Here is a definition of the terminology used on this site.

• behaviourism: Behaviourism is the theoretical foundation underlying many coercive school practices, from applied behaviour analysis (ABA) to token economies, reward-and-punishment discipline systems, and compliance-based IEP goals that treat a child's natural responses to distress as targets for extinction. On this site, the tag marks content examining how behaviourist frameworks reduce children to observable outputs, strip meaning from behaviour, and authorise adults to override a child's autonomy, communication, and self-protective instincts in pursuit of conformity. Posts under this tag explore how behaviourism operates in schools through rigid behaviour plans, room clears, partial schedules, restraint, seclusion, and the quiet daily coercion of children whose neurology is treated as a problem to be managed rather than a way of being to be understood. The tag connects specific practices to the ideology that legitimises them, drawing on disability justice scholarship, autistic community knowledge, and critical research that identifies behaviourism — particularly ABA — as a system of control that produces compliance at the cost of selfhood, safety, and psychological integrity. Where schools frame these interventions as support, this site names them as harm. Learn more
• broken promises: Commitments made by schools that are not followed through. Includes verbal assurances given in meetings that never materialise in practice, action items documented in minutes that remain incomplete, accommodations promised in IEPs that are never implemented, and timelines for resolution that pass without acknowledgment. Broken promises erode trust, extend harm, and serve as evidence of institutional unwillingness to address concerns, often forcing families toward formal complaint processes. Learn more
• bullying: Bullying is a fraught term in the context of disability and education, and this site uses the tag with deliberate caution. Neurodivergent children are simultaneously more vulnerable to being bullied and more likely to be labelled the bully, and both positions share a common root: the deficit between the support a child needs and the support a school provides. Children who require scaffolding around social and emotional learning, regulation, executive functioning, and impulse control are set up for crisis when that scaffolding is absent, and the resulting behaviour is then reframed as a character problem rather than a resourcing failure. When schools make bullying about niceness rather than about the structural conditions that shape how children treat one another — staffing, supervision, accommodation, explicit instruction in social communication — they collapse nuance in ways that serve exclusion. Posts under this tag examine how bullying frameworks interact with disability, exploring the ways schools use bullying language to pathologise neurodivergent behaviour, to justify removal, or to avoid accountability for the environmental conditions that produced the conflict. The tag also covers the experiences of disabled children who are targeted by peers, particularly where institutional indifference to that targeting compounds the harm. Learn more
• bureaucratic harm: Bureaucratic harm is used for content about the emotional, relational, and embodied effects of educational conflict, exclusion, and chronic institutional stress. On k12complaints.ca, harm is not treated as a side issue separate from policy or legal process. It is understood as part of the evidence of what schools, districts, and systems do to children and families when needs are ignored, support is delayed, or distress is managed through punishment and removal. This tag may appear in posts about fear, grief, burnout, trauma, shame, recovery, or the long tail of educational harm after a crisis has supposedly ended. It also captures how repeated advocacy demands can affect family life, trust in institutions, nervous system regulation, and a child’s sense of safety, dignity, and belonging. Learn more
• burnout: Burnout is used for content about the emotional, relational, and embodied effects of educational conflict, exclusion, and chronic institutional stress. On k12complaints.ca, harm is not treated as a side issue separate from policy or legal process. It is understood as part of the evidence of what schools, districts, and systems do to children and families when needs are ignored, support is delayed, or distress is managed through punishment and removal. This tag may appear in posts about fear, grief, burnout, trauma, shame, recovery, or the long tail of educational harm after a crisis has supposedly ended. It also captures how repeated advocacy demands can affect family life, trust in institutions, nervous system regulation, and a child’s sense of safety, dignity, and belonging. Learn more
• camouflaging: Camouflaging is used on k12complaints.ca for content about neurodivergence, disability, learning differences, and the ways schools respond to students whose needs do not fit narrow norms. In education, these issues are never only about diagnosis; they are also about communication, sensory environments, executive functioning, regulation, stigma, and the supports a student needs in order to access learning and belong. This tag may appear in posts about accommodation, exclusion, behavioural interpretation, masking, assessment, late identification, and the mismatch between a child’s needs and institutional expectations. It is also used when challenging deficit-based assumptions that treat difference as a problem to control rather than a reality the school must understand and accommodate with dignity, flexibility, and meaningful support. Learn more
• cancelled field trips: Cancelled field trips are one of the mechanisms through which schools exclude disabled children from full participation in their learning community, and they operate through a logic that makes exclusion appear practical rather than discriminatory. Posts under this tag document the specific ways schools withdraw, alter, or condition access to field trips: cancelling outings and citing a lack of resources, telling parents they must attend as a condition of their child's participation, instructing a child to stay home on field trip day, redesigning the entire class plan around one child's accommodation needs in ways that make that child's disability visible to every peer, not getting the permission slip home to families where the child lacks executive functioning, or calling a parent to collect their child mid-excursion. Each of these practices transfers the school's resourcing failure onto the family and the child, reframing an institutional obligation as a parental responsibility or a logistical impossibility. The tag also captures how cancelled field trips function as collective punishment, where the withdrawal of an activity the whole class anticipated is attributed, implicitly or explicitly, to the presence of a child whose needs the school chose to leave unsupported. What looks like a scheduling decision is often a disciplinary one, and what looks like caution is often exclusion wearing a permission slip. Learn more
