Neurodivergent By Design — The Evolutionary Advantage of Thinking Differently
Different minds aren’t an evolutionary accident. They’re a critical form of diversity. I was so fascinated by this week’s discussion with Dr. Alex Reed about why humans have always needed neurodiversity to thrive.
I love how Dr. Reed — a clinical pediatric psychologist — supports neurodiverse kids from a place of strength. We have these traits for a reason, how can we make the most of them?
Melissa: I’m so fascinated with something you said on a podcast interview recently. You said there was an evolutionary advantage of having a percentage of our kids being neurodivergent. And how this actually is something that has happened by design.
Alex: Oh, I'm so excited we get to dive into this finally.
So the term neurodiversity itself was sort of meant to be analogous to the theory of biodiversity.
When we think about a monoculture, which is like growing the one single kind of corn or wheat on the same plot of land, that crop is more susceptible to disease, it damages the ecosystem around it, and so on.
Well, with people, it's kind of the same.
So different minds are not just an accident, but a critical form of diversity in our ecological landscape. They make us more adaptable. They make us more sustainable.
Melissa: Dr. Thomas Armstrong was the first person who introduced me into this idea of the evolutionary benefit of neurodivergence, which he discusses in his work The Myth of The Normal Brain.
He said that people with ADHD are essentially the hunters in a farmer's world. So genetically, they were designed to be the people who were constantly on the move, that were paying attention to lots of things, who were responding quickly to input from the environment, because that was an advantage, right?
But now in our modern world, we label these things as hyperactivity, destructibility, impulsivity.
Alex: That reminds me so much of the quote from Temple Grandin, who said someone with high functioning Asperger's probably developed the first stone spear. Because it wasn't one of the people who were talking around the campfire.
And I loved that perspective, because I completely agree with you that the modern environment we've created is what creates the disabilities.
The Myth of The Normal Brain
Dr. Thomas Armstrong explores the impact of neurodivergent strengths in our current ‘ecosystem’ (the workplace) in his research entitled The Myth of The Normal Brain.
People with autism tend to have strengths when working with systems (computer language, mathematical systems, machines) and tend to be better at identifying tiny details and complex patterns. So tech companies have begun recruiting folks with autism for tasks like finding deviations in computer code or managing databases.
People with dyslexia often have different visual spatial abilities, like being better at finding the M. C. Escher “impossible objects” or work well with blurred or low definition scenes, so they can be great fits for jobs with 3D thinking like computer graphics or astrophysics
People with ADHD can often be creative and novelty seekers. Folks with Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, and Angelman syndrome are often friendly, warm, and can have really strong musical abilities.
If Neurodiversity Is An Advantage, Why Do We Use ‘Disability’ Language and Labels?
Alex: The tricky part of this conversation is that we do want to support neurodivergent people and help them thrive, but dismantling this system is going to take time.
And unfortunately, the labels that have such negative connotations like ‘disabled’ and ‘disordered’ are often required for us to advocate for and receive this support within the system.
85% of People Are Neurotypical***
Alex: 85% of people develop in a “typical” way. That’s a big majority of people who move through life without accommodations and do okay. And then 15% fall under the neurodivergent category — that’s still a significant portion. And that's just the people who qualify for a neurodevelopmental disorder across the board.
Melissa: I think even that 85% is pretty fluid. What I'm finding in my work is so many people later in life are discovering that they’re neurodivergent. Just because they weren’t identified doesn't mean they’re not neurodivergent or experiencing the world differently. And a recent report stated that over 40% of kids in US schools learn differently. So this number is definitely growing. So unless you fell into these very strict categories and got diagnosed, the data doesn’t reflect the true ratio.
Melissa: It’s a catch-22, because without the label, you don't qualify for the support services. Yet these labels tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: you don't believe in yourself because you’ve been crushed by the system and made to feel “less than”, not as good, need to be fixed, a problem.
How do you feel about it? Is this ‘disability’ language in service of neurodivergent people or is it a detriment?
Alex: It's a complicated question. We need our language to communicate the challenges while still advocating for the humanity of neurodivergent people.
“Disability” is the legal language we use around these terms, so it’s sort of the one we’ve got for now. It reflects that there's a challenge and we need to meet it. But it feels marginalizing.
If we refer to “divergence from the norm” as a disorder, it catches people’s attention in the sense that if it's disordered, then we need to make it ‘right.’ And I don't necessarily think that's correct either.
So, if other people have better suggestions for how to delineate the challenges and maintain the humanity and the gifts, then I'm all for it.
Melissa: It's almost like it's a necessity based on the system that we find ourselves in now, right? The label, the diagnosis, the assessment is the gateway to help.
“If we’re genetically predisposed to having a certain neurodiverse percentage of the population, is this really a disorder? Is this really a disability? Or is it something that has over time become disabling because the modern world is no longer a match for this type of neurowiring?”
Neurodiversity Often Coincides With Giftedness
Melissa: This subject of giftedness has become more and more interesting to me because I think it's widely misunderstood what it means to be gifted and how it can actually coexist with kids who are struggling.
Alex: “Twice exceptional” (2E) is the colloquial term we use to informally talk about kids who have both high cognitive abilities and who are neurodivergent in some way.
