One of the biggest shifts in my professional life has not been learning a new therapy model or gaining another qualification.
It has been changing the stories I tell about people
Not deliberately. Not consciously.
Just the quiet stories that form in all our minds when we are trying to make sense of what we see.
A child refuses school.
A parent repeatedly asks for help.
A teenager seems angry, withdrawn, or uncooperative.
A house is messy.
A child is not dressed appropriately.
A client keeps returning to the same problem.
A professional observes a behaviour and tries to understand it.
We all do it.
We create a story.
The problem is not that we tell stories. Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We cannot avoid it.
The problem comes when we forget that the story is only a theory.
Early in my career, I was trained in behavioural approaches.
The underlying message was relatively simple: reinforce the behaviours you want to see, ignore those you don’t.
Later came the era of parenting programmes, reward charts, consequences, routines, consistency and boundaries. I taught many of these approaches. I watched them help families. I saw positive changes.
Then I became a parent myself.
And some of the stories I had been told no longer seemed to fit.
I tried approaches that I had seen work beautifully with other children. I used respectful, relationship-based parenting. I focused on connection rather than punishment.
Yet many of the outcomes I had been taught to expect simply did not appear.
At first, it was tempting to conclude that the approach wasn’t working.
What I understand now is that it was working.
I was simply measuring the wrong things.
For some neurodivergent children, success does not necessarily look like compliance, cooperation, or immediate behaviour change.
Sometimes success looks like maintaining trust during conflict.
Sometimes it looks like a child still seeking comfort from you after a difficult day.
Sometimes it looks like preserving a relationship despite years of stress.
Sometimes it looks like reducing shame rather than reducing behaviour.
The intervention had not failed.
The story I was using to judge success was incomplete.
Over the years, I have become increasingly interested in the harm caused by misinterpretation.
Not because professionals are malicious.
Most are doing their best with the knowledge they have.
But I often wonder about the people who have been understood through the wrong lens.
The autistic child understood only through an attachment framework.
The traumatised person labelled as having a personality disorder.
The overwhelmed child described as defiant.
The parent viewed as anxious, controlling, or overprotective.
The family judged by the state of their home rather than the circumstances they are navigating.
A formulation does not stay on paper.
It shapes what support is offered.
Who is believed.
Who is blamed.
What interventions are used.
And perhaps most importantly, the story people come to tell about themselves.
One of the most important lessons I have learned from neurodivergent people and families is that behaviour often makes far more sense than we initially assume.
What looks like avoidance may be overwhelm.
What looks like control may be an attempt to feel safe.
What looks like non-compliance may be distress.
What looks like poor parenting may be a family making impossible choices with limited resources and competing needs.
The behaviour has not changed.
Only the story has.
These days, I am less interested in asking:
“What’s wrong with this person?”
And more interested in asking:
“What story am I telling about this person?”
And perhaps more importantly:
“What if that story is wrong?”
Because sometimes the greatest harm does not come from the original experience.
Sometimes it comes from spending years being told the wrong story about that experience.
And sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer another human being is not advice, intervention, or treatment.
Sometimes it is a willingness to put our assumptions down long enough to become curious.
To wonder what we might be missing.
To allow the story to change.
And to remember that people are often making far more sense than we first imagined.
I hope to write more about these people — and about what happens when we think we know their story better than they do.