Curiosity, Connection, and Confidence: A New Path to Motivation for 2e Kids
- REEL Team
- May 5
- 27 min read
Why can a twice-exceptional learner spend hours deep in a passion project — yet struggle to begin a simple homework assignment? The answer isn't laziness or defiance. It's neuroscience.
In this talk from REEL's 2026 Parent Speaker Series, four experts come together to explain the real brain-based reasons motivation breaks down for 2e kids, and what parents can actually do about it.
You'll learn:
🧠The dopamine science behind motivation vs. activation — and why these are not the same thing
🔬 Why "I don't want to" and "I can't" are neurologically the same thing
🧰 How to identify your child's personal "sparks" and "blockers"
🏎️ How to be an effective "pit crew" for your 2e learner
🤝 A curiosity-first, shame-free framework for collaborative problem solving
🌿 Why recovery and feedback are essential parts of the motivation cycle
Speakers:
Gustav Steinhardt — Lecturer, UC Berkeley (Behavioral Science & Neurodiversity)
Courtney Edman — Founder, 2tametheshamE, Inc.; Host, See Me Podcast
Elizabeth Cobb — Neurodivergent Parent Educator & Neuroanthropologist
Teresa Nair — REEL Parent Community Program Manager, M.Ed. in Cognitive Diversity
Read the transcript here:
## Speakers
- **Gustav Steinhardt** — Lecturer, UC Berkeley (Behavioral Science, Biological Anthropology & Neurodiversity)
- **Courtney Edman** — Founder, 2tametheshamE, Inc.; Co-host, See Me Podcast
- **Elizabeth Cobb** — Neurodivergent Parent Educator & Neuroanthropologist
- **Teresa Nair** — REEL Parent Community Services & Program Manager
---
## The Dopamine Story: Motivation and Motor Action
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
We're going to be talking about motivation. When we talk about motivation, that is the dopamine story — dopamine is what makes the connection between motivation and motor action. It's one thing to have the abstract state of "I want to," but it's another thing to actually move your muscles and do what you need to do to achieve that goal. I want to think of these things in a continuum, because we intuitively tend to distinguish between problems of motivation — "I don't want to" — versus problems of motor control. What I want to try to convince you of is that neurologically, there really is no line between "I don't want to" and "I can't."
If you know nothing else about dopamine, you probably know that it's associated with repeated, rewarding behaviors — food, scrolling on your phone, gambling. It's pretty clearly involved in ADHD. If you're familiar with ADHD medication, Adderall is chemically very similar to dopamine, and if ADHD is an issue in the dopamine circuitry of the brain, Adderall is addressing that. Dopamine is also involved in autism, although for reasons that are less clear. Autism has so many different presentations, probably caused by many different underlying neurological phenomena, whereas ADHD is a little bit more narrowly defined.
---
## Key Brain Regions: Where Dopamine Does Its Work
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
What's important is not dopamine itself, but where the dopamine is going — it does very different things in different parts of the brain. The nucleus accumbens is probably the biggest one; when people say they got a "dopamine hit," what they mean is they got a hit to their nucleus accumbens — that rewarding sensation of "I want to do that again." There's also a lot of dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex, where planning happens — what we think of as executive function, the ability to lay things out in a linear way, identify sub-goals, and execute on tasks. Less talked about is the striatum, also called the basal ganglia, which is involved in rote memory — riding a bicycle, the alphabet. The striatum also chooses motor activity and inhibits all the other things you could be doing so you can focus on what you've decided to do.
The nucleus accumbens gives you that sense of reward and pleasure. Interestingly, you can actually get a stronger response by making reinforcement less consistent — which is a little odd. You'd think it would make more sense to invest in a reward you're confident in, but it turns out an uncertain reward is actually more motivating. Gambling works this way, and so does social media — as you scroll, you get inconsistent hits, which is exactly what makes it so compelling. It's kind of a sad fact about the mammalian brain that we're more reinforced by uncertainty.
