The Weight of Cognitive Flexibility

I’ll never forget the day I first explained cognitive flexibility to Dawson. He was hyper-focused on something not turning out the way he’d envisioned. Seeing his frustration, I told him, “I need you to be flexible.” He looked up at me, exasperated, and said, “Mom, I don’t think stretching is going to help here!”

It was funny in the moment, but it also opened the door to a deeper conversation about what cognitive flexibility actually means. I explained it as the ability to bend your ideas, to adjust when things don’t go according to plan. After some back-and-forth and a bit of practice, Dawson began to understand the concept and how it feels to use it.

Since then, “cognitive flexibility” has become a regular phrase in our home. But it wasn’t until one particular Friday night that I really grasped how heavy that expectation could be for Dawson.

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That evening, Dawson dug out a children’s cookbook he had received for Christmas. Flipping through the pages, he landed on a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and excitedly decided we should make them. After checking that we had all the ingredients, we got to work, following the recipe to the letter. Everything seemed to be going perfectly—until the final step. As we added the chocolate chips, the dough unexpectedly turned brown. The warm butter we’d used earlier had melted the chips, and now our cookie dough was chocolate-flavored batter.

Dawson took one look and shut down. He started pacing, his frustration building as he processed the change. I asked him, as gently as I could, to practice cognitive flexibility—reminding him that even though they didn’t look like traditional cookies, they would still taste delicious.

That’s when he stopped and looked at me with tears in his eyes. “I can’t, Mom! I’ve been using cognitive flexibility all day, and I’m too tired to use it again.”

He went on to list the moments from his day when he had already had to be flexible: three tests (when he’s used to just one or two), unexpected schedule changes, working with different staff, and having to play a different game at recess than the one he had anticipated. By the time he finished, he said, “My brain is too tired to be flexible right now.”

I paused, realizing something I hadn’t fully considered before. I’d been asking for cognitive flexibility without recognizing the energy and effort it takes for Dawson’s neurodivergent brain to constantly adapt.

As the dough cooled in the fridge, we sat on the couch together and watched a movie. Eventually, Dawson curled up in my lap and cried while I rubbed his head. He was exhausted—physically and mentally—and this one little mishap had pushed him to his limit.

After about an hour, when the dough was ready to work with again, Dawson had calmed down. We went back to the kitchen, and though he helped roll the dough into balls, he soon stepped aside while his brother and I finished the task. I put the cookies in the oven, hoping we could salvage a sweet ending to the night.

But ten minutes later, the timer went off, and I discovered two trays of what looked like brownies—the cookies had spread into a single, melted sheet. I called Dawson back into the kitchen and gently warned him that the cookies didn’t quite turn out as we’d hoped. When he saw the disaster in the oven, he exclaimed, “Not again!” and walked away, defeated.

At that moment, I remembered something I’d heard on a podcast by Brené Brown, where she talked about relationships not always being 50/50. Sometimes, one person only has the capacity to carry a small part of the load, and the other has to step in and take the rest. That night, Dawson could barely manage 10%, and it was clear that I needed to take on the other 90%.

So, while Dawson rested in the living room, I took a glass, sprayed the rim with oil, and began cutting round cookies out of the rectangle-shaped cookie mass. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all, but I knew how much this mattered to Dawson. I was determined to make it work.

When I finished, I called Dawson and Kamden back into the kitchen to try our not-exactly-chocolate-chip cookies. Dawson took a deep breath before finally enjoying one of the circular treats.

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As I tucked the boys into bed that night, I reflected on the evening. What was the lesson here? I realized that I had been asking Dawson to be flexible every day without fully appreciating how much work it really required from him. The weight of cognitive flexibility is heavier than I thought, and I now understand that it’s not something I can take for granted.