Words Worth Knowing

A state of profound long-term exhaustion resulting from sustained masking, chronic overload, and insufficient support. Distinct from meltdown – which is acute – autistic burnout develops over months or years and is characterised by withdrawal, loss of previously held skills, and a fatigue that rest alone cannot touch.

In your family, this might look like:

A child or teenager who has been performing neurotypicality at school for years and suddenly cannot get out of bed, cannot tolerate things they previously managed, or seems to have lost skills they had before – this may be autistic burnout. It requires genuine recovery time, not pressure to return to normal.

The process by which one nervous system helps another return to calm – through physical presence, tone of voice, and the pace of breathing. It is not a technique you apply. It is a state you offer. And it happens before any word is spoken.

In your family, this might look like:

When you sit quietly near your child after a meltdown, not asking anything, not fixing anything – just being there – that is co-regulation. Your nervous system is communicating safety to theirs.

A nervous system response to perceived demands that registers them as existential threats to autonomy and safety. Not defiance. Not manipulation. A threat response. The avoidance is the nervous system's safety strategy – and the more the demand is pressed, the higher the anxiety rises.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who will happily do something when it's their idea but refuses or escalates when asked directly – this is demand avoidance. The resistance is not about the task. It is about the felt loss of control.

A neurological condition affecting the planning, coordination and execution of movement. Not clumsiness. The brain and body are not communicating efficiently about how to sequence physical actions – from tying shoelaces to writing to navigating a busy corridor. Often co-occurs with ADHD and autism and is frequently missed because the child appears capable in some areas and inexplicably struggles in others.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who cannot seem to learn to ride a bike no matter how many times you practise, who avoids PE, whose handwriting never improves, or who knocks things over constantly – this is dyspraxia. The effort required for tasks that feel automatic to others is significant and largely invisible.

The set of mental processes that allow a person to plan, start, organise, and complete tasks – as well as manage time, regulate emotions, and shift attention between things. Executive function is not about intelligence or motivation. It is about the brain's capacity to move from intention to action. In ADHD, executive function difficulties are neurological, not a character flaw.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who knows exactly what they need to do, wants to do it, and still cannot start – this is an executive function difficulty. 'Just get on with it' is asking the nervous system to do something it currently cannot do without support. External structure, timers, and breaking tasks into single steps are not indulgences. They are accommodations for a real neurological difference.

The four survival responses activated when the nervous system detects threat. Fight: aggression, screaming, hitting. Flight: running, bolting, physically or emotionally escaping. Freeze: going still, shutting down, becoming unreachable. Fawn: sudden compliance, people-pleasing, self-erasure. All four are the nervous system's emergency response. None of them are a choice.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who hits when overwhelmed (fight), who bolts from the classroom (flight), who goes completely blank and cannot respond (freeze), or who suddenly becomes unusually agreeable and compliant after a frightening moment (fawn) – these are all the same event. The nervous system has detected more than it can manage and activated its survival response. The form it takes depends on the child, the moment, and what has worked before.

The nervous system's ability to sense its own internal state – hunger, thirst, tiredness, temperature, pain, needing the toilet. Many autistic and ADHD children have significantly reduced interoceptive awareness and genuinely cannot detect these signals until they become critical. This is neurological, not behavioral.

In your family, this might look like:

A child who doesn't notice they are hungry until they are in crisis – or who can't feel that they are cold until they are shivering – is experiencing impaired interoception. 'Did you eat lunch?' is sometimes the most important question a parent can ask after a difficult afternoon.

The effortful, often unconscious work of suppressing natural neurodivergent responses in order to appear more neurotypical. Masking is not a conscious strategy for most children. It is an adaptive response to an environment that consistently signals: be different from how you actually are. It is exhausting in ways that are entirely invisible from the outside.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who is impeccable at school – attentive, cooperative, seemingly fine – and falls apart the moment they get home has been masking all day. The collapse at the door is the cost of the performance.

The nervous system's continuous, unconscious scanning for safety or threat in the environment. Developed by Dr Stephen Porges as part of polyvagal theory. Neuroception happens below conscious awareness – faster than thought, faster than language. A child's nervous system can detect threat before either of you has registered what triggered it.

In your family, this might look like:

Your child becomes distressed in an environment you can see nothing wrong with. Their nervous system has detected something – a sound, a tone of voice, a social signal – that did not register consciously for you. This is why 'there's nothing to be scared of' does not help. The detection already happened.

