Neurodiversity
A paradigm shift in understanding learning, behaviour, and support needs—centred on acceptance, not correction.
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Why I’m reviewing school codes of conduct
To the student who found this page because you typed something scared or confused or angry into a search bar—something like “are teachers allowed to take away recess?” or “can I be suspended for a meltdown?” or “why did my teacher say I wasn’t trying hard enough when I couldn’t stop crying”—this is for you.…
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Wait and see: a mother’s warning
Before kindergarten began, we told them—unequivocally, painstakingly, with as much specificity as we could muster—that our son had been harmed in daycare, that he had a long line of diagnoses and was awaiting an autism assessment, that his nervous system was thrashed, and that he would require sustained, full-day relational support in order to experience…
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We stand with BC teachers
The BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) has launched a new ad campaign ahead of the provincial election to spotlight BC’s worsening teacher shortage and demand urgent government action. The campaign, titled Hire More Teachers, features TV and digital ads showing the real impact on students and calls for a fully funded workforce strategy similar to health…
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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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Fight flight fawn freeze: surviving school
There are children who throw chairs when cornered, children who slip quietly out the door or hide behind the portable, children who don’t speak for hours, who go limp, who answer every question with “I don’t know,” and children who nod and smile and say “okay” to everything—until they collapse at home, trembling and broken,…
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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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How we change culture: From ashtrays to accountability in BC schools
Once, we smoked in office buildings. Not just on breaks or in private spaces—at desks, in meeting rooms, on airplanes. The haze of other people’s choices was something you had no right to escape. That was just how things were. Until it wasn’t. Now, the idea of someone lighting a cigarette during a staff meeting…
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Columneetza Junior Secondary (SD27 Cariboo‑Chilcotin): a neurodiversity‑informed conduct critique
Columneetza Junior Secondary School 2024-2025 Code of Conduct affirms a mission of fostering respect, individual growth, and a sense of belonging within both school and community. It names safety, caring, and order as essential conditions for “purposeful learning.” The document outlines rights, responsibilities, and behavioural expectations for students and broader school actors, including parents and…
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Just when it starts working, they take it away
The cruelty of temporary support in BC schools. There is a particular kind of cruelty in getting what your child needs—finally—and knowing it will be taken away. In the fall of 2017, our family reached a breaking point. Our child Robin was refusing school, destroying the classroom, and coming home dysregulated and despondent. The school…
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She graduated and this is what she learned
On raising a badass advocate, unintentionally. I didn’t set out to raise an advocate—I set out to raise a child. A child who might feel safe in her body and steady in her breath, who might look out at the world and feel drawn toward it rather than braced against it, who might trust her…
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The path to justice: legal versus public record
The courts may offer compensation, but rarely truth. The legal path demands silence in exchange for settlement. The public path asks you to speak while you’re still bleeding. Neither is easy. But only one builds a record that helps the next family survive.
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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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The bait and switch: What inclusion really looks like at the VSB
Every September, I walk into school meetings with the same cautious hope. We’ve done everything right. The diagnoses are up to date. The IEP is in place. The reports are filed — more than thirty of them over the years, from audiologists, psychiatrists, speech-language pathologists, behaviour consultants, and occupational therapists. You’d think that would mean…
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The end of the school year never feels like a celebration
We are scouring the comments for signs that our kids are OK. Supported. Happy. Trying not to spiral when we read ‘developing’ or ’emerging’ or don’t see the words, ‘It was a pleasure to have your child in my class this year.
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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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We shouldn’t be enemies
I took my daughter for a manicure this week. She’s graduating from grade 7. A milestone. A moment that felt almost ordinary—slideshow, applause, plastic chairs, nervous grins—and yet there was nothing ordinary about what it took to get there. Vocabulary for what happened Class change She spent seven months of this school year outside the…
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On graduation and the grievability of disabled children
I’ll try to be normal at my daughter’s graduation, even as I grieve a system that quietly erased her twin and expects no one to notice.
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If I could: A letter to my daughter before another school meeting
If I could catch you before you fall, I would. If I could make them understand—make them see you as you truly are—I would. You are doing so well, in so many ways. If I could make you feel the pride you deserve, the pride I feel when I look at you, I would. But…
