Pavlov’s Dogs in Uniform: Neurodiversity, Behaviour & the Radical Idea That Perhaps It’s the System That Needs Rewiring.
Carl Jung called it the path of Individuation; perhaps a concept linked to neurodiversity? Mary Magdalene, in her Gospel, called it the Seven Powers. Spiritual traditions call it Enlightenment. Anthropologists call it Liminal States. Science has given us Quantum Field Theory, although, importantly, Quantum Field Theory does not support the existence of a “God field”. Different languages. Different lenses. Perhaps different maps for the same human desire to understand what lies beneath the surface of ordinary experience. Whatever the name, mine began in 2014, when my father died. His death cracked open everything I thought I knew. It sent me around the globe searching for answers, answers I slowly realised I had never been taught to ask.
After more than 25 years as a schoolteacher, with a degree in Psychology and Child Development and Learning, I found myself confronting the unknown. The journey took me from the classroom to the ashram, from Liverpool to the universe. It eventually became my first published book. But the journey didn’t end with the book. It went deeper. It changed form. It moved through my body. And somewhere along the way, the search for answers became less important than becoming deeply present to what is, what is moving through us, what we feel, what we suppress, what we know without words. This is not a path for the faint-hearted. It asks for courage. It asks us to feel what we have learned to suppress. To listen to what the body knows. To meet the tenderness, we were taught to hide. We are so often trained to live from the neck up.
The journey, for me, has become a coming home to the whole of myself. Real. Raw. Alive. Fully human.
Because along the way, we inevitably lose people we love. Friends become strangers. Some relationships move through revolving doors, staying only briefly. Others remain for a season, a reason, or something neither person can quite explain.
Moreover, I have come to value the word alignment. Not as some polished spiritual ideal, but as an awareness of what, where, and who, feels congruent with whom we are becoming.
We are human beings, not human doings.
We are complex, interconnected and constantly responding to the world around us. We experience life differently. We move through different emotional landscapes. We carry different histories, sensitivities, gifts and ways of making sense of the world. There is no single template for being human. So why do we keep trying to create one?
And perhaps this is where spirituality and education unexpectedly meet.
What if education became the epicentre of change?
After decades in education, I have seen some beautiful, intentional teaching. I have also seen classrooms governed by outdated models of behaviour modification: rewards, sanctions, compliance and control.
And I keep wondering:
Is some of this simply a subliminal form of coercion?
Pavlov’s dog in school uniform?
“Do this, and you’ll get a sticker.”
But where, in that equation, is autonomy?
Choice? Curiosity? Self-awareness?
The opportunity for a child to understand themselves rather than simply learn how to behave in a way that pleases the adults around them?
A truly inclusive classroom starts with the teacher. It begins with knowing yourself, your teaching style, your assumptions, your strengths and your limitations. It requires emotional awareness and the ability to self-regulate. It means creating a classroom climate where learners feel safe enough to ask questions, make mistakes, express themselves and become curious about what makes them tick. Not reducing a child to a behavior. Not measuring them solely against a national expectation. Not rewarding compliance as though compliance were the ultimate measure of success. But seeing the individual. The unique expression. The potential. The human being in front of us.
What if teaching with awareness changed the question?
Instead of:
“How do I make this child behave?”
What if we asked:
“What is this behaviour communicating?”
Instead of:
“How do I get them to fit?”
What if we asked:
“What do they need to flourish?”
Instead of:
“How do I fix them?”
What if we asked:
“What can I understand?”
This is where my work around neurodiversity has taken me.
And here’s the spoiler:
Neurodiversity is not simply about autism or ADHD.
Human brains naturally vary, cognitively, sensory, socially and emotionally. Dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette’s, OCD, autism, anxiety and differences form part of the spectrum of human experience and neurodiversity.
These are not simply problems to fix.
They are differences to understand.
And, where possible, to value.
The tyranny of never enough
Perhaps one of the most damaging lessons we teach children isn’t actually in the curriculum.
It is comparison.
From my own experience growing up in schools, and from listening to how adults speak in everyday life, I have become increasingly aware of how early the belief of not being good enough can be planted.
It follows us everywhere.
Into the gym:
Someone does five pull-ups and immediately compares them with the twenty they managed last week.
Body fat. Body weight. Repetitions. Time.
Into the workplace:
Promotion. Salary. Status.
Into relationships:
Who chose you? Who didn’t?
Into the home:
Weight gained. Weight lost. Surgery. Alcohol. Smoking. Success. Failure. Achievement.
It becomes a hive-mind culture of comparison.
A forbidden-fruit culture of never enough.
Calculus. Calculated. Exhausting.
More so, schools can either reinforce this conditioning or interrupt it, supporting neurodiversity. That is why education matters.
Schools have an extraordinary responsibility: to nurture critical thinkers and sincere minds that are not burdened by inherited ideas about worth.
When a child writes a poem, solves a calculation, asks an awkward question or produces something completely unexpected, perhaps we could honour it for what it is.
A moment of expression.
A moment of connection.
A moment in the process of becoming.
Not simply a tick or a cross in red pen.
Because what even is perfection?
And why do we keep pretending it is the goal?
The journey is the point.
The process is where the real learning lives, in the curiosity, the mistakes, the personality, the questions, the uniqueness that nobody else can replicate.
Are we celebrating that?
Or are we quietly undermining it?
Are we cultivating confident, curious human beings?
Or are we inadvertently shaping future adults burdened with self-doubt, low self-esteem and coping strategies rooted in shame?
Maybe the revolution isn’t about changing children.
Maybe it begins with changing how we see them.
And perhaps, in the process, changing how we see ourselves.
So, I keep asking:
What kind of adults are we cultivating?
And perhaps the bigger question is:
What kind of humans do we want to become?
Because here’s the thing, learners don’t always remember what they learned, but they absolutely remember how they felt. It’s not about perception. It’s about attunement. Being present enough to notice. To listen. To respond. To see the human being beyond the behavior, the label, the grade or the expectation. Because perhaps that is where real education begins.
These are just snapshots from my guidebook, A Guide to Teaching Neurodiversity with Awareness, written for educators who care deeply about all learners but are tired of vague advice.
It’s honest, doable and useful.
This isn’t a checklist of inclusive things to do. It isn’t a perfect-world guidebook. It’s a practical, human-level guide for real classrooms, where learners are noisy, administrators are stretched, and you don’t have two extra hours every night to reinvent your lesson plans.
It’s about working with all learners, with all needs, not around them.
Through real-life experiences, practical ideas and honest reflection, it explores how we can adapt with greater awareness in every learning environment:
Seeing Patterns.
Asking Questions.
Teaching with Presence.
Because maybe the most powerful shift in education isn’t teaching differently.
Maybe it’s seeing differently.