• capacity theft: Capacity theft describes the systematic transfer of institutional obligation onto families when schools fail to meet a disabled child's needs, consuming the finite energy, time, and resources that families need to sustain their own lives. Posts under this tag examine how schools steal bandwidth from families in multiple directions: children who arrive home depleted, dysregulated, and unable to cope because their school day lacked meaningful access or accommodation, forcing families to absorb the regulatory and emotional labour the school refused to resource; endless meetings, administrative hurdles, and bureaucratic processes that consume parental capacity under the guise of collaboration; and the imposition of prerequisites — private assessments, specialist referrals, therapeutic activities, behaviour tracking — that families must complete before the school will provide the support it already owes. Each of these practices treats family capacity as an inexhaustible subsidy for institutional failure. A disabled child's right to educational access exists at the schoolhouse door; families carry no legal obligation to perform supplementary labour outside of school as a condition of their child receiving adequate support within it. Capacity theft names the mechanism through which schools externalise their resourcing deficits onto the people least able to absorb them, ensuring that institutional underfunding is experienced as private exhaustion. Learn more
• child abuse: Child abuse is a term this site uses with precision and without apology. The tag marks content examining practices and conditions within BC schools that cross the threshold from inadequate support into genuine harm — recognising that the line between systemic neglect and abuse is one that institutions have every incentive to obscure. Posts under this tag explore how restraint, seclusion, repeated humiliation, deliberate isolation, and the sustained withdrawal of accommodation can constitute abuse when inflicted on children whose distress a school has chosen to manage rather than understand. The tag also encompasses the harm that arrives through institutional failures of supervision: children who are sexually touched, physically targeted, or systematically tormented by peers when the adults responsible for their safety have been withdrawn, understaffed, or simply absent. When a school knows a child is vulnerable, fails to resource the supervision and support that vulnerability requires, and that child is harmed by another student, the school's negligence is inseparable from the harm itself. The tag further holds space for the slower damage: the cumulative weight of years spent in environments hostile to a child's neurology, where daily dysregulation, exclusion, and the erosion of selfhood compound into something that cannot honestly be called anything else. Learn more
• child protection: Learn more
• classroom exclusion: Classroom exclusion is used for content about school practices, student support systems, and day-to-day educational conditions that affect whether children can safely and meaningfully participate in learning. On k12complaints.ca, this often includes discussion of accommodation, exclusion, discipline, supervision, behaviour management, educational planning, and the practical consequences of school decisions for students and families. Some posts use this tag to examine a specific tool or practice; others use it to question how ordinary school routines can become barriers when they are rigid, punitive, or disconnected from a child’s actual needs. The tag helps connect individual incidents to larger patterns in school culture, staffing, policy implementation, and accountability, especially where educational access is limited by institutional convenience or narrow behavioural expectations. Learn more
• coercive control: Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour used to dominate another person by restricting their freedom, undermining their credibility, and creating fear of consequences for speaking or acting independently. Unlike isolated incidents of conflict, coercive control operates through ongoing tactics such as intimidation, manipulation, monitoring, isolation, financial pressure, or reputational harm. The goal is not a single outcome but long-term power over the other person’s choices and voice. In school advocacy contexts, coercive control can extend beyond the home. When a parent—often the mother—raises concerns about a child’s rights or accommodations, schools may unintentionally reinforce existing power imbalances. Institutions sometimes favour the quieter or more compliant parent, interpret safety concerns as “conflict,” or rely on a narrative of neutrality that treats both parents’ accounts as equally credible. For a parent already navigating coercive dynamics, this can replicate familiar patterns of gaslighting and discrediting. Fear of retaliation from a former partner may be overlooked or used against the advocating parent, while the child’s needs become entangled in adult power struggles. Understanding coercive control helps schools recognise when “parent disagreement” may actually involve a pattern of domination that affects both the parent’s ability to advocate and the child’s access to appropriate educational support. Learn more
• coercive proceduralism: Use of procedures to delay, control, or exhaust families. Schools weaponise meetings, forms, assessments, and protocols to create the appearance of responsiveness whilst avoiding substantive change. Families face endless requests for more documentation, repeated meetings that circle without resolution, mandatory waiting periods for assessments already completed, and procedural requirements that consume time and energy whilst their child continues to experience harm, abandonment, or exclusion. Learn more
• collaboration: Collaboration in education refers to schools and families working together to support a student’s learning, safety, and well-being. In inclusive education policy, collaboration means sharing information, listening to family knowledge about the child, and making timely decisions that lead to concrete supports, accommodations, or changes in practice. True collaboration produces action. It results in agreed-upon steps, implemented accommodations, or adjustments to programming that improve the student’s access to education. In practice, however, the language of collaboration is sometimes used in ways that place a disproportionate burden on families. Parents may be asked to attend repeated meetings, provide extensive documentation, complete tasks, or participate in long discussions without any meaningful change occurring for their child. When meetings generate conversation but no decisions, timelines, or implementation, the process can become a drain on family time, energy, and emotional resources. For collaboration to be meaningful, meetings should focus on what concrete change can occur as a result of the discussion—such as implementing accommodations, adjusting supports, or resolving barriers to learning. If no action is possible, the meeting may be informational, but it should not be framed as collaborative problem-solving. Learn more
