This week I’m talking with Strengths-Based Learning Expert Caitlin Meister who has made it her life’s work to bring her strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming, joyful learning approach to other parents and educators.
Caitlin is the Founding Director of The Greer Meister Group, a New York City-based private tutoring and educational consulting practice. She attended Wesleyan Unversity and went on to receive additional training through the Harvard Graduate School of Education and in the Orton-Gillingham approach for teaching students with language-based learning differences.
In our conversation today we discuss strength-based and neurodiversity-affirming approaches in education that foster belonging and engagement for all students. We also explore practical strategies like reframing behaviors, collaborating with teachers, and providing specific praise to support neurodiverse learners. Caitlin shares insights on embracing neurodiversity and creating flexible, inclusive learning environments where children's strengths and differences are valued.
William Curb: To get started here, can you give yourself a quick introduction and we can go from there?
Caitlin Meister: Sure. So my name is Caitlin Meister and I am a specialist in strength-space learning and neurodiversity affirming practices, which is a bit of a mouthful, but basically means I help folks who are looking to raise confident capable kids. I help teachers and other educators who are trying to bring neurodiversity affirming practices into their classrooms so that we can build belonging for all the kids in our learning spaces.
William Curb: Awesome. Can you give a bit of a definition of what strength-based learning is? Because I'm sure a lot of people have heard the term and they kind of have an idea, but it's not super clear always what we are talking about.
Caitlin Meister: Yeah. So strength-based practices mean we begin a relationship by identifying a strength and then building in the areas where we want to or need to grow based on that strength. It's the opposite of a deficits-based approach where we might define the child by the ways that they are quote-unquote failing to meet expectations.
Right? So sort of the simplest way to think about it is that a deficits-based approach would be me saying to a child, here are all the ways you're failing to meet expectations and now I have to help you catch up. Whereas the strengths-based approach would be to say, look at this thing you're really strong in. I'm going to teach you how to use that strength to grow in this other area.
William Curb: Awesome. Yeah. Because I often find myself being like looking at ways to either help my kids or improve myself in terms of, yes, strengths and weaknesses. And it's often like, oh, this is where I'm weak.
This is where I could improve the most. But that's not usually how it turns out to be. It's usually like, if I'm good at something, I'm going to be able to get better at that thing more easily.
Caitlin Meister: What's really interesting is that the first pushback I usually get from folks on this strength-based idea is, well, does that mean that we're just pretending they don't have any challenges? They don't have any areas where they need to grow in? And it's not about that at all. We're not ignoring challenges.
We're not glossing over struggles. But again, if it were just you and me talking and I were to say to you, like, hey, you're really strong at this. Let me teach you how to use that skill over here to grow in this other area. You're of course going to be more engaged in learning with me than if I say the former, right, the, oh, here's how you're failing to meet expectations.
I have to help you catch up, right? So it's kind of a no-brainer when you think of it that way. But I do think folks who are unfamiliar with it do have this fear of like, well, are we just going to pretend they don't have any challenges? And it's not about that at all.
William Curb: Yeah. And I can definitely see how important it would be for people with ADHD to focus on this aspect, because we are so interest-based and part of the reason that we're weak at certain things is because that's something where we're not interested.
Caitlin Meister: Sure. And when you look at how many times in a day, a week, a month, a year, child with ADHD is told that they are failing to meet expectations in their learning spaces, it's heartbreaking. And then the teachers look around and go, well, we don't get why the kids are disengaged with learning, right? So the more that we can take a strengths-based approach, and the more that we can build authentic belonging for all of our students, especially our neurodiverse students, then the more that we are going to see an increase in engagement in the learning, not to mention more happiness, other mental health outcomes, right? Like, everybody wins here when we do this. That's what the research shows us, right? This is good for everybody.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I always find funny when I'm like doing all these things to be like, oh, I'm doing these things that help my brain, but really I feel like they would help anybody to do them. It's just extra important that I'm doing them because I will get nothing done otherwise.
Caitlin Meister: Well, I think we need to move away from this idea that in a classroom setting or in a learning space, that it makes sense for a teacher to present a one-size-fits-all demand when faced with 10 or 20 or 40 kids who are in all different places with their executive functioning, not to mention a host of all other skills, right? And so when you look at it that way, you're like, well, what happens if I'm an educator and I present this one-size-fits-all demand to this diverse population in front of me? Well, it's not successful, right? When I pose this to teachers and I'm doing like professional development or conferences, I hear words like chaos, right? When I say what happens, right?
