What is Neuro-Developmental Mentoring and Why Does it Matter? 

Neuro-Developmental Mentoring

Neurodevelopmental mentoring is a developmental assistance strategy for parents, support professionals, or anyone with a vested interest in the continuing development of neurodivergent children, teens, and young adults. It has been coined and created by Jason and Debbie Grygla.

Jason and Debbie Grygla are expert mentors. It’s their passion, and it’s their goal to make successful mentoring tools available to all. Debbie once said: “Making a difference feels good… if you’re effective.” It’s the spirit of effective difference-making that drives Debbie and Jason’s mission to create opportunities for neurodivergent young adults to thrive. And this is best done by mentoring. 

In terms of creating and training NDM principles, this journey started about a decade ago, but Jason and Debbie would tell you it began well before that. 

Jason and Debbie are parents first. They have 5 children, three of whom are neurodivergent, and they would tell you most of what they know came from parenting. Additionally, Jason is a licensed clinical mental health counselor, and Debbie is a certified life coach. They also started NeuroDev (formerly TechieForLife) 8 years ago and have been making a difference in neurodivergent young adult lives, ever since.

Fundamental to their success is their neurodevelopmental mentoring philosophy which is broken into three parts, which we will cover in more detail in subsequent posts.

Neuro– the science of the workings of the brain, brain states, and neurodiversity. NDM helps mentors practice insight, connection, and empathy from a place of collaboration as they guide mentees out of crises and into developmental progress. 

Developmental– the knowledge of typical and atypical human development, developmental stages, and the experiential needs that contribute to advancing development in young adulthood. 

Mentoring– the empirically validated, anecdotally-embraced philosophy of nonprescriptive, attachment-focused strategy for influencing and supporting neurodivergent young adult development and well-being. 

Why Neuro-Developmental Mentoring Matters

As Debbie said, “Making a difference is rewarding work if you’re effective.” Neurodevelopmental mentoring matters because it optimizes success. With Neurodevelopmental mentoring (NDM), the focus is less on practical methods or skills to develop, and more on how to become a great mentor. Putting faith in any modality sort of misses the mark. It’s not the modality or procedures or tactics that make mentoring great—it’s having great mentors. 

For starters, consider this example: You’re struggling to figure out how to motivate somebody. You try to teach them the importance. You’re even pretty persuasive. You try to reward them, you threaten punishment, you bribe, joke, tease, etc. Then you feel frustrated because you haven’t found the right system yet. 

Everyone talks about how “there’s no perfect system” and “you’ll have to try different things on different days.” The trick is knowing why there’s no perfect system. It’s because procedures or transactions in relationships don’t work. There’s no formula for producing an outcome in somebody else’s behavior. 

The only thing we can do is be connected enough, trustworthy enough, and helpful enough that they want to join us. That has almost nothing to do with the mechanics of our interactions and everything to do with the person we are as a mentor. 

Join us next week to talk more about how to learn to mentor neurodivergent young adults by better understanding their neurodivergence. 

Thanks for reading!