---
## Anticipation vs. Pleasure: The Striatum's Role
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
There's also a lot of dopamine activity in the seconds *before* a rewarding moment — that's the anticipatory function of dopamine, and it happens in the striatum. I love a study done with music where participants identified their favorite moment in a piece — the key change, the guitar solo breaking out. When they listened in a scanner, the nucleus accumbens shot up right when that rewarding moment happened. But in the seconds before, the striatum was already waking up, starting to anticipate that reward. That anticipation is what causes the motor system to come online — because most rewards require action. You have to reach for the food, go in for the hug, do the thing. The striatum says, "I anticipate a reward, so I'm going to take the steps required to realize it."
The prefrontal cortex is most often associated with ADHD — it's where a lot of things get stuck that parents and teachers want most, including goal-directed behavior and the ability to hold off on an immediate reward (like scrolling on social media) for a long-term reward (like studying). There's an important study from MIT in 2014 that looked at people who were diagnosed with ADHD versus those who no longer presented that way after treatment. The key finding is that the difference doesn't mean less activity in the prefrontal cortex — it means less coordination of activity between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain. Someone with ADHD doesn't have a silent prefrontal cortex; it's very likely constantly active, it's just going off in its own direction. Getting everybody on the same page to do something like get out the door or sit down for homework takes a lot more effort when the brain isn't already coordinated.
With ADHD, you're not seeing a reduction in planning, motivation, or executive function — you're seeing planning, motivation, and executive function that are going off in their own direction rather than being tied to the rest of the brain. Another helpful way to think about this: during a task, we expect the prefrontal cortex to be very active; during a non-task "default" state, we expect it to wander. That distinction is largely true for non-ADHD brains. For ADHD brains, there's less difference between task and non-task — the prefrontal cortex is always online, and it's very hard to signal "now is when I need to focus" versus "now is my default state."
---
## Parkinson's, ADHD, and the Continuum of "Can't" and "Won't"
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
There's another condition that very strongly involves dopamine — specifically the striatum — and that's Parkinson's disease. A lot of its presentations have parallels with ADHD, and yet nobody ever says to someone with Parkinson's, "Just try harder." We recognize that as a neurological problem. But the kinds of presentations you see in Parkinson's — difficulty initiating movement, tremor (which is basically an uninhibited motor system where the striatum can't suppress competing movements) — these are very similar to what we see in ADHD. Parkinson's and ADHD even have similar treatments, in that both are often treated with a version of dopamine or a stand-in for dopamine. And yet we think of Parkinson's as a motor issue and ADHD as a motivation issue — which is not wrong, but it misses the fact that they're rooted in the same neural structure and circuitry.
Neurologically, "I can't" and "I don't want to" are part of the same thing. In order to understand why somebody might be lacking motivation, or why they might be motivated in some contexts but not others, we really have to think of these as all part of the same system.
---
## From "They Won't" to "They Can't": Reframing Our Perspective
**Courtney Edman:**
What Gustav described is a great explanation of how dopamine is involved with motivation and motor action, and it's really only a small part of what affects our brain. Taking action is a complex process involving nutrition, sleep, time of day, any history or trauma we've experienced, our general preferences — there are so many factors. And I love how Gustav highlighted that motor control is involved in achieving our goals in a way that the neurodivergent space doesn't always talk about.
As Gustav mentioned, our perspective matters — how we see whether people are taking action or not. The key question is: is it that they *won't*, they *can't*, or they *did it*? We can start with the idea of "I want to," and go through the roadmap of the brain. If the dopamine pathway is working smoothly and effectively, we get to do what we want. But a lot of times, our emotions — the things we prefer to do — create detours or roadblocks that result in us doing other things, because they impact dopamine processing. That's why we get confused about why our kids can attend well to certain things and not to others.
The truth is the underlying reason for the inaction is neurophysiologically based — similar to Huntington's and Parkinson's. Our perspective matters because it's a neurophysiological basis that's making it hard at the cellular level for our kids to take action. So here's the breaking news: we can be motivated and still be unable to take action toward our goal. It's brain-based, not behaviorally based. What we perceive to be a motivation problem is really difficulty with taking action.
When we shift our perspective, it changes our response. When we go from "they won't" to "they can't," it changes the way we communicate. When we perceive someone as having Parkinson's, we shift into "how can I help?" But when we perceive someone as not wanting to do something, we tend to use rewards, consequences, or logic — telling them "all you have to do is this" or explaining what will happen if they don't. What we have to do instead is get curious. We become compassionate and collaborative.
