Rethinking Education Conference: Pedagogy, Practice and Putting Children First

Within every cohort of school children who are engaging, learning and appearing content in school are countless neurodivergent children. They may be absolutely indistinguishable; you may not even know who they are. They are ‘coping well’. So when parents and carers report high anxiety and constant meltdowns at home, and flag up high concerns about mental health it may be very hard to make sense of. The truth is that the price of portraying a perfect neurotypical image is too high for any young person to bear for any length of time. The strain of monitoring every utterance, every facial expression, every action and repressing basic needs goes beyond what is supportable. So why don’t they ‘stop masking?’ and ‘tell us when they feel anxious?’ Because that would be worse. The need to fit in and belong is a basic human need, and from day one, autistic and other neurodivergent young people feel outsiders. The way they learn, play and behave is ‘different’ and the reactions they get from often well meaning staff and peers tell them so. Receiving stickers on their reward chart for sitting still and going to assembly confirms it. By the time an autistic child is in year 4 they mask so automatically and unconsciously they don’t know how to stop. But the statistics are showing us it is breaking their mental health, and sometimes irreparably.

This presentation looks at how we can reduce the need for neurodivergent pupils to mask in school. How we can tell when a pupil is masking, and what we can do to support them so that their mental heath does not suffer further.