Neurodivergence in College with Dr. Tara Williams

The goal of parenting is not to control the path. It is to help our kids learn how to navigate their own. My guest this week is Elaine Taylor-Klaus, and we are talking about something I wish every parent had access to: basic coaching skills. Elaine describes coaching as an empowerment-based, strength-based, collaborative way of communicating. Instead of always telling a child what we think they should do, coaching helps them become more aware of who they are, how they operate, what matters to them, and what they want to do next. That does not mean parents stop teaching. Elaine made a distinction during our conversation that gave me actual goosebumps: there is a difference between teaching someone and creating an environment that helps them learn. Sometimes our kids need information from us. And sometimes we can ask a question that helps them discover something for themselves. "What happens when you try it that way?" "What do you notice?" "What do you think might work?" When the insight comes from the child, they have more ownership of it. We use the classic school planner as an example. If the goal becomes "use the planner," we can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to get a kid to use a tool that may not work particularly well for their brain. But the planner is not really the goal. The goal is for the child to know what they need to do and when they need to do it. Once we get clear on that, we can problem-solve together. Maybe the answer is a planner. Maybe it is something else entirely. The useful question becomes, "How will you know what you need to do?" That shift from directing to collaborating requires something else from parents: a willingness to live with some uncertainty. We start parenting with all kinds of ideas about who our child will be, what they will do, how they will develop, and what their future will look like. And then we actually get to know our child. They have their own brain, their own timeline, their own strengths, and their own ideas about what they want. Elaine talks about parenting as a gradual process of letting go of some of our vision so that we can make room for theirs. That can be especially complicated when your child's path does not look like the paths of their same-age peers. You may feel completely settled about your child doing things differently, and then another milestone or comparison comes along and brings some of those feelings right back. I describe it as spiraling forward. We are not starting over. We are meeting the same work from a different place. We also talk about the stories parents tell ourselves. My child should be doing this by now. Other kids their age can do it. I could do it when I was that age. If they cannot do this now, what happens when they are 24? Elaine shared the example of a parent who was upset that her 12-year-old kept leaving crumbs on the floor while watching television. Underneath that frustration was a fear that someday her daughter would not be able to keep an apartment clean. I called it "fearing forward." We take something happening today and turn it into a story about our child's entire future. Coaching gives us another option. We can notice the story, ask whether it is helping us understand the child in front of us, and reframe it in a way that gives us somewhere useful to go next. And finally, Elaine gives us one very practical assignment: Put the stick down. A lot of us learned to motivate ourselves with criticism. We beat ourselves up for what we should have done, what we forgot, where we fell short, and all the ways we believe we should be doing better. Elaine invites parents to literally imagine putting that stick down. Being kinder to ourselves does not mean ignoring the things that need our attention. It gives us more room to be calm, curious, and available to the child in front of us. And honestly, that may be some of the most important parenting work we do. Key Takeaways Coaching gives parents a col

A student can understand the assignment and still have no idea how to get themselves started. Carrie Bonnett is back on Complicated Kids, and this time we are talking about executive function in the classroom. Carrie is an executive function coach and veteran teacher, and she has a wonderfully simple definition of executive function: the brain skills that help us get important things done. That includes organization and time management, of course, but also planning, getting started, staying focused, regulating emotions, getting back on track after a distraction, finishing, and remembering where the finished thing is supposed to go. In other words, "Go do your work" is asking a brain to do A LOT. Carrie shares the story of a teacher who suddenly realized that a student sitting through independent work without starting might not be choosing not to work. Getting started is a skill. The student may understand the assignment and still be stuck on the first step, how to organize the page, how long the task will take, or any number of things we cannot see from across the classroom. Carrie offers one of my favorite questions from this conversation: What if this is a skill thing and not a will thing? That little shift creates room for curiosity. Maybe the student needs the task broken into a smaller chunk. Maybe they need help identifying the first step. Maybe there is a routine we assumed they knew but never actually taught. And routines are a big part of this conversation. Carrie points out that brains like structure, consistency, and predictability. Teaching students how to begin independent work or what to do when they get stuck is not wasted classroom time. It is teaching the skills that make the rest of the work possible. We also get into the language adults use around executive function. Instead of turning a struggle into an identity, Carrie encourages talking about brains: "My brain needs support with working memory," rather than "I'm terrible at this." I LOVE this. Kids need to understand how their brains work if we want them to choose useful strategies, advocate for themselves, and develop a healthy sense of who they are. And yes, somehow laundry makes an appearance, because I currently have clean, folded laundry sitting in a basket on my bedroom floor and apparently that makes an excellent executive function teaching tool. Adults have unfinished tasks too. Maybe giving ourselves a little grace for that can help us bring more curiosity to the kids in front of us. Key Takeaways Executive function includes the brain skills that help us start, organize, plan, focus on, regulate ourselves through, and finish important tasks. A student who is not starting an assignment may understand the work but still need support with task initiation. Independent work requires many executive function skills at once, including understanding directions, starting, sustaining attention, recovering from distractions, finishing, and turning work in. Asking "What if this is a skill thing and not a will thing?" can help adults move from assumptions to curiosity. Breaking a task into a smaller first step can make getting started more accessible for a student who feels stuck. Classroom routines support executive function because structure, consistency, and predictability reduce how much students have to figure out in the moment. Skills such as task initiation should not automatically be treated as things students already know simply because of their age or grade. Brain-based language can separate a skill difficulty from a student's identity and create a more useful starting point for support. Helping students understand their own executive function profiles can make it easier for them to choose strategies and advocate for what they need. Adults struggle with executive function too, and acknowledging our own imperfect brains can normalize those differences for students. About Carrie Bonnett Carrie Bonnett is a veteran teacher, lif

