A companion to the main ADHD article, written for professors and higher-education professionals.
A student stares blankly when you say "you'll want to strengthen this section," and you read it as not caring. It's not that. Your feedback needed a translator, and you handed them a riddle instead.
What this actually is
The ND/NT translation gap is the everyday mismatch between neurodivergent communication, literal, direct, often needing explicit instruction, and neurotypical communication, which leans on implication, tone, and social softening. In academia this gap runs both directions: it shows up in you if you run ND and feel constantly misread by colleagues, and it shows up in the students you teach who look unresponsive but are actually stuck decoding cues nobody explained.
How it shows up
In you: you say something direct in a faculty meeting and get labeled abrasive, when you were just being precise and trying to save time. You give feedback you think is clear and a student still seems lost, because your version of clear and theirs never actually matched up. In your students: "needs more depth" or "think about your audience" reads as helpful to an NT student and as meaningless static to an ND one who genuinely cannot decode what to change. A student who goes silent in office hours isn't being cold or evasive, they may be in overwhelm and temporarily unable to produce speech on demand.
What actually helps
Replace vague feedback with explicit, itemized instructions: instead of "needs more depth," write "add two supporting examples in paragraph three, here's why." State expectations in writing, not just in class discussion, so students aren't relying on tone or memory to reconstruct what you meant. When a student goes quiet or seems unresponsive, name it plainly and give them an out: "you can answer now or email me by Friday, whichever works better for you." Apply this same directness to your own working relationships, ask colleagues for literal instructions instead of guessing at implied social rules, and stop apologizing for needing it stated plainly. One more structural fix: build a standard rubric with explicit, itemized criteria for every assignment, so students are never trying to reverse-engineer your expectations from a single adjective on a comment thread. Notice, too, that asking a colleague to state something plainly is not a personal failing on your part, it's a reasonable request in a workplace that claims to value clear communication in every other context.
One move this term
Rewrite your next round of feedback comments to replace one vague phrase with one concrete, itemized instruction, and notice which students suddenly respond differently.
Precision isn't coldness, it's the actual bridge across the gap, use it in both directions, for your students and for yourself.
Go deeper
Read the full piece: ND/NT Relationships: The Translation Gap
ND Hive is coaching and community, not therapy or medical care.
Written by ND Hive.