It is so much easier to be a neurodiverse adult then it was to be a neurodiverse child. But perhaps not for the reasons you think. For both adults and children, environments are designed for typical people. Schools and offices, especially, are designed for typical people. The difference is in your own power. As a child, you have absolutely no license to choose your environment, to alter your environment, or to “opt out” when you know that the environment will be aversive. Take lunch, for example. In my k-12 public school, every day I was thrown into an overcrowded cafeteria that was intolerably loud, with flickering fluorescent lights that gave me a migraine and overwhelming food smells. Of course, worse than that was the social aspect – no one wanted to sit with me, but there was no table where I could read my books (my preferred activity) and just be left alone. I was stuck sitting with other children who would try their best to bully me away. Sometimes they would throw food at me, or, on one faithful day in 9th grade, a girl dumped her soda on my head. But try as I might, and I have a reputation for being rather resourceful, I could not find a way to avoid lunch in the cafeteria. I tried hiding in the bathroom, I tried wandering the halls looking like I was headed to the office, I tried hunkering down in an alcove. They always “caught” me and sent me on to lunch, nodding their heads in disbelief. Ultimately I resigned myself to being absent often, and skipping school altogether whenever possible. That lasted until 12th grade, when I was finally allowed to go off to work right after my morning classes. Suddenly, I was never absent!
Needless to say, when I went to college, living in a large dormitory, I was not eager to visit the cafeteria. In fact, I chose to not go to the cafeteria once my entire freshman year, despite not having access to anything but a toaster oven in my room. Sophomore year I went occasionally, but only when a group of friends were going, so I didn’t have to deal with the social aspect. To this day, I don’t venture into cafeterias, whether it is at a hospital, museum, or even a school, without a shiver of anxiety. But at least now, I have a choice.
~Aspen Eglick
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