I was recently perusing Parents’ Review articles when I stumbled across articles about the nervous system from 1891. I have poked around in Parents’ Review articles for years, and these have never jumped out at me. In one article called “The Child’s Nerve-Mechanisms” H. Laing Gordon says, “Recognising education as fundamentally a directing, stimulating and strengthening of physical and mental physiological processes in course of development, I propose to draw attention in this article to a few elementary facts in the physiology of the nervous system which may be usefully added to the parent's stock of knowledge.”
I will admit I have educated my children for more than a decade without giving the nervous system much thought, but then again, I have been primarily educating neurotypical children. It wasn’t until the last few years that I have begun researching and conversing with others about neurodiversity that I began focusing more on the nervous system, seeing connections between what I read and Miss Mason’s educational philosophy, and applying all of this to life (education included) with my son.
In the spirit of H. Laing Gordon’s article, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned about the nervous system, which may be added to your knowledge in these modern times.
I will be primarily sharing with you what I’ve learned from Mona Delahooke’s book, Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges. Instead of gushing over it, explaining all the different ways it has helped me put words to all my “mom tingles” and be a better advocate for my son, I will simply recommend adding it to your TBR pile.
In this book, the author lays out a “House of Social-Emotional Development.” I sketched a visual into my commonplace. It would look something like this:
She explains that the foundation of the house (1) is regulation and attention for the child, the framing of the house (2) is engagement and relations, the electrical wiring (3) represents purposeful reactions (gestures and facial expressions), the rooms of the house (4) are shared social problem-solving skills, the decorating of the home (5) represent creating symbols, words, and ideas, and finally, the driveway out into the world (6) is the emotional thinking and the organized thoughts of the child. I want to stop us with this image.
Seeing that we are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, we can allow ourselves but three educational instruments — the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit and the presentation of living ideas.
— Charlotte Mason (Vol. 6, p. 94)
Delahooke shares that this foundation of regulation and attention is absolutely critical in order for the child to build the rest of the house. This may be easy enough for educating the neurotypical child, but for the neurodivergent— this is the battlefield. Let us take a look at Mason’s atmosphere and what this means for the neurodivergent child.
It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us. It is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated action of common sense.
— Charlotte Mason (Vol.6, p.96)
In Beyond Behaviors, Delahooke shares with us autonomic pathways within the nervous system. They have been labeled green, red, and blue. When a child is in the green pathways, they are able to communicate, play, and learn. In the green pathways, the foundation of the house is solid, the child is regulated, and growth can happen. When the child is “thrown off”, as Mason says, they enter into the other pathways. The red pathway can mean sweating as the nervous system tries to counteract the threat. This is fight and flight behavior: storming off, raising their voice at you, throwing things, etc. The blue pathways indicate the child is withdrawing for safety. They are shutting down. This is freeze behavior. Children may lose the ability to speak or move when they are in the blue pathway. A child isn’t able to learn, they have no social-emotional house, when their nervous system is in the red or blue pathways.
Neurodivergent children can have delicate sensory systems and be sensitive to their environments, so “the regulated action of common sense”, as Mason says, is going to be on the mother-educator until the child can learn to self-regulate if they are able. We accomplish this mainly through co-regulation. Wikipedia defines this as:
a term used in psychology. It is defined most broadly as a "continuous unfolding of individual action that is susceptible to being continuously modified by the continuously changing actions of the partner.” An important aspect of this idea is that co-regulation cannot be reduced down to the behaviors or experiences of the individuals involved in the interaction.The interaction is a result of each participant repeatedly regulating the behavior of the other. It is a continuous and dynamic process, rather than the exchange of discrete information.
This is a fancy way of saying your atmosphere as a mother-educator and the atmosphere of your child is dancing back and forth with each other—all day, every day. Your calm is their calm. You can tell by the look in their eyes or the movement in their body that you have to change something in the environment. Maybe we simply need to smile and reassure the child who gets easily frustrated with math. Some days this may be enough to keep the child on the green pathway. Maybe this means we need to quit multitasking and sit next to the child in supportive silence while they work. Maybe this means we need a weighted blanket and cuddles with mom for the entirety of lessons to help the child regulate. Maybe this means we get outside, allow a break, or even realize it is best to put the lessons away until later. There is no one right way, and there is no one right way each time. What worked yesterday may not work today. “A mother must know what she is about,” as Mason says, in a whole new way. Understanding our children and their nervous systems and having a sensory diet in place is crucial to this educational instrument.
It can seem overwhelming to raise and educate a neurodivergent learner. But when we look at “Education is an Atmosphere” as meaning, as Mona Delahooke puts it, “priming a child’s nervous system for success,” we are on our way to “respecting the due personality of our children.” Charlotte Mason may have only given us three instruments of education as educators, but the idea of atmosphere alone within her pedagogy gives neurodivergent children a foundation to thrive.
The choicer the plant, the gardener tells us, the greater the pains must he take with the rearing of it; and here is the secret of the loss and waste of some of the most beauteous and lovable natures the world has seen; they have not had the pains taken with their rearing that the delicate, sensitive organisations demanded. V2, p.76
— Charlotte Mason (V2, p.76)
Plant ownership comes with a whole lot of knowledge that is unknown to those that don't own plants. There are plants that require certain humidity levels. There are those that require bright light but not direct light. There are those that prefer to be bottom watered as opposed to watered from the top. There are plants that would rather just stay in water and not soil. It goes on and on.
As I've embraced my inner, crazy plant lady, I’ve learned to feel the leaves of my plants when the soil is dry as compared to when it has been watered. This helps me to make sure I'm not overwatering or underwatering them. I am learning to do the same with my son. I can tell by the tone of his voice or the way he moves his hands that we have to change something in the atmosphere.
This plant-child language is one I understand now in a new way. It has helped me immensely to be able to have this knowledge of the nervous system, and I hope it will be helpful to you, too.
Crazy plant ladies spend a lot of time and energy tending to their plants.
Mothers of neurodivergent children spend a lot of time and energy helping their children.
Some may call that great pains, but I think I just call it love.
Mariah Kochis 2023