Chaos or disorder, things like this. And this is why. But when we start to break down the research on the way brains work and we look at the way executive functioning skills, for example, develop, right? And then we go, well, of course, it doesn't make sense then for me to present a one-size-fits-all demand knowing that everybody in front of me is in a different place developing those skills. And then we start to differentiate, right? And then suddenly everybody is more engaged and thriving. It's a beautiful process.
William Curb: Absolutely. We're talking about these like neurodiverse affirming practices. Can you tell me a little bit more about like what kind of approaches you'd be using there that are helpful for people with these brain differences?
Caitlin Meister: Sure. So I mean, most of the folks listening here probably already know, but just to make sure we're all coming from the same foundation, right? Neurodiversity describes the variation in the way that people process information, right? No two people think alike. It is not a diagnosis. It is a fact of our species.
And it's actually completely essential for our species to thrive, right? And one of the ways I like to look at this is to say, well, if we want something different one day, like a cure for cancer or a solution to climate change, why would we think that compelling everybody to conform to one way of thinking would ever get us something different out the other end, right? And when you say it that way, it's like you watch the heads explode in the room, right?
Because it starts to make sense so clearly. So a lot of the work that I do is around dismantling conformity, right? Moving away in education from this idea that we're asking all of our kids to conform to one standard, whatever that standard may be, right? That doesn't really make sense anymore based on what we know about the way brains work and what our society and our culture need right now. So to be neurodiversity affirming then means to say to all of your learners, right, that I value you and I see the value in what you bring to this community.
And those two things are not the same, right? And so this is a big part of building that kind of belonging for neurodivergent learners is saying I value what you bring to this experience, this classroom, this workshop, this meeting, this conversation, whatever it is, even when what you bring may not be on the curriculum, right? And it may not be part of the scope and sequence that I as the adult had in mind for this discussion, right?
This class discussion, it might not be part of what I pictured, but I can be flexible as an adult and show you that I value your lived experience and what you're going to bring to this conversation. And then the other aspect I like to talk about, we talk about what does it mean to be neurodiversity affirming is valuing each person's interests, skills, and capacity, right?
Again, even if those things are, if I'm talking to a sixth grader, even if your interests or your skills are not part of what I had in mind for sixth grade curriculum, they are still valued here.
William Curb: This sounds like it's different than like the old model of like learning styles from what I understand doesn't really work.
Caitlin Meister: Yeah, no, this is different because when we're talking about forms of neurodiversity or neurodivergence, right? There are a lot of neuro types that fall under that umbrella, right? And some of them folks are very familiar with obviously folks listening today with ADHD, but many others that we hear more commonly like our autistic students, dyslexia, dysgraphia, profound giftedness.
So there are a lot of them that we're familiar with. It's not about, oh, am I a visual learner? Am I a kinesthetic learner? It's about the way your brain processes information. And that may be different than somebody sitting next to you. A big part of the work that we're doing is building spaces where every way that you might process this information, like we can provide it for you in a way that you can access it.
Maybe that means that because of your processing speed, you're going to do better if we can give you material ahead of time so that you can preview it at your own time at your own pace, right? Maybe that means you are not going to learn best sitting still at a desk all day long. Fine. There's focus by making eye contact with me.
That's fine. There are many ways to show focus, right? So it's about holding space in our learning spaces for all the different ways that folks will show up and participate and bring value to what we're doing and not having one standard that we're trying to get everybody to conform to.
William Curb: That sounds also really important just to make it so that people aren't dreading or hating going to school.
Caitlin Meister: Absolutely. And this is what I'm saying when we say like we take a strengths-based approach and a neurodiversity affirming approach, we see increased engagement, we see better mental health outcomes, right?
When we're talking about teenagers, that's huge. So it basically fosters like increased engagement in learning and feeling part of a community, whereas the opposite will lead to disengagement, right? And that's where we go back to like looking around and going, why are they disengaged with the learning? Well, are you asking them all to conform to one standard and pretending that that standard is somehow objectively right when most of the standards we have in education are actually subjective?
Like they've been designed by a personal group of people to accomplish a certain goal, which makes them by definition subjective, but we're trying to convince the kids that this is some objective measure of their merit, right? Yeah. It doesn't make sense.