When we can perceive things from a brain-based perspective, we realize that changing our inputs can change our kids' outputs. Those inputs could be the way we communicate, medication, sensory adjustments — there are a variety of different inputs that can be changed to meet the underlying needs of an individual's brain. The only way we go about doing that is to become curious, connect with our kids, and become what I like to call partners in problem solving. That's how we start to build a toolbox for our individual child — one that responds to their individualized brain-based needs. We can use things like activators — things that get them going, which Teresa will also refer to as sparks — and we can understand the blockers that derail them.
---
## Thinking Like an Anthropologist: The Biocultural Framework
**Elizabeth Cobb:**
Thank you so much, Courtney. We are so excited to be here at Built Curious. Today we're going to think like anthropologists. I studied cultural anthropology at Princeton, and I return to anthropology anytime I need to understand something. I went to UC Berkeley, to Gustav's class — Diversities of the Human Brain — and it was so helpful to me in my work with my kids that I asked if he would talk to parents about this information, and he said yes. What has been so wonderful to see is how just having the neuroscience information available can transform parents' understanding of their kids.
We're going to learn neuroanthropology concepts that reframe behaviors, and apply a biocultural framework to our everyday experiences. With this framework, we recognize that our understanding of neurodiversity has to consider both biological and cultural factors. Neurodivergence is not an individual trait — it's a mismatch between a person and their environment. But we always have to hold the biological in mind, because if you've got a kid who gets dysregulated on windy days, changing the environment doesn't change everything. We need to hold both.
These are not how-tos to change behavior — this is how to think *differently* about behavior. It's not deficit-based or strength-based. It's about how to think about *difference*. I think it's important to mention this because strength-based approaches often get misunderstood and used as a kind of superpower narrative, and it's important to remember that everyone deserves respect and understanding regardless of whether or not they have superpowers.
---
## Shame, Motivation, and the Pit Crew
**Elizabeth Cobb:**
Building on Courtney's excellent point about motivation versus activation — when shame enters the picture, it can make it hard to see that all behavior is communication. Once shame isn't in the driver's seat, we can ask: what does my child need? That question alone can often transform motivation into activation.
Think of the dopamine circuits working in concert like a Formula 1 race — getting from your child's bedroom to the front door in the morning can feel exactly that challenging. We can be the activation pit crew. Interest is the fuel, autonomy is the engine, and sensory processing is where the rubber meets the road. When we're trying to understand what our children need, sometimes all three of those are at play at once — if a child won't brush their teeth on the way out the door, it could be a lack of interest, a lack of autonomy, or that the brush doesn't feel good or the water is too loud. We are the pit crew who gets to decide, "I'm going to listen to my driver" — hear the child and really try to understand what's going on.
---
## Pervasive Drive for Autonomy (PDA)
**Elizabeth Cobb:**
One area where all three aspects of activation come into play is in the Pervasive Drive for Autonomy — PDA. You may have heard it called Pathological Demand Avoidance, which is what it used to be called. What it is: when a child has a very difficult time with any request perceived as a demand — even preferred activities. A kid who loves chess club might refuse to go simply because being asked is perceived as a demand. PDA is a response to perceived demands — it's not defiance, it's not manipulation.
Using Gustav's movement-and-motivation continuum, if we understand that "I don't want to" is a little closer to "I can't," we can understand what's going on with PDA. A good example is PDA equalizing or leveling — a child might say "no" when you ask them to take their dishes to the kitchen, then do it ten minutes later. That is very often a result of PDA equalizing: there's a need to exert some control to regain autonomy before the task can be done. Or if a child says, "I'll only do it if you do this for me" — if we understand those apparent negotiation tactics as a form of balancing, we can start to work with what our kids are actually saying.
There's a quote from Christy Forbes, an Australian PDA-er with PDA children: she encourages us to consider the behaviors we're told are unacceptable or confrontational in our children as forms of balancing in a person who requires equity. The wording of a request can make a real difference: "Let's all go out for pizza" might get a "no way," but "Could we go out for pizza?" is often perceived very differently by a PDA-er. In the parent-child relationship, which is inherently unequal, neurodivergent kids with their neuro-spicy sense of justice often bristle at that inequality. My oldest made this very clear to me — when I asked what she'd do if invited to lunch with the Queen, she said, "I'd just tell her, I'm here for the corgis." She told me in no uncertain terms that it didn't matter if you were the Queen of England — she considered herself deserving of the same respect.
