Child Experience
The internal and external impact of collective punishment and exclusion on children — including fear, shame, dysregulation, and invisibility.
-
Coerced sibling care in public school inclusion
The school saw twins and imagined comfort. What they created instead was coerced care—using my daughter’s body to regulate her brother without consent, without safety, and without repair.
-
Disgusted by my advocacy
I have become hyper-attuned to the particular curl of a staff member’s lip, the slight recoil in their chair, the clenched tone when I insist—again—that my child deserves continued support. These micro-expressions, often passed off as stress or surprise or bureaucratic irritation, are not neutral. They are expressions of disgust. And for families like mine,…
-
How PE class taught us to disappear, comply, and endure
There are classrooms where harm appears visible—where a raised voice or a revoked privilege tells a clear story, where a child’s tears correspond to a policy, a decision, a teacher’s name—yet physical education was a different kind of room. PE held harm in soft cotton and shouted praise. It offered pain disguised as character. It…
-
Support is a bridge
What happens when schools pretend the bridge is whole. The appearance of help “She gets check-ins from the area counsellor once a week.”“We’ve made sure the classroom teacher is aware of her IEP.”“We’re doing everything we can within the current resources.” These are the phrases they recite—softly, professionally, as though reassurance were a substitute for…
-
The space between my brain and the page
My parents never sent me to kindergarten, so when I started first grade, it was a bit mysterious to me. I had been living on the side of a mountain, chasing garter snakes, and picking wild strawberries. While the class attempted to learn the alphabet, my parents had already been reading chapter books to me…
-
When autistic girls fawn and schools look away
They told her to be polite while she was being harmed. Now they call her difficult for saying no. Jeannie never screamed—never yelled or stormed out or flipped a desk or tore paper into confetti; instead, she froze, and in that freezing, she vanished from their view. No one interrupted the boy when he joked…
-
To the kid looking for answers about collective punishment
Hey, If you found your way here, maybe it’s because something happened at school that didn’t sit right. Maybe you searched for “why did my whole class get punished” or “it wasn’t my fault but we all lost recess.” Maybe a grown-up sent you here. Or maybe you just wanted to understand. If so—hi. I’m…
