Change The Lens And You Change The Child’s Story.

by Kate La Trobe MSc, BCBA and Nicola Killops, Educator and Gifted & Twice-Exceptional Specialist

We were those kids: bright, talkative, imaginative, distracted. The ones teachers described as “full of potential if they’d just apply themselves.” We did apply ourselves — just not to what made sense to other people’s brains.

Like so many adults, especially women, we were misdiagnosed, overlooked, or told we were simply “too sensitive.” It was only later, as adults, that we began to understand our own wiring. That understanding brought a kind of quiet liberation: the release of years of guilt, of endless self-flagellation for not being okay, for not understanding why the world never seemed to make sense.

Where our stories met

That quiet recognition became the thread that later tied two lives together. Kate and Nicola came from different paths but recognised the same story — children who were never quite understood, growing into adults determined to make sure no one else felt that way again.

The cost of misunderstanding

When difference isn’t recognised, it gets punished.

Kids learn to hide. Parents learn to brace. Teachers, even the kind ones, run out of ideas and call it “non-compliance.”

Kate sees it every day in her clinical work. Nicola has seen it from the front of a classroom and from the driver’s seat of the car after yet another call from school. Gifted and twice-exceptional learners live in a strange limbo—smart enough to know they’re failing invisible tests, too tired to keep pretending to be typical.

The real cost isn’t detentions or grades. It’s self-worth.

Diagnosis as turning point

For both of them, diagnosis wasn’t about a label; it was about language.

Kate’s late-identified ADHD sparked a deep dive into the “why” behind behaviour. That curiosity became a master’s degree, BCBA certification and a practice built on compassion and data instead of compliance and fear.

Nicola’s moment came through parenting—watching her own child live the same confusion she once did. It pushed her into gifted and twice-exceptional education and into founding the NeuroParenting Hub, where parents can finally exhale and say, “Oh, this makes sense now.”

Once they understood themselves, they stopped trying to fix children and started trying to see them.

Reframing behaviour: seeing beyond the surface

Kate and Nicola both learned that behaviour is rarely what it seems. What looks like defiance or disinterest is often communication in disguise. Kate reads behaviour as data — clues to environment, regulation and need. Nicola reads it as story — the human narrative beneath the surface. Together they show that once adults start reading the real message, connection becomes possible.

Building the bridge

This is where Kate and Nicola’s worlds meet—data meets belonging.

Behavioural science gives structure; relational education brings the heart. When they work with schools and families, they translate between those languages until everyone is fluent in “child.”

It’s not theory. It’s the small, real stuff: a parent taking a breath before correcting, a teacher realising a child isn’t oppositional but overwhelmed. Those tiny shifts change everything.

Five truths they wish every adult knew

1. Ask what need this behaviour meets. Every behaviour meets something—a need, a fear, a frustration or just an escape from maths homework. If adults jump straight to “stop that,” they miss the message. Curiosity is cheaper than punishment.
2. Regulate before reasoning. You can’t logic a child (or an adult, let’s be honest) out of overwhelm. Calm first, talk later. It’s the emotional equivalent of putting on your own oxygen mask; no one learns while gasping for air.
3. Build sensory safety first. If the lights hum, the clothes itch or the noise hits migraine territory, no sticker chart on earth will fix it. Comfort is the unsung hero of cooperation.
4. Assume competence, even in chaos. The child flailing on the floor might also be able to explain the laws of physics in Lego metaphors. Don’t confuse regulation with intellect; they’re separate systems.
5. Support curiosity, not compliance. Curiosity is how brains fall in love with learning. Compliance just ends the argument. If adults can make a child want to know, they’ve already won half the battle—and no one has to cry in the car afterwards.

None of this needs perfection. It just needs adults who can breathe, notice and remember that “doing your best” looks different every day—for them and for the children they love.

What would have helped them

If someone had told Kate and Nicola sooner that their chaos had context, they might have spent fewer years apologising for who they were. Understanding doesn’t rewrite the past, but it softens it — and it changes what comes next.

Now, every child they meet is a chance to interrupt that old story, to swap “What’s wrong with you?” for “What’s happening for you?” That single shift in language changes everything — for the child, for the adult, for the space between them.

And that’s what drives them now: to make a difference, one conversation, one classroom, one family at a time — until understanding becomes the rule, not the exception.

Because in the end, the kids they’re trying to help are the ones they once were.

The call to action

It’s time to stop fixing children and start fixing the lens. The goal isn’t normality; it’s understanding.

Once you truly see a child, you can’t unsee them. And that moment — when recognition replaces correction, when a child feels seen rather than managed — that’s where everything good begins.

About the authors

Kate La Trobe MSc, BCBA
Behavioural Analyst, Early-Intervention & Family-Support Specialist and Neurodiversity Consultant. Board-Certified through the BACB, Kate works across clinical and educational settings in South Africa and the UK, applying behavioural science with compassion to support neurodivergent learners and their families.
🌐 katelatrobe.com
🔗 linkedin.com/in/kate-la-trobe

Nicola Killops
Educator, writer and Gifted & Twice-Exceptional Education Specialist, founder of the NeuroParenting Hub and co-creator of the Render-Killops relational-education framework. Drawing on lived experience as both teacher and parent of a neurodivergent learner, Nicola creates strength-based tools and curricula that help children be seen, supported and celebrated.
🌐 neuroparentinghub.co.za
📰 tinyurl.com/the-neuroparenting-newsroom
🔗 linkedin.com/in/nicola-killops-8398b1127

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