Autism
Posts tagged with autism centre autistic perspectives and lived experience in education. We address how school systems respond to autistic students—through inclusion, exclusion, accommodation, or erasure—and examine how ableism, behavioural norms, and compliance culture shape those responses. Topics include diagnostic access, IEP design, sensory and communication supports, masking, burnout, and the urgent need for neurodiversity-affirming practices
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Becoming neurodiversity affirming means listening to Autistic people—not managing them
Too many school-based approaches still centre on control: eye contact, quiet hands, forced compliance, and the suppression of stimming, protest, or joy. But Autistic advocates have been clear: these methods may produce short-term behavioural conformity, but they come at the cost of safety, trust, and long-term mental health. Compliance is not connection. Masking is not…
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Forgiveness, or whatever comes after disbelief
A friend asked me recently why I hadn’t filed more external complaints—human rights complaints, formal grievances, legal action. And it’s true. I should have. There were so many moments where I could have, where I had grounds to. And I believe deeply in the importance of external complaints. I’ve written about them. I’ve supported other…
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To the neurodivergent kid who got blamed
Worried your mistake might get your whole class punished? That fear isn’t yours to carry. Here’s why—and what you can do.
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Apparently, starving yourself isn’t a serious mental health condition in VSB
There is a kind of harm that unfolds slowly — a hunger that accumulates across weeks and months, tucked beneath the surface of routines and well-meaning systems. My daughter is autistic, has ADHD, and a feeding disorder called ARFID. She eats quietly, cautiously, in ways that make sense to her nervous system. Her paediatrician recommended…
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Not sick. Not fine. Not supported. Sexism in Vancouver School Board.
They said she was doing well. They said it with the softness of authority — that practiced tone that suggests neutrality while sidestepping consequence — a tone I’ve come to recognise as institutional, not personal, and absolutely not maternal. They said she was fine because she was quiet. Because she didn’t scream. Because she didn’t…
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What would it really cost to fix the problem?
We talk so much about the cost of inclusion—as if it’s indulgent, optional, something that must be justified—but we rarely talk about the cost of exclusion. And those costs are everywhere: in emergency rooms, in overburdened case files, in classrooms where distress goes unseen. When schools can’t support disabled students, families fall apart trying to…
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The poison of silence: on complicity, healing, and speaking the truth
I had so much pain stuck in my chest and throat. Cancelled screams. Unsaid truths. Every meeting where I stayed quiet, every time I swallowed my words to seem reasonable, every time I hoped that portraying myself a certain way might stop my children from being harmed—those moments didn’t disappear. They got stuck. I stopped…
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Grace and the weight of a meeting
I felt so hopeless in that meeting. Underneath all the patronising words and well-meaning smiles, I could feel the same machinery at work—the one that asks disabled children to be gracious in the face of dismissal, polite in the face of erasure, composed in the face of harm. “We’d ask if Jeannie could show a…
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Maybe tomorrow: reflections on goal post shifting and the economics of access
There were accommodations on paper and endless lip-service meetings. But none of it happened in the classroom. And every time we did what was asked—another intake, another form, another plan—the goalpost moved again. We weren’t asking for miracles. We were asking to be seen as disabled. And instead, we were told to be more positive,…
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Revoking recess as a form of collective punishment
Rules intended for safety become instruments of collective punishment when they erase unstructured play from the school day, compounding distress for children who rely on movement, predictability and sensory regulation. this post examines the disproportionate impact on neurodivergent learners and proposes targeted interventions that preserve every child’s right to play and learn.
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“Too much”: on allergy, autism, and the systemic erasure of care
There is a quiet solidarity among parents whose children are considered too much for school. Some of us carry medical kits. Others carry binders of psychological assessments. But all of us carry the same invisible burden: a system that treats our children’s needs as optional—and our vigilance as overreaction. This is the story of two…
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Real leaders lead by example
In May 2025, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) quietly enacted wage cuts that stripped contracted workers—specifically bus drivers and special education attendants—of their living wage top-ups. At the same time, VSB senior leadership quietly accepted significant raises. This decision will result in a 25% wage reduction, with drivers earning $23/hour and attendants only $20/hour [CTV…
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Regulation isn’t colouring a box: how neurotypical emotion models can harm autistic kids
The Zones of Regulation chart is made of four tidy boxes—blue, green, orange, red—a short list of emotions, each offering the illusion of clarity, simplicity, legibility. It’s a system that looks soft, friendly, and progressive, but that often functions as a mechanism for shaping children’s expressions to fit the comfort and control needs of adults,…
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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.
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Rot at the root: Why POPARD must be dismantled from the top down
When I first objected to the strategies POPARD proposed, I tried—truly—to assume good intent: that if I just gave them the right information, the clearest language, the most generous interpretation of their mandate, they would course-correct and stop pushing reward charts onto an already-traumatised child. I wrote careful emails, cited the psychologist’s diagnosis, offered specific…
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Collective punishment: unjust in schools, unjust everywhere
Collective punishment—punishing a group for the actions of an individual—is widely recognised as a violation of human rights. It is condemned in international law, yet it persists in various forms worldwide. From China’s persecution of human rights defenders’ families to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the Taliban’s illogical governance, collective punishment disproportionately harms innocent people.…
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Parenting through gaslighting and grief
In the early days, our relationship was luminous, almost feverishly bright with attention and agreement and what I understood then as love—its intensity, its precision, the way it seemed to reach for every part of me, even the parts I kept hidden, even the ones I feared were too strange or fragile to show. I…
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Shut it down: Why POPARD cannot be trusted to support neurodivergent children
We asked for help.We got a behaviour chart. We invited experts into our child’s life, hoping they would help school staff understand his anxiety, his trauma responses, his fiercely sensitive nervous system. We asked for relational strategies grounded in respect and attunement. We shared research. We named his diagnosis. We explained, in plain terms, what…
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Profound loss amplifies calls for better training
I was in the car with my children when I first heard the story of Chase, the 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police, in Surrey. It’s deeply distressing to hear this, knowing full well that my kids are recalibrating their worldview. Kids can be shot. My children sometimes process auditory information more…
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She’s agonised inside and that doesn’t count?
Much of this unfolded in 2022 and 2023, during a period when my daughter remained undiagnosed as autistic, unsupported in any formal way, and largely invisible to the school system. The patterns described here continue to shape our lives. In this essay, you’ll hear the cautious hope I carried—that a formal diagnosis would unlock the…
