My seven-year-old son is brilliant at school. Getting him through the door is destroying us both.
Why mainstream schools are failing neurodivergent children, and why even privileged families are barely coping
These pieces started as a way to process what was happening: the school that couldn’t see him, the system that wouldn’t help, the burnout that nearly broke me. I realised other families were going through the same thing, in silence — and decided to share. I write with AI as therapy and thinking tool, linking lived experience to the mechanisms behind it, challenging the status quo, and designing kinder systems.
All my writing is published on Medium. These are the most relevant pieces on the SEND system, system change, and my lived experience:
The system failed us
A neurodivergent child, years of asking for help, and the legal duties that were never triggered
The ADHD diagnosis felt like an answer. It wasn’t.
What one morning in our house taught me about nature, nurture, and why the diagnosis is just the start
Every toy sold in the UK must prove it does no harm. A child’s SEN Support Plan does not.
His SEN Support Plan said he was fine at lining up. At home we were in crisis.
Invisible
A neurodivergent child, family members who decided our parenting was the problem, and everything they never saw
A letter to the Department for Education: I have lived the SEND system you are reforming. Here is what needs to change.
Your experience is evidence. The Government is consulting on SEND reform. Hold them to that.
Survival mode: the impossible maths of neurodivergent parenting
Raising a neurodivergent child shows just how urgently families like ours need more support
The invisible work of appearing normal: what autistic masking really feels like
Understanding the invisible labour of autistic masking through my own late diagnosis and watching my children
This is what a ‘simple’ English lesson actually feels like when you’re dyslexic, autistic, and ADHD
A thought experiment in sensory and cognitive overload
