Belonging grows from being seen: the reflections of a parent in a Neurodivergent family

Belonging in a Neurodivergent family often means letting go of traditional expectations and learning to see behaviour as communication. Bethan Warner shares how shifting from expectation to connection helped her family create a home where everyone feels safer, understood, and able to belong.

The need to belong is a fundamental human need, and crucial for good mental and physical health. Feeling like we do not belong is not something we can easily define, but is an experience most of us have had. We look around us – are these people like me? Do I feel safe? Am I accepted?

What does belonging look like in a Neurodivergent family?

This morning, before school, this professional, non-RADA trained woman could be found playing “toothbrush charades” with my child. His words were silent but his body was communicating, loud and clear. Side by side, declarative gestures only, listening to the same song for the fifth time since 7am, co-regulation front and centre. Reader, teeth were brushed.

This is not the idea of parenting I had in my head before I became a mother. My work colleagues would joke that my children “will always eat their broccoli.” They meant it warmly. That I was strict, but kind. Organised. Sensible. Equipped to raise kids that met the performance standards of our society.

What I didn’t know yet was that society measures the wrong thing.

We often hear that “behaviour is communication”. I like to imagine this as music on a stave – a language that, with practice, you feel as much as you read. When we learn to make music, the first sounds are messy. But no one expects to play smoothly on instinct. You learn how to hold it, how to listen, how to find rhythm with other players. Patience is needed. Over time, squeaks and clashes settle into something recognisable. Something shared.

Parents might expect to instinctively understand a child’s emotional world, even when it’s not the landscape we were taught to recognise. But raising a Neurodivergent child asks for the same grace as making music.

Looking back now, I can see that there was no single point in time where we changed our focus on what we started to pay attention to as parents. But having tried the strategies in the standard books, we came across the idea that maybe some children can’t do what they are being asked to. Can’t, not won’t.

Equipping ourselves with information, we started to parent differently. To create safety for everyone in our family. For everyone to belong. We tried dropping demands, allowing the way we measure ourselves inside the home to be different. We started to differentiate between needs and wants. It was not instant. It was not easy. But it felt right.

Belonging grows from being seen. Being allowed to be ‘inconvenient’. From having our feelings taken seriously, and from having our worth valued without earning it. Society says that kids should eat their vegetables and be polite to strangers. That the parents are responsible for making this happen. And some kids can achieve these traditional markers of good parenting in safety; some can even behave “well” even when safety is not robust. And some kids’ systems are telling us a different story. My path of parenting has taken me from measuring how manageable my child is, to tuning into his nervous system safety. 

So, what have I learned on this parenting odyssey?

I have learned that it isn’t possible to get it right the first time. Or every time. Or when we are tired or our own needs haven’t been met. But trying and repairing when we mess up is how we take steps towards, not away from, where we want to be.

I have learned that communication does not need to involve words. Words are too much for some children.

I have learned that a child that looks defiant does not need to be less so. They need the adults to create something safer so the defiance can dissolve. Kids do well if they can.

I have learned that children don’t learn from being told what to do. They learn from seeing it happen. So, if I want my family to feel like a place where my child belongs, I need to role model this for myself. Creating a home where I belong. Not as easy as it sounds, it turns out, and very much a work-in-progress. 

It has been a long journey for myself and my husband, and we are not at the end. I wish I had known many years ago that something different was needed, that change had to begin with us. We had to start to measure something different, something underneath. Were we all feeling safe? What did that look like? We had to notice the rhythms of our family and the individuals in it and create space for each other. It is like we are an orchestra of different instruments. Sometimes our music clashes, but now we know some familiar tunes we can return to.