We're the pit crew, and just like it's the pit crew's job to decide what needs attention and when, we can also recognize that similar behaviors might have different causes depending on the kid or the day. Is procrastination a PDA equalizing challenge? An ADHD multi-step instruction issue? A task initiation issue? Is it both? Is it neither? When we only study symptoms like anxiety, we miss opportunities for understanding.
---
## Sparks, Blockers, and the Motivation Cycle
**Teresa Nair:**
Alright, I'm Teresa Nair, REEL's Parent Community Program Manager. I get to work with amazing colleagues like the three you've heard from tonight, and then take that information and tell you what we do with it in our community — how we use it as parents. A lot of it is strategy, curiosity, and learning from each other.
Instead of relying on willpower or pressure for this "motivation" idea, let's take this opportunity to learn what actually helps the neurodivergent brain. We need to help them begin the whole scenario, but we also need them to continue and reset — because for a neurodivergent kiddo, and for many of us, it's not a one-and-done. That brought us to looking at motivation as a cycle. Because oftentimes we're coming across this need to activate the brain, spark it, get it going — and then, because the world is not designed for neurodivergent brains, blockers come in. Lights, sounds, smells, executive function overwhelm — there are so many reasons.
There are two different systems worth understanding. There's the interest-based ADHD system — sparked and fueled by novelty, curiosity, play, and those unique things the ADHD brain craves. That's the dopamine-driven activation system. For autism, it runs a little differently — fueled more by clarity, fairness, predictability, and deep interest. For example, if I said something extremely unfair to my autistic child, motivation to do what we needed to get done stopped immediately — "that's not fair" became the blocker. Sometimes just understanding our child's neurology begins those conversations.
Sparks can be many things, and I encourage you to explore them with your kids. Your kiddo really does need autonomy — so how can you build autonomy into your motivation cycle, whether it's getting out the door in the morning or getting homework done? My family loves playlists — they spark so many things. My daughter's Hamilton playlist for cleaning? Spark right there. I have a playlist for showers — just putting it on can help me engage. Working with your kids to think about sparks and blockers can be fun, and listen closely: some of the sparks they come up with you might never have thought of yourself.
Sensory experience can be a big spark. I had a parent in a small group whose kid would only shower if they could use all the soap — all the shampoo, all the soap. Mom understandably couldn't sustain that. As a group, parents strategized: what if you get those little travel sizes? And before the shower starts, he gets to choose — autonomy is great — which little bottle he wants, each one with a different soap and sensory experience. Building sparks in when you know you have a challenge can work beautifully.
Blockers can be things like executive function overwhelm — when the air traffic control of the brain skips and everything stops. How can we put things into place to take out blockers before they happen? If we know transitions are a blocker, or unpredictability is a blocker, let's write that down. You might be having a rough night and look at that list and suddenly remember: "Oh, that's right — end of the day, no snack — blocker. I just need to feed the kid." We're not always going to remember everything in the moment, and these little hints become invaluable.
---
## Real Stories: Sparks and Blockers in Practice
**Teresa Nair:**
I had a parent who said their teenage son would not clean the bathroom. Mom put all the cleaning supplies on the floor of his bathroom for weeks, and he just walked past them. I noticed he seemed angry about it when it came up — which told me he wasn't indifferent. There was something more going on. I asked him: "Hey, is there something blocking you about this bathroom cleaning thing?" And he said the words, "I don't even know what to do with all those things." Boom. We've got a dialogue. The blocker is executive function — task initiation, working memory. We can work with that now.
Another one: a kid who said he wasn't motivated, didn't care about anything, wasn't doing homework. Dr. Mason, a colleague, said something that really landed: "Your child obviously cares — and he cares very deeply. Because if you think about somebody who doesn't care, it looks very different. You've got that footloose, fancy-free 'I don't care' attitude." Our kids, when they're withdrawn and angry and having a really difficult time, are often in a cycle of being activated to do something, being let down by their executive functions, failing, and then having to try to get back up again. They care — it's just that the cycle has failed them repeatedly.
