There is one session I keep returning to when I explain how I coach neurodivergent children, because it changed something in how I think about this work. A 16-year-old I was coaching needed to walk a short distance, maybe ten steps, from one point to another. Verbal instructions did not move him. Repeating those instructions did not move him either.
I had a resistance band in my hand from an earlier part of the session. Almost as an experiment, I offered him one end and held the other. He took it, and he walked, on his own, without another word from me.
The Task Didn't Change. The Entry Point Did.
The task had not changed. He still needed to move from point A to point B. What changed was the entry point, the specific thing that let his body engage with the task at all. Holding the band gave him something concrete, physical, and immediate to respond to, in a way that spoken words, however clear, had not.
Looking for Entry Points Before Instructions
I think about entry points now before I think about instructions. Before I ask a child to do something, I try to notice what they are already responding to in the room. An object. A specific kind of movement. The presence or absence of eye contact. Sound level. Whether they need to see me do the movement first, or whether watching another child do it works better. None of these are universal, and none of them are guesses I make once and then repeat forever. Each session, I am watching for what this specific child's entry point might be, today, in this state.
Not a Trick, a Practice
This is different from finding a trick that works and then applying it broadly. The resistance band worked for that one teenager, in that one moment. It has not been the answer for every child since, and I do not expect it to be. What transferred was not the object. What transferred was the practice of looking for a concrete, physical entry point before assuming a verbal one will work.
I do not think this makes the work formulaic, even though it might sound that way described in a single story. Every child's entry point is specific to them, and finding it takes real attention, session after session, rather than a checklist I run through. What the resistance band taught me was to keep looking for that entry point instead of repeating an instruction and hoping repetition alone would eventually work. That practice, more than any single technique, is what shapes how I approach every neurodivergent coaching session I run.
