By Shannon Lopez, Clinical Psychologist

Accessing early supports is crucial in supporting neurodivergent children, including ADHDers and Autistic children, as it can significantly improve their development, functional capacity, quality of life and mental health.

Early supports and intervention can have a wide range of purposes for children, including supporting their speech or motor development, toileting, emotion regulation, behavioural regulation, and helping their parents and caregivers to better understand and support their needs.

What is Autism & ADHD?

Autism is a brain style, formally diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder, and is a brain style characterised by differences to an individuals sensory experience, language and communication, and social and emotion experiences. Autistic children and individuals have a range of strengths, including interest areas, hyperfocussing and research skills, capacity for deep relationship building, preferences for precise or exact language and tend to be involved in justice oriented pursuits. However, the differences as part of this brain style can also be difficult to manage in a neurotypical world, and may include sensory sensitivities, challenges with understanding internal sensations and emotions, emotion regulation difficulties, distressing repetitive behaviour, or language delays and difficulties.

ADHD, or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is a brain style characterised by differences in executive functioning, which includes attention, planning and organising, working memory, task-initiation, task-shifting, task-monitoring and emotion regulation. These differences can result in symptoms such as inattention or distractibility, hyperactivity, impulsivity or decision-making difficulties. ADHDers can often struggle in formal education settings, or later in life in work settings due to these differences in executive functioning, as well as in social settings. As a result, ADHDers can develop negative self-image, or low self-esteem, or be particularly sensitive to criticism and rejection.

Why Early Intervention is Helpful

Early supports and interventions is important for all brain styles for a number of reasons including;

1. Catching the Window of Brain Development-

Early childhood is a critical period of brain development for all children. The supports and interventions provided during this period are able to shape, thanks for neural development and plasticity, children’s developing brains and have a lasting positive impact. For both brain styles, when difficulties with skill development is observed, it is highly beneficial to be able to provide support at the time that the skill development is occurring, rather than later or outside of this developmental window.

2. Improved Outcomes-

Research has consistently shown the efficacy of early interventions in significantly improving or supporting communication, social development, academic skills and a child’s overall quality of life.

3. Reducing the risk of Secondary issues-

Ee understand that early supports and gaining a good understanding of a person’s brain style as early as we are able to, tends to predict better mental health outcomes for this person. This is protective against poor self-esteem or self-concept, assists in forming stronger social supports and connections with others, ensures children are able to remain in schools and other supportive environments, and achieve to their potential.

4. Support for Families

Early supports for individual children also work to provide support to parents and caregivers. This is crucial, as parents of neurodivergent children may experience more complex challenges than other families, and can impact on parental mental health, which in turn may affect the greater family unit and individual child. It is important that parents and families understand their young person, and the tools and strategies they need to implement to best support their child’s development.

What do Early Supports and Interventions Look Like?

There are a variety of therapies and disciplines that are involved in early support for neurodivergent children, and is highly dependent on a child’s individual needs. This may include, but is not limited to;

• Psychology- Psychologists are training to support children’s mental health and understand childhood brain development, but are also able to support emotion regulation skill development, behavioural regulation, or attention and organisation skill development via a variety of therapeutic approaches, such as CBT. Psychologists are also trained to assist in developing appropriate parenting skills, such as developing secure attachment, co-regulation skills, and appropriate behaviour management skills for parents.
• Speech Therapy- A paediatric speech pathologist is trained to assess the speech sounds that children make, how a child is using language, how a child uses language and communication to indicate their needs or communicate to others, how a child uses social speech to engage with others, and their oral motor functioning. Children and their families may consult with a speech therapist for support with speech sounds, communication, learning different assisted communication strategies, or feeding concerns.
• Occupational Therapy- Occupational Therapists work within a broad scope of practice, and often assist children with the development or fine or gross motor skills, motor planning, sensory sensitivities, emotional regulation, social interactions or providing supports to better access their environment.
• Physiotherapy- Paediatric Physiotherapists primarily support children’s muscular development, and may support core or trunk control, neck control, or aspects of walking.
• GPs and Paediatricians – Supporting children from a medical perspective is also very important, and GPs and paediatricians are vital in providing appropriate medical care, including appropriate medications as indicated.

How to Get Started with Early Intervention

The key to accessing supports early in a child’s development, is understanding or being aware of your child’s development, the general stages they should be up to in their skill development based on their age, and having the supports around you to raise any concerns you may have as to challenges or differences in development. It’s also important to understand family history, as neurodivergence is highly genetic.

A thorough and comprehensive assessment to obtain an accurate diagnosis or identification of a brain style is usually the next step. This is important to ensure the right supports are in place for that individual.

Some children may benefit from a number of supports, and it is important to build a support team of healthcare providers to access a comprehensive support plan.

Next Steps

The team at Spencer Health are passionate about early supports, and are experienced in providing comprehensive Autism and ADHD assessments. Our team takes a multidisciplinary approach, comprised of psychologists, speech therapists and paediatricians to ensure that we are able to best support our clients. If you are interested in understanding more about our assessment or therapy services, please reach out to enquiries@spencerhealth.com.au for more information.

Early supports and intervention can make a significant difference in the lives of Autistic and ADHD children and their families, and importantly predict better outcomes for emotional development, mental health and overall quality of life.