Neuroaffirming With Simon

I used to genuinely believe the way my brain worked was a problem to manage. Too direct. Too detailed. Too all-or-nothing.

Turns out that's a pretty solid description of a good consultant.

I understand the kids I work with because I was one of them, undiagnosed and misread for most of my school years. I can explain their experience to parents and teachers because I haven't had to imagine it. I know what it felt like to have a meltdown and be told I was choosing to behave that way. I know what it cost to mask every day in a building that wasn't built for me.

That's the lived bridge. Not a metaphor I came up with, an actual function I perform between what adults observe and what children are experiencing.

My autism isn't incidental to the business. It's the whole point.

If that resonates, save this. Share it with someone who needs to hear it.

I'm speaking at the Autism & ADHD Show in London on 19th June at 1:30pm.

My talk is called "Play on Our Terms" and it's about something I see misread constantly, in classrooms, in reports, in EHCP reviews. A child lining up cars for the fifth time. Spinning in the corner. Refusing to join the group activity. Adults see a problem.

The child is succeeding, on their own terms, and nobody's noticing.

I'll be talking about what autistic play actually looks like from the inside, why the "repetitive, rigid, obsessive" read is so often wrong, and what it means in practice to protect and value a child's play rather than redirect it.

If you're coming, come and find me at 1:30. If you're not, I've written a short preview of the talk based on my own experience as an autistic adult.

DM me PLAY and I'll send it to you.

I'm autistic. I've heard every one of these.

Some were said by people trying to help. That's what makes them stick, because they come wrapped in good intentions and still do damage.
The myths aren't harmless. They shape how autistic people are supported, assessed, employed, and believed.

They determine whether a child gets help early or spends twenty years wondering what's wrong with them.

None of these are edge cases. They're the default.

DM me CONSULT if you want to talk about your child specifically.

The DfE made a video. Gemma Collins walked through an office. Kids were told to concentrate.

Meanwhile, autistic adults who actually lived through the education system, who know exactly where it fails and why, are still waiting to be asked.
I've been autistic my whole life. I've been in classrooms for 25 years. I work with Local Authorities on SEND provision right now.

The gap between what the government thinks helps autistic children and what actually helps them is enormous, and it's not closing.
This carousel is about that gap.

If you want the version of this conversation that's grounded in something real, follow me. This is what I post about.

You've got someone in your team who's brilliant with the hard-to-reach kids. You have no idea what it costs them to show up every day.

I've just published a short guide on the neurodivergent practitioners already in your teams, what they bring, what daily masking costs them, and three things you can do this week without a new policy or a budget.

The Missing Variable.

Comment GUIDE below and I'll send you the link.

After my talk at Nursery World last week, a woman came up to me.

She said I'd described her. That she'd recognised herself in everything I'd spoken about.

Then she said: "The dysregulated children always come to me."

She'd spent her career being a safe place for the kids nobody else could reach. She just didn't have the language for why. Nobody had ever given it to her.

That's what happens when we only talk about neurodivergence in children.

The adults are in the room too. They went through the same schools, the same systems, the same years of not quite fitting. Some of them found their way into this work because something in them recognised something in those kids, even before they had words for it.

She thanked me for saying it out loud.

I'm the one who left grateful.

💬When did you first notice that neurodivergent children found you? Tell me in the comments.