William Curb: I mean, I know when I was going through school, like if I couldn't tell why something was important, it was just so hard for me to like get behind doing any of the work for that class. And I'd be like, which is I'm sure so many kids with ADHD is like, oh, you're not living up to your potential. I can kind of see why geometry is important, but it's not there for me.
Caitlin Meister: Right. And that's so interesting that phrase, you're not living up to your potential, right? And that's something that I think so many of us heard, you know, in our generation. And it speaks to me because of this idea that to be neurodiversity affirming is to say, I value your interests, skills and capacity, right? We talked about those three things, right? So what is potential?
What is this thing we're naming? We're saying you're not living up to, right? Well, that is something that this other person has defined for you, right? This is the thing that I think your potential looks like and you're not matching my expectation. But what have you defined as your potential?
What is it that you are drawn to and want to achieve, right? These are very different questions. We don't want people developing a sense of self around somebody else's expectation that may not be something that you value.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because there are so many situations where you realize, oh, what that person values has nothing to do with what my values are. And that's even more disheartening when you're like, oh, I was trying to lease this person and we have a complete different value system.
This makes no sense. One of the things I'm thinking too is like, we're trying to get this into schools more, so people are doing it. But that can be a hard self for schools. Like, it's our ways that we can better advocate for our kids or if you're an older student, how you can advocate for yourself.
Caitlin Meister: Yeah. So I think there are a couple of steps here. Number one is for parents to understand how their kids learn best. Because once you understand it, then you're going to be able to advocate for it better and more clearly, right? So the first step is understanding how our kids learn best. And then we can take that information with us out to advocate in school or with other practitioners who may engage with our kids, right?
And for older students, to your point, this is about understanding how we learn best and how we can advocate for that for ourselves, right? Now, in terms of like, detailed, like, how do I recommend you do this work? If you understand what your child needs and that need is not being met in their classroom in their current learning space, how do we have those conversations, right?
Those can be very difficult conversations to have. First and foremost, I always encourage parents to see themselves on a team with their child's teacher, right? You and Mrs. Klein are team SAM, right? And the goal of this team is to help SAM thrive, right?
That's the goal. Now, the reason why that's so important is because if you and your child's teacher are using up any of your resources, being antagonistic with each other, then those fewer resources you have to meet the goal. The goal is help SAM thrive, right? So I want you and the teacher using all of your resources to help SAM thrive.
So we want to go into this as a team. Now, part of being a team is for parents to understand that teachers have certain needs that need to be met. But there may be more than one way to meet that need, right? That's where the flexibility lies. And for teachers to understand that for parents, the stakes can be no higher than their child's well-being. So every interaction they come to is fueled by that sense of urgency, right?
That's what's underneath. The stakes can be no higher for me than my child's well-being. If we can understand those two aspects, right, on each side of this team, then we come to this with compassion and understanding and teamwork, right? So that's sort of the foundation when I work with parents on how do I go in, how do I advocate? Now, when I say we need to understand the teacher has a need that needs to get met, but it doesn't always have to get met in one way.
Here's an example. Let's talk about tests, right? What is the function of a test? The function of a test is to assess mastery of the content, right? So if we have a student who is consistently demonstrating mastery in class participation, let's say close to 90% in group projects, in presentations, in homework, and all of these other ways at 90%, but she's failing the tests.
That's not a child who's failing tests, that's a test that's failing to serve its function, right? Because we know from all these other measurements, this child has 90% mastery, but she's failing the test, right? That test is not working. So that's what I mean with the teacher needs is the means of assessing the child's mastery. But where there could be flexibility is maybe it's not on this kind of test, because it's not actually doing what you need it to do.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because I do know so many, so many people that are like, I was great in school, but it was bad at tests. And like, that's frustrating for everyone involved. I was particularly bad at like essay tests, like I just couldn't form you arguments at the time, like writing them down. But if you sent me home with an essay, I wouldn't be using any additional research is I'd have the time to spend to do it.
Caitlin Meister: Right. What is it that you want as an educator, what is it you want to learn from that test, right? Do you want to learn only whether in your example, you can write this essay given these exact parameters on this paper in this room at this time with this time limit on this topic, right? Is that what's important?