That's where this language of sparks and blockers can help, even with older kids. My 14- and 16-year-olds will say they need a spark to get started on homework. "What kind of spark do you think you might need?" "Popcorn." "All right, let's go with the popcorn." Even if it's just a way to begin the dialogue — "I see you, and I want to be a part of this. How can I support you?" — sparks and blockers give us something to work with.
---
## Scripts for Parents
**Teresa Nair:**
One thing we love about our groups is scripts — because we weren't necessarily taught how to have positive conversations that aren't judgmental. Instead of "Stop wasting time!" — how about "Do you need a different way in? Do you need a reset? How can I help here? Sometimes the brain needs a spark to get moving. What could your spark be? Is there something I can help provide?" It's not something you've done wrong — it's something we can solve by taking a different action.
One family had a teenage son who wouldn't study for spelling. What does he enjoy? He loves slime. Could he play with slime while they review spelling words? Involving the body and the brain and the sensory all in one can really expand what it means to be activated. And regarding extrinsic motivation — Dr. Megan Neff has made the point that we've been perhaps too hard on it. How often do we, as adults having a tough time, say "I have to go to work because I need a paycheck"? That's extrinsic, and it's fine. When our kids need something to help them get a little motivated — whether it's popcorn or slime — let it be.
---
## Recovery and Feedback: The Missing Pieces
**Teresa Nair:**
Recovery and feedback are essential pieces of the motivation cycle — without them, we don't really get a chance to understand what motivates our children. Our kids are using enormous brain power, and they're physically very active. We need to make space for their nervous system and bodies to recover. Have you ever been completely exhausted and thought, "I'm not motivated to do anything"? Our kids experience that almost every single day — eight hours at school and then coming home to more work. Let's build in recovery.
Finding whether active or passive movement works for them — humor, play, reading under a weighted blanket — include that in the system. Without recovery, we won't get very far with motivation or the feedback loop. Verbalize sparks and blockers; put them in the calendar. Make it a casual, ongoing habit to look back on when things went really well. "That went pretty smooth tonight — bedtime routine was smooth. What do you think helped?" Listen to understand, not to react. Maybe it's a daily check-in, maybe weekly, but make it a habit.
And when things didn't go well — let them tell you. One family couldn't get their kid motivated for swim lessons. When the parent finally asked what was going on, the kid said: "I was tired, it was at the end of the day, I didn't have any snacks, it was so loud in there, and I was cold, and everybody kept yelling." Don't react — that's all data. Take a moment in the car to say, "Okay, so let's put it in the calendar for next week: bring a snack, bring your comfy sweatsuit." You might not get it all right the first time, but you've shown them they have the power to be part of the cycle. Ultimately, our goal is for our kids to understand and enjoy figuring out how their own system works for them.
---
## Q&A: Dopamine Transfer and "Why Don't They Remember It Went Fine?"
**Yael Valek:**
With ADHD, I've noticed that the dopamine will hit, but they will have forgotten about it the next time the same event happens. How can we help this process of not remembering, "I did it like this, it wasn't so bad, I can do this"? People often say "they'll learn if they just keep doing it" — but that's not my experience.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
There's a name for this: dopamine transfer. Dopamine transfer is the movement of the dopamine response into the anticipatory phase after you've repeated something a few times. For a neurotypical person, after a few trials of something rewarding, the dopamine shifts from the nucleus accumbens — that reactive hit — into the striatum, which starts anticipating and taking steps toward the reward. One of the things that shows up with ADHD is that that transfer doesn't happen. So the sparks-and-blockers conversation that happens the first time probably needs to happen the 30th time too — that's just what's going to happen. We have a lot of systems based on the assumption that people's brains will logically maximize their return on investment, and that barely works even for neurotypical people. There isn't a brain-based solution that works for everyone — anybody who says otherwise is selling you something. What Courtney and Teresa and Elizabeth have been saying about getting collaborative is so important — you have someone in your household who has the expertise on what works for your particular situation, and recruiting them as an ally is everything.
