NDIS Community’s Post

I’d told my husband we were going to try to switch off. We desperately needed a week away just for ourselves. We’d gone to Cornwall after quite a difficult year, finally able to find some space and breathe out. And after giving our AuDHD (young adult) kids the choice of joining us, we’d accepted they were happier to stay at home by themselves. But as any parent knows, particularly one of neurodivergent children, they’re never far from your mind. So it was inevitable we talked about them a lot as we walked along the beach and the coastal path. And there were a few issues we had to sort out with them from a distance – mainly down to the fact one’s chaotically messy, and the other easily overwhelmed by too much stuff. We were fertile grounds already when we came across this book in a little independent bookshop in Padstow. I’d had it on my reading list for a while and knew it was good. But after reading it cover-to-cover one wet afternoon in the holiday house, I can tell you it’s far more than good. It’s life-changing. Even as a mum who spends hours reading about AuDHD or in parent chat forums, I understood things about my children’s late-diagnosed experience I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood before. There were times I felt a jolt of love and compassion as it dawned on me just how hard life had been for them. But it’s also at its heart a profoundly positive book – a manifesto for change underpinned by humour, hope, and celebration of the untypical mind. I put it down again feeling confident I could be a better parent and my kids would find their feet. Please, please *everyone* read this book as a service to yourselves, your neurodivergent people, and to wider society. It should be compulsory reading in every teacher training course at the very least. Thank you Pete Wharmby for this gift to us. And thank you also Mark Ellerby for being the first to let me know about it. #neurodiversity #autism #ADHD #neurodivergence As ‘writing partner for regenerative design’, I include neuroarchitecture and design for neurodiversity inclusion. I apply my lived experience – both as an architecture copywriter and as an untypical parent navigating (literally and metaphorically) the public and schools building challenge – to help architects tell the world what they’re doing to change things.