Home » About K12 complaints » Glossary
gaslighting
Distortion of facts to undermine parent credibility. Schools deny events parents witnessed, recharacterise documented incidents, claim parents misunderstood, or suggest parent anxiety is distorting perception. Gaslighting includes altering meeting minutes, claiming emails were never received, describing exclusion as accommodation, or positioning institutional harm as parent overreaction. Gaslighting destabilises families, erodes confidence, and forces them to question their own knowledge whilst schools maintain narratives that absolve them of accountability.
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Solving problems at school: accommodation and IEP failures
When a school fails to accommodate a disabled child, it rarely announces the failure plainly. The accommodation does not arrive; the IEP goal sits unimplemented through term after term; the education assistant’s hours are quietly reduced without consultation; the psychoeducational assessment…
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Solving problems at school: exclusion and removal
Exclusion takes many forms in BC schools, and most of them have been given names designed to obscure what they are. A “gradual entry plan” is a partial schedule. A “room clear” is the isolation of a disabled child in an…
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My autistic daughter masks at school and collapses afterwards. The school says she’s fine. How can I get help?
This page addresses what to do when your autistic daughter is camouflaging at school, experiencing significant distress at home, and the school is using her apparent coping as evidence that she requires no support. It covers the research on masking, the…
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What parents expect when they file a complaint
When a parent files a complaint about harm to their child, the system looks reassuring. There are policies.There are timelines.There are appeal levels.There are forms to fill out. On paper, it promises fairness and due process. But many parents quickly discover…
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District level remedies are temporary, exhausting, often for the comfort of staff
There’s a moment in every complaint process when the district hands you something and calls it a solution. A meeting. A plan. A support worker. A document promising to collaborate, reassess, and make sure your child’s needs are met. The language…
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Why do I feel like I’m being treated as the problem?
Why do I feel like I’m being treated as the problem? Systems that deny accommodation often shift scrutiny onto the parent once refusal becomes difficult to justify. Labelling parents as difficult functions to delegitimise advocacy and reduce accountability for denial. How…
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Am I being unreasonable or asking for too much?
Requesting legally required accommodation is not unreasonable. Feeling “too much” is a common effect of repeated denial, tone policing, and procedural delay—not a reflection of the legitimacy of your request. What the law guarantees The BC Human Rights Code establishes that every child…
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It’s not you: the system is designed to say no
There is a moment many parents recognise, usually sometime after the third or fourth meeting, when a quiet, unsettling thought appears: Maybe it really is me.Maybe I’m overreacting.Maybe I am asking for too much. If you’re a mother, the thought often…