Resolutions and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria: Neurodiversity Affirming New Year Activities for Neurodivergent, ADHD, and Autistic Kids and Parents
Neuroaffirming New Year’s Traditions
The start of a new year often invites reflection. But for neurodivergent kids including gifted, autistic, twice-exceptional (2e), PDA, ADHD, AuDHD, and other kids, and the parents raising them, reflection can quietly turn into self-criticism.
What didn’t we fix?
What goals weren’t met?
What should we work harder at?
What still isn’t, “where it should be?”
For many families raising neurodivergent children, these questions don’t just show up once a year. They show up in school meetings, therapy goals, progress reports, behavior intervention plans, and well-intentioned conversations about “special needs.”
Over time, it can begin to feel as though neurodivergent kids, and their parents, are always being evaluated and scrutinized, always being nudged toward improvement, always being measured against standards that were never designed with them in mind.
This framing isn’t neutral. It’s shaped by a culture that equates worth with productivity, regulation, and visible improvement; and it lands especially hard on neurodivergent families, making the traditional practice of New Year’s resolutions, a potential invitation for painful and familiar feelings of inadequacy, and pressure to keep striving for “improvement."
As a trauma therapist who supports neurodivergent adults and parents of neurodivergent kids from a neurodiversity affirming framework, I want to offer different questions for this new year:
What if growth didn’t start with what’s missing?
What if growth didn’t require rejecting or erasing who you already are?
Neurodivergence is Not a Self-Improvement Project: When Growth Gets Confused With Change
Growth and change are often treated as interchangeable. But for neurodivergent kids, and for the parents supporting them, this confusion can be deeply harmful.
Change implies that something about who you are is defective or insufficient.
Growth, in contrast, is about expansion, capacity, support, and integration.
Neurodivergent children are often surrounded by systems designed to change them. Even supportive environments can unintentionally center compliance, normalization, and independence as markers of success. Many neurodivergent kids grow up receiving a steady stream of corrective feedback focused on:
What they need to do less of
What they need to control better
What they need to “work on”
Even when offered with care, this imbalance can quietly communicate: You are a problem to be managed. From a trauma-informed perspective, this can lead to internalized narratives about being inadequate, unacceptable, unlovable, or a burden. It can create a chronic state of vigilance. When your nervous system is always bracing for correction, curiosity and self-trust shrink. Over time, kids may internalize the belief that growth means becoming less:
less sensitive
less emotional
less intense
less different
less themselves
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and The Emotional Cost of Constant Correction
Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, and otherwise neurodivergent kids often hear far more feedback about what’s not working than about what is. This can shape their internal world in painful ways.
Many neurodivergent kids develop:
Heightened anxiety around mistakes
Fear of disappointing others
Avoidance or shutdown when challenged
Intense emotional reactions to perceived criticism
For ADHD and autistic kids especially, this can connect to Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). Rejection sensitivity is a nervous system response where feedback, even when neutral or supportive, is experienced as overwhelming rejection, reflection of failure, or a personal attack; often being met with highly reactive, explosive, or shut down responses to feeling intensely ashamed or criticized.
From a trauma-informed lens, these defensive protective responses makes sense. When a child’s nervous system is repeatedly activated by evaluation and correction, rejection sensitivity increases and safety narrows. Being perceived or observed becomes stressful. Learning becomes harder. Reflection becomes threatening. And self-compassion can feel out of reach.
Neurodivergent Parents and Parents of Neurodivergent Kids Feel This Pressure Too; Often Quietly
Neurodivergent parents and parents of neurodivergent children are not immune to these messages. Many carry their own internalized ableism, absorbing cultural narratives that say:
“If my child is struggling, I must not be doing enough.”
“If progress isn’t visible, I’ve failed.”
“We should be further along by now.”
“If I don’t push them now, it will be worse for them in the future.”
Over time, this pressure, stress, and worry contributes to parental burnout; especially for neurodivergent parents, or parents supporting kids with higher needs. Burnout doesn’t just cause exhaustion; it narrows perspective. When you’re overwhelmed, it becomes genuinely harder to notice effort, resilience, and growth; especially when outcomes don’t look impressive by “neurotypical” standards.