So in neurodivergence in general, cognitive scores are impacted, but in this twice exceptional group, they typically are not.
And giftedness can take many forms beyond like cognitive scores. So it's really hard to measure.
How can we identify 2e? (Twice Exceptionality)
Twice exceptionality may present in one of three ways:
The challenges mask the gifts.
I worked with a student who is dyslexic and had visual spatial gifts in the 98th percentile. But because in the early years of school we measure reading, writing, and spelling, her challenges masked the fact that she had these high abilities in these other areas that aren't typically measured in school.
The gifts mask the challenges.
This is the student whose gifts hide their challenges. Perhaps the strengths exist in the traditionally valued school areas, such as math and reading and writing, and their aren’t exposed until later on.
The gifts and challenges average each other out.
Due to the asynchronous nature of the 2e profile, the high scores when averaged with the lower scores can result in an an IQ score that appears “average” and is not a true reflection of the child’s ability or experience.
Alex: Getting back to the evolutionary benefits we were talking about, research from an ‘autism at work’ program found that people who were cognitively gifted and had autism made fewer errors and were 90 to 140% more productive than neurotypical employees. Like wow, that's a big number right? Think about how valuable those traits are in a group of people.
Melissa: If you're a gifted person, you're experiencing the world in a more heightened way. It’s valuable that you're experiencing it with this intensity that other people are not.
Alex: There's so many areas where we see giftedness: the arts, visual spatial skills, musical abilities, emotional intelligence. Things that we don't measure in our cognitive tests.
So I do think in many ways, this is a group that sort of falls in the cracks in so many ways. With severe presentations of their challenges, it's easy to justify pouring resources into their support. But for these kids who are either minimally disruptive or academically gifted, their extra cognitive labor doesn't seem to need support.
Strength-Based Support Is The Most Effective Way To Nurture Our Neurodiversity
Melissa: So often our reaction is to lead with fixing what's not working. But the more current research shows we can flip flop that and bring what is working into their experience first and use it to leverage what's harder. It's not dismissing what's hard — I don't want to say that these people aren't having a difficult time thriving in a system that wasn't designed for them, because we certainly are.
But at the same time, what if we flipped the script and instead of starting with what's not working, we started with what was.
Alex: A total game changer. Like what is what is the need that we are not meeting here? Doing that strength-based approach gets us to the basis of what's causing the behavior, right?
Melissa: Yes. Those strengths are there for a reason, because we're supposed to be doing more of it. You know, coming back to that evolutionary perspective, there's a reason why we're good at the things we're good at.
We need some people to be the hunters and some people to be the farmers. If we're all hunters or all farmers, our society doesn't work.
So we can validate those strengths even if they seem obscure and give them an opportunity to grow.
Alex: I mean, the people with dyslexia in prehistoric times were the ones probably trying to figure out where the route was to the best hunting or seeing objects in three dimensions or bringing them to life.
We need that. These aren't peripheral traits. They're not accidental and they're not something that we need to suppress.
Melissa: These genes are still in the gene pool for a reason: because there's an advantage.
I see those that advantage in today’s world as our innovators, creatives, and entrepreneurs.
Alex: Yes, the risk takers.
Melissa: Some of our most significant contributors are neurodivergent, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, John Lennon.
I mean, the list goes on and on of people who school didn't work for them. They actually dropped out of school and they went on to contribute not in spite of their neurodivergence, but because of it.
My whole perspective here is let’s reframe neurodiversity as an essential piece that we need collectively as a society to grow.
Alex: Exactly. And I want to point out too that we’re careful about overselling the strengths, like we don’t all have to become Mark Zuckerberg. But that doesn't mean that in your day to day, we can't hone those strengths to make you thrive.
But in terms of creating an ableist world, we have done that time and time again. There's always a norm and it always leaves out the marginalized groups, and unfortunately neurodivergence is no exception.
So we have to keep pushing in the ways that we can. And I think that leading with strength-based language and curiosity is a revolutionary move.
More Resources Mentioned in the Episode
Connect with Alex: she’s @dr_alex_reed on Instagram and you can also find her helping out parents on the @drbeckyatgoodinside community
Here’s the podcast episode where I first heard Alex talk about this: Good Inside with Dr. Becky: The Overlap Between ADHD, Neurodivergence, and Deeply Feeling Kids
Dr. Thomas Armstrong’s Myth of the Normal Brain: (AMA Journal of Ethics)
The article about the ‘autism at work’ research Alex mentioned: (Financial Times)
Dabrowski's Five Overexcitabilities in Gifted Children: psychomotor, sensual, imagination, intellectual and emotional (ed.gov, pages 70 and 71)
Temple Grandin: “Who do you think invented the first stone spear?” (Cornell Chronicle)
The shareable pamphlet I mentioned at the end of the episode for creating equitable learning environments for all students (pamphlet)
More of my thoughts about the Jonathan Mooney quote I mentioned in the episode: why language matters so much to me
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Still curious about anything we mentioned today? I'd love to hear what's on your mind.
It's really a dream come true to have a platform to discuss these issues that are so near and dear to my heart with you. And I'm just so grateful that you're here with me today and ready to support each other on our journeys.