**Courtney Edman:**
A lot of times we as parents want to help our kids remember what they're not remembering — "Don't you remember this happened?" Instead, try getting curious or reflective with them: "Do you remember what happened the last time we did this? Walk me through what we did." You're helping them tap into what they remember of their experience, which informs you about their thought process. If they don't remember that the outcome was positive, you know that's not what they're carrying — what they're carrying is the exhausting effort it took to get started. That's the blocker. So you figure out: when you feel that way, what's your spark? How can we bring a spark into this? The language around kids — "you should," "you need to" — if we replace that with curiosity, sparks and blockers, and help them understand their motivation cycle instead of telling them how to do it, that is going to help melt away the protective layer of shame that has built up over the years.
---
## Q&A: How Teachers Can Tell the Difference
**Yael Valek:**
How can a teacher tell the difference between a student who is lacking motivation due to a lagging skill or neurodivergence versus a student who just doesn't want to do the work?
**Courtney Edman:**
My answer is: if you give them an incentive and they immediately change, or you give them a consequence and they immediately change, their brain works with rewards and consequences. For example — "If you don't do it now, you'll have to do it at home" — many kids won't want that, and they'll use that logic to get started. If you mention that and they still don't get started, there's probably something else blocking them. If traditional approaches don't work, they probably won't ever work, and we need to use a different approach. The sooner we use a different approach, the less shame, guilt, and negative self-narrative our kids will develop.
**Teresa Nair:**
Most of us here lean into Dr. Ross Greene's framework — "kids do well when they can." I hope teachers can take that idea and know that this kid does not want to be the failure of the class. If they've taken that label on, it's because it's been part of their cycle and it's where they feel comfortable staying, because it's what's expected. But underneath, most kids want to succeed. Look at the neurodivergence: is there a processing issue? Is there an IEP that gives insights? Working memory issues, processing challenges — these can all be the block. As a former teacher, I know it's a lot on your plate to do this for each kid, but it's important and it's valuable.
---
## Q&A: When Motivation Drops Off Mid-Task
**Yael Valek:**
Sometimes motivation is there, but partway through, it's no longer there. If I take a break, it's hard to come back. What to do?
**Courtney Edman:**
If you know you're going to take a break and you know you have a hard time coming back, what can you do in anticipation of that blocker? I call it a "boundary blocker" — not quite a spark, not quite a blocker, but something you set up in advance. Maybe it's an alarm. Maybe you call a friend and say, "Can you call me in five minutes? I'm taking a break and I need to make sure I'm back on track." Then you add in a spark when you return — jumping jacks if movement works for you, or a different playlist to activate a different part of your brain. Figure out your "phone a friend" moves so you don't get lost in the break.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
I want to echo the point about community. I work with neurodivergent college students, and I see the value of community — especially neurodivergent community. If you can get some ADHDers together to compare notes, that's incredibly helpful. Both for accountability, and for the validating sense of "there are other people out here who also work this way." It can sound like a hokey answer, but community solves a lot of these problems, or at least gives you the platform from which to solve them.
Sometimes the "push through" framing is motivating. Sometimes it isn't — and in those moments, try "allow yourself through." Instead of "I'm going to grip my teeth and push through this reading," try "I'm going to allow myself the privilege of reading this thing." That doesn't always work either, but when pushing through isn't working, letting yourself flow around the obstacle might.
**Courtney Edman:**
I'm also a fan of allowing yourself to feel the block — naming it, saying "This really stinks, I am stuck right now." Emotions have a physiological lifespan of about 30 seconds, but if we keep feeding them energy, they keep building. If you can name it and release it, change scenery, or reach out to someone and say "I'm really having a hard time — do you have any ideas?" — that vulnerability and asking for help can help you find flow again. Developing awareness of what environments and times of day give you sparks, and setting yourself up to do the hardest things when you have the most success — that's an experimental mindset. Give yourself grace to recover when you hit a block. Then iterate on that cycle so you build a deeper understanding of what your brain needs.
---
## Q&A: What if the Spark Seems Counterproductive?
**Yael Valek:**
What if a kid asks for sparks that seem distracting? My kid wants me to read aloud while she does her math homework.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
I'm tempted to say: try it. Give it a shot.
**Courtney Edman:**
Counterproductive to whom, right? Let's check that assumption.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
Sometimes a spark isn't workable exactly as stated — but even just asking the question starts getting you to the insight. If the sensory experience of being read to is what activates that anticipatory dopamine spike, that's your first clue, and that's where you start digging until you find something that does work. Whatever the spark is, is informative at the very least.