Or is what's important your ability to write a compelling essay on any topic, maybe something that's more interesting to you or your ability to write an essay released from anxiety around timing, right? Like what is what's important here? And sometimes we get so wrapped up in this is just the way things are done that we don't stop to ask, well, why are they done this way? And is this something that I value that's important to me?
William Curb: An article I read about the LSAT for like the LSAT being like, does that actually produce the best lawyers? Like, is that test that defines whether or not you can do it actually going to produce the best people for this thing? Or is it going to get the people that are the best at taking that test?
Caitlin Meister: Right. When I look at my kids, like I'm a mom of two, I have a five year old and a nine year old. When I look at my kids, I want them to be lifelong learners. And what does it take to be a lifelong learner? It takes curiosity. Well, our kids come to us wired with curiosity, right?
And there are choices that we can make that either foster that curiosity or diminish it. What else does it take to be a lifelong learner feeling like you are capable, right? If you don't know the answer to something, you have a path to finding it out, whether that's research, whether that's phoning a friend who has more expertise in it, whatever that looks like, right? What else fosters lifelong learning? Understanding that learning is everywhere, right? It's not just in pages of a textbook.
It doesn't just happen inside the four walls of a classroom or on a homework assignment that got sent home from school, right? Learning is everywhere. Understanding that and seeing how to find the learning in those everyday moments. These are the things that foster lifelong learning.
That's my priority as a parent and as an educator, right? And that supersedes any score on an individual test or, you know, whether the homework took them 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whether we even did the homework at all, right? Now, when I say this, I don't want people to think I'm out there saying like, oh, you should never like don't ever take the SAT, right?
I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is we need to have honest conversations with our kids about these things, right? So, you know, if I have a teenager who chooses to take the SAT because it is a hurdle, they have to get over to to achieve some greater academic goal they have than fine. And they have chosen to tackle that hurdle because they want to get to something else on the other side of it, right?
But they're going to do that in a way that's healthy for them. Understanding, again, that is not an objective determination of their merit. This is a subjective test somebody created. You may agree with, you may not agree with. That's the healthy way for our kids to approach this.
William Curb: And yeah, it is so important to try and foster that sense of curiosity and being like, hey, you're interested in something. We can learn about it.
Caitlin Meister: The best thing that could happen to me as a mom is that one of my kids asks me a question I don't know the answer to, right? That is the best because it gives me the opportunity to teach this lifelong learning skill of how do we find out something if we don't know the answer? That's more valuable to teach them than just telling them the answer, right?
There's what's two plus two and I say four. Great, I've given them a fact. But if they ask me something and I'm like, you know what, I don't actually know the answer to that. Let's figure it out together. Now I'm teaching a whole host of skills that are way more valuable.
William Curb: This morning, my daughter was asking me about earthquakes. And so we're like learning, OK, how often are there earthquakes going on? It's like, oh, there's 55 earthquakes around the world every day. And OK, because she's like, oh, have I ever experienced one?
I'm like, well, it looks like you have, but you just didn't feel it. And so it's like, oh, yeah, we can look these things up. We can find the answers and we can then go, OK, I'm sure later if she's still interested, we can look, OK, well, what even causes earthquakes and stuff?
Caitlin Meister: Yeah, absolutely. Because that's the thing. The first question will lead to more questions will lead to more questions if you've created a space where that's valued. Again, I value what you bring.
Right. So if her questions, if the questions your child is bringing to you are valued, right, then they're going to lead to more questions and more questions. And this is one of the ways that we foster that curiosity. Remember what I said, they come to us wired with curiosity and choices we make as the adults can either nurture it or diminish it. Right. And this is one of the major ways we can nurture it is by valuing those questions.
Right. And so then usually parents will say to me, well, OK, that's fine. But like, sometimes my child asks a question in a moment like, I can't tackle that right then. Like I'm doing 18 other things and like, I don't have the time to value that. And I would say that like, I don't want you carrying parent guilt over that. We have enough parent guilt in our lives. There's a way to show that you value it, even if you can't address it right in that moment.
Right. You can say, I love that question. And I'm actually really interested in learning about that with you at a time when I can focus on it. If I tried to do that right now, I wouldn't be able to focus on it. Right.
And I really value it. So let's arrange a time. Let's think, OK, tonight after dinner, we're going to have time to do that. Let's do that question. That right. Like there's always a way, even if you can't do it right in that moment to still show that you value it.
