Playing It Forward: A Practical Guide for Neurodivergent Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children

Most parenting advice wasn’t written for neurodivergent parents—or for neurodivergent kids.

Playing It Forward is a practical, realistic guide for parents who love their children deeply and still feel overwhelmed by noise, emotions, transitions, and constant demands. It’s designed for neurodivergent parents raising neurodivergent children (roughly ages 3–10, with flexibility beyond that), and it focuses on one core idea: play as a tool for nervous system safety, not performance or entertainment.

This guide isn’t about fixing your child or becoming a different kind of parent. It’s about using small, doable moments of play to:

• Build regulation before behavior

• Teach flexibility without force

• Support emotional learning when words are hard

• Repair after meltdowns, shutdowns, or parenting slips

• Stay connected during real-life chaos, not just calm moments

Each chapter introduces one play-based skill, explains the brain science in plain language, and shows how it actually looks in daily life. You’ll find scripts, examples, and brief reflections you can come back to when something stops working. You don’t need to read it in order, and you don’t need to use every strategy.

The play in this guide is:

• Quiet when it needs to be

• Brief when energy is low

• Repetitive when safety matters

• Flexible only when the nervous system allows

It also includes guidance for adapting play to different neurotypes, including autistic, ADHD, and PDA profiles, so you’re not forced into one-size-fits-all strategies.

Written by Dr. Mark Bowers, a licensed psychologist with over 25 years of experience supporting neurodivergent children and families, Playing It Forward is meant to be used, not admired. Progress will be uneven. Messy still counts. Repair matters more than getting it right.

This guide helps you understand what’s actually happening in your child’s brain—and how to respond with enough safety, often enough, to make a real difference over time.  48 Pages.