What Families Keep Telling Us
Over the past year, I have spoken with families whose children range from late-diagnosed ADHD teenagers to dyslexic eleven-year-olds who have already spent years feeling out of place in classrooms and tutoring centres.
What stayed with me was not a single dramatic statement, but a quiet consistency. Children weren’t struggling because they lacked intelligence or motivation. They were withdrawing because the tools around them rarely considered how overwhelmed they already felt before the first question even appeared on screen.
Parents didn’t ask for advanced analytics or complex personalised dashboards. They asked for something much more basic: an environment where their child didn’t feel judged, hurried, compared, or embarrassed.
It made me realise that we often talk about “inclusion” as a structural goal, but many of the barriers these students face are emotional and sensory long before they are academic.
Why Emotional Safety Is Not Optional
For most neurodivergent learners, the difficulty is never just the lesson itself. A dyslexic student might be perfectly capable of learning new patterns, but the moment the interface flashes red, or the timer speeds up, or the language feels condescending, they disconnect.
Teenagers with ADHD often describe feeling “on alert” the second they open an educational app because they have been conditioned to expect correction rather than support.
This is not about coddling or lowering expectations. Emotional safety is what allows cognitive resources to be used for learning instead of managing anxiety. A child who feels safe enough to make mistakes will explore more. A teen who doesn’t feel talked down to will stay on the task long enough to understand it.
These are small but decisive shifts that change how a learner sees themselves.
The Gap Between What We Build And What Students Need
EdTech has done a remarkable job of scaling content, improving accessibility standards, and providing tools for teachers to manage classrooms. Yet when I look at the products neurodivergent children are expected to use, it becomes obvious that the core emotional experience has been designed for a different type of learner.
Most systems still prioritise speed, correctness, and efficiency. They emphasise progress bars that move in one straight line, praise delivered in overly childlike tones, and motivational messages written for younger children even when the user is a teenager trying desperately not to feel infantilised.
The idea that “engagement” automatically improves through animation or gamification does not align with what many neurodivergent students actually want. Teenagers have repeatedly told me they prefer plain language, choices that let them control their pacing, and tools that recognise when they are anxious rather than pushing them forward.
What Happens When We Remove Pressure
In my own work with families, I began experimenting with what they kept highlighting. What if a system recognised when a user slowed down and adjusted the difficulty instead of escalating it? What if the interface signalled calm rather than urgency? What if the voice guiding students sounded like someone speaking to a capable young person rather than a preschooler?
We tried removing timers. We replaced corrective sounds with neutral ones. We gave students control over when to replay, skip, or ask for an example again.
The surprising thing was that removing pressure did not reduce performance. It increased it. Students stayed longer, tried more, and repeated activities without being asked. Parents reported fewer shutdowns and more willingness to return the next day.
These were not sophisticated machine learning features. They were simple choices, guided by what families told us about their children’s emotional needs. It reminded me that innovation in learning often begins with paying attention to the quiet signals that fall outside typical metrics.
Moving Beyond “Content Delivery”
Many tools today are built on the assumption that providing high-quality content is the most important part of improving learning outcomes. For neurodivergent students, content is often the least of the problem.
They need an environment where they do not have to armour themselves before beginning a task. They need an interface that trusts them and lets them retain dignity. They need flexibility that honours the fact that learning is not a linear process.
The more I spoke with parents, the more obvious it became that they were not looking for the next curricular breakthrough. They were looking for something that would not make their child feel small, slow, or different.
This is not a technological challenge. It is a design philosophy.
What Educators and Leaders Can Do Now
If you’re evaluating tools for neurodivergent learners, or building environments that serve them better, here are the questions worth asking:
Does this interaction respect the learner’s maturity? Look at the language, the visual style, the tone of feedback. A fourteen-year-old struggling with reading is still fourteen. Tools that talk down to them do more harm than the academic content can repair.
Is the pacing adjustable in a way that feels natural, not punitive? Students should be able to pause, slow down, or speed up without being marked as “struggling” or “off-task.” Control over pacing is control over their nervous system.
Does the design reduce cognitive load instead of adding to it? Busy interfaces, rapid transitions, and constant notifications may feel “engaging” to designers, but they create sensory overwhelm for many ND students. Simple, clean, predictable interfaces work better.
Could the feedback be interpreted as judgement? Red X marks, error sounds, and comparative metrics (like leaderboards) signal threat to students who are already bracing for failure. Neutral feedback that focuses on what to try next is more effective.
Have we assumed that motivation looks the same for every child? Gamification and extrinsic rewards work for some learners. For neurodivergent students who have spent years being compared and corrected, intrinsic motivation often comes from feeling capable—not from earning badges.
A Path Forward For Learning Innovation
If we want to meaningfully support neurodivergent learners, our next frontier cannot be more personalised pathways or more predictive engines. It needs to be a rethinking of the emotional climate within which learning takes place.
These questions are not only relevant for neurodivergent students. When we design for emotional safety as a core principle, all learners benefit. Teachers gain tools that reduce stress rather than amplify it. Families feel seen rather than blamed. And students who have been labelled “difficult” or “unmotivated” begin to experience themselves as capable again.
Listening As A Form Of Innovation
Everything I have learned so far came from sitting with families who trusted me enough to share what their children go through. Their stories were not about deficits. They were about resilience and the quiet work required to show up each day despite years of being misunderstood.
If we want meaningful change in education, we need to treat their experiences as expertise. The solutions are already present in their stories. Our job is to build tools that honour that reality and give every student, especially neurodivergent ones, a chance to learn without fear.
For more on neurodiversity-affirming approaches to education, explore the work of Dr. Devon Price on unmasking and self-accommodation, and Thomas Armstrong’s work on the neurodiversity paradigm in schools.
About the Author
Roshan Thomas works with neurodivergent children and their families to design learning experiences that honour both cognitive strengths and sensory needs. His work at Vedyx Learning focuses on emotional safety as the foundation for effective learning. He believes the best insights come from listening closely to the people educational tools are meant to serve. Contact: connect@vedyx.ai
