the areas that I’ll advocate for then at their initial IEP or eval results meeting. Like, hey, I get that you all think this is what’s really important, but we also need to really focus on and incorporate what the student shared is their priorities because their voice matters the most. I always observe the student during parts of the day that are the most challenging. Not necessarily to see what deficits exist, but also are there environmental barriers? So like I will, whenever I observe students in their general education classroom, I always will kind of gauge like, what is the teacher’s attitudes towards neurodivergence or disability? Are they kind of having these under the table rules that students need to do whole body listening, they can’t access accommodations, they can’t use adapted seating, there’s like these hard line rules and I kind of will also look at how sensory inclusive their classroom is. Like, do they have their fluorescent lights covered? You know, there’s a lot of visual stuff on the walls. And so I really like to think of my portions of evaluations as very trying to amplify the students’ perspective and their voice and evaluations. And I can’t even tell you the number of times where, like, I feel like no one really reads my portions of the eval sometimes anyway, because it’s always such a massive document. But I’ll get emails or even at these meetings, family members will be like, hey, like, which one of you is Bryden the OT and I’ll be like, oh yeah, that’s me. And they’ll be like, hey, like we really loved how you wrote your reports. Like it was the first time we’ve ever felt like our child was really fully seen because even how I write it is very strength based. It’s not like Johnny is, you know, has a deficit in X, Y, and Z. It’s like Johnny has strengths and interests in this area. And this is how we can adapt their learning and the environment to amplify their learning profile, stuff like that.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. As you were sharing that, it made me think of two conversations that I’m going to encourage listeners to check out. One is that I recently interviewed Dr. Destiny Huff, who she’s great, right? She has a great website and resources in her book, which we talk about as neurodiversity affirming advocacy. And she is a powerhouse and has a lot of great insights, especially for those kind of IEP conversations and in the school. And then also Dr. Jade Rivera, and we talked about strength-based assessments and IEP goals. Those would be like a nice companion listen to this conversation. But I guess what I’m wondering is, you know, what do you see in terms of the openness, especially like in school systems? And people doing this work in these bigger systems. We know that change is slow, the bigger and more bureaucratic certain systems are. So could you talk a little bit about the climate that your book is coming out in now, and if you do see an openness to integrating some of these ideas.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah, I think it really just depends on the individual. There are so — I mean, I do a lot of things I think very differently than what a lot of I think typical school based OTs do. Like, I don’t — I mean, yes, I assess fine motor and handwriting, but that’s like 5%. Like my teams know that I am very much into supporting the students’ wellbeing, positive identity, and mental health. And so because of that, I think more often than not, a lot of my — I have really good relationships with my case managers, my special education teachers. And I feel like, I mean, it’s like a bell curve. Some folks are much more open to these conversations than others. And what I love to share, cause I do presentations actually across our district with our admin, because thank goodness I love, love, love my director and our administration — special education administration is really wanting to be more trauma informed and neurodiversity affirming and strengths based in special education in our district. And what I like to share is that public education, special education, like the system — neurodiversity affirming doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Like our IEPs can be strength based. They don’t need to be deficit based, like they just need to demonstrate a need. And the team just needs to work on creating a plan to illustrate what that support will look like. Like one of my other roles too is that I advocate for — you know, at least in the United States, in order to have a behavior plan, you need to do a functional behavioral assessment. And that’s a whole nother conversation about how FBAs are — how we do behavior plans — are very ableist and can cause harm. So like my role is I advocate to be a part of any behavior planning meeting to help minimize the harm of the FBAs and the behavior plans and try to incorporate the students’ voice. And I do want to share though, too, I mean, especially for parents, like, I can’t even imagine — both Zach and I, we’re not dads yet. And I can’t even imagine like the amount of pressure to feel like you always have to fight over and over again, whether it’s a goal, whether it’s how a report is written, ableism and I also want to affirm that you’re not a bad parent, you’re not a bad ally or bad advocate to your child if you feel like you don’t take on every single opportunity, because you will burn yourself out. And so not that anyone needs my permission, but like, I hope there’s like this exhale where you feel like you don’t need to take on every single moment of like, that’s ableist during a meeting, or that you don’t have to try to tackle everything because you will burn yourself out. And that’s okay to not do that.

