Relationship accommodationsAccommodation is fundamentally about not changing the person but changing the environment around the person.Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences Yet on a programmatic… More are the reasonable adjustments we make which allow the other person to meet our needs.
Raffael Boccamazzo
But there are times when we don’t understand why our partner isn’t meeting our needs. And that can happen a lot in neurodiverse relationships. If one person is neurotypicalThe existence of the word neurotypical makes it possible to have conversations about topics like neurotypical privilege. Neurotypical is a word that allows us to talk about members of the… More and the other person has ADHD
ADHD or what I prefer to call Kinetic Cognitive Style (KCS) is another good example. (Nick Walker coined this alternative term.) The name ADHD implies that Kinetics like me have… More. Or one person has ADHD and the other person has Autism
Autistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.If you are wondering whether you are Autistic, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline. If… More. It can be really frustrating because the needs are there and they’re not being met. And it’s really hard to understand why. And what to do about it. And we might jump to some conclusions, like they’re not listening, they don’t care
The activities that constitute care are crucial for human life. We defined care in this way: Care is “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue,… More, they’re just not trying hard enough, my needs don’t matter to them.
A lot of us try to explain our needs harder or expect the person to try to meet them harder, and we know at work and at school that that doesn’t work. It’s usually not about lack of effort.
Relationship accommodations are a great way to kinda bridge that gap.
ADHD and Autism Relationship Accommodations — How to Get Your Needs Met
So, one of the things to also bear in mind with this is that the impairments that exist in terms of relationships or even in broader sense with folks both on the spectrum and with ADHD is that our impairments can often be invisible.
We’ve been socialized to try and speak neurotypical, but we’re not good at it.
A lot of relationship-difficulties for folks who are neurodiverse come from misunderstandings of intent. Misunderstandings of action. Or feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. Often because we come from an entire lifetime of literally not being acceptedAcceptance means training mental health service providers to look at autism and other disabilities as a part of a person’s identity, rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. Acceptance… More for who we are.
ADHD and Autism Relationship Accommodations — How to Get Your Needs Met
Again, relationship accommodations need to be reasonable and allow the other person to meet our needs.
ADHD and Autism Relationship Accommodations — How to Get Your Needs Met
Further readingThere are three types of reading: eye reading, ear reading, and finger reading.The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan: A Blueprint for Renewing Your Child’s Confidence and Love of Learning Most schools and… More,