Building Trust: The Foundation Your Neurodivergent Child Needs to Thrive
What's the opposite of anxiety? Most of us would say "calm" or "relaxation." But Dr. Barry Prizant, one of the world's leading authorities on autism and neurodevelopmental conditions, offers a different answer: trust.
This simple reframing—shared by his colleague and neurodiversity advocate Michael John Carley—changes everything about how we support neurodivergent children. Recently, Dr. Prizant joined the Young Scholars Academy community to explore how building trust becomes the cornerstone of emotional regulation, learning, and wellbeing for twice-exceptional and neurodivergent learners.
With 50 years of experience as a scholar, researcher, and international consultant, Dr. Prizant brings both deep expertise and genuine respect for neurodivergent perspectives. His approach emphasizes understanding rather than fixing, connection rather than compliance, and trust rather than control.
Understanding Trust Beyond People
Trust isn't just about relationships with others—it encompasses far more of a child's daily experience. Dr. Prizant breaks down trust into four essential dimensions:
Trust in other people: Can your child predict how others will behave? Do they experience people as dependable and reliable?
Trust in environments: Does your child feel safe in the sensory world around them? Can they anticipate and if necessary, prepare for sensory experiences that await them in different spaces?
Trust in activities and routines: Does your child know what to expect from daily activities? Can they rely on consistent patterns and sequences? Do your child’s activities and schedules support a sense of familarity and comfort?
Trust in their own body: Can your child depend on their physiological experience? Do they understand the signals their body sends them?
When children can develop trust across these dimensions, they're able to show up as their best selves—regulated, engaged, and ready to learn.
Why Neurodivergent Children Struggle With Trust
Understanding the barriers helps us provide better support. Many neurodivergent children face unique challenges in developing trust:
Difficulty predicting others' behavior. Reading nonverbal signals, interpreting intentions, and anticipating how people will react requires constant social and cognitive work. As Dr. Prizant notes, when you can't predict someone's behavior, even neutral interactions may feel confusing or threatening.
Absorbing others' emotions like a sponge. Many neurodivergent children struggle with emotional boundaries, taking on the strongly expressed emotions directed at them. This means the way caregivers and educators express themselves—even when not directed at the child—can trigger dysregulation such as anxiety or fear.
Unexpected sensory experiences. A fire alarm, fluorescent lighting, unexpected touch, or overwhelming smells can feel like violations rather than mere discomforts. Dr. Prizant calls these "sensory violations"—and they erode trust in environments.
Confusing social rules. The unwritten rules of social engagement change dramatically from one setting to another. Why whisper in a library but shout on a ball field? These inconsistencies feel arbitrary when you can't intuitively read the social landscape.
Misunderstood behaviors. When behaviors serving essential regulation functions get labeled as "non-compliant," "manipulative," or "attention-seeking," children learn that adults don't understand them. This fundamentally damages trust.
What Trust Actually Promotes
When children develop trust across these dimensions, remarkable things happen:
They feel safe and secure, which allows them to take more risks and try new things. They become more flexible because they believe things will work out even when plans change. They seek out others more readily because relationships feel dependable rather than unpredictable. They understand that asking for help is valuable rather than shameful.
Most importantly, trust supports emotional regulation. Children with strong trust develop positive emotional memories of experiences and relationships, rather than operating from a place of stress, anxiety and hypervigilance.
The Three Root Causes of Stress
Dr. Prizant identifies three major sources of stress that undermine trust for all humans—but hit neurodivergent children particularly hard:
Uncertainty (lack of predictability): While neurotypical people crave some predictability, many neurodivergent children absolutely require it. Uncertainty doesn't just cause mild discomfort—it can trigger significant dysregulation.
Unexpected events: Especially unexpected sensory events and breaks in routine. These feel more threatening when you already struggle to predict what's coming next.
Lack of control: When unpredictability combines with no sense of control over what's happening, anxiety and dysregulation intensify dramatically.
Understanding these three factors gives us a roadmap for creating more trustworthy environments.
Practical Strategies to Build Trust
Anticipate and Prepare
Before challenging situations, provide appropriate supports proactively. Talk through sequences of events. Discuss changes in routine ahead of time. Reduce uncertainty wherever possible. This doesn't mean eliminating all surprises from life—it means preparing children for the surprises you can anticipate.
Offer Real Choices
Choice-making gives children a sense of control and helps them feel the world isn't just raining down on them with impositions. Even simple choices matter: which clothes to wear, whether to participate or observe an activity, which task to complete first. For children with PDA (pervasive drive for autonomy) profiles, this becomes absolutely essential.
Create Safe Havens
Every child needs a place where they can go to regulate when overwhelmed. At home, this might be a bedroom or cozy corner. In school settings, it could be a resource room designed for taking breaks. The key is that children know these spaces exist and have permission to use them without shame.
Acknowledge Emotional States
Rather than using "planned ignoring" when children are dysregulated, acknowledge what you observe: "It seems like you're feeling upset right now. Can we talk about this?" Nobody wants to be ignored—we all want to be heard. This acknowledgment is itself a regulation strategy.