When anxiety starts shaping the whole family's routines, helping the child may need to begin with supporting the parents. Dr. Lauren Siegel joins me to talk about SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is a little different from many treatments for childhood anxiety because although the child is still the focus, the parents are the ones going to therapy and making changes. Rather than beginning with "What skills does my child need?" SPACE asks parents to look at how anxiety is functioning within the family and what they may be able to approach differently. One of the big ideas in SPACE is accommodation, and we need to be very clear about what that means because this is not the same thing as the accommodations a child may appropriately receive at school. In this context, we are talking about the ways family members can unintentionally organize themselves around a child's anxiety. Maybe the family stops going to certain places. Maybe a parent spends hours helping a child fall asleep or accompanies them every time they go to another room. And there is zero shame in how we got there. If your child is distressed, of course you want to help. Lauren points out that parents are biologically wired to respond to their children's distress. That is how we keep babies alive. The question as kids grow becomes whether a particular kind of help is still supporting them or whether it may be reinforcing the idea that they cannot handle the situation without us. That is where SPACE gets interesting. Reducing an accommodation does not mean withdrawing support or throwing a child into the deep end. Lauren takes a gradual, individualized approach that starts with what the parent and child can realistically handle. Maybe bedtime is not the place to start because that time still feels connected and lovely for the family. Maybe there is another part of the day that is creating much more frustration and feels more workable. There is no universal rule about what a six-year-old "should" be able to do. We also talk about something that is hard for pretty much every parent: seeing your child upset and not immediately making the upset disappear. Some distress is part of learning that we can do hard things and come out the other side okay. But that does not mean all distress is automatically productive. A child who is overwhelmed by a sensory or nervous system issue may need something very different. The work is figuring out the difference and finding the just right challenge for that child. Parent regulation matters here too. If one parent is particularly activated by a situation and another has more bandwidth, maybe they tap in. SPACE creates room for parents to look at their own fears, reactions, and pressure points before changing anything with the child. Because the goal is not to white-knuckle your way through a plan while everybody's nervous system is on fire. What I like about this approach is the message underneath it. Sometimes changing how we respond to anxiety tells a child, "I see that this is hard, and I also believe you can get through it." That is very different from pretending the anxiety is not real. It is support with confidence built into it. Key Takeaways SPACE is a parent-based treatment for childhood anxiety, so parents attend the sessions even though the child's anxiety remains the focus. SPACE can be especially useful when anxiety is significantly affecting a child's daily life and the routines of the whole family. In SPACE, accommodation refers to ways family members may unintentionally organize themselves around a child's anxiety. Accommodating an anxious child is a natural response to distress, so the goal is understanding the pattern rather than blaming parents. Gradually changing an accommodation can send the message, "I know this is hard, and I believe you can handle it." There is no one-size-fits-all expectation for what a child should be able to do. The approach needs

