Kristin (Host):
Hi everyone, and welcome to 2e 101. I'm Kristin, your host, and today on Ask an Expert, we are so fortunate to be speaking with Dr. Matthew
Zakreski.

Dr. Matt is a clinical psychologist, a professional speaker, and he's also the author of Neurodiversity Playbook: How Neurodivergent People Can Crack the Code of Living in a Neurotypical World. So be sure to check it out.

Dr. Matt, welcome, and thank you for being here.

Dr. Matt:
Thank you so much for having me. I… I'm very excited to, uh, to talk with you a little bit about this.

Kristin:
Awesome. So a parent wrote in with a question we hear a lot at FlexSchool and 2e 101.

It's something I've experienced myself as the parent of a 2e kid.

This parent writes:

“My kid is so bright, and he used to be so curious and excited and just loved to learn. But lately, he seems so shut down. What is going on, and what can I do?”

So, Dr. Matt, what would you say to this parent?

Dr. Matt:
There's probably a couple of different things going on.

And one… there… one thing to remember with this population is that our kids love to learn. They don't necessarily love school.

And I think a lot of people sort of see that as part of the same, like, why would that be different?

You know, it makes me think of that old, uh, that old joke, it's like:

“Hey, son, what'd you learn about school today?”

“Dragons!”

“Oh, you guys, your teacher talks about dragons?”

“No, I learned about dragons. I have no idea what the rest of the class was doing.”

Because our kids like to follow their interests. But as they move along through their education, it gets harder, it gets more demanding.

And so there's… they feel more squeezed. Right? So I think that… you know, that's probably a factor.

And the other thing we always look for is, as those demands increase, what you see is increased demands on what we would call the soft skills of learning.

Our kids can read, they can write, they can do math, they can do the things, right?

But as one moves through their educational, um, career, you start to see more need for resilience, more need for organization, more need for time management, more need for the ability to ask for help.

And these are skills that a lot of our 2e kids have less of, or need to develop more.

So, if your kiddo is sort of ground to a halt, probably what you're seeing is the intersection of things are getting harder, and they're not really sure what the next step is.

And as a result, they're sort of ground to a halt.

Kristin:
That is so true. Do you have any advice for this parent? What can we do to unstick a kid who has ground to a halt like that?

Dr. Matt:
I would start that process by… you know, you always want to loop in your team, right? So let's get the therapist involved, let's get the teacher involved, student support people at school.

Get everybody in a meeting, and make sure that they're seeing what you're seeing.

Right, a lot of times, things can get siloed, because the school's like, “Oh, they're doing great at school.”

If they can keep it together, they're sort of white-knuckling through it. They get home and they fall apart.

But if school is seeing that as well, this is a good time to reset and say, “How do we adapt what we're asking this kid to do in a way that is possible for them to succeed at?”

The second thing is… all you can do is meet your kid where they are.

If you have a kid who has the next Percy Jackson in their brain, but their executive functioning is only developed if they can write 2 or 3 sentences at a time, then we're going to set expectations that they're going to write 2 or 3 sentences at a time—while we seek to build the skills so they can write two to three paragraphs.

Or pages. Or if they're Stephen King, two to three novels, apparently. You know, he just, like, flyers them out there, right?

But this all starts with: we have to meet our kids where they are in order to help them move forward.

And it's very easy to intervene with kids from a place of where we think they should be—not where they actually are.

Kristin:
That is such good advice, thank you so much. 

Friends, Dr. Matt's book is Neurodiversity Playbook. Be sure to check it out.

You can always find me, Kristin, right here at kristin@flexschool.net.

Thanks for watching!

Dr. Matt:
Thanks for having me.