For years, Kathia Roberts would drop off her son at camp and wait for the call that came without fail.

Zion had struggled from an early age with a range of neurodevelopmental and behavioural challenges. When he became frustrated, his behaviour could be difficult for others to manage.

“I’d sign him up and after not even an hour, they’d call me: ‘Come get your child. He can't stay,’” Ms Roberts said.

She would lose the money she had paid and, as Zion’s primary caregiver, would have to abandon her own plans. It also made it difficult for her to maintain her work as a naturopathic practitioner.

Over the Easter break, Zion joined his stepsister at the Department of Education’s Steam Academy run by Neville Zuill.

Ms Roberts waited but the call did not come.

Zion enjoyed the programme enough to return this summer on his own. He stayed for six weeks, every day, all day.

For Ms Roberts, it was an extraordinary turnaround and further evidence that finding the right environment could make an enormous difference for her nine-year-old son and other neurodiverse children.

Zion was 2½ when he received a range of diagnoses including ADHD combined type and oppositional defiant disorder. He also experienced impulsivity and sensory processing and integration difficulties and was later diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

Through her own work with children with ADHD and other neurodiverse conditions, Ms Roberts had some understanding of the role a child's surroundings could play in their behaviour.

“The root cause is a sense of safety dysregulation, his brain working differently. He just sees things differently,” she said.

Knowing that did not make it easy to find a school environment in which Zion could settle.

Ms Roberts eventually took him out of the school system and home-schooled him for two and a half years.

“And with the homeschooling he changed. He was 90 per cent better because he wasn't in a system where he kept being told, ‘You are the problem. You are wrong, and you are bad’,” she said.

Over time, however, Ms Roberts felt there were areas where Zion would benefit from having a professional teacher. Her circumstances had changed too. Following a divorce, she was a single mother and needed to return to full-time work.

After reading about a parent who had arranged a hybrid approach to schooling, she approached the Department of Education to see whether something similar might be possible for Zion.

East End Primary, the school closest to their home, had only five children in the class. Zion began attending for two hours at a time and, as he settled, his school day gradually increased. After a couple of terms he progressed to half-days and, last term, started attending for the entire day.

“He's made friends and he's doing well,” Ms Roberts said.

She also pushed for Zion to stay with the same teacher when school resumed this month after seeing how well they worked together.

“He's already established a relationship. Trust has been established,” she said.

Zion’s experience this summer at the Steam Academy gave Ms Roberts another insight into the type of environment in which her son does well.

“There’s a lot of space for autonomy with regards to just the way Mr Zuill runs the camp,” she said. “There's not a lot of babying and hand-holding there. It's sort of like here's what you need. You figure it out.”

According to his mother, Zion can struggle to focus when something does not interest him but the opposite is true when he is engaged.

The way mathematics and practical problem-solving were incorporated into the programme suited him well.

“Mr Zuill was very supportive. And my son, because of his neurodiversity, he is brilliant in math. He's a few years ahead and so he likes being challenged,” Ms Roberts said.

“They think they're just playing, but meantime, it’s real-life problem-solving. It's being innovative. The things they’ve designed, it's all things you can use in medicine, in transportation, in weather management. So it’s all applicable tools to the workforce and what you would need to be working in life.”

Zion's experience has strengthened Ms Roberts’s belief that practical skills and trades deserve a greater place in education, particularly for children who may struggle to engage with more conventional approaches.

“Every child is so different and that’s the larger conversation that is needed. When it comes to education, it is such an individual approach,” she said.

She accepts that it is not possible in Bermuda to cater to every child’s individual needs but believes there is room to look beyond conventional approaches.

“If we start to think outside the box [there are solutions to be found]. Just witnessing him and the changes that have happened in the last few years, especially with this camp, is so inspiring.”

Reaching this point, however, has required Ms Roberts to negotiate with educators, seek out different forms of support and repeatedly advocate on her son's behalf.

“There's lots of families and single parents out there that don’t have the luxury and availability to show up for their children in this way — to take them out of school, to advocate for them in all the organisations, to pull together a team of special educators,” she said.

She is now facing some of those pressures herself.

“What happens when a mother’s circumstances change and they no longer can be the parent advocate because they are forced to work and just won’t be available,” she asked. “What happens? How does the community support?”