12/09/2026
Visual Thinking 101_186: Free : Supporting your Neurodiverse Family
Posted on September 12, 2026 by olivehickmott
I am delighted to be running a number of FREE webinars for the Luton and Bedfordshire Recovery College, funded by the NHS. Every Monday at 12:30.
Three modules: Supporting your neurodiverse family.
Sept 14th, 21st, 28th
To guide parents, grandparents, children and learning support to understand more about neurodiversity, including its strengths and challenges, what the profiles mean in real life, simple observations that anyone can notice, plus techniques for improving sleep.
The schedule of the next few weeks is:
Monday 14th September: Neurodiverse strengths and thinking skills
Monday 21st September: Supporting your neurodiverse young fanily
Monday 28th September: Turning Dyslexia around.
Register here now on Microsoft teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/382744259711045?p=ETFowuisP7JXosTwcC
Meeting ID: 382 744 259 711 045 Passcode: nT35fB7
Children Begin as Visual, Sensory Learners. From birth, children experience the world through their senses. They recognise their mother not through language, but through sight, smell, and presence. If that visual image suddenly changes—imagine a mother wearing a bright pink wig—the child may become distressed. Why? Because their internal visual understanding of “mum” no longer matches what they see.
This tells us something fundamental: early learning is rooted in visual and sensory recognition.
As children grow, this visual thinking evolves. You can see it in how they solve problems, explore ideas, and express creativity. They are naturally curious, imaginative, and capable of forming rich mental images.
What Happens When We Shift Too Soon? At some point, education introduces structured literacy—most commonly through phonics. While phonics has its place, an overemphasis on auditory processing may unintentionally shift children away from their natural visual thinking strengths.
When this happens repeatedly and intensively, children can become highly skilled in decoding sounds, but less confident in using imagination, visualisation, intuition, and understanding to achieve fluency.
This raises an important question: are we expanding children’s thinking—or narrowing it?
Rethinking Dyslexia. Traditionally, dyslexia is seen as a difficulty with reading. But what if, in some cases, it reflects something else?
What if dyslexia is not simply a deficit, but a difference—a sign of a child whose strengths lie in visual, creative, or big-picture thinking, rather than auditory processing?
If we insist that all children must learn to read in the same way, we may unintentionally force some learners to work against their natural strengths. In doing so, we risk diminishing confidence, creativity, and engagement.
Neurodiversity is not a deficit—it’s a different way of thinking and learning, needing a slightly different way of teaching. By recognizing the role of visual thinking and teaching orthographic mapping explicitly, we can create a more inclusive education system that values diverse minds.
When we move from simply labeling difficulties to identifying specific challenges and strengths, we open the door for children with dyslexia to flourish—not in spite of their differences, but because of their strengths. We need to champion the strengths of neurodiverse learners.
