Guest Post: When Neurodivergence Isn’t a Trend: It’s a Life

By Sarah Kernion

“And The Beat Goes On”

FROM JOHN: I recently published a Substack titled “When Discipline Disappeared and Diagnosis Took Over.” For obvious reasons (you’ll just have to go back and read it), it stirred up some disagreement, including an email from Sarah Kernion, whose eloquence moved me to invite her to write the guest Substack below (the title is hers). My response follows.

When Neurodivergence Isn’t a Trend: It’s a Life

By Sarah Kernion

I recently read an article by John Rosemond that challenged the scientific validity of ADHD and neurodiversity-affirming approaches. He described ADHD as a set of bad habits, neurodiversity as “claptrap squared,” and mental health professionals as peddling pseudo-science.

As a mother of two profoundly autistic, non-speaking children, I read his piece through a very different lens, one not shaped by theory, but forged in the daily, exhausting, beautiful, and brutal reality of full-time caregiving.

And I agreed with more than he might expect.