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clarity
Clarity is what comes after self-doubt. These posts are about understanding the systems you’re navigating — not just what they say they do, but how they actually operate when a child needs support. We look closely at language, incentives, and power, and trace how reasonable parents end up confused, worn down, or questioning themselves. If you’ve ever left a meeting thinking I agreed to that, but I don’t know why, this space is for you.
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Humiliation harm: the invisible injury in schools
Many school harms leave no visible mark; they are social injuries, moments when a child’s distress becomes a spectacle and their dignity becomes collateral damage. For disabled students, particularly autistic children, those with ADHD, and those navigating trauma or anxiety, humiliation…
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My child is being excluded from class: room clears and partial schedules
If your child is regularly sent home early, placed on a shortened day, or repeatedly left alone in a classroom while other children are moved out, they are being excluded from education. Schools in BC sometimes present these arrangements as support…
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When does lack of support become child abuse?
There is a moment — and every parent of a disabled child in a BC school has felt it, even if they could not yet articulate it — when the institutional explanation for your child’s suffering stops making sense. The school…
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Don’t wait for an apology to heal
The apology is probably not coming. It is worth saying plainly, before anything else, because so much of what keeps families suspended in the aftermath of institutional harm is the unspoken anticipation of it — the sense that healing cannot properly…
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How districts redirect—and how to stop them
When families request accommodation, districts rarely respond by addressing the child’s needs directly. Instead, they shift the focus. Each response often moves attention away from your child and toward institutional constraints, systemic limits, or behavioural justifications for denial. This redirection is…
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The token parent: hoping you’ll be the lucky one
You arrive at the school believing something very specific. If you are just reasonable enough, grateful enough, cooperative enough, your child will be selected. Selected from among all the struggling disabled children. Selected as the one who deserves rescue. You see…
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Trust without evidence: when administrators demand faith while demonstrating unreliability
“You need to trust us more.” This is one of the most common refrains parents hear when they begin documenting harm. It is rarely said once.It is said repeatedly, across meetings, emails, and phone calls—until skepticism itself is framed as the…
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Won’t a complaint light my relationship with the school on fire?
You fear the complaint will destroy everything, that the moment you file formal paperwork the teacher who seemed to care will stop returning emails, that the principal who promised to help will suddenly become unreachable, that your child will pay the…
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When one child’s support becomes everyone else’s denial
School districts often respond to requests for accommodation with a story about scarcity. They explain that resources are limited, that they must prioritise the “most disabled,” and that providing intensive support to one child necessarily means taking it away from another.…