Inclusion - ensuring everyone to behave the same or enabling each one to be their own self?
A note on this piece: This essay describes observations from an art activity I designed and led as a volunteer at a summer day program for neurodivergent children. Names have been changed, and identifying details have been altered or composited across multiple children to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. I am not a clinician, and nothing in this essay should be read as medical, diagnostic, or therapeutic advice.
I had an opportunity to volunteer at a summer day program organized by the hospital where I worked as a swim coach. This summer program was also directed at neurodivergent kids. This was an opportunity to design my own program rather than assist with an existing one. I spent some time with the coordinator and learned that the activities had to accommodate varying ability levels. The coordinator suggested keeping the tasks simple and limiting materials - both for safety and to avoid overwhelming the kids. The rest of this blog details my observations and what I learned through subsequent research. These findings should help the reader better interact with neurodivergent children.
It was interesting to note that the same instructions produced a wide range of responses across the group. Every brain processes instructions through its own sensory and attentional filters. What looks like a simple instruction to one child may be experienced as several competing pieces of information to another. Variability is not noise in the data — it is the expected result of different nervous systems processing the same input.
Some children repeated the activity multiple times, while others stopped after a single attempt. Repetitive behavior is often a regulating strategy, not a lack of understanding. Returning to a familiar, predictable action can help a child manage sensory or emotional load — the repetition itself is doing cognitive work, even when it looks like the child has simply not moved on.
One of the girls decided to make the activity her own and did her own thing rather than follow the given steps. Choosing to deviate from an instruction requires intact executive function — the capacity to evaluate a task and decide on a different course of action. This is a sign of active engagement and self-directed thinking, not defiance or non-compliance.
It was very interesting to observe that younger children were calmer and communicated more clearly than some older children (the complete opposite of what I expected). My subsequent reading taught me that neurodivergent profiles do not develop on a single, predictable timeline. Age is a poor predictor of communication ability or regulation capacity within this population — each child's developmental trajectory is shaped by their own specific neurological profile, not simply by their years lived.
I volunteered multiple times over the summer at this camp, and the behavior patterns detailed above repeated themselves. But I had a deeper appreciation of why, and hopefully that made me a better person in responding to and interacting with these kids. I was left with an important question though - if the same room changes every child differently, what does inclusion actually require - treating everyone the same, or making room for how differently everyone experiences the same thing?
This essay reflects my personal observations and interpretation as a volunteer, informed by my own subsequent research. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by any hospital, healthcare provider, or academic institution. Any child described has been anonymised and composited. Readers seeking guidance about a specific child's development or behavior should consult a qualified professional.
Source: Sapolsky, R. (2010, June 2). Human Behavioral Biology, Lecture 25 — Last Lecture and Individual Differences. Stanford University. YouTube.
