Self-Advocacy Skills: 10 Tips for Schools to Support Parents in the Journey with Their Neurodivergent/2e Learners

Neurodivergent students (those with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, etc., including the twice-exceptional) experience many aspects of their lives differently than expected. This increases the need for them to understand themselves, what they need to thrive, and how to advocate for their own learning needs in spaces that may not always be open to supporting them. 

However, parents don't always know how to best help their children. Some become over involved, managing every aspect of their student's experience. Others are under-responsive, due to overwhelm, fear, or misunderstanding. Each of these impact student agency because kids don’t develop the skills they need or don’t understand themselves well enough to self-advocate. 

School leaders, educators, and site-based mental health professionals such as school counselors and school psychologists often are at the center of these situations, thinking about ways to support families in their journey to releasing control and agency to their children. But, what works?

REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative hosted a panel focused on supporting families in the complex and emotionally-laden process of building their students’ self-advocacy skills. Tiffany Nielsen, Dean of Students at Helios School, and educational consultant Heather Johanson of The Actias School, shared the strategies they’ve used and what they have seen for schools working to help families develop students’ self-advocacy skills. 

What the Research Says: A Quick Dip

REEL launched the Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for school counselors and school psychologists because our annual educator survey results indicated that about 70% of public school teachers turn to these skilled colleagues to support their work with neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students. This is reflected deeply in the academic literature surrounding school counselors and school psychologists, which highlights the critical role they play in collaborating with educators, parents, and the students themselves (Carpenter, 2021; Cormier, 2022; Foley-Nicpon & Assouline, 2020; Renzulli & Austermann, 2025; Townend et al., 2024). 

Still, parents of neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students bear a greater advocacy burden than others as they face structural barriers to ensuring their children’s needs are addressed (Bechard, 2019; Ronksley-Pavia & Clark, 2025). In fact, a study of autistic students highlighted that challenges with self-advocacy lie not in each student’s individual actions or skills but rather in the ways schools are structured, creating unintentional barriers to self-advocacy (Nadwodny, 2026). A study of over 400 disabled adults in the United States noted that having an invisible difference such as autism, ADHD, or dyslexia, created more challenges in self-advocacy than having more visible differences (Christ et al., 2026).

All of this points to the need for everyone on the child’s team - their educators, their school staff and specialists, their parents, and the child themself - to be deeply aware of the opportunities and challenges of self-advocacy, and to work together with intentionality to scaffold these skills that are critical to the student’s short-term well-being and long-term ability to thrive.

10 Tips Towards Self-Advocacy

Combining Tiffany’s experience developing an intentionally scaffolded program of parent education, teacher supports, and student-led conferences with Heather’s 30+ year career working within and helping families navigate school systems, ten key tips emerged for school counselors, school psychologists, school leaders, and educators to help families gradually shift autonomy for advocacy to their students.

1. Build a “Scaffold Ladder” for Parents

Parents need scaffolding just as much as students do. Schools should provide a clear roadmap that shows the steps the team will take to build students’ independence. Heather shared, “When parents feel in the dark, there’s more fear.” And then they tend to over-manage. She went on to say, “Let’s shine a light on it, create a plan based on the child’s neurodivergence.” Transparency and a clear plan for small shifts in agency over time from parent to child (e.g., “This week I’ll check your planner; next week, you check it and I’ll just sign it”) can help parents feel calm enough to step back and share advocacy responsibilities. 

2. Reframe Fear as Opportunity - And Stepping to the Side

Fear is a universal theme for parents of neurodivergent learners. As Tiffany noted, “We need to focus on switching this mindset to opportunity.” Schools can help by working to shift the narrative. Instead of viewing a challenge a child faces as a potential “failure,” frame it as a “Magical Mystery Tour,” a journey of discovery where every obstacle is an opportunity to learn what the student actually needs to thrive. Fear may also lead parents to be over-involved in that journey. It’s important schools don’t try to sideline parents on the journey; for younger, elementary aged students, the focus should be on building students ability to talk about their experiences with other adults and joint problem solving. But especially as students move through middle and high school, the school team can encourage parents to see their role in advocacy as an important guide on the side..  

3. Center the Child in the Process

Self-advocacy is not something that happens to the child. It is something that happens with the child. Even a 2nd grader can participate in an IEP/504 meeting for a few minutes to share one thing they are proud of and one thing that is hard, demystifying the process and starting the self-advocacy habit. Transitioning from teacher-parent meetings to student-led conferences has been a key aspect of the Helios School’s approach, shifting the power dynamic from adults talking about students to talking with one another as a team. 

4. Implement the “Trial Run” Approach

To lower the stakes and reduce parental anxiety, encourage a “trial-based” mindset. This can be particularly important when kids enter middle school, and parents’ anxiety spikes about what the future will hold. Framing strategies and accommodations as experiments in a lab can help lower the pressure. This “let’s give it a try” attitude makes experimentation feel safe and allows for adjustments without the pressure of a mistake being perceived as a permanent “miss.” Just because a child forgot their binder one day, it’s not a catastrophe, but rather data that informs the next trial.

