Why Our Products Work for Many ADHD and Neurodivergent Learners — and Why We're Careful About How We Say It

A parent messaged us recently to say that after months of dreading reading practice with her ADHD son, she'd found something that held his attention for twenty minutes straight. That thing was Word Tag, our vocabulary gaming app.

This isn't an isolated message. We hear from parents of children with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, and other learning differences. They aren't the audience we originally imagined. But they're telling us something important, and we want to take it seriously.

We don't make specialist SEND tools, and we'd never claim to. But when we look at what we know about how neurodivergent learners process information — as well as how our products are actually designed — a picture starts to emerge.

The research here is genuinely interesting [1, 2, 3, 4]. Neurodivergent children with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and related differences don't share a single learning profile — but there are common themes in what tends to work. Let's take them one at a time.

We don't design our products simply to be funny. There's a lot of scientific research that sits behind every decision we make, from the way we structure our video games to the way in which we approach phonics instruction. Here's an insight into the research-based techniques behind some of our best-sellers.

Word Tag adapts its pacing automatically, which means a child can work at exactly their own level without that being visible to classmates — a quiet dignity that matters enormously when a neurodivergent child has already experienced self-consciousness around learning. The game format sustains attention where a worksheet wouldn't, and the built-in spaced repetition means each word comes back at exactly the right moment for consolidation, without the child having to manage that themselves.

Our signature illustration style is deliberately bold, funny, and strange — which isn't just an aesthetic choice. Distinctive imagery creates stronger memory traces. A ridiculous cartoon helps a child remember "exasperated" in a way a dictionary definition never could. The short-burst format — one word a day, one spread at a time — also suits neurodivergent attention profiles that struggle with longer reading sessions.

Although the stories in our phonics readers change book to book, the pedagogical structure each set follows is highly predictable. Each book focuses on a target sound (or set of sounds), which a reader will spot whenever they appear. That's 12 books, 12 target sounds, and 12 silly stories. For dyslexic learners especially, that systematic consistency is exactly what the evidence recommends. 

What we can say is this: our products are built on design principles — short-burst learning, visual distinctiveness, spaced repetition, adaptive pacing, predictable structure — that happen to align with what researchers and educators know about neurodivergent learning. That's not a marketing claim. It's an observation, and one we want to be careful and honest about.

If our products are working for your neurodivergent child in ways you didn't expect, we'd love to know. That kind of feedback shapes everything we build next.

[1] Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

[2] Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 45(3), 255–287. (The foundational "dual coding" theory — visuals + words = stronger recall)

[3] Cepeda, N. J., et al. (2008). Spacing effects in learning: A temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1095–1102.

[4] Luman, M., Oosterlaan, J., & Sergeant, J. A. (2005). The impact of reinforcement contingencies on AD/HD: A review and theoretical appraisal. Clinical Psychology Review, 25(2), 183–213.