Neurodivergent, Not Broken: Rethinking Support, Accountability, and Authentic Growth

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/07

Dr. Matt Zakreski emphasizes that neurodivergent individuals are not broken neurotypicals but uniquely wired people requiring tailored support. He contrasts Canada’s flexible, individualized approach with the U.S.’s rule-bound systems, underscoring the importance of equity—not uniformity—in education and development. Zakreski critiques the misuse of identity labels to avoid accountability and encourages adaptive support based on process, not perfection. He advocates for knowledge as empowerment, shifting from stigma to informed compassion. Emphasizing the role of stereotype threat, he calls for environments where authenticity can thrive. Children need flexible systems and high, compassionate standards to become grounded, resilient adults.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How are neurodivergent people, not broken neurotypical people? What is the misunderstanding there in the public mind?

Dr. Matt Zakreski: There is a core misunderstanding that there is a “right” way to engage with the world. However, that is just not true. Some ways are easier or more widely accepted—but not inherently better.

Society is primarily built by and for neurotypical people. About 80% of the population is neurotypical. So, when you are neurodivergent, you often operate outside the default design. That does not mean you are wrong. However, it can tell youthat you are at odds with how others expect things to be done.

Those odds do not have to lead to conflict or isolation but can lead to friction. That is where support becomes crucial.

We need to help neurodivergent people understand the rules and how to engage with them in ways that feel most authentic and manageable for them. That is not the same as saying, “You need to change who you are.” It is more like, “Here are some skills that will help you navigate this moment.”

Once that moment has passed, if they want to return to their fully authentic selves, we honour that. The goal is adaptive functionality, not forced conformity.

Jacobsen: How do America and Canada differ in their approaches to supporting neurodivergent individuals as they develop from childhood through adolescence?

Zakreski: One of the things I have always respected about Canada is that Canadians seem more inclined to recognize and accommodate individual developmental journeys. I am a big hockey fan, so think about Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid—they are given that special dispensation to play in the juniors early. Why? Because they were ready.

Moreover, that is the essence of good neurodivergence support: finding the right-sized fit for the right kind of challenge. It is partly operational, but at its heart, it is philosophical. It is a commitment to honouring a person’s unique growth path and doing what it takes to help that path unfold.

In the U.S., we pride ourselves on rugged individuality but are also extremely rule-bound. I cannot tell you how often I have spoken with neurodivergent students in the U.S. who need something different—a more advanced math class or a different approach to writing—and the system says, “No. This is how we do it.”

In my experience with Canadian educators, especially those who work with neurodivergent kids, the attitude is often, “Let us see what we can do to meet this student’s needs.”

Moreover, that is a huge difference. Because if you are willing to think outside the box, you are automatically better positioned to serve “outside the box” kids.

Jacobsen: How do we prevent that from overextending into pandering?

Zakreski: That is such a great question. Are you familiar with the Yerkes–Dodson Law?

Jacobsen: Oh yeah—the Yerkes–Dodson curve. Absolutely.

Zakreski: So here is the thing: almost every intervention I design is rooted in the idea behind the Yerkes–Dodson Law. The goal is to find the right level of stimulation or challenge—that “leading edge of learning,” as I call it.

When something is too easy, people disengage. When it is too hard, they shut down. However, you can achieve engagement, growth, and resilience if you hit that sweet spot.

So, no, giving kids the right opportunities is not pandering. We are not lowering expectations—we are calibrating the level of challenge. If we are targeting that optimal zone, we almost cannot pander to them. We are pushing them just enough to grow while still supporting them as they stretch.

If a kid says, “I am smarter—I need better math. Give me better math,” and we say, “Okay, let us do that,” then the kid struggles and cannot keep up, so we often remove them from that setting.

However, those services—those accommodations—should not be seen as badges of honour. They are not awards. It is not about prestige. It is a matter of equity.

Everyone should get what they need.

Gifted kids, neurodivergent kids—they are not better. They are different. Moreover, the goal is not to reward someone for being different. It is to right-size the challenge so that each student is in a place where they can grow and thrive.

Jacobsen: In practice—clinical practice, specifically—how do you “measure twice and cut once”? How do you assess and then tailor support accordingly?

Zakreski: You start with the person’s interests.

Let us say Sally is a high-level musician. I know music matters to her, so I begin by exploring music-based interventions. I asked her, “What does success in music look and feel like to you?”

Does it mean playing Carnegie Hall in New York City? Does it mean attending Juilliard? Does it mean becoming a tenured professor at McGill University in Montreal?

Jacobsen: That is right. You have your Canadian references in order.

Zakreski: Of course! I do this. I am ready for the quiz.

Jacobsen: Okay then—quiz time. Who said, “The medium is the message”?

Zakreski: That is Marshall McLuhan.

Jacobsen: Correct. 100 points. Gold star. What was Glenn Gould known for playing, and which composer was he most famous for interpreting?

Zakreski: Oof—I do not think I know that one. I will model my intellectual humility here and admit there is a gap.

