23/05/2026
Working with children and young people is one of the most meaningful parts of my work, and something I am increasingly noticing in practice is how deeply children absorb the language used around them.
Children rarely arrive into the room speaking in clinical language. They arrive through play, behaviour, silence, humour, movement, avoidance, creativity, or overwhelm.
Increasingly, I am hearing words like ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, OCD, sensory processing difficulties, dyslexia, trauma, and neurodiversity becoming part of everyday conversations around children.
Diagnosis can absolutely be supportive. It can provide understanding, access to supports, validation, direction, and relief for children, parents, schools, and professionals. However I often find myself reflecting on something else:
How are we explaining these diagnoses to children themselves? Because there is a significant difference between a child hearing:
“You process the world differently and your brain has unique strengths,”
versus hearing:
“There is something wrong with you.”
Children build identity through the language they repeatedly hear around themselves. What I am noticing more and more in practice is that many children are not struggling because they are “difficult,” “lazy,” “attention-seeking,” or “defiant.” Often they are overwhelmed, dysregulated, exhausted, highly stimulated, emotionally overloaded, or trying to navigate environments that do not match their needs. Sometimes the distress we see is not the child failing the environment, but the environment failing to understand the child.
A diagnosis should never become a child’s identity. It should help us better understand:
• how they regulate
• how they learn
• how they process sensory information
• what overwhelms them
• what supports connection
• what helps them feel competent, understood, and capable
I am also increasingly noticing the impact of modern childhood on emotional regulation and nervous systems: constant stimulation, screens,
reduced rest, less free play, performance pressure, social comparison, and children spending less time simply being children.
Many children are carrying far more emotional and sensory load than we realise. And perhaps one of the most important shifts we can make as adults is moving from:
“What is wrong with this child?”
to
“What might this child be trying to communicate?”
Children do not need perfect adults. They need emotionally attuned adults who can stay curious, reflective, regulated, and connected enough to help them understand themselves with compassion rather than shame. The way children come to understand themselves matters, and “different” should never mean “less than.