William Curb: And I see a lot of other potential for this skillset to be just pushed around to other areas of our life in parenting, especially with the ideas of there is a need that needs to be met, but it doesn't have to be one specific way of doing it.
Caitlin Meister: Absolutely.
Because there are so many places with my kids where I'm like, would like you to just do this thing. But if the way I'm asking you to do it isn't working, so maybe we need to find a different way to try and make it happen. You know, absolutely.
Caitlin Meister: And oftentimes what we can also do is adjust our expectation in the sense of like, so here's the example I give of this. Like, well, what would happen if your child went to school in his pajamas?
And then we like pause and we go, oh, wait, that's another one of those standards or expectations that we sort of took as objective, right? It is right not to wear your pajamas to school.
And now we step back and we go, well, wait a minute, if wearing pajamas to school means I get meaningful connection with my child in the morning and we don't have a stressful morning and nobody's into years of we're not yelling and my child like gets to go off to school feeling really confident and capable, then maybe going to school in your pajamas is such a bad thing, right? Like, yeah. And that's just one sort of frivolous example, right? But you can see where I'm going.
William Curb: But yeah, I mean, there's so many places where it's just like, OK, what is the stated goal versus what is my actual goal here?
Caitlin Meister: Or my need.
William Curb: Yeah.
Caitlin Meister: We see this with sibling rivalry a lot too, where I'll say to my kids, you know, stop telling me about what he has or he's doing or whatever. Tell me what you need. And that opens it all up in a totally different direction, right? Because now the child sees I see them.
I want to meet their need. It's not about your brother, right? I have two boys, so it's not about your brother. It's about what what do you need and how can I help you get what you need?
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm amazed what my children can find to fight about. Everything. Yeah. Last week, the one that like blew my mind was them fighting about who was more well behaved in school and got praised for it, like got like this lip scent home that they were good. And I'm like, how is this an issue?
Caitlin Meister: You open up a whole other can of worms there with that and were praised for it. And something came home from school. Yeah. Marking one had more praise than the other, right? Because now what we're talking about is the potential for inadvertently publicly shaming our kids, which is a particularly huge issue for neurodivergent folks, right? And so sometimes these standards like, OK, I don't mean to pick a part of your family's example, but let's use it as a hypothetical, right? Let's break it down. What was good behavior?
What did that mean? Because if good behavior is sitting still for X number of minutes or making iconic for your teacher, something that is not neurodiversity affirming, right? We got to start to unpack that number one, right? Number two is how are we publicly referencing an individual's quote unquote good behavior?
So if we have one of those behavior charts up on the wall where it's like, oh, you're in the green zone, you're doing great, you're in the yellow zone, you have a warning or like you're in the red zone, you're not behaving the way I want to see you behaving and we're like moving the kids' names up and down the zones. Well, now what we're doing is we're publicly shaming in the name of classroom management, right? And what happens when we trigger shame? We shut down learning.
Also, back to what do you need? It's actually not meeting the teacher's need either because the teacher's need is for learning to take place. And when we shame inadvertently, right? Nobody gets into education unless they generally want to help kids. I don't believe it's intentional.
I think it's inadvertent because these are classroom management strategies that are being taught in a lot of undergraduate and graduate education programs. Unfortunately, they're not evidence based, right? But when we trigger that kind of shame, then we shut down our kids' ability to learn. Right?
William Curb: Absolutely. It is amazing how and I've definitely seen it with my kids when I'm praising one child for something, the other one is inadvertently getting the message that, oh, I'm not doing that.
Caitlin Meister: Right. And I'm not saying we shouldn't praise our kids. I'm saying that we need to be focused on authentic connection on an individual level. So if I want to compliment one of my students or one of my kids on something that they've done really well, I'm going to do that with them one on one, you know, and really acknowledge and make that connection.
And I'm going to do it in a specific way as I can. So instead of like a good job, I'm going to try to say, like, I really loved the way that you helped Susan find her crayons when she couldn't find them. That was really, you know, being a good friend or being helpful, something like that. More specificity is always better.
William Curb: Yeah, it's funny, because having grown up, I am not someone that takes compliments that easily, and especially when it's just like, oh, yeah, you did a great job on them. And I'm like, well, what does that mean?
Caitlin Meister: And listen, again, like, I don't want parents walking around with more parent guilt. We've got enough of that. If you say good job to your kid once in a while, are you ruining them?
