Advocacy for Education is not an attack on Educators

Whenever I write or speak about barriers to education for autistic children, or inaccessibility, or childism or discrimination, I am always met by those interpreting my lived experience as a direct attack on educators or other professionals.

It’s tiring and nonsensical.

Why must the families of neurodivergent children always be so hypervigilant about the way in which we outpour our grief, our fear, our lamenting over the loss of a quality of life our children have a right to?

Why is it more important for us to choose our words carefully, add caveats and preambles ensuring anyone listening or reading knows it isn’t personal and is a sharing of our experience? Why must we constantly be in the position of needing to clear the space to be held for us, while simultaneously being armed with the same shield we use when we simply ask for our children to be seen and heard?

Recently someone remarked that I can’t imagine the stress educators are under.

Why is this drawn as a conclusion? Because I speak to the rights of disabled children?

Why must advocacy so often be perceived as a personal attack on those in positions to do differently as opposed to an invitation to join us?

If somebody wasn’t satisfied with their medical care and shared their experience, while offering suggestions for better care, would it be received as an attack on all medical professionals or a lack of appreciation for medicine?

Why is a parent asking for the same rights for their autistic child as their peers received as an indictment on the entire education system and in opposition of educators?

Why must it be a case of us against them? I don’t want that.

My God, as if we have the energy.

I want our coming generations of autistic children; all children, to access an education in ways that allow them to do so equitably and adequately.

The same person remarked that inclusion is impossible.

These are basic human rights we’re addressing.

I am a trained, qualified classroom teacher. I understand the exhaustion and frustration beyond possibly what some might imagine. I am also an autistic adult with ADHD and PDA and cPTSD and all the letters of the chronic illness alphabet. I am a parent of four autistic children, and I am not alone in my community.

We rise every single day and we advocate. We research, we reach out, we connect, we build up, we offer, we give, we never stop. We develop expert knowledge and skillsets not always because we want to, or because we choose the field we’re in; but because we have to. Because the way our children are viewed and so ill considered is the same treatment many of us have survived ourselves as children in the same system, and decades and decades later, we’re doing what our autistic elders did before us - advocating for human rights.

We learn the ins and outs of the NDIS, the education system, the healthcare system; we research and figure out our own illnesses before finding a way to present the evidence while protecting ourselves from accusations of fabricated or induced illness and mandatory reporting when we know who our children are and what works best for them.

This is survival. Our lives are often exclusively dedicated to our survival. While some study for degrees in subjects they choose for leisure, many of us study in pursuit of advancement of the human rights of our neurokindred and adjacent communities.

If this were your child, not only missing out on the education they have a right to, but being excluded, isolated, and punished for the way their brain and body work… would you still call inclusion "impossible"?

If this were your child, forced to mask, to shrink themselves, to sit in discomfort or distress just to make it easier for the adults in the room, would you still call our advocacy unreasonable?

If this were your child, coming home dysregulated, defeated, or no longer believing they are good or capable or worthy, would you accept the narrative that "there’s nothing we can do"?

Because that’s the reality for so many of us. We seldom get the rest, the downtime, the holidays, the birthday parties and sleepovers because we are advocating. Advocacy is a full time job, and it’s unpaid and often a constant assault on our livelihood, our wellbeing and our hopes and dreams for not only our childrens’ futures but our own.

Let me be clear..I have deep respect for educators. I know *so* many are doing everything they can, often while underpaid, overwhelmed, and unsupported. I know most educators didn’t get the training they needed to support the full spectrum of neurodivergent and disabled children. I know the system fails them too.

But this is exactly the point: the issue is systemic.

This isn’t about asking teachers to be superheroes. It’s about acknowledging that no one should have to be superhuman just to make sure a child feels safe, seen, and supported in a classroom.

It’s about dismantling a model of education that only works for some and continues to fail the rest. And let me add: it isn’t only neurodivergent children and disabled children that are often failed by the current education system.

Our kids are not the problem. The system is. It’s the system. The system fails educators, it fails parents and it fails children.

Teaching in this system is immensely challenging. There are many of us who advocate for change from within and we are often forced out as a result.

Many of us have our children in excellent schools with compassionate, incredible educators; where we converge in our shared care for our children, meeting one another where we are and building on knowledge and experience together. This is what we're asking for. But in our community, we seldom meet our own needs and walk on. We advocate for one another, not just ourselves.

I cannot accept the assumptions that perpetuate harm, particularly toward disabled and neurodivergent children.

When we say that a child must do what everyone else is doing or be excluded, what we are really saying is that only children who can comply with an industrial model of education deserve to belong. That is not inclusion. That is conditional access based on ability, and it is blatant discrimination.

The idea that parents of disabled children do not understand how hard teaching is is a sweeping generalisation. Many of us are teachers ourselves. Many of us are holding multiple complex truths at once: our children need support to access an education, and we understand the system is not set up to provide it.

But our children are not burdens. They are human beings. And they have a legal and moral right to access education in a way that works for them.

To say that the reality is hopeless and the system cannot change is not a neutral statement. It protects the status quo, which actively harms disabled children and their families. What you’re describing is a system that is not fit for purpose.

The solution isn’t to lower our expectations for inclusion. It is to reimagine education altogether. That starts with listening to families, not silencing them because their needs seem too big or too hard.

It’s why we advocate. Because no child should spend their days in an environment where their needs are seen as impossible. And no family should have to fight to prove their child deserves to be there.

There is no simple answer. But dismissing our children’s needs as unachievable is not the answer either.

Advocating for disabled children’s rights is not an attack on teachers. It’s a call for collective humanity.

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KF