• collective punishment: Collective punishment occurs when a group of students is disciplined or restricted because of the behaviour of one or a few individuals. Instead of addressing the specific circumstances or needs involved, consequences are applied broadly—such as cancelling activities, restricting recess, removing privileges, or isolating an entire class. In schools, collective punishment is sometimes used as a behaviour management strategy intended to encourage peer accountability. However, it can create harmful dynamics, particularly for disabled students. When a child’s behaviour is connected to disability, communication differences, or dysregulation, group penalties can quickly turn classmates into enforcers. Peers may pressure, blame, or exclude the student perceived to have “caused” the punishment. This approach can intensify stigma, isolation, and bullying while failing to address the underlying needs driving the behaviour. For students who require accommodations, regulation support, or environmental adjustments, collective punishment replaces problem-solving with fear and social pressure. Effective behaviour support focuses on identifying barriers, providing appropriate accommodations, and teaching regulation and communication skills. Addressing behaviour at its source supports both the individual student and the wider classroom community, without placing the burden of discipline on the group. Learn more
• compensation: Compensation refers to remedies provided when a student has been harmed because a school failed to meet its legal obligations—particularly the duty to accommodate disability and provide equitable access to education. When discrimination or significant failures occur, compensation may be ordered to recognise the impact on the student and family and to help repair the harm. Compensation can take different forms. In some cases, it may include financial damages awarded through a legal process such as a human rights complaint. In other situations, compensation may involve practical remedies designed to restore lost opportunities—for example, additional services, tutoring, counselling, or funding for supports that were not provided when they should have been. Many families do not realise that harm caused by a school system can give rise to compensation. When accommodations are repeatedly not implemented, when a student is excluded from learning because their disability-related needs were ignored, or when a child experiences significant psychological harm linked to discrimination, legal remedies may be available. Compensation is not about punishment. It is a recognition that the student experienced a loss—educational, emotional, or developmental—and that systems have a responsibility to repair that harm as much as possible. Learn more
• complaint: Complaint refers to a legal, procedural, or accountability concept that can shape how families respond when a child’s needs are not being met at school. On k12complaints.ca, this tag is used for content about documentation, timelines, complaint strategy, decision-making processes, and the formal pathways available when internal problem-solving fails. Depending on the issue, that may include district complaints, human rights processes, Ombudsperson review, access-to-information requests, professional regulation, or questions about evidence and remedies. The tag is not limited to legal theory; it also captures the practical reality of navigating systems that can be slow, technical, and emotionally demanding. Posts using this tag often focus on how procedure affects access to justice, educational access, and the balance of power between families and institutions. Learn more
• complaint pathways: Complaint pathways refers to a legal, procedural, or accountability concept that can shape how families respond when a child’s needs are not being met at school. On k12complaints.ca, this tag is used for content about documentation, timelines, complaint strategy, decision-making processes, and the formal pathways available when internal problem-solving fails. Depending on the issue, that may include district complaints, human rights processes, Ombudsperson review, access-to-information requests, professional regulation, or questions about evidence and remedies. The tag is not limited to legal theory; it also captures the practical reality of navigating systems that can be slow, technical, and emotionally demanding. Posts using this tag often focus on how procedure affects access to justice, educational access, and the balance of power between families and institutions. Learn more
• complaint process: Complaint process refers to a legal, procedural, or accountability concept that can shape how families respond when a child’s needs are not being met at school. On k12complaints.ca, this tag is used for content about documentation, timelines, complaint strategy, decision-making processes, and the formal pathways available when internal problem-solving fails. Depending on the issue, that may include district complaints, human rights processes, Ombudsperson review, access-to-information requests, professional regulation, or questions about evidence and remedies. The tag is not limited to legal theory; it also captures the practical reality of navigating systems that can be slow, technical, and emotionally demanding. Posts using this tag often focus on how procedure affects access to justice, educational access, and the balance of power between families and institutions. Learn more
• complaint types: Complaint types refers to a legal, procedural, or accountability concept that can shape how families respond when a child’s needs are not being met at school. On k12complaints.ca, this tag is used for content about documentation, timelines, complaint strategy, decision-making processes, and the formal pathways available when internal problem-solving fails. Depending on the issue, that may include district complaints, human rights processes, Ombudsperson review, access-to-information requests, professional regulation, or questions about evidence and remedies. The tag is not limited to legal theory; it also captures the practical reality of navigating systems that can be slow, technical, and emotionally demanding. Posts using this tag often focus on how procedure affects access to justice, educational access, and the balance of power between families and institutions. Learn more