No, of course not. But it's just looking for opportunities to provide more specific information to them about what we're observing. And that makes them feel seen and valued and connected to us. I look for those opportunities wherever I can find them.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because we do have the research that shows like praise is the most effect. Like it's so much more effective than trying to punish a behavior out of someone.
Caitlin Meister: Absolutely. And this also goes back when we talk about like in a learning setting, you know, are we focused on classroom management in a sense of like, we think we need to be disciplining behavior or are we looking at behavior as a means of communication, right?
Again, back to need. So I'll give you an example, right? So a child puts his head down on the desk in the classroom. Well, if I try to discipline that behavior, right?
Like we don't put our heads down on the desk here. I'm missing an opportunity to teach skills, right? Punishing don't put your head down on the desk doesn't teach a skill. But if I look at that head down on the desk as communication as a child, it's like a clue, right? OK, he is struggling to meet the expectation of this moment.
So he's communicating something to me. He is missing some skills. He needs to be successful here. Like what are those skills? Once I can figure that out, I can teach skills.
I think it was Mona Della who said like, I don't want to manage behavior. I want to understand it, right? And I think that's really powerful as a reframe as parents. And when you asked me earlier about how to advocate in school settings, that's something we can advocate for that framing, right? I want to understand this behavior.
William Curb: Yeah. So often when I like see my kids having a hard time, it's usually if I like a step back, I'm like, OK, see, they're tired and they need a nap. They haven't had enough to eat. They haven't had water in a while. Some need is not being met. It could also be I was engaged in doing something for a while and they need attention.
Caitlin Meister: Right. Or they don't have a certain skill that they need to be successful with the thing that they're trying to do and we can teach that skill, right? So we see this with frustration tolerance a lot, right?
Where they get really frustrated, they can't tolerate not being able to succeed at something. But they're missing a skill. They need to succeed at it. Well, can we teach them how to do that thing? Not to do the frustrating thing for them, but teach them the skill that will allow them then to do the thing for themselves. I think that that's really, really huge.
William Curb: Also building that skill of being, oh, yeah, I can be frustrated, but I don't have to stop what I'm doing when I'm frustrated.
Caitlin Meister: No, I don't have to give up on it because again, back to lifelong learning, I know what to do when I don't know the answer, right? Or I know what to do when I don't know how to do something. You know, how do I access what I need?
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Like being like, oh, I'm really frustrated with this. Maybe this is a sign that I need to ask for help from someone else because I can't figure it out.
Caitlin Meister: So this comes up all the time where we hear kids labeled or frankly, even adults labeled as unmotivated. And this comes up so often for folks with ADHD, too, right? Like, oh, they're just not motivated. Well, I can't teach be motivated, right? And I can't solve a problem if I don't know what it is. So labels like unmotivated or disrespectful or whatever these labels are going to be, right? They don't point us to the problem.
In a sense, they cover up the problem. Oh, well, he's just not motivated. But in reality, often what looks like unmotivated to somebody is really an executive functioning challenge, right? I've got something in front of me that's overwhelming and I don't know how to get started. But if we can break it down into smaller pieces, small enough that the first one really feels accessible and actionable, well, now I can get started. Suddenly, I don't look unmotivated anymore. But in that example, I didn't teach be motivated.
I taught the executive function skill of how to break down a big overwhelming project, right? Those labels, they're lots of trouble because they totally cover up what it is we could actually be doing to help the person, right?
William Curb: Yeah, that is something I come back to so many times as being like, what's a better label, having ADHD or being lazy? Which one can I do something about?
Caitlin Meister: Are you familiar with the folks who are pushing for the acronym VAST instead of ADHD?
William Curb: I need a reminder.
Caitlin Meister: Yeah. So I think it stands for variable attention stimulus trait. And the idea is that if you have this trait, the way that your attention responds to different stimulation differs from somebody who doesn't have this trait, right?
And so it's removing deficit and disorder from the title because so often our definitions of what our deficits and disorders are culturally responsive. Yeah. Right. Meaning, again, like some people in our culture decided that that doesn't fit the dominant narrative of what is typical or what is the norm. And it doesn't mean we have to agree with that. Again, like, does that align with our values? Right?
