A glossary of conditional care

This is a field guide—a survival text for parents who’ve sat through too many meetings where care was promised, repackaged, and quietly withdrawn.

• “Let’s build independence”
  We’ve decided your child doesn’t qualify for support, and we need to reframe that as a virtue. Expect less. Celebrate it.
• “She’s so high-functioning”
  We don’t see the shutdowns, meltdowns, sensory overload, masking fatigue, or trauma aftermath—so we’ve decided they don’t count.
• “They’re doing their best”
  You’re being too direct. You’re making us uncomfortable. Please rephrase your concern in a way that doesn’t require us to act or feel bad.
• “Not a good fit”
  This environment will not adapt. Your child is the variable we intend to remove.
• “We want to set them up for success”
  We are preemptively denying access to something they need, by declaring it will be too hard for them.
• “It’s a capacity issue”
  We’re rationing support based on adult energy, not student need—but we’ll phrase it in a way that sounds like logistics, not triage.
• “They just need to ask”
  We’ve designed the system to serve only the children who can self-advocate in neurotypical, verbal, regulated ways. Everyone else is out of luck.
• “We’ll keep an eye on it”
  We’ve done nothing, and plan to continue doing nothing—but we need to close this email thread.
• “This isn’t the right time”
  We are waiting for you to burn out so we don’t have to say no directly.
• “Thanks for your input”
  We will now be ignoring everything you said.

These aren’t just phrases. They’re policies. They’re structural violence written in the language of care. They mark the edges of institutional comfort—the places where support ends, and spin begins. They’re the terms we hear most often when we’re being gently, professionally, repeatedly told to lower our expectations.

If you’ve heard them all, you are not imagining things. You are not overreacting. You are reading the script backwards—seeing clearly what was meant to be obscured.

These phrases are not just irritating. They are exhausting. They eat time, sap trust, and quietly rewrite the story of what our children deserve.

Let’s build a better glossary. One rooted in truth. In equity. In care that doesn’t expire.