5. Prioritize Rather Than Maximize Accommodations

More is not always better when it comes to accommodations - and can overwhelm parents and distract them from prioritizing what will be the most impactful accommodations. Helping parents prioritize also prevents students from feeling overwhelmed or “different” and helps everyone focus on the specific tools that actually move the needle for the student’s unique profile (e.g., “Should I focus more on ensuring my sensory needs are met? Do I benefit more from executive functioning supports?”).

6. Create Communication Templates

We don’t expect elementary school students to start in the driver’s seat, but by high school, we need to help parents understand that they should rarely be the first point of contact with a teacher. That’s not to say parents should never be involved, but rather school staff can directly support students in making the transition using the “I do. We do. You do.” model. For instance, providing email templates for common issues that help students contact their teachers, working towards a senior year goal of a student being able to articulate “When X happens, it affects me in Y ways. Can I try Z instead?”, or going with students to meet with teachers to model advocacy. Helping students with scripts that articulate their needs clearly and professionally provides those needed training wheels so that their parents can scaffold release of control. 

7. Focus on Self-Awareness and Self-Reflection - For Parents and Students

Self-advocacy is impossible without self-awareness. Tiffany shared that her work to coach families to help their children is built on the students’ ability to identify their strengths, needs, and learning preferences. And then extend this to parents as well, so that they also understand their own executive function and sensory profiles and how that has influenced their paths through life. Sometimes parental “over-involvement” stems from the parent's own executive functioning (EF) style. When parents understand their own triggers, they can better distinguish between their own anxiety and their child’s actual needs.

8. Celebrate “Tiny Steps” and Progress

Parents often miss the gradual progress their children are making because they are focused on an envisioned “end goal”. Tiffany emphasized the importance of “pointing out progress” to parents, highlighting even small wins, such as a student asking a single question in class or sending one email. Seeing those tiny steps towards growth helps parents to trust the process of releasing control, even when there are misses along the way.

9. Normalize Accommodations via Universal Design

Schools can help families and students by removing barriers to learning and creating environments more conducive for everyone, meaning that there is less self-advocacy required. By moving toward Universal Design for Learning (UDL), where tools like extra time or speech-to-text are available to everyone, schools reduce the “social cost” of self-advocating for neurodivergent students, address the stigma that often prevents students (especially those in middle and high school) from using support, and allow students to focus their self-advocacy efforts on higher value accommodations - and learning.

10. Protect the Parent-Child Relationship Above All

The single most important advice is to remind parents that their relationship with their child is the #1 priority. If advocacy is breaking the relationship, it’s time to take a break. The school can help by stepping in as a buffer. Heather pointed out that it’s the school counselor and school psychologist who are often “holding everyone - parents, students, teachers. You can see it from all angles” and can step in to take some of the navigational burden off their shoulders so they can go back to being a supportive parent.

With these 10 lessons in mind, more neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners can build the self-advocacy skills they need to chart their own path to thriving. 

Looking for more resources on self-advocacy?

• Talking with parents about a students’ struggles can be uncomfortable. Our article Effective Strategies for Educators: Talking to Parents About Student Challenges offers tips from Heather and our team.

• Helping students learn to self-advocate varies by age - and scripting is a great way to scaffold development of self-advocacy skills. Our Parent Community Program Manager Teresa Nair held a small group discussion about The Importance of Self-Advocacy Video and Script Downloadable.

• Heather spoke to our parent support group in September 2025 about Building Collaborative Communication with Teachers and create other Back to School Resources for  Parents of Neurodivergent Kids 

• We hosted a panel on 2e Self Advocacy Panel—Help Your Student Understand Their Brain, and Their Teachers, Too! Understanding how our brain works is helpful for kids to know what to advocate for.

This panel was hosted as part of REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for School Psychologists and School Counselors made possible by generous funding from the Jockers Family Foundation and the Mary A. Crocker Trust. 

References

Bechard, A. (2019). Teacher preparation for twice-exceptional students: Learning from the educational experiences of teachers, parents, and twice-exceptional students. AILACTE Journal, 16, 25–43.

Carpenter, A. Y. (2021). Twice-exceptional students. In T. L. Cross & J. R. Cross (Eds.), Handbook for counselors serving students with gifts and talents (2nd ed., pp. 305–323). Routledge.

Christ, B. R., Malhotra, B., Chapman, O., Ertman, B., & Perrin, P. B. (2026). Disability level and visibility: Associations with unmet academic accommodation needs and attitudes toward requesting accommodations. PLOS ONE, 21(2), e0342243. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342243

Cormier, C. J. (2022). How did you get here? You’re not supposed to be here: Supporting the social-emotional and mental health needs of Minoritized twice exceptional students. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 57(6), 424-429. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599211073073

Foley-Nicpon, M., & Assouline, S. G. (2020). High ability students with coexisting disabilities: Implications for school psychological practice. Psychology in the Schools, 57(10), 1615–1626. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22342

Nadwodny, N., VanHook, B., Esham, B., Larsen, L. N., Levinson, S., & Eisenhower, A. (2026). Good intentions are not enough: Autistic perspectives on structural ableism within the walls of our classrooms. Autism, 30(5), 1176-1190. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613261426691