Our guest on the podcast is Melissa Monteiro, a Bangalore-bred teacher and personal tutor specializing in neurodivergent children, to discuss why she shifted from classrooms to one-on-one teaching after seeing students left out by standardized systems.

Melissa explains how labels like “lazy” or “disrespectful” often miss the real challenges of ADHD, dysgraphia, and emotional regulation, and emphasizes separating the child from the behavior and keeping the “issue” as the shared problem.

Drawing on her own anxiety, she describes supporting students through overwhelm, reframing success beyond marks, and using strengths-based approaches.

Together, Ann and Melissa cover negative self-talk, rejection sensitivity, and alarming suicide risk, sharing tools like asking “where is the evidence?” and speaking to oneself like a friend.

Melissa also discusses family pressures, affordability of support, balancing push vs pressure, the value of love and specific appreciation, physical activity and social connection, and the importance of parent self-care and “pressing pause.”