For some kids, the most powerful support is not one more program. It is an adult who keeps showing up. Jorie Das is the Executive Director of Friends of the Children Los Angeles, an organization doing something that immediately got my attention: pairing children who have experienced significant adversity with paid, professional mentors who make a 12-plus-year commitment to them. These are not volunteers dropping in for a semester or a program that disappears when the funding cycle ends. Friends spend intentional time with kids at school, at home, and in the community while helping them navigate goals, transitions, new experiences, and the very ordinary business of growing up. As Jorie says, childhood is not a program cycle. A kid can be doing beautifully at eight and struggling enormously at thirteen. Schools change. Families change. Adolescence happens. The commitment is designed to stay in place through those changes because the child does not have to reach a milestone or behave a particular way to earn the relationship. That becomes especially important when we talk about trauma. Jorie explains that we cannot expect a child who has experienced instability in relationships to immediately trust a new adult just because that adult has excellent intentions. Kids may pull away, shut down, or test whether this person is really staying. The mentor gets to respond through their actions: "You don't have to earn my consistency. I'm still here." Over time, that relationship can create new experiences of safety, predictability, and repair. Mentorship is not a replacement for therapy when a child needs clinical care, but a safe and consistent adult can absolutely be part of the healing environment. What I also love about the Friends model is that the child is not treated as though they exist in a vacuum. The organization supports caregivers, works with schools, connects families with community resources, and supports the mentors themselves. Because if we are asking adults to show up consistently for kids carrying a lot, those adults need people showing up for them too. We also talk about neurodivergence and educational advocacy. Jorie shares that a large percentage of the young people served by Friends LA have IEPs, which has pushed the organization to build more training around ADHD, autism, IEPs, and helping caregivers communicate with schools. Sometimes the parent knows something is not working but does not know the language, the process, or even who they are supposed to talk to. Having someone who knows the child and can help bridge that gap can change the entire conversation. And underneath all of this is something very simple and very human: kids need people who do not give up on them. Not because the relationship will always be easy. In fact, sometimes the most important moment may be after the really hard day, when the adult can say, "I'll see you Tuesday." For a child who has learned that people or support can disappear, knowing somebody is coming back can be a very big deal. Key Takeaways Consistency can be an intervention, especially for children who have experienced trauma or instability in relationships. Children should not have to behave a certain way or reach a milestone to earn a trusted adult's continued presence. Long-term relationships give adults the chance to know the whole child as they grow and change over time. Trauma can make it difficult for children to trust adults, even when those adults have good intentions. Safe, predictable relationships can create new experiences of trust, repair, and connection. Mentorship can support healing, but it does not replace therapy or other clinical care when those services are needed. Supporting children also means supporting caregivers, schools, mentors, and the larger community around them. Neurodivergent children and their caregivers may need additional support navigating IEPs and advocating within school systems. When a child pushes an adult away, curiosit

If we spend childhood teaching a kid that adults know their body, needs, and limits better than they do, it is a pretty big leap to expect self-trust to magically appear in adulthood. Jenn Glacel is back on the podcast, and this time we are talking about what she calls radical acceptance of children's inner knowing or wisdom. Before anybody starts rolling their eyes, this is not an argument that a four-year-old has all the information necessary to run the household. Jenn makes an important distinction between knowing something about your own experience and having the language, context, or skills to explain it. Kids may know what they are feeling or what they need without being able to communicate it in a particularly useful way. We also talk about the difference between autonomy and independence. We tend to treat autonomy as something children earn once they can be independent in the ways adults expect. But needing help does not mean a person should lose their say over their own body, preferences, or experiences. The humble winter coat becomes our case study. If your child says, "I'm not cold," and you repeatedly respond, "Yes, you are," what are they learning? Maybe they are learning about coats. But they may also be learning that their own bodily experience is less trustworthy than an adult's interpretation of it. This does not mean we let a kid wander into ten-below weather in shorts because autonomy. Context matters. Sometimes the adult has information the child simply does not have yet, and safety requires us to step in. But at 45 degrees, maybe we bring the coat and let the kid gather some data. A lot of learning can happen without a lecture. That trust becomes especially important when we ask children to try something new. Jenn makes a point I love: when a child knows that their "no" will actually be honored, a push can feel safe. They can try the roller coaster, the new activity, or the unfamiliar experience because they know that if they change their mind, the adult will listen. If we say, "You can stop anytime," and then immediately argue when they want to stop, we have changed the deal. We also talk about shifting from judgment to curiosity. Jenn's starting assumption is that if a child can do something, they will. If it is not happening, instead of jumping immediately to lazy, defiant, disrespectful, or "they just don't want to," we can ask what is getting in the way. As I say in the episode, you can be right and indignant, or you can be curious and in relationship. And yes, sometimes what we discover is that the dishes are not going to get done on our preferred timeline and, tragically, we may have to wash them ourselves. That same idea of mutual respect comes up in the tiny daily interactions too. If we want children who say please and thank you, are we saying please and thank you to them? If we want respect, are we treating them as people worthy of respect? Kids are watching what we do much more closely than they are memorizing the lecture. None of this requires children to communicate their needs beautifully. Dysregulated kids can express themselves in some truly spectacularly unappealing ways. Our job is not to assume that a badly delivered need is not a real need. Our job is to become detectives, slow things down, and figure out what the child may not yet be able to tell us clearly. Because helping kids trust themselves starts with showing them that we are willing to listen. Key Takeaways Children can know something about what they need or feel even when they cannot explain it clearly. Autonomy and independence are different. Needing support does not mean a child should lose their voice or choices. Children build self-trust when adults take their bodily experiences and signals seriously. Supporting autonomy does not mean ignoring safety. Adults still provide protection, context, and support when the stakes require it. Kids may be more willing to try something new when they trust that their