**Teresa Nair:**
Right — it might not be you reading aloud specifically, as much as they just need an auditory something in the background. Bach worked great for me when I was studying; for animation, I'd put on rave music. Maybe try music instead, or explore what that auditory need might mean in other ways.
**Courtney Edman:**
This is why some people have to think carefully about their environment. Are they in a quiet library? A coffee shop? The louder part of the library? At home with the TV on? There's something called a counter-stimulus — sometimes people need something in the background auditorially in order to focus and attend. It's a real thing.
---
## Q&A: How Does Anxiety Fit with PDA?
**Yael Valek:**
I've understood PDA as being more related to anxiety. How does anxiety fit into PDA and into motivation in general?
**Elizabeth Cobb:**
We talked about this at last year's Stanford conference and there wasn't a clear consensus, but here's how I'd reframe it: anxiety is a symptom of PDA — it's an indicator of something we need to pay attention to. When we study anxiety as the primary lens, it's so amorphous that it doesn't give us much actionable information. But drilling down into PDA really helps us identify: where are we seeing equalizing happen? What is the underlying need — sensory, autonomy? That specificity is what gives us something to work with.
**Courtney Edman:**
The way I perceive it is that anxiety is our brain trying to protect us from something, whether real or perceived. It activates our sympathetic nervous system — fight, flight, or freeze. What the person with PDA is doing when they become avoidant is saying, "I don't feel safe right now." Subconsciously, their fight-flight mechanism is saying, "I need to be protected." That could look like anger, shutting down, any number of things. So we have to find a way to help them feel comfortable and activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the half that helps us feel calm — in order for the rest of the brain to come online. That's what equalizing does: it shifts them from sympathetic fight-or-flight into parasympathetic calm, where they can access the rest of their brain. It's like Monopoly — they pass Go. Once they're in a calm state, everything else opens up.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
Or even just being activated all day in a school environment that doesn't feel supportive. The stress response — that sympathetic nervous system — is pretty sensitive, and it gets more sensitive as it's reinforced. When you have a negative experience, every element of that experience becomes negative for you. If you're in a car accident, every time you pass that corner, you start to get activated, because the amygdala is remembering everything about that experience indiscriminately — not just the specific cause, but everything. Young people have just an enormous number of aversive stimuli in their lives, and if you spend all day activated that way, yes, you're going to look for ways to protect yourself. Those responses aren't always rational, and they're not always aimed at the actual problem — especially for someone whose nervous system is still developing.
**Courtney Edman:**
And our brains are wired to hold on to the negative much more strongly than the positive.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
Any experience with a strong negative valence forms a very strong memory. We could do a whole other hour just on the way the memory system responds to emotions — but yes, that's the basic idea.
---
## Q&A: How Does ADHD Medication Work on the Brain?
**Yael Valek:**
What does ADHD medication do to the brain things we talked about? Does it help with dopamine transfer between the various parts of the brain?
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
Depending on the specific medication, yes — one of the things it can do is either elevate or stabilize the total amount of dopamine or the activity of dopamine. If what you're dealing with is a dopamine system that's quieter, or intermittently quieter and louder, either of those might present as someone who has trouble getting things started or has trouble with dopamine transfer. So yes, ADHD meds absolutely will help people with those kinds of executive function things — though it's hard to say in the abstract whether it will work for any one person's particular circumstance. As with all psychoactive drugs, everybody's brain is different and everybody responds differently. We often don't really know the exact mechanism. I'm a strong advocate for being open to medication. I don't think it's the right solution for everyone, but it absolutely helps the people that it helps.
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## Q&A: A Student Asks — How to Maintain Sparks and Avoid Burnout
**Yael Valek:**
From a neurodivergent student: what is the best way to identify a blocker, find a way to push through with a spark, and keep those helpful habits as consistent as possible so I don't go back to dealing with the block or burning out and repeating the harmful cycle?
**Teresa Nair:**
Have a list of sparks, because one might work in one moment and not another. For blockers — those are the ones we want to mitigate. If you can take a blocker out of the picture even before the situation arises, that's ideal. If being interrupted is a challenge and a blocker, try to get to a place where you can prevent that from happening. Know your blockers beforehand and minimize their presence. Having a couple of go-to sparks, knowing what's going to make you stall, and having a plan for re-sparking when you need to. And when you hit a block — give yourself grace. Sometimes you're going to run out of spoons, and no matter what spark or blocker you encounter, it's over for the day. That's the time to go into recovery and reset yourself.
