I Don't Want to Know How to Teach an Autistic Child. I Want to Know How to Teach This Child.

I was recently asked a question along the lines of:

“What do you understand about how we should educate children with autism and ADHD?”

And my immediate thought was that, for me, that's not quite the right question.

Because I don't think the aim should be to learn how to teach an autistic child or how to teach a child with ADHD.

I want to understand the child sitting in front of me.

Of course, knowledge matters.

Understanding autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other forms of neurodivergence can help us recognise why a child might find something difficult. It can give us strategies to try. It can help us question our own expectations and understand behaviours that might otherwise be misunderstood.

Training absolutely has a place.

But a diagnosis can give us information about a child.

It can't introduce us to them.

We've come a long way

About 20 years ago, I went into my daughter's school because I thought she might be mildly dyslexic.

I was told that dyslexia was essentially an excuse for laziness.

Around the same period, I spent time volunteering in a classroom supporting children with ADHD.

The approach I witnessed was heavily focused on shouting, control and demanding discipline.

I can still remember how stressful the atmosphere felt.

Thankfully, understanding of neurodivergence has moved on considerably since then.

There is far greater awareness of dyslexia, ADHD, autism and other differences in how children learn and experience the world.

There are courses, books, qualifications and training programmes.

That's progress.

But I sometimes wonder whether we now risk making a different mistake.

“I've done an ADHD course, so I understand children with ADHD.”

Imagine I told you:

“I've worked with a child who has freckles, so I understand how to teach children with freckles.”

It sounds ridiculous.

Having freckles tells me virtually nothing about how that child learns.

It doesn't tell me whether they're confident.

It doesn't tell me whether they love football, dinosaurs, Shakespeare or bullet trains.

It doesn't tell me whether they need time to think before answering.

It doesn't tell me whether they hate writing but can talk brilliantly for ten minutes about an idea.

It doesn't tell me whether games help them relax or make them feel uncomfortable.

It doesn't tell me what happened at school that morning, whether they're tired, what they're frightened of getting wrong or what makes them feel successful.

And while an autism, ADHD or dyslexia diagnosis clearly gives us far more educationally relevant information than freckles do, it still doesn't tell us who that individual child is.

Two autistic children aren't the same.

Two children with ADHD aren't the same.

Two dyslexic children aren't the same.

Even the same child isn't necessarily the same from one lesson to the next.

Training should give us questions, not assumptions

This is why I think SEND training is incredibly important — but I also think we need to be careful about what we believe that training gives us.

Completing a course about ADHD doesn't mean:

“Now I know how to teach children with ADHD.”

Hopefully it means:

“Now I understand more about ADHD, so I have more knowledge to draw upon when I'm trying to understand the individual child in front of me.”

That's quite different.

Training might help us understand executive functioning, sensory needs, processing, attention, communication or working memory.

It might give us strategies and adaptations to consider.

But then we still have to get to know the person.

What are their strengths?

What interests them?

What makes them anxious?

What makes them laugh?

What do they avoid?

How do they communicate when something is too much?

When do they feel successful?

What happened last time somebody tried to teach them this?

And perhaps one of the most important questions:

What is this child telling me — through their words or their behaviour — about what they need from me today?

Sometimes the lesson needs to change

This sits at the heart of how we've come to work at Clara James.

If a child isn't engaging with the lesson, my first thought shouldn't automatically be:

“How do I make this child comply with what I planned?”

Sometimes I need to ask:

“What can I change?”

Maybe we put the worksheet away.

Maybe we explain it differently.

Maybe we use a game.

Maybe they tell me rather than write.

Maybe we use colour, pictures or objects.

Maybe we break something into much smaller pieces.

Maybe today's goal needs to change completely.

That doesn't mean having no expectations.

It means recognising that the purpose of the lesson is to help the child learn — not to prove that my lesson plan worked.

The diagnosis matters. The person matters more.

I would never suggest that we don't need to understand autism, ADHD, dyslexia or SEND.

Quite the opposite.

The more we understand, the larger our toolkit becomes.

But the toolkit is there for us to choose from.

We don't tip the entire contents over every child who happens to share the same diagnosis.

A label can help us understand something about the way a person experiences learning.

It can help a child understand themselves.

It can help families access support.

It can help teachers and tutors make appropriate adjustments.

But it isn't the child's entire identity.

And it isn't a teaching plan.

After more than a decade of tutoring, I don't think being SEND-informed means having a list of strategies for each diagnosis and knowing which box to open.

For me, it means having the knowledge to recognise possibilities, the curiosity to understand the individual and the willingness to change what I'm doing when it isn't working.

Because ultimately, I'm not teaching autism.

I'm not teaching ADHD.

I'm not teaching dyslexia.

I'm teaching the person sitting in front of me.

And that's where the lesson has to start.