Neurodivergent, gifted and 2e learning support
Your child’s story is in pieces. Let’s bring it together.
You know your child. You may also have reports, diagnoses, teacher feedback and years of observations. Yet somehow, the whole picture still does not quite add up.
I’m Nicola. I’m an educator and a mom of a neurodivergent young adult. I help families bring those pieces together and work out what they mean for the child actually living the school day.
Start with the child
What is everyone seeing?
Professional reportsSchool historyTeacher feedbackParent observationsLearner voiceStart with what is happening
You don’t need to know which service you need.
Every new learning-support enquiry begins with a free one-hour conversation. Bring me what is happening, what has already been tried and what you are trying to work out. We use that first conversation to decide whether I can help and what would actually be useful enough to do next.
Where should I start?
Which of these sounds closest to where you are?
I have reports, but I still don’t know what to do with them
Start with Report to Reality. We take what is already known and work out what it means for the learner’s actual school and learning life.
Explore Report to Reality →My gifted or 2e child is struggling
Ability can hide difficulty and difficulty can hide ability. We look at both, together.
Explore gifted and 2e support →School is where things are getting stuck
We can look at communication, school fit, learning pathways or the particular demands creating difficulty.
Explore school support →My child needs a different way of learning
For homeschoolers and learners who need one-to-one or very small learning spaces, the teaching itself can be built much more closely around the learner.
Explore bespoke learning support →I need a clearer picture of my child as a learner
We bring the professional evidence, school experience, parent picture and learner voice together before deciding what deserves attention.
See how the process works →Report to Reality
A report can explain a learner beautifully and still leave everyone wondering what Monday should look like.
Report to Reality takes the learner picture off the page and works out what it means for school, homework, studying, written output, organisation, expectations and support.
Gifted and twice-exceptional learners
Ability and difficulty can exist in the same child.
Ability can make the difficulty harder to see, while visible difficulty can obscure the ability. Either way, expectations can end up badly matched to the learner.
“A child can be technically capable of doing something and still be paying an enormous cost to do it.”
About Nicola
I’ve been on both sides of the school meeting table.
I came to this work as an educator, including years in gifted education, and later from the parent side of the table. That combination shapes the questions I ask now: what does the evidence tell us, what are the adults seeing in different environments and what is the learner actually experiencing?
Teacher. Parent. Translator.
My role is educational. I bring the pieces together, look for the patterns between them and help turn what we know into something useful for the learner’s actual day.
The work extends from here
Different parts of the same education conversation.
BABS
Breaking All Barriers is the collaborative practice I share with Lauren Kyte and Kate La Trobe, bringing learning support, NBI® thinking-preference profiling, executive function and coaching together.
Explore BABS →The Neuroparenting Newsroom
This is where I write when a question needs a little more room: neurodivergence, giftedness, learning, school and the things families keep trying to make sense of.
Visit the Newsroom ↗Estates in Africa Education
I’m the education editor for Estates in Africa, where I get to explore education and the conversations around children, learning and schools in much greater depth.
Read the latest Education issue ↗The Neuroparenting Hub
What I mean when I say: bring the pieces together.
From parents
A few words from families I’ve worked with.
“Nicola got her. There were things I had been trying to explain for years and she saw them almost immediately.”
Parent“For the first time I had something I could actually take back to the school. It gave me a way to explain what was happening without feeling like I was constantly defending my child.”
Parent“I wish we’d done this earlier. We had all the reports and knew where the difficulties were, but we were still stuck on what to actually do next.”
ParentWorking around the child
No child exists in one room.
I work across the information held by families, teachers and other professionals. When another person, school, service or tool is useful, I would rather point you towards something I genuinely trust than try to be every part of the answer myself.
You don’t need to know what to ask for.
Start with what you are seeing. We can work out the useful question from there.
Start with a free conversation