**Gustav Steinhardt:**
Sometimes "push through" is helpful. Sometimes it isn't — and sometimes "allow yourself through" works better. If you're gritting your teeth and pushing through a reading you dread, try reframing it as, "I'm going to allow myself the privilege of reading this thing I'm actually kind of curious about." That's not always going to work, but when pushing through doesn't, allowing yourself through might.
**Courtney Edman:**
Developing awareness around what environments and times of day give you sparks — and then setting yourself up to do the hardest things at the times when you tend to have the most success — that's an experimental, iterative mindset. Give yourself grace to recover when you hit a block, and then learn from that cycle. Iterate on it, so that you build an understanding of who you are, what your brain needs, and when and where and how you can have more success more frequently.
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## Q&A: Getting Shame Out of the Driver's Seat
**Yael Valek:**
How do we get shame out of the driver's seat? Shame, rejection, and fear of failure are usually at the forefront of inhibiting action.
**Teresa Nair:**
There's something called the giftedness trap — both Dr. Megan Neff and Jamie Roberts have done great talks on this. The idea is that for 2E kids, the identity of "the smart kid" gets built up, and then when the struggles come, the shame piles on because they can no longer be that smart kid. "They're so smart, but..." — that *but* carries enormous weight. We as parents and educators need to be aware of how we talk about giftedness, effort, and creativity without setting up a trap where, when things get hard, kids don't know who they are anymore. They used to get straight A's, and all of a sudden the shame of not being able to do it becomes a spiral.
**Courtney Edman:**
This goes back to the Ross Greene language: "It looks like you're having a hard time" rather than "you're giving me a hard time." Our 2E kids have had such a strong sense of agency and ability for so long — and when they hit a wall, we have to be there to hold them and put the pieces back together so they don't create the narrative "I'm a failure." I always encourage people to use the word AND as a connector, not BUT. "You're having a hard time, but I know you can do it" — the "but" invalidates everything that came before it. "You're having a hard time AND we can figure this out together" — both things are true, and neither cancels the other. Through figuring things out together, we model for our kids that using help is something everybody does — and we normalize asking for and accepting help, because some kids don't learn that until adulthood, and that can be a really hard crash.
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## Q&A: When the Parent Also Needs a Pit Crew
**Yael Valek:**
How do we go about being a pit crew when we ourselves could use one? I struggle with my own dopamine pathways and activation, which makes it incredibly challenging to monitor and regulate someone else's — especially the follow-through piece.
**Courtney Edman:**
It's hard. It really is. It's about starting by identifying your own underlying needs — maybe writing them down. What builds your ability to have energy for the day? I think about battery life: what do I need to do to recharge for what I have to do for the rest of the day? And it's modeling for our kids that it's okay to take time to recharge. Who's on our pit crew? Do I have friends, music, exercise, nutrition, sleep? Where is the pit crew I haven't yet thought of? REEL could be part of your pit crew. And how do we let go of — and I know this was a process for me — the vision of the child I thought I was going to have, and the relationship I thought I was going to have? Seven years later, I'm doing it. But it was a process. How do I let go of what I expected in order to embrace the person that I actually have — the child's timeline, their interests — and join with them to decrease the resistance I'm creating for myself? That's a huge ask and a huge process. It takes time. I did a lot of holding it together in the moment — being communicative, collaborative, compassionate with my son — and then going to cry, or calling a friend and saying, "I can't believe he did it again." Allowing yourself to have the full human emotional experience so that it doesn't get stuck in your body. Building that acceptance and finding your pit crew — both internally and the one you surround yourself with externally — is a process for all of us.
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## Closing
**Yael Valek:**
Thank you all so much, and thank you for staying extra time, everyone. I really appreciated this conversation and all of your expertise — the way it wove together coming from all different angles. I hope everyone gets some sparks, clears some blockers, finds new perspectives, hits cruise, and gets that magnifying glass to become the detective. Thank you all so much.
**Courtney Edman:**
Thank you so much for putting this together. I really appreciate being a part of it and hearing all the questions.