William Curb: Yeah. One of the things that's funny to think about, too, is even with the terms of like neurodiversity, it's like, what makes this the diverse trait? It's just because we're not in the majority of I have heard the term like neuro-majority versus neuro-minority being used to be like, hey, yeah, there is a dominant neuro trait. And I mean, that's not necessarily better or worse. It's just the most common one.
Caitlin Meister: Also, what do we want and what do we value? Right. Like, I don't want everybody to think the same way. Yeah. Right. I understand that what is best for my species, for my society, for my family, for my learning environment, like pick how big or a smaller community you want to talk about.
Right? What is best is to have this natural variation. Again, to my point about like, do we want a solution for climate change? Do we want to care for cancer? Right. Like, I don't want everybody to conform to one way of thinking it's not healthy for any of our communities, big or small.
William Curb: Yeah. There's so many ways that having any kind of diversity in a group just improves the overall thinking because we tend to think in similar ways. If we have a similar brain and similar upbringing.
Caitlin Meister: Yep. And the other thing is like, what is the framing here? Are we looking at forms of neurodiversity as something that's broken that we have to fix? Or are we looking at it as a difference that we value because we value what that way of processing information brings to our conversation, right? Or to our community?
Now, you can guess which one of those teams I'm on, right? But this is the shift that people like me are pushing for now, particularly in learning spaces in schools, right? Is I don't want educators out there looking at forms of neurodivergence as something that is broken and that needs fixing, right? That we have to move away from that model.
William Curb: Yeah. I was really pleased when I was looking through stuff for what's in my school district as the high capacity program, which is what they're using like for gifted kids up here. And just like reading through it's like, oh, this is like a laundry list of neurodivergent traits that they're talking about going to these classrooms. I'm like, oh, they're just this is a program to help people that are doing things a bit differently.
And it is doing the strength based thing. Like my daughter's doing a program where she's like doing like a 30 book challenge this year because she really loves reading. So like, oh, you get love reading. Let's do more of that.
Caitlin Meister: You know, it's interesting that you bring up giftedness. So my older son is profoundly gifted and that in and of itself is a form of neurodiversity, right? The way he processes information is different than a lot of people. Often what ends up happening is we conflate the idea of being gifted with the idea of being a high achiever in our culture. It starts to happen a lot because a lot of our school gifted and talented programs are actually high achiever programs, right?
It sounds like you all are in a better setup than that, which I'm really grateful to hear, but it is what often happens. And so we conflate these ideas that gifted is high achieving when it isn't necessarily it can be. And often what we see with our gifted kids is what's called asynchronous development, where they may be advanced in one area and on par with their age, same peers or even behind in another area.
Right. So when we start to dig down into the nuance of what it means to be gifted and how that can manifest, it's a lot more complex than your surface level, like, oh, we have a gifted and talented track and you take this test to get in can make it seem right. And then when you layer in another form of neurodivergence, so now we have our kids, but people are called twice exceptional, right?
So we're gifted and we have ADHD or we're gifted and we're autistic or gifted and dyslexic, whatever it may be, right? The needs of our twice exceptional learners then are different from our gifted kids who are not twice exceptional, which is different from kids who don't have any of these forms of neurodivergence, right? So this is again, brings us back to like, why are we seeking conformity or why are we presenting one size fits all? Right. It just doesn't make sense.
William Curb: Yeah. And it always just comes back to me. I'm like, what's working, what's not working? And why do we keep trying to do the square peg in the round hole for so many of these things? Even the star shaped hole, it looks like it maybe it could fit in if you really jam it. All right. Well, I think we're coming up on time here. Is there anything you'd like to leave the audience with?
Caitlin Meister: I would say I love what I do and I love talking about what I do in case you can't tell. So I would love to continue the conversation with anybody who wants to. You can find me on Instagram at Caitlin Greermeister. You can find me on my website, which is just joyfullylearning.com. And please reach out. If anything we've said here today piques your interest, you have more questions. I welcome it.
William Curb: Awesome. And I'll include all that in the show notes. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Caitlin Meister: Thanks so much for having me.
This Episode's Top Tips
We can focus on utilizing a child's strengths and interests as starting points for learning and growth to help build confidence and engagement.
It’s important to work collaboratively with teachers as a team with the shared goal of supporting the child's well-being and success.
Advocating for neurodiversity to be valued in learning environments can help create flexible spaces that can help everyone thrive.