A profile within the autism spectrum characterised by an extreme, anxiety-driven need to avoid everyday demands and expectations. The avoidance is not defiance or manipulation – it is the nervous system experiencing demands as existential threats to safety and autonomy. Traditional parenting approaches based on boundaries, consequences and consistency typically make things worse. Low-demand, collaborative, autonomy-supporting approaches work better.

In your family, this might look like:

A child who can appear socially fluent and articulate, who negotiates everything, who refuses things that seem trivially easy, and whose behavior shifts dramatically depending on how much perceived control they have in a situation. The same task accepted one day is refused the next – not because of mood, but because the felt level of demand has changed.

The nervous system's sense of where the body is in space – the position of limbs, the amount of force being applied, and the body's relationship to its environment. When proprioceptive processing works differently, children often seek heavy input – crashing, pushing, carrying, wrestling – to give the nervous system the information it needs to feel grounded and regulated.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who leans on people, crashes into furniture, carries unnecessarily heavy things, or constantly roughhouses – this is the nervous system seeking proprioceptive input. It is not aggression or clumsiness. It is a regulatory need. Weighted blankets, carrying the shopping, and wall push-ups are proprioceptive inputs that can help.

A personalised programme of sensory inputs – movement, pressure, sound, touch – designed to regulate the nervous system throughout the day. Not a luxury or indulgence. For a child with sensory processing differences, regular sensory input is physiological maintenance – as necessary as food and sleep.

In your family, this might look like:

Fifteen minutes of jumping on a trampoline before school, a weighted blanket at homework time, or wall push-ups before a transition – these are not rewards or distractions. They are the nervous system receiving what it needs to stay within its window of tolerance.

Variation in how the nervous system receives and responds to sensory information – sound, touch, light, smell, taste, movement, and the sense of the body in space. Some children take in more than others (hypersensitive). Some need more input than the environment provides (hyposensitive). Most neurodivergent children are both – in different channels, at different times.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who cannot tolerate the seam in their sock, or who needs to crash into things to feel regulated, or who covers their ears in a supermarket – this is sensory processing, not behavior. The nervous system is receiving the world at a different volume.

A nervous system response to overwhelm that moves inward rather than outward. Where a meltdown is an explosion – visible, loud, impossible to miss – a shutdown is an implosion. The child withdraws, goes quiet, becomes unreachable, and may lose the capacity for speech or movement temporarily. Shutdown is not calm. It is overwhelm that has nowhere to go.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who goes completely silent in the middle of an argument, who stares at nothing and cannot answer questions, who retreats to their room and cannot come out – this may be shutdown. Pressing them to engage, explain themselves, or 'snap out of it' prolongs the shutdown. Quiet, low-demand presence and time are what the nervous system needs to come back online.

The period of physiological dysregulation that follows a meltdown, during which the child appears present but is neurologically still recovering. Speech and processing capacity remain reduced even after the visible crisis has passed. This is not sulking. The nervous system is still coming back online.

In your family, this might look like:

An hour after the meltdown, your child seems fine but can't quite answer simple questions, seems foggy, or agrees with everything you say. The window for connection and repair opens later – sometimes much later. When you see the eyes soften and the body unclench: that is the window opening.

The neurological cost of switching between activities, environments, or mental states. The brain requires time and preparation to disengage from one thing and orient to another. For neurodivergent children, this switching cost is significantly higher – and demands that arrive without warning are experienced by the nervous system as an abrupt interruption to safety and predictability.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who cannot stop a preferred activity without a meltdown, who needs ten minutes of warnings before leaving the house, or who falls apart at school drop-off every single morning – this is transition difficulty. The problem is not the destination. It is the gap between here and there, and the nervous system's need for time to cross it.

The nervous system's processing of movement, balance, and spatial orientation – located in the inner ear. Children with vestibular processing differences may seek constant movement to stay regulated (spinning, rocking, swinging) or may be hypersensitive to movement and find fairground rides, being tipped back, or certain PE activities genuinely distressing.

In your family, this might look like:

The child who cannot sit still, who rocks on their chair, who spins without getting dizzy, or who needs to move constantly to concentrate – this is vestibular seeking. The movement is not defiance or inability to focus. It is the nervous system self-regulating. Movement breaks and wobble cushions are not rewards. They are tools.

The zone in which the nervous system can function, engage, learn and connect. Below this window: shutdown. Above it: fight or flight. Within it: your child is reachable. The window narrows under load and widens with safety, rest and consistent co-regulation over time.

In your family, this might look like:

Your child's window of tolerance is smaller on tired days, hungry days, high-demand days. The same situation that passes smoothly on a full-tank Tuesday can push them outside the window on an empty-tank Wednesday. The child hasn't changed. The window has.