Before an instruction gets given to a neurodivergent child in coaching, there is a period of watching treated as essential here, not optional. What gets looked for is specific, even if it is hard to reduce to a checklist that would apply the same way to every child.
What Gets Watched For
Where a child's attention is currently directed gets watched, and whether it is available to be redirected without causing distress. Their body gets watched, whether it looks tense, loose, restless, or still, because that says something about their current state before anything gets asked of them. Whether they are seeking or avoiding sensory input gets watched too, whether that is sound, touch, movement, or visual stimulation in the room.
How they responded to whatever just happened gets watched, the transition into the session, a greeting, a change in the room, because a reaction to something small often says more about their current capacity than a direct question would. Whether eye contact is comfortable for them or effortful gets watched too, and the absence of eye contact never gets treated as a problem to correct, just as information about how this child engages.
What they gravitate toward without being asked gets watched too. If a child picks up a specific piece of equipment unprompted, that says something about a possible entry point, the same way the resistance band said something about that 16-year-old's needs in a session still worth thinking about often.
Only Then Does the Instruction Come
Only after this observation does a decision get made about whether an instruction is likely to work, what form it should take, whether it needs to be verbal at all, or whether a physical demonstration, an object, or simply more time without any instruction is the better next step.
Worth being clear this is not a formula applied identically across children. What gets watched for is consistent. What gets concluded from the watching is specific to the child in front of the coach, that day, in that state. A child who was highly responsive to a verbal cue last week might need something different this week, and that wouldn't be known without watching first rather than defaulting to whatever worked previously.
This order, watching before instructing, is the actual skill in this work, more than any single technique or exercise. Instructions and exercises are tools. Knowing which tool a specific child needs, in this specific moment, comes only from paying attention first — the same principle behind every session run here with neurodivergent clients.
