We weren’t trained for this. We were not briefed, warned, or prepared. We entered the public school system, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like most parents do—with trust, with hope, and with a belief, however weathered, in the promise that schools would try to do right by our children. What we didn’t understand was how quickly that promise could collapse under the weight of policy, funding shortfalls, and a culture of denial. And we had no idea how much we would need to learn just to survive it.
We weren’t trained for this
You expect to attend a parent-teacher conference, not become the manager of a multidisciplinary support plan. You expect to send your child to school, not to need a spreadsheet to track how many days they’ve gone without their legally required accommodations. You don’t think you need your own spreadsheet to track absences to contest the official records. You don’t think you need a spreadsheet to track the names and job titles of how many people work with your child because it will be too numerous to remember. You expect professionals to speak truthfully, clearly, and with care—but instead, you’re met with vague delays, shifting criteria, and the suffocating presence of maybe tomorrow.
“We didn’t include that note.”
“We’re doing our best.”
“It’s just a matter of staffing.”
Over time, you become the archivist of your child’s distress. The analyst of behavioural patterns. The person who knows exactly when the EA was away, what email went unanswered, and what the latest excuse will be. The person who—after weeks of silence—knows that copying the principal, or cc’ing the district, is the only way to get a response. You learn how to escalate.
Related terms
→ Parent burnout
→ Documentation burden
→ Goalpost shifting
→ Escalation anxiety
You learn how to sound less upset
There is a moment—many, actually—when your child is harmed and your outrage burns through the page. But then you learn. You learn that tone becomes the proxy for legitimacy. That if you sound too emotional, your concern is reinterpreted as instability. That if your email includes bold or italic or capitals, the team will talk about your tone instead of your child.
You learn to police your own expression. To rewrite your emails three, four, five times until they are dispassionate enough to be read. You become afraid of sounding angry, even when anger is the only sane response. Because you know what happens when parents are cast as difficult: they’re excluded, too. The Director of Inclusion calls you uncivil.
Related terms
→ Tone policing
→ Performative empathy
→ Parent as procedural proxy
→ Lip service
Our children are only legitimate when they suffer visibly enough
You start to realise that help only comes after collapse. If your child is quiet, if they mask, if they internalise their pain—no one sees a problem. In fact, they’re praised. They’re called resilient, or easy-going, or a pleasure to have in class. Their distress is only recognised when it becomes uncontainable.
This is the hidden logic of grievability. Some children’s suffering is legible. Others must prove they are broken to receive care. And when those others are autistic girls, racialised children, or disabled students with complex needs, the system’s blindness becomes cruelty.
Related terms
→ Grievability and legitimacy
→ Masking
→ Girls
→ Gatekeeping
The harm is the delay, the pattern, the cumulative denial
Harm in schools isn’t always about one moment. It is the slow erosion of trust. The knowledge that things could have been different if someone had acted sooner. It is watching your child’s joy vanish over weeks and months as they are surveilled, punished, restrained, excluded, and ignored.
When support finally arrives—if it ever does—it is too late. And yet that late arrival is used to deny that anything was wrong before. It’s as if the fire has been extinguished, and no one wants to talk about why the smoke alarms were turned off.
Related terms:
→ Institutional betrayal
→ Moral injury
→ School trauma
What we’ve learned the hard way
We have learned how the designation system fails. How documentation disappears. How meetings have little meaningful impact. How support is promised, delayed, and withdrawn. How harm is redefined as a misunderstanding. How schools insist that the problem is the child—or the parent—but never the system.
We have also learned to write. To record. To analyse patterns. To find each other. We have created digital trails that tell the truth, even when institutions won’t. And we have built our own glossary of harm—not theoretical, not abstract, but lived. We carry it with us every day.
Browse key concepts
→ Coercive proceduralism
→ Educational harm
→ Loss of faith in institutions
→ Disabled parenting
→ Survival strategies
And still, we are told there is no money
We are told that funding is tight. That inclusion is expensive. That there simply aren’t enough staff, enough hours, enough resources to support every child who needs it. But somehow there is always enough for consultants, for audits, for lawyers. There is enough to build new schools, but not enough to staff the ones we have. There is enough for restraint training, but not for trauma-informed care.
And I find myself asking: how have we come to accept this? How have we allowed the manufactured logic of scarcity to become so naturalised that we ration care like it’s a luxury item? How have we been convinced that our children’s access must be weighed against someone else’s convenience or budget line?
The truth is, we haven’t run out of money. We’ve run out of courage. We’ve run out of moral clarity. We’ve run out of time to keep pretending that exclusion is a neutral side effect instead of a policy choice.
