In our house, it seems there is always something to be done… the laundry, cleaning, homework. One day, I had asked Annaleigh to do something simple – a task she has done independently many times before… But this time, when I asked her to do it… she just sat there staring… Then she looked at me and said, “I know I need to do XYZ… but I just can’t get my body to move.”
She wasn’t being defiant. She wasn’t being lazy. She was describing, as clearly as any kid could, the exact gap between knowing and doing that so many people assume doesn’t exist – the gap between won’t and can’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that gap lately, especially after seeing conversations online questioning whether ADHD is even “real,” or whether we’re just pathologizing typical human differences. I understand why someone might think that if they’ve never watched significant neurodivergence up close. But parenting two very different neurodivergent kids has completely rewritten what I understand about effort, ability, and what support actually looks like.
Two Kids, Two Very Different Journeys
My younger son was diagnosed with Level 3 autism at two years old. His differences were visible early – the kind that get noticed, named, and (usually) met with grace, because people can see something is going on.
My daughter’s path looked different. She was diagnosed with ADHD and autism much later, and on paper, she has Level 1 autism. She’s verbal. She’s sharp. She holds conversations, goes to school, and can look, from the outside, completely fine.
That word – fine – has become one of the most complicated words in our house.
Watching both of my kids grow up has taught me something I didn’t expect: support needs don’t always correlate with how obvious a disability is. My son’s more visible differences mean people tend to recognize when he needs help. My daughter’s ability to appear fine means she’s increasingly expected to remember, organize, regulate, navigate social situations, manage her emotions, keep up, and be independent – and when she can’t, it’s easy for that to read as a lack of effort instead of a neurological difference.
That’s exactly what was happening on the couch that day.
The Difference Between “Won’t” and “Can’t”
As a former speech-language pathologist, I spent years learning about executive functioning, sensory processing, and motor planning in a clinical sense. But nothing taught me the real-world weight of those concepts the way parenting has.
I’ve watched, firsthand, what it looks like when a brain genuinely processes the world differently – the executive functioning difficulties, the sensory differences, the impulsivity, the regulation challenges, and the sheer amount of effort it can take to do things that look effortless for someone else.
Annaleigh knew what she needed to do. The knowing was never the problem. The problem was that her body and her brain, in that moment, could not connect to make it happen. That’s not defiance. That’s a nervous system that is, for lack of a better word, stuck.
Being able to do something sometimes doesn’t mean a child can reliably do it all day, every day – especially when they’re tired, overwhelmed, or dysregulated. A kid who can clean her room on Tuesday might genuinely be unable to on Thursday, and it has nothing to do with how much she wants to.
Why This Matters Beyond My Own Living Room
The more I learn from my kids, the less interested I am in asking, “How typical does this child look?” And the more interested I am in asking:
“What does this child need to thrive?”
I think that’s a question worth asking for every child – neurodivergent or not.
A Few Things That Help Us Reframe “Can’t” Moments
If you’re parenting, teaching, or supporting a child who seems capable one day and stuck the next, a few things have helped us:
- Name the gap out loud. When Annaleigh says she can’t move, we don’t argue with it – we acknowledge it and problem-solve from there (“Okay, your body’s stuck. What’s one tiny step?”).
- Watch for the pattern, not just the moment. A single hard day isn’t data. A repeated pattern of “knows what to do but can’t initiate” is.
- Separate the request from the capacity. Kids can understand an expectation completely and still not have the executive functioning bandwidth to execute it in that moment.
- Give grace even when things look “fine.” A child who is verbal, social, and doing well academically can still be running on empty.
The Question Worth Asking
Support needs don’t always look the way we expect them to. A diagnosis level on paper doesn’t tell you what a child is carrying underneath – the effort it takes just to get through an ordinary day.
So instead of measuring how typical a child looks, I’d rather ask what they need to thrive. That question has changed how I parent both of my kids, and it’s the one I hope more people start asking too.