As a parent of an autistic or ADHD young person, you may have noticed how difficult it is for the systems around your child—particularly in education—to reflect the full complexity of who they are. Schools often ask them to be consistent, linear, and externally regulated. But your child might not be consistent. They might be deeply affected by context, by sensory input, by internal emotion and external demands. They may seem to move through different versions of themselves—more than one identity, more than one attention style, more than one way of learning.
This is not simply behavioural. It’s a philosophical reality. And one that William James understood over a century ago.
James, often regarded as the father of modern psychology, offers a perspective on attention, emotion, and identity that remains remarkably relevant today—particularly for understanding the inner lives of neurodivergent young people. His work allows us to speak about multiplicity without pathologising it, to affirm emotional sensitivity as a form of knowing, and to see attention not as something to control, but as something to understand in its own terms.
The Plural Self
William James introduced the concept of the plural self in response to what he observed as the richness and diversity of consciousness. For James, the self was never static or singular—it was multiple, layered, and deeply dependent on experience. “A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him,” he wrote (James, 1890). But this idea extends beyond social interaction. It includes the way emotion, memory, environment, and internal state co-construct the version of the self that appears in any moment.
If your child behaves one way at home and another at school—or seems to shift depending on who they’re with, how stressed they are, or how safe they feel—you’re seeing the plural self in action. This is not duplicity or defiance. It’s responsiveness. It’s the nervous system adapting to varying levels of pressure, demand, and sensory input.
For neurodivergent young people, this fluidity is often heightened. Their sense of self may be more relational, more context-sensitive, and more vulnerable to the misinterpretations of adults who expect consistency. But consistency is not the same as authenticity. And when you make space for the plural self—when you stop asking, “Which version is the real one?”—you begin to see the emotional intelligence in how your child adapts.
Attention as a Stream
James is also well known for his metaphor of attention as a stream of consciousness—a continuous flow, shaped by interest, emotion, and relevance. He rejected the idea that attention could be neatly segmented or passively directed. Instead, he argued that attention followed affect; that it moved towards what felt important, meaningful, or emotionally resonant (James, 1890).
If your child struggles with transitions, if they lose time when immersed in something meaningful, or if they seem unable to attend to tasks that feel arbitrary, you’re witnessing this in real life. Their attention is not a light switch—it’s a current.
It doesn’t obey external demands; it follows internal cues. It is layered, emotionally tuned, and often non-linear.
This matters because many educational environments operate under the assumption that attention is a skill to be trained. But if attention is affective and embodied, as James believed, then we need to meet children where their attention already lives—not where we’d like it to go.
In my work, this understanding of attention as emotionally driven is one of the foundations for a different kind of learning support—one that doesn’t force focus, but listens for its rhythm.
Emotion as Intelligence
For James, emotion was never separate from thought. He believed that feelings were not obstacles to reason, but integral to perception, memory, and meaning-making. The body, he argued, responds first—before cognition can label or interpret. In other words, how your child feels is part of how they think.
This is particularly relevant for neurodivergent children who are often told they are too sensitive, overreacting, or emotionally dysregulated. But what if we reframed emotional intensity not as excess, but as insight? What if, as James proposed, we took emotion seriously as a source of understanding?
A child who resists a learning task may not be oppositional—they may be emotionally signalling that something in the structure, timing, or sensory load is incompatible with their current state. A child who becomes overwhelmed may not be fragile—they may be showing us how much energy it takes to simply be present in a world that rarely accommodates their rhythms.
When you attend to emotion as an epistemological guide—as James did—you begin to recognise that your child’s emotional responses are not disruptions. They are communications. They tell you about pressure, about overload, about joy, about deep engagement. And when learning environments fail to listen, those signals don’t disappear. They just go underground—often emerging later as shutdowns, refusals, or burnout.
Learning and the Unfinished Self
James believed that the self was always in process—always becoming, never finished. This is especially meaningful when you’re supporting a child whose development doesn’t follow standard timelines, or whose learning doesn’t look like their peers’. Progress for your child might be circular, not linear. It might involve repeated returns to the same concept, a patchwork of bursts and pauses, or a long silence before sudden insight.
This doesn’t mean learning isn’t happening. It means it’s happening differently.
In my own model—the NPA (Neurodivergent Pedagogical Alchemy) model—James’s insights are a quiet foundation. The programme doesn’t impose a learning identity on your child. It allows that identity to emerge gradually, through interaction, reflection, and symbolic play. In this way, the NPA model honours emotional truth, plural identity, and attention as something relational and responsive.
What your child needs is not more discipline, more compliance, or more repetition. They need space to learn in their own time, in their own way. They need to feel safe enough to show you who they are, even if who they are is still unfolding.
An Invitation to the NPA Learning Model
If what you’ve read here feels familiar—if your child has been misunderstood, rushed, or flattened into labels that don’t fit—James’s philosophy offers a way forward.
And the NPA model offers a way to practise that philosophy with care. Learn more here.
I work with families who are seeking a new language for learning. Not one based on outcomes, but on insight. Not one that diagnoses, but one that listens. If you’re ready to explore what your child’s mind might look like when it’s not being measured—but met—I’d be glad to speak with you.
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