This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a nervous system response to chronic overwhelm.
Growth Is About Capacity, Not Correction
Growth does not require denying struggle. It doesn’t require adopting neuronormative standards. It does not mean pretending that navigating around systems or expectations that do not accommodate for a range of neurotypes was easy or successful. Growth can include:
getting through a hard year
trying again after setbacks
learning what doesn’t work
needing more support than expected, or different support than what was offered
For neurodivergent kids and parents especially, growth often shows up in ways that don’t translate neatly into charts or milestones: emotional awareness, self-advocacy, persistence, self-discovery, recovery after overwhelm, self-compassion and self-acceptance.
These forms of growth matter, and recognizing them is important.
New Year’s Reflection That Builds Safety for Neurodivergent Families
When reflection is framed as evaluation, it can activate shame. When framed as noticing, it can build safety.
That’s why I often recommend a shift away from New Year’s resolutions for change, and a movement toward reflection tools that are explicitly neurodiversity-affirming; like the free, downloadable New Year’s worksheet from Neurowild designed for children and parents to complete together or separately.
Rather than asking “What needs fixing?” it invites questions such as:
What did I do well?
What did I work hard at; and where am I now?
What do I want to get better at (not because I’m failing, but because it’s important to me)?
Who will support me?
How will I care for my brain and body as I grow?
For some families, this may be the first time reflection feels non-threatening; exploring growth as an evolution and not a goalpost. What matters most is not filling it out “correctly,” but approaching it with compassion and openness. For some kids, answers might come easily. For others, especially those carrying shame or internalized ableism, naming strengths may feel uncomfortable or even distressing. That’s okay.
When Naming Strengths Feels Hard for Neurodivergent Kids and Parents
Struggling to identify positives doesn’t mean there aren’t any. It often means there’s been too little space to notice them safely, or to honor them. It’s important to say this plainly: if you or your child struggle to identify strengths, effort, or positives, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
It often means there has been too much emphasis on fixing, too little on witnessing, noticing, and appreciating.
Internalized ableism and shame can make it genuinely uncomfortable to acknowledge what is going well; especially when outcomes don’t match “neurotypical” expectations. That discomfort deserves understanding and compassion, not correction.
Encouraging Growth With Support, Not Self-Blame
One of the most powerful shifts we can model for neurodivergent kids is that growth doesn’t happen in isolation. Support, accommodations, relationships, and care matter.
Naming who helps us, what supports us, and how we take care of ourselves reinforces a crucial truth: growth is relational. Interdependence is not a failure; it’s a human reality.
This applies to parents, too.
If you find yourself longing for growth in the year ahead, but feeling depleted, resentful, or numb, due to overwhelming parenting demands without the resources that you need; it may not be that you need more effort. You may need more support.
Growth Requires Support for Neurodivergent Parents and Parents of Neurodivergent Kids Too
Parents often want growth for themselves as much as for their children. More patience. More clarity. More capacity. But growth cannot happen in a depleted system.
As a psychologist specializing in anxiety, trauma, and burnout among neurodivergent adults and parents of neurodivergent kids, I see how often parents blame themselves for symptoms of burnout that are actually signals of unmet support needs.
That’s why my online neurodivergent, ADHD, and autistic parent burnout course focuses on:
nervous system regulation
unlearning shame-based parenting narratives
making values-aligned choices without constant self-judgment
accessing needed resources to support balance and reduce feelings of failure
Growth is possible, but it’s not something you should have to force alone. This isn’t about becoming a different parent in the new year. It’s about having enough support to become more yourself.
Beginning the New Year With Less Ableism and Shame
You might ask not “What’s wrong?” but:
What has already been hard and meaningful?
What support helped us make our way through difficult things?
What kind of growth would feel nourishing, not shaming?
As you step into this new year, you might allow reflection to be gentle. You might allow progress to be slow and non-linear. You might allow care, rather than correction, to lead the way.
That, too, is growth.
