For families raising neurodivergent children, navigating the school system can feel like surviving a labyrinth built to exhaust you. What should be a place of growth becomes a terrain of harm and dismissal. Beneath the polished language of equity and inclusion lies a set of invisible barricades—attitudinal, communicative, spatial, systemic, and technological—that quietly erode trust and obstruct access to meaningful education.
Attitudinal barriers
The attitudinal barriers run deep. Too often, schools focus on the intentions of staff instead of the impact of their actions. They centre what was meant instead of what was felt—by the children who were dismissed, ignored, or harmed. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Harm is still harm, even when it’s wrapped in kindness. And harm is rarely acknowledged outright. Instead, families are told to move on. But trauma accumulates. Neurodivergent children, especially those who internalise distress, are often punished for advocating for themselves—seen as disruptive when they leave the classroom, or overly sensitive when they refuse to go back. Needs are triaged according to what is visible. Loud meltdowns trigger intervention. Quiet fawning is mistaken for coping.
Too often, schools focus on the intentions of staff instead of the impact of their actions.
I wonder if staff are suffering a moral injury? Participating in a system they know is failing, they become numb. Their capacity to act with compassion is eroded not by indifference but by despair. And so, they cling to rules, policies, and procedures—anything that dulls the ache of knowing that they are part of something that harms the very children they wish to help.
Gender bias adds another layer. Girls with severe anxiety are too often denied appropriate designations, despite clear clinical evidence. School refusal is treated as truancy instead of distress. Parents—particularly disabled or neurodivergent parents—are ignored, gaslit, or treated as overbearing. We are expected to hand over our expertise to professionals who don’t live with our children. We are silenced when we express concern, unless our words are filtered through someone else’s authority.
Meanwhile, schools reward masking. Children are praised for hiding their discomfort, and punished when they reveal it. Rules are applied rigidly, without consideration for how those rules land in nervous systems wired for different thresholds. Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is misunderstood or rejected outright. Staff insist children must learn to comply. But compliance is not safety. It is not engagement. It is not education.
Communication barriers
Information barriers deepen the divide. Communication is erratic, inaccessible, and riddled with jargon. We are told that our children don’t need more support—while they are unable to enter the classroom. Appeals processes are performative and vague. We are strung along with promises of next steps that never arrive. Decisions are cloaked in obfuscation, then defended with reference to internal policy—policies that often carry no legal standing. Meanwhile, our children miss weeks or months of education.
The assumption that all parents are neurotypical further marginalises those of us who need things spelled out. We are not given accessible formats. We are expected to pass paper forms back and forth across households without error. When we ask for plain language, transcripts, or shared notes, we are told no. When we follow up, no one replies. When we escalate, we are treated as adversaries.
Physical and sensory environment
The built environment is no more forgiving. Classrooms are overstimulating, inflexible, and unaccommodating. Children return home drained—physically and emotionally spent from holding it together all day. When my child made friends, she was deliberately separated from them in class to avoid their “disruption.” This was cruelty disguised as structure. Neurodivergent learners are misunderstood; their tools—bouncy balls, fidgets—are locked away. Their need for quieter spaces is accommodated with a small playhouse, which quickly becomes the busiest place in the classroom.
Systemic and structural failures
Systemically, the structure is designed to delay, deflect, and deny. Underfunding is used to justify everything, yet there is room for senior staff raises. Children with real, documented needs are denied designations. Parents are forced to escalate, appeal, or litigate just to access basic support. My son has had 30+ different people work directly with him in eight years. And yet, he’s never consistently had enough support. The door is constantly swinging. This is not continuity. This is chaos. The support worker who made the greatest difference in his life worked nights at a homeless shelter because her daytime wage at the school wasn’t enough to live on. She was worried about bed bugs and staying awake.
Technological barriers
Technological barriers reflect a failure of imagination. Devices that could enhance access—phones, voice dictation tools—are difficult to manage, as they may seem unfair to some students. Instead of teaching why some tools are helpful for everyone, but critical to some, these accommodations seem to often fall by the wayside. Schools are not preparing children for the real world, where AI is already reshaping how we work. For children with processing challenges, these tools can be transformative.
Toward a new standard
In every domain, the system clings to a standardised, compliance-driven model. It waits for children to break before it intervenes. It waits for parents to give up. For families to go away. And when we don’t—it punishes us for caring too much.
We need a shift. A radical reframe. Ask not whether a child qualifies for help. Ask what they need to fully participate. Stop measuring success by budget expenditure. Start measuring it by how engaged and empowered students feel. Meet their needs before they fall apart. Leave no one behind—not the child who cannot speak, not the parent who cannot wait any longer.
Inclusion that disappears under pressure was never inclusion. It was a promise unkept. It was a story told to comfort those who do not live the reality.
It’s time to write a new one.
