“But They’re Fine Once They’re There”: When School Sees a Different Child
“They’re fine once they’re here.”
If your child is struggling with school, there’s a good chance you’ve heard those words at some point. They are often meant to reassure you, but when you’ve just spent an hour or two trying to help your child leave the house, they can feel anything but reassuring.
Because school didn’t see the morning you just experienced.
They didn’t see your child struggling to get out of bed, the tummy ache that appeared when school was mentioned, the uniform that suddenly felt unbearable or the tears when it was time to put shoes on. They didn’t see your child hiding upstairs, becoming angry over something that appeared tiny, repeatedly needing the toilet or becoming completely stuck when it was time to leave. They might not know that you sat in the car outside school for 40 minutes, trying to help your child feel able to take that final step through the gate.
School sees the child who eventually arrives.
And sometimes, that child really does look “fine”.
They might walk into the classroom, speak to their teacher, sit down, complete some work and even laugh with their friends. From the outside, there may be very little to suggest what it took to get them there.
Both experiences can be true.
Your child can appear to manage once they are inside school and still be finding school incredibly hard.
Attendance tells us where their feet are. It doesn’t tell us what it cost their body to get there.
When school becomes difficult, it is understandable that attendance becomes the thing everybody focuses on. How many mornings did they manage this week? How long did they stay? Could we add another lesson? Could we increase by another half an hour next week?
Those things can give us useful information, but attendance alone does not tell us whether a child has the capacity to manage what is being asked of them.
A child can physically be in school while their nervous system is working incredibly hard to keep them there. They may be managing noise, movement, bright classrooms, social expectations, transitions, uncertainty, sensory discomfort, learning demands and the constant effort of working out what is expected of them. Some children may also be masking their distress in order to get through the day.
This is why one of the questions I encourage parents to move away from is simply, “Did they manage it?”
Instead, start asking, “What did managing it cost?”
That question gives us a very different picture of what is happening.
Think about your child’s capacity like a battery
Imagine your child starts each morning with a battery. We might assume that battery is fully charged after a night’s sleep, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Poor sleep may already have taken some charge. Waking up and anticipating school may take some more. Then there is getting dressed, tolerating clothes or uniform, managing breakfast, noise in the house, finding everything they need, leaving home and making the journey to school.
For some children, a significant amount of their battery may have already been used before they even reach the school gate.
Then the school day begins.
There are people, noise, smells, movement and transitions. There are lessons to follow, instructions to process, questions to answer and social situations to navigate. There may be unpredictable changes, difficult sensory environments, busy lunch halls, uncomfortable toilets or a constant need to work out what is happening next. If a child is masking how difficult they are finding all of this, that requires energy too.
None of those things will drain every child’s battery in the same way. A busy lunch hall might barely register for one child and use an enormous amount of another child’s capacity. A change of teacher may be manageable for one child but create significant uncertainty for another.
That is why there is no single answer to the question, “Why is my child finding school hard?”
We have to understand the individual child.
Why do they fall apart when they get home?
This is where things can become particularly confusing for families.
School might tell you they have had a good day. Your child has completed their work, followed instructions, spoken to friends and perhaps even appeared happy. Then they walk through the front door and everything changes.
Suddenly, the smallest request causes an explosion. They might shout, cry, argue with siblings or become unable to tolerate anybody speaking to them. Other children withdraw completely. They head straight to their bedroom, put headphones on, game for hours, watch the same programme repeatedly or need the world around them to become very small and predictable.
Parents can understandably begin to wonder why school seems to get one version of their child while home gets another.
But I want us to be careful about interpreting this as a child “behaving for school” and then choosing not to behave at home.
Instead, ask what their body has had to do to get through the day.
Some children are incredibly skilled at holding themselves together in environments where they feel they need to. When they eventually reach a place or a person where their nervous system feels safer, that effort can no longer be maintained.
The behaviour you see at home is therefore not irrelevant simply because school hasn’t witnessed it.
It is information.
It may be telling us something incredibly important about the cost of coping.