Jacobsen: Gould was a classical pianist best known for his interpretations of Bach. When he visited the Soviet Union, people were so in awe of his technical and emotional mastery that they asked questions like, “Is it a machine? No—it is a man,” which echoed Superman-like mythologizing.

Zakreski: That is wild. I love it.

Jacobsen: Okay, let us pivot back. In clinical work, have you ever had a situation where a neurodivergent child shows their divergence in verbal reasoning or verbal ability, and you model something nonverbally—without explicitly stating that is what you are doing?

Zakreski: Yes, absolutely. There is a famous psychological study—I am 90% sure it came out of Yale. If needed, I can fact-check that. Malcolm Gladwell references it in his book Blink.

The core idea is that Western culture is exceptionally verbal. So, people with advanced verbal skills are often disproportionately elevated—socially, academically, and even professionally—compared to those with strengths in problem-solving, lateral thinking, or engineering/STEM domains.

So, when working with neurodivergent kids, especially those with expressive or receptive language challenges, I often model emotional regulation, problem-solving, or curiosity through nonverbal behaviour without paying attention. Over time, many kids pick up on this, integrate it, and reflect it in ways that match their cognitive style.

It is one of our most potent, quiet tools, especially when working with kids who process the world differently.

In this particular study, participants were put in a room where they had to solve a problem—one that was not immediately clear how to solve. Everyone received the same set of instructions, but what they found fascinating.

The verbal thinkers kept asking, “What else do I need to know? What information am I missing?” They assumed there was a verbal piece missing from the instructions. Meanwhile, when the facilitators either nonverbally modelled how to solve the problem or gave a sizable hint, the adaptive thinkers—those who could pivot between verbal and nonverbal reasoning—were able to adjust and solve the task.

However, the people locked into that single-channel verbal mode of thinking kept circling back to more questions and language. They were limited by the style they had grown comfortable with.

One of the core principles we try to model, especially with neurodivergent clients, is that process matters more than product.

I want people to learn how to sit with the discomfort of a challenge, wrestle with something difficult, and work their way through it. If you do that and get a lower grade, or you do not get the “correct” answer, but your method of approaching the problem is fundamentally sound—that is far more important and far more predictive of long-term success than simply repeating whatever strategy has always netted you a good grade.

I did not learn how to write good papers until university. In high school, I could throw many clever words on a page, make them sound smart, and get the grade—because my verbal IQ was in the 140s. I was not a good writer; I just sounded like one.

It was not until college that I had a professor—John Llewellyn, a fantastic guy who introduced me to Marshall McLuhan—pull me aside and say, “You think you are a good writer. You are not.”

Moreover, I said, “I know, sir. I just figured out how to do this in a way that worked in high school.”

He said, “Good. Now, I will teach you how to be a real writer.”

When I wrote my book last year, I thought about him constantly. Whenever I wanted to cut a corner or fall back into old habits, I heard his voice. Resisting those shortcuts made the book so much better. I am genuinely grateful for that lesson.

Jacobsen: We are in a cultural moment that feels like Identity Politics 2.0—sometimes referred to or criticized under the umbrella of “woke ideology.” Now, that framing gets messy because it has both upsides and downsides.

The benefit is obvious: it can help mobilize people for necessary, justice-oriented causes. The downside is the rise of what you might call “parade-based activism” rather than “work-based activism.” It is easy to confuse symbols for substance—for instance, thinking that wearing a rainbow pin is equivalent to marching with a friend at Pride or wearing a Christian cross is the same as participating meaningfully in someone’s confirmation journey.

There is a risk that these markers become proxies for actual support or understanding.

So my question is: Is there a risk that youth who receive a neurodivergent diagnosis might fall into that same trap—where the label becomes a shield, an excuse, or even a kind of performative identity that limits their accountability or growth when things go wrong?

Zakreski: That is a fundamental question. Moreover, for the record, I am always on the side of diagnosis—on the side of knowing yourself. I often say it is way better to know you are a zebra than to think you are just a weird horse.

Because our brains work this way: in the absence of external information, we make sense of things using the internal information we already have—which is, overwhelmingly, ourselves.

For example, I am colorblind, which is a form of neurodivergence. However, I did not know colorblindness existed until I was 11, so before that, I thought I was just dumb.

Everyone else could tell colours apart, but I could not. So my conclusion was, “I must be stupid.” I did not have the language or the framework to understand otherwise.

That is why diagnosis is helpful—not because it is the end of the journey, but because it is the beginning of a different journey.

I always say that the story does not end when Frodo gets the ring—it ends when Frodo gets to Mount Doom.

Diagnosis is not the conclusion. It is the starting point that guides how we move forward.

Think about it like this: if someone is diagnosed with high blood pressure, and their doctor gives them medication—but they do not change their diet, they keep eating fried food, keep drinking soda and alcohol—then the diagnosis alone is not going to fix anything.

In the same way, a neurodivergent diagnosis should be a North Star—a tool for gaining self-knowledge and orienting one’s environment and behaviours toward the best possible version of oneself.

Moreover, like I said earlier, Neurodivergence is always context—it is never an excuse.

