Welcome back to NeuroCurious—where we explore the brain, behavior, and the human experience.

Today, I want to challenge a really common assumption:

When a child has an intellectual disability…Are behaviors just a part of the disability?

Or… are we missing something deeper?

Because for many families, what looks like defiance, aggression, or shutdown is actually something else entirely— something misunderstood, and often untreated.

Millions of children in the U.S. has an intellectual or developmental disabilities.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), is what mental health professionals use to effectively diagnose clients.

Diagnostic criteria for intellectual disability include deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning across the conceptual, social, and practical domains.

This can affect the individual’s judgment, abstract thinking, academic learning, and functioning at home, school, and in the community. It can be measured as mild, moderate, severe, or profound. Depending on the level of severity, some domains may be deficient, such as communication and basic activities of daily living, including dressing and eating.

However, many of them may also be navigating:

• ADHD
• Autism
• Anxiety
• Depression

So right away, we’re not dealing with a single diagnosis—they are dealing with multiple layers. Think of it like an onion (or a parfait if you are not a fan of onions) no matter, they have layers. The outside layer may appear as sad, but the next layer may be feeling lonely, and as we get deeper, it may be feeling isolated. The deeper the layer, the deeper the emotion that is felt. It can run very deep, especially if it is misunderstood.