Debbie:
Yeah. No, I really appreciate that. And I think what heartens me is so many of the conversations I have are with people like you who are changing systems from the inside and doing important work. This is how paradigms shift. This is how the change happens. And so I guess as a way to kind of wrap up, I’m thinking of listeners and most of our listeners are parents, we also have therapists and educators who listen to the show. How can we — and I’m talking to all you guys out there listening — partner with their OTs, with your work, with this book, how can we amplify the work that you’re doing in our own lives? Do you have any ideas for that?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yeah, honestly, I think one really relatively easy thing you can do is just checking your social media feeds, checking who do you follow? Do you follow neurodivergent advocates? Do you only follow — like this was great learning for myself to like a good call-in for myself is, you know, do you only follow white neurodivergent advocates? And so just really making sure that like even like, where are you getting your information from? I think it is a really easy way and just so then you can, you know, social media is powerful when it comes to allowing neurodivergent voices to really be at the forefront. And so just trying to get a lot of your information that way. But also coming from a super anxious person, like not even taking my own advice, I do my best whenever I can, but don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t be afraid to be open heartedly curious. I think even just having these conversations in and of themselves is super important and super critical. And when you’re in — because when you’re in a clinic, it’s really easy to feel like you can create your own affirming world because what you do is just kind of more one on one with the families involved. But when you’re in a school system, it’s so much more complex. Like best practice isn’t just working with a student one on one like it’s changing the minds of teachers, paraprofessionals, administration and — kind of what you mentioned, Debbie, like slow is fast and really try to celebrate the quote unquote small wins. Like the first year when I was in the schools, I was so defeated because I was like, if I don’t change everything of how we do evaluations, I’m failing as a neurodivergent advocate. I was feeling disappointed about coming to work. And I really had a change of mindset about really celebrating those steps. Like if a parent has a five minute conversation with a teacher and they feel heard from the teacher, like that’s such a big success. Or if you’re a therapist that provides an idea that changes how a paraprofessional does behavior management with a student that’s more affirming, like just from a very quick conversation or they watch what you’re doing and they were like, hey, I like that, I want to do that next time. That’s a massive big win. And so trying to really celebrate those smaller, well smaller, but super powerful wins.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it all matters. All of it. It all matters. Every little — yes, absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to name your book one more time. And then if you could share where listeners can learn more about you and Neurodivergent Nexus, that would be great. So the book is Neurodiversity Affirming Occupational Therapy Empowering Approaches to Foster Neurodivergent Participation. It’s an anthology, really. It’s a collection of writing from many people. And I think it’s a good read for anybody to better understand what’s happening on the inside and how we can all participate in this shift. But you also have other resources that parents might want to check out. So where can parents learn more and connect?

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Yes, so parents, therapists, anyone listening, they can find me. So you can just do neurodivergentot.com or neurodivergentnexus.com. I also do have an Instagram, which is brydencarlsongiving. I will say I’m really bad at posting, but I do my best to upload resources and all that when I have some spare time. But yeah, I hope some of the resources are helpful. There’s a whole website page that’s dedicated to the book, so if you’re even just kind of curious about all the different chapters and what we talk about, it’s a really good place to start.

Debbie:
Yeah, great. Okay, so listeners, as always, I will have links in the show notes pages to those resources, as well as the other episodes I mentioned and some other things that came up in our conversation. So check that out. And Bryden, thank you. I so enjoyed this conversation and also that we got to go down like little rabbit holes. It’s always my favorite kind of interview to do. So thank you so much.

Bryden Carlson-Giving:
Thank you, Debbie, it was a super duper honor. Thank you.