Labelling a child as having ADHD can be very helpful. It might lead to educational accommodations, therapy, or medication. However, the mistake I often see parents make is that they stop there.

They will say something like, “My kid has ADHD, so of course they cannot help but cheat on a test—they are impulsive.”

Moreover, I respond respectfully but firmly: That is not how this works.

Yes, I will understand more about the impulsivity behind the behaviour. However, accountability still matters.

We do not eliminate expectations just because someone has a diagnostic—or, perhaps more appropriately in these contexts, an identity—label. We adapt the expectations and adjust how we deliver them, but we do not remove them.

You can’t just throw up your hands and say, “Well, they are neurodivergent, so they are off the hook.” That does a disservice to the child and the broader community.

Jacobsen: Do you ever have a situation in practice where someone uses their identity, or diagnostic status, to shield themselves from accountability—where it becomes a kind of shield?

Zakreski: Yes, and I will give you an example.

I work with a kid in my clinical practice who has gotten into some social trouble at school this year. He has genuine social communication challenges and is quick to yell or escalate when he feels cornered or misunderstood.

He also happens to be part of the LGBTQ+ community. And in one of our team meetings, he said, “They are picking on me because I am gay.” Moreover, because I have worked with him for a long time, and because I know him well and we have that rapport, I was able to say:

I told him, “You are being a jerk. You are a jerk who happens to be gay.”

It was direct, but it was said with care and with the understanding that his identity does not absolve him of how he treats others. The goal isn’t to weaponize labels—it is to understand them in ways that promote growth, self-awareness, and accountability.

We are not going to hide behind identity politics here. Accountability still matters.

Now—if people are being cruel because of his sexual orientation, if they are weaponizing his identity in some way—that is a very different conversation. That is not acceptable. However, people are allowed not to like you. That is part of life.

People are allowed to dislike others whether they are tall, short, fat, skinny, gay, straight, trans, ADHD, autistic, dyslexic, or whatever. We will not stand for the ad hominem version of those attacks.

Saying, “You are stupid because you have ADHD” or “ADHD people never amount to anything”—that is deeply harmful and entirely out of bounds.

However, saying, “Hey, I do not like you—you annoy me” is not the kindest thing you will ever hear, but it is not necessarily inappropriate. That is part of navigating human relationships.

Jacobsen: Speaking of niceness—and tilting that into politeness—do cultural stereotypes guide collective behaviour in any way?

For example, the stereotype of Canadians being polite or Americans being entrepreneurial but obnoxious. Do these, in your view, become self-fulfilling prophecies?

Zakreski: I think they do—very much so.

One of the most critical research areas here is the stereotype threat concept. The basic idea is: If I think you will see me a certain way, I will proactively change my behaviour to manage your expectations—even if it makes me less authentic or less effective.

I was recently in Europe for work—specifically in the Netherlands—and I do not speak much Dutch. I kept apologizing for not knowing the language because I did not want to be seen as the stereotypical “ugly American.”

However, that constant apologizing made me a less effective communicator. I was so worried about managing the perception that I was not focusing on the interaction.

You see this with kids all the time, too. I work with students who have ADHD, and they are so afraid of being seen as impulsive or scattered that they spend all of their energy trying not to appear that way.

In doing so, they do not learn anything.

If students need to fidget or doodle to stay engaged and learn, we should let them do it. If their environment allows them to be themselves without penalty, the stereotype threat drops dramatically, and their capacity for success increases just as dramatically.

Jacobsen: So, looking ahead—thinking about the remainder of the 2020s and into the 2030s—if we extrapolate lines of best fit from current clinical psychological data for kids aged 5 to 20, extending into young adulthood, what do young people in North America need to survive? Moreover—more importantly—what do they need to thrive as authentic, grounded individuals?

Zakreski: We need two things: flexibility and high standards.

But not rigid standards—high standards.

We need knowledge.

Moreover, knowledge is not just power—knowledge is empowerment.

When we understand that ADHD is a brain-based difference, we stop labelling kids as lazy, weird, or broken. We recognize that it is a neurobiological condition that affects executive functioning. Moreover, if we start from that foundation of knowledge, it becomes much easier to move toward compassion and practical support.

Another thing I always say is, “When the flower is not blooming, we do not blame the flower—we change the greenhouse.”

One of the most significant shifts in this post-COVID world is that more families finally say, “Okay. The greenhouse that worked for one of my children does not work for this one.”

So, they are now willing to create a different environment—a custom greenhouse—for the child who needs it.

That is why I strongly oppose this wave of anti-DEI backlash: Equity is not just a buzzword; it is a human need.

Everyone does better when they get what they need to thrive. Neurodivergent people are no exception.

Moreover, most of what we ask for—for these kids and families—are small, simple changes. We are not asking the world to reshape itself entirely. We are asking to be allowed to enter that world in ways aligned with our needs and dignity.

That is why I will always fight for my kids and clients—the cost of inaction is too high, and the solutions are often well within reach.

Jacobsen: This was a treat. Thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Zakreski: I hope it was helpful for you as well. It was. Thank you for reaching out.

Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices. In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.