What looks like defiance, inattention, or laziness is often a child communicating a need. In this LiveTalk, Jamilyn Cole explores what changes when we stop asking “What’s wrong with this child?” and start asking “What does this child need from the environment?” Drawing on her own journey from a nonspeaking Montessori child with an IEP to a Montessori special education teacher with decades of classroom experience, she shows how the prepared environment itself can become the intervention for neurodivergent children and answers a rich round of questions from parents and educators.
Key Topics Covered:
- Behavior as Communication: Why defiance, inattention, or laziness is often a child expressing a sensory, regulation, or executive functioning need, and how to read it differently.
- The Environment as the Intervention: Practical ways to prepare the home and classroom environment for children who learn differently.
- Montessori’s Neurodiverse Roots: How Maria Montessori’s earliest work with neurodiverse children shaped the materials and questions we still use today.
- Meeting Children Where They Are: Modified lessons, following unexpected interests, and using music and movement as doorways into learning.
