Four Back-to-School Tips for Neurodivergent Families
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It’s officially back-to-school season!
For many neurodivergent families, this time comes with mixed feelings. You might be excited to get back into a more normal routine but also nervous about helping your child navigate new teachers, classes, and classmates.
To start the month off, I want to share four tips to help you and your family through this big season of change.
1. Help your child prepare for coming changes
Adjusting to a new class, schedule, and routine can be overwhelming. One effective way to prepare your child is by discussing the plan in advance. For preschool and elementary age kids, social stories, which provide a visual and narrative guide to upcoming changes, can be a powerful tool in this process.
For this month's freebie, I made two social story books to help your child prep for the school year. You can add your own pictures to the story before printing or have your child illustrate their book.
Version one is a simple four-page book showing your child's school, classroom, and teacher. Version 2 is an eight-page book that discusses details like what your child will bring to school, how they will get there, and what time they will leave.
If a digital version would be a better fit for your child, there are also great social story apps like Social Story Creator.
2. Choose supplies with your child’s neurodivergence in mind
You can help set your child up for success by thinking through their strengths and support needs when picking back-to-school items. Simple switches to items that are a better fit for how your child’s brain works can reduce their stress and make daily logistics easier.
Here are a few of my favorite easy switches:
If you know your child likes to fidget, choose fidget-friendly accessories like a spinner ring or chew neckless over ones that will break when played with.
If your child struggles with finding things in a complex backpack, stick to a simple design with one large pocket.
If your child struggles to keep track of everything for their lunch, choose a bento-style container or a lunchbox with built-in icepacks so there are fewer loose pieces.
You can also support your child’s sensory needs by choosing headphones that are noise-canceling, stickers with texture, or scented pencils and markers.
Here are all of my favorite neurodivergent friendly back to school finds for kids and teens:
3. Lean into your child’s special interests
Many neurodivergent people have special interests or topics they are intensely focused on. While more research needs to be done, existing research (such as this study of autistic adults) shows that engaging with special interests results in increased well-being, social contact, and satisfaction for most people.
If your child has special interests, try to include them while preparing for the school year. This might mean getting horse folders or a Minecraft backpack. It might also mean things like getting dinosaur mini erasers to use for math homework.
4. Remind yourself that it’s a process
Lastly, remember that starting the new school year requires lots of learning and adjusting for both you and your child. The reality is that the first week might be great, but it also might be really difficult. Your child may experience a range of emotions, from excited and hopeful to nervous, anxious, or scared. Sometimes, they might have multiple emotions at the same time that seem contradictory.
You can support your child by making space for them to experience these feelings and talk about them if they would like. I also encourage you to focus on the wins while slowly working to create routines that work for you and your family.