Clarity Compass Blog

There’s a quiet pressure that follows a lot of neurodivergent kids and adults: try harder, be more normal, blend in. It sounds helpful. It isn’t. I stopped treating my child like a problem to solve, and started treating them like a person to understand. The message hiding underneath “Try harder” A lot of neurodivergent kids grow up hearing the same message in a thousand different ways: try harder, act normal, be quiet, don’t stand out. Sometimes it’s said with love. Sometimes

It took my child to show me who I really am.

Some nights I sit at the kitchen table watching my son stare at a blank page, textbook open. The pencil is in his hand, the homework is open… but nothing happens. I see the shutdowns, the screaming, the running to their room in avoidance. And in that moment, I think: Please please tell me they’re not refusing again. Please tell me this isn’t about laziness. Because I’ve seen enough to know, it isn’t. What Task Initiation Really Looks Like It’s not just "getting started." It’s

Self-determination and self-advocacy are so connected; you can’t advocate for yourself well unless you first know yourself.

When we got his diagnosis in 2020, in the height of COVID, I thought I was learning how to support my autistic son, but somewhere along the way, I started learning about me too. When your child experiences the world differently, you don’t just adjust routines, buy all the books or read new research. You start questioning your assumptions about success, behaviour, motivation, and even what it means to be “doing okay.” I used to measure days by what we got done. Now I notice h

Executive functions are the mental skills that help us manage daily life, from planning and organizing to controlling impulses and staying focused. (Pardo-Salamanca, 2024). Thomas E. Brown, a clinical psychologist known for his work on ADHD, identified six key clusters of executive functions. Understanding these clusters can help us recognize how our brains work and why some people struggle with tasks others find easy. What Are Executive Functions? Executive functions are li

What you need to know about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)

Neurodivergence is an important term that refers to various neurological differences, including Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and learning differences like Dyslexia. These differences are not defects ; they represent unique ways of experiencing and interacting with the world. As someone who identifies with neurodivergence, I have learned to appreciate both the strengths and challenges that accompany it. In this post, I will explore at a very high le

The ache of a lifetime of being seen wrong I thought the moment I realized I was neurodivergent would feel like relief. Like this big exhale I’d been holding in my whole life. Instead I sat on the edge of my bed and cried in a way that surprised me, not loud, not dramatic, just quiet and stunned, like someone had reached into my chest and gently undone something I’d spent years stitching and holding together. It wasn’t the word that broke me. It was the memories lining up beh