As clinical psychologists working with neurodivergent parents and children, we see every day how powerful language can be.

The word neurodivergent has given many people a new and more positive way to understand themselves. For autistic people, ADHDers, and others with neurodevelopmental diagnoses, it can bring relief, a sense of belonging, and an explanation. It’s a concept that is rooted in difference, rather than deficit. It provides a framework for making sense of our lives: why school felt so hard, why relationships have been complicated, why emotions feel so intense, and even why our parents behaved in the ways they did. It opens the doors for community with others who have had similar experiences, reducing isolation.

Having language for neurodivergence can fundamentally change how safe the world feels

Neurodivergent people are disproportionately misunderstood, excluded, and burned out. They are more likely to experience school trauma, workplace discrimination, misdiagnosis, and chronic invalidation. Having language for neurodivergence can fundamentally change how safe the world feels, how easily support can be accessed, and how people come to understand themselves and each other. For many of us, it leads to real shifts in self-compassion and mental health, even after years of feeling “wrong”.

The growing neurodiversity movement feels, to us, like a really important and hopeful social shift. The word “neurodivergent” is a helpful word to group together a range of diagnoses such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, learning disability, and others, that also often co-occur. It is useful identity for those whose lives are shaped by differences that often require specific understanding, accommodations, and advocacy. While there is disagreement about which diagnoses should and should not be considered “neurodivergent”, there is broad agreement that it is a helpful umbrella term.

However, the difficulty comes when we try to find language that means “not neurodivergent” - and the most common term has come to be neurotypical. And this is where we start to feel less comfortable.

What do we mean by “neurotypical”?

In everyday use, “neurotypical” usually means “not autistic” or “not ADHD” - a kind of shorthand for people who don’t meet criteria for these diagnoses, and whose ways of thinking, communicating, and regulating tend to fit more easily within our society’s expectations.

In a way, it makes sense: the word “divergent” suggests there is something to diverge from. Divergent from something more expected, more common, more… typical.

But the problem is that the word “neurotypical” implies that there is such a thing as a typical brain. A “standard” nervous system against which others are measured.

From a scientific point of view, this doesn’t really hold up. Neuroscience shows that human brains vary enormously - in structure, development, chemistry, and function. There is no single configuration that can meaningfully be described as “normal”.

Brains don’t come in two tidy types (neurodivergent and neurotypical): they come in countless variations

Modern models of neurodevelopment increasingly focus on dimensions rather than neat categories. Researchers have argued that differences in attention, emotion regulation, sensory processing, and social cognition exist along complex spectrums that interact with each other. Diagnostic categories can sometimes hide just how much diversity exists within groups, and they can artificially separate experiences that often overlap.

In other words, brains don’t come in two tidy types (neurodivergent and neurotypical): they come in countless variations. This doesn’t mean diagnoses like autism and ADHD aren’t valid or useful - they absolutely are. But it does mean there isn’t a “gold standard” brain that deserves the label neurotypical.

Difference within difference

We know that variation is the rule, not the exception, in neurodevelopment. Autism research has shown this clearly. Two people can both meet diagnostic criteria and yet differ hugely in language, sensory processing, emotional awareness, executive functioning, and social motivation. Most of us have heard the phrase: “If you’ve met one autistic person… you’ve met one autistic person”.

Most of us have heard the phrase: “If you’ve met one autistic person… you’ve met one autistic person”.

The same is true for ADHD. Some people are mostly hyperactive and impulsive, others primarily inattentive. Some struggle a great deal with organisation, emotional regulation, and working memory; others less so. There are shared patterns, but also many different ways those patterns show up.

And beyond diagnoses, our nervous systems are of course shaped by temperament, culture, language, attachment, trauma, education, and environment... Nature and nurture are intertwined from the very beginning. This is as true for people without diagnoses as it is for autistic and ADHD individuals.

The risk of a false binary

One of our concerns about the use of neurotypical is that it inadvertently sets up an “us and them”. While this kind of language often starts off in a light-hearted way on social media (“Look what the neurotypicals are doing!”), we know that black-and-white thinking rarely leads anywhere helpful.

If we fall into describing the world as “neurodivergent” versus “neurotypical”, we risk losing the very thing the neurodiversity movement is trying to protect

As psychologists, we’re trained to sit with nuance, to work in “grey areas”, and to embrace complexity. So reinforcing a binary view of the world isn’t really in our wheelhouse. If we lazily fall into describing the world as “neurodivergent” versus “neurotypical”, we risk losing the very thing the neurodiversity movement is trying to protect: which is an understanding that we are all individuals, with nervous systems to match.

Yes - there is a group of people who have found they don’t tend to “fit in”, they seem to be “more sensitive” and they feel “different”. This neurodivergent identity is extremely important - but it doesn’t mean there exists a homogenous group of “neurotypical” people to match against.

This is not “we’re all a bit neurodivergent”

It’s important to be clear that questioning the word neurotypical is not the same as minimising neurodivergence. We are not saying “we’re all a bit autistic”.

We need collective language. We need to be able to talk about masking, sensory overload, chronic exhaustion, and marginalisation.

Neurodivergence is, without doubt, a protective socio-political framework - even though it also has roots in neurobiology. While we don’t yet fully understand where all the biological, neurological or sociological boundaries lie, we can hold that complexity and uncertainty without needing to place everyone else into a single category called “typical”.

Why this matters for neurodivergent parents

For neurodivergent parents, the word neurotypical can feel particularly complicated.

On one hand, it can be genuinely useful shorthand. It can help name the reality that parenting advice, school systems, and social expectations are often designed around a particular “typical” kind of nervous system, or temperament. It is validating, and can explain why certain environments feel harder to manage, why parenting can feel harder, and why advice that works for “most parents” doesn’t always help.

At the same time, describing a child as neurodivergent in opposition to neurotypical can sometimes create distance. Seeing your child as opposite to “normal” kids can feel alienating, and lonely. Categorisation can sometimes feel as though there’s less room for growth, learning, or change - and that simply isn’t true.

And when we talk about neurotypical parents as a group, it can start to sound as though there is one clear, shared “normal” way of parenting. Something others naturally manage, and that neurodivergent parents somehow fall short of. For parents already carrying shame or self-doubt, this “us versus” them approach can reinforce the feeling of being on the outside looking in.

For parents, it’s often more helpful to shift the focus away from neurodivergent versus neurotypical, and towards understanding specific needs. Yes, diagnoses like autism and ADHD can give us useful shorthand for what those needs might include, and help make clear that these differences are nobody’s fault - not the child’s, and not the parent’s. But ultimately, what matters most is individualised support and adaptations that allow each child, and each parent, to thrive.

A more precise way of talking

From a clinical point of view, precision matters. When we mean “not autistic” or “not ADHD”, we can say non-autistic or non-ADHD, or even the term “allistic”, rather than relying on neurotypical as a catch-all.

The neurodiversity movement is here to celebrate difference as part of natural human variation

The neurodiversity movement is here to celebrate difference as part of natural human variation. Holding onto that principle means being thoughtful about the categories we create. We can advocate fiercely for neurodivergent people, demand accommodations, challenge harmful systems, and build communities of shared understanding, without positioning a fictional “typical brain” as the reference point for human worth.