Be Dependable and Reliable
Follow through on what you say you'll do. If you can't for some reason, explain why with humility. Apologize when you break expectations, even unintentionally. Children learn to trust when adults prove themselves trustworthy through consistent actions.
Allow Processing Time
Many neurodivergent children need more time to process language, especially under stress. Don't rush responses. Consider using multimodal communication—not just spoken language, but also writing, pictures, or other visual supports. Some children communicate feelings more easily through art or movement than through words alone.
Respect Behavior as Communication
That child who bolts from their seat after 30 minutes? Maybe they have a high arousal bias and need movement. The student who resists math worksheets? Perhaps they hold negative emotional memories of similar tasks. Always "go for the deeper why" rather than labeling behavior as non-compliant or defiant.
Support Strengths and Interests
Building activities around what lights your child's fire builds self-esteem, motivation, and trust. When someone understands what matters to you and incorporates it into learning or activities, you feel seen rather than imposed upon. These strengths and interests may lead to hobbies, social connections, or even future employment.
Avoid Intrusive Prompting
Excessive verbal or physical prompting communicates "I don't think you can do this" and "I need to impose my agenda on you." Give children space to process, respond, and engage at their own pace whenever possible.
Language That Undermines Trust
Dr. Prizant highlights phrases that damage relationships with neurodivergent children:
"That's just a behavior we need to extinguish"
"He's just stimming" (dismissing regulation strategies)
"That's non-compliant behavior" (without seeking to understand why)
"It's a control issue" (when control helps everyone stay regulated)
"She's being manipulative"
"He understands everything, he's just trying to get out of work"
"She doesn't need those supports anymore" (without checking in)
These phrases reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of neurodivergent experience and erode the trust necessary for regulation and growth.
Building Self-Awareness
One of the most powerful tools you can give your child is self-awareness about their own needs. As Dr. Prizant emphasizes, self-awareness leads to self-advocacy—the ability to request helpful supports and explain what works for their unique brain and body.
This self-awareness, encouraged and validated by adults, becomes the foundation for a lifetime of effective self-advocacy.
The Bigger Picture
Creating trust isn't about eliminating all stress or making the world endlessly predictable. It's about building enough reliability, safety, and understanding that your child can navigate challenges from a foundation of security rather than constant hypervigilance.
As Dr. Prizant reminds us, the goal isn't to pound square pegs into round holes—it's to honor the unique shape of each child while creating environments that allow them to thrive.
When we approach neurodivergent children with respect, when we acknowledge their communicative attempts, when we provide choices and build on strengths, when we create predictability and honor their need for control—we build trust. And with trust comes regulation, flexibility, willingness to try new things, and the foundation for lifelong wellbeing.
Your child isn't broken. Their traits become disabilities primarily when people and environments fail to provide appropriate and effective supports.. By building trust across all dimensions—in people, in environments, in activities, and in their own bodies—you give your child the greatest gift: the ability to move through the world feeling fundamentally safe.
About Dr. Barry Prizant
Barry M. Prizant, PhD, CCC-SLP is recognized as among the world’s leading scholars on autism and neurodiversity, and as an innovator of respectful, person- and family-centered approaches in supporting neurodivergent individuals. He is known internationally for his inspiring keynote addresses and presentations. He currently is the Director of Childhood Communication Services, a private practice, and an Adjunct Professor of Communicative Disorders at the University of Rhode Island. Barry has fifty years of experience as a clinician, an international consultant and researcher. He has served as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Brown University Medical School and has held a tenured professor appointment at Emerson College. Barry has published five books, more than 150 articles and chapters, and is a co-author of The SCERTS Model: A Comprehensive Educational Approach, published in seven languages, and now being implemented in more than a dozen countries. He has been a two-time featured presenter (2013, 2017) at the United Nations World Autism Awareness Day in New York City and has given more than 1000 presentations in major universities and medical schools across the US and internationally. Barry’s recent book Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism (Expanded edition - co-authored with Tom Fields-Meyer, 2022 ) has been the best-selling book on autism since 2015, with the audiobook version that Barry narrated. It is now published in 27 languages and was ranked by Book Authority as #1 of the “100 best books on autism of all time”. Barry also co-produces and co-hosts a podcast, Uniquely Human: The Podcast (www.uniquelyhuman.com) with his friend, Dave Finch, an autistic audio engineer and New York Times best-selling author. It is ranked # 1 of all time by Goodpods in categories of disability, psychiatry, autism, and ADHD.
Learn more about Dr. Prizant's work at www.barryprizant.com , or subscribe to the Uniquely Human podcast at www.uniquelyhuman.com ].
About Young Scholars Academy
Young Scholars Academy provides specialized programs for bright, differently-wired children, with a particular focus on twice-exceptional learners. We understand that neurodivergent gifts flourish best in environments designed to support the whole child—celebrating strengths while providing thoughtful accommodations. Our community connects families navigating the rewarding complexity of raising gifted children with learning differences, offering both educational support and a network of families who understand the journey. Spring courses now enrolling.
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