“Fine” isn’t a measure of capacity
When we are trying to understand whether something is manageable for a child, we need to look at more than the moment itself.
I encourage families to think about three parts of the experience: before, during and after.
What happened before school? How much support did your child need to get there? What body clues or protective behaviours were you seeing?
What happened during school? What demands were they managing? Were there particular lessons, environments, transitions or relationships that seemed to make things easier or harder?
And then, importantly, what happened afterwards? Did they still have capacity for ordinary family life? Could they eat, talk, play or connect? Did they need hours of recovery? Did they manage one day of school but have very little capacity the following day?
When we put all three pieces together, we get a much richer understanding of whether something is actually sustainable.
Two children could both attend school for exactly two hours.
One might come home, have something to eat, play and continue with their day.
The other might come home completely depleted, unable to tolerate conversation and need the following day to recover.
On an attendance sheet those experiences look identical.
To the nervous system, they are very different.
This matters when we start talking about increasing attendance
If the only information being used to make decisions is, “They managed three mornings last week”, it can be tempting to assume the obvious next step is four mornings.
But before increasing anything, we need to understand what those three mornings actually looked like.
What did it take to get your child there? How much support was required? What helped? What drained their battery? Were they able to participate while they were there? What happened when they came home? Was their capacity relatively stable across the week, or did it gradually disappear?
Increasing attendance simply because a child survived the previous level can create a cycle where we repeatedly push until the nervous system cannot manage any more, reduce again following a crash and then begin building back up.
That isn’t the kind of progress I want families to be aiming for.
The goal is not to discover the maximum amount of school a child can tolerate before everything falls apart.
The goal is to understand what helps participation become increasingly safe, manageable and sustainable.
So what can parents do with this information?
If school sees a very different child from the one you see at home, try not to get pulled into proving which version of your child is the “real” one.
They are both real.
Instead, start building the whole picture.
Notice what happens before school and where things begin to become difficult. Think about what seems to drain your child’s battery and what helps to recharge it. Look at the parts of the school day that seem particularly costly. Pay attention to what happens afterwards and how long recovery takes.
Then bring that information into conversations with school.
Rather than only saying, “They’re struggling to come in”, you can begin describing the pattern: what happens before arrival, where the biggest barriers seem to be, what you are seeing in your child’s body and behaviour, and what happens following attendance.
This changes the conversation from simply asking, “How do we get them through the gate?” to asking, “What is making getting through the gate so difficult, and what could we change?”
That is a much more useful place to begin.
But understanding is only the beginning
This is often where parents tell me they become stuck.
Once you start understanding behaviour differently, you can see that simply increasing attendance isn't necessarily the answer. You can recognise that your child needs recovery, safety and support around the things that are draining their capacity.
But you are still left making some incredibly difficult decisions.
Do I encourage them today or do they need more recovery? Are we reducing pressure appropriately or avoiding something they are ready to approach? Should school expectations change? When do we hold where we are? When is it time to take another step? And how do I communicate all of this to school when everybody seems to be looking at the situation from a different angle?
There isn't one answer I can give every family, because there isn't one nervous system, one sensory profile or one school experience.
And this is exactly why I created the InnerMe School Recovery Roadmap.
It is an 8-week live parent coaching programme where we take this understanding and apply it to your individual child.
Together, we look at what is happening underneath their behaviour, their nervous system, sensory processing and interoception, what is draining their capacity, what recovery looks like for them and what needs to change around them. We strengthen your confidence in communicating and advocating with school, and we bring all of that information together to build your child’s individual Recovery Roadmap.
This isn't an eight-week promise to “get your child back to school”.
Recovery is far more individual than that.
It is about moving from constantly thinking:
“I don't know if I'm doing the right thing.”
towards:
“I understand what is happening. I know what my child needs right now. And I know what we're working towards next.”
The first School Recovery Roadmap cohort begins 14th September and is limited to 15 families because of the live coaching and individual support involved.
The investment is £660, or 6 monthly payments of £110.
Because getting through the school gate doesn't necessarily mean your child is coping.
Sometimes, the most important information comes from understanding what it cost their body to get there.
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