School Report Time

A negative experience regarding school reports is common amongst the neurodivergent community. Many neurodivergent adults recall their parents being told their child should “try harder” and “apply themselves”. And, possibly the most triggering of them all, that they aren’t reaching their potential. While many neurodivergent kids are still receiving this unhelpful feedback, things are better now than they used to be. They should be better still. If your child’s report is critical and not neuroaffirming, it is time to ditch feeling angry. Flip the situation. Use the school report as an indicator as to where your child’s school isn’t living up to their potential.

Home Goals

The core factor here is ensuring that you are aware of your child’s needs and goals. And consciously aware of your own. Are your hopes around their results realistic and fair? For example, just because they can achieve high academic results, if you’re aware that this requires them to burn many spoons and you’re also putting focus into staying regulated and managing emotions and behaviours well, are you asking too much?

How about your child? Have you asked them? I know a dyspraxic child who expressed a personal goal to reach the “As expected” field in PE, rather than the “Working towards” they’d received for the years prior. What a great target! Are they hoping to be a world class athlete? No. Is the goal they’ve chosen a possibility? Maybe. Will they be a failure if they don’t reach it? Of course not; they’re a dyspraxic kid trying to reach a level of physical achievement expected of the average physically able child of their grade!

But this same child in years previous also chose not to push themselves in this area. They actively joined in during every class. Did all their homework. Took part in additional sporting activities outside the mandatory classes. They did not make up excuses to avoid PE, or for their grades. It simply wasn’t something they were great at, and something that would require a significant amount of additional work to improve their abilities in.

So before you’re “disappointed” in a result in a report, be certain that what your child is hoping to achieve, what you were hoping for them to achieve, and the reality around both these situations, is aligned.

Negative Can Be True

It’s not always a comfortable reality, but any perceived negativity around your child isn’t going to be false, unfounded, or unfair, just because they’re neurodivergent.

While it is not even remotely okay to call a child lazy when they’re actually dealing with significant executive dysfunction problems, just because your child has issues around executive dysfunction it doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to be lazy! A child can be autistic, require structure and routine and be bossy and controlling. A child with dyscalculia shouldn’t be judged as “needing to pay more attention” because they’re not improving their maths at the rate the teacher hoped for, but they can receive a comment like this if they were throwing dice at another child instead of listening to the teacher.

So while the usual critical statements lobbed at neurodivergent kids are likely to hit with force, do take a moment to read them without reading into them.

Is It Critical?

Similarly, it is your child’s teacher’s job to support them to learn as much as possible and be able to demonstrate this knowledge as well as possible. So a statement like, “Dylan could do better in maths if he put more effort to completing the worksheets,” can be true without being critical. Consider it a “if you and your child would like to improve their grades in this subject, this would be a good step”. And imagine how demoralising it might feel to instead read, “Dylan has not achieved the expected outcomes for a child in his grade, but frankly I think he’s reached his absolute limit so there’s no point trying to teach him anything more in this subject.”

Guidance and advice is not always intended as critical, and often isn’t critical at all.

Read some of the more detailed written feedback; does it sound like your child? Are they being seen? This might give you greater insight as to whether they’re on the right track.

And, as hard as it is, do keep in mind that there is always a chance you don’t know your own child quite as well as you thought; or that they present very differently at school, for a variety of reasons.

A Negative Report

What about the genuinely problematic report cards? The ones that blindside you with a dramatic negative change in academic ability. The ones that describe your child as someone difficult you don’t recognise. Or the ones that seem to pick on your child, not take their neurodivergence into account at all, and compare them to their neurotypical peers or neuronormative standards?

Where Was The Feedback?

Did their teacher contact you with any concerns during the year? It is not okay for a teacher to recognise a child as struggling – emotionally, socially, academically, or otherwise – and only feed this information back to you in a report card.

If they did communicate with you, was it clear? Did they give it the gravity it needed? Was there follow up?

If you’ve been shocked with this information in a report, this is definitely something to raise with your school.

Were Problems Addressed?

If your child’s teacher did contact you during the year with concerns or issues, what was the outcome? 

When they shared with you that your child was frequently misbehaving alongside a peer, was your child given the opportunity to thrive by being given space from (or giving space to) that peer?

If the teacher told you your child was falling asleep in class, did you look into their sleep habits and do what you could to improve them?

When the teacher was frustrated that your child was calling other children names, was your child talked to about this clearly or only disciplined?

Accommodations

Further to this, how much were your child’s differences taken into account and accommodated for?

Was your child criticised for not listening, when you’d already advised the teacher that they have an auditory processing disorder? Were they disciplined for tricky behaviours, only to reveal that the teacher hadn’t done any of the things you’d said would support your child to avoid these behaviours? Were fidgets taken away as punishment, or given as rewards, rather than being treated as a learning aid like glasses, or a hearing aid? Did they offer support regarding School Can’t, or simply complain about “poor attendance”?

What To Do

If any of the above is familiar, it’s time to arrange a moment to chat with your school about your child and their report. By the time end of year reports are distributed, you may well be in a position where you don’t even know who to talk to! The Assistant Principal for the grade your child will be entering next year is often the best option, as they will oversee whichever teacher your child is allocated in the following year.

While some will feel that they receive more results from being angry and demanding, I cannot express how strongly I feel that working in partnership with your child’s school is the best approach. This does not mean acting like a doormat! You don’t have to ask overly nicely and accept no for any answer.

A Positive Approach

Here are some suggestions for an effective school meeting:

• Write down your key points using positive, constructive language. Bring enough copies that you can make notes to take home and leave a copy or two for the school
• Go in with the assumption that the school likes your child, and wants your child to thrive (even if you have to fake it a little!)
• Talk to the teacher / principal as an equal. You are not there to criticise them, attack them, or tell them how to do their job. Nor are you there to feel inferior, beg, or be treated with contempt
• Give your school a clear understanding of your child, their strengths, their needs, and their goals
• Be aware in advance of your child’s rights as a student at their school (this will be different in public, private, and selective schools) as well as their rights as a person
• Be aware of, or be curious about, funding and support resources at your child’s school
• If you don’t feel confident achieving these, make a booking with More Than Quirky to figure out how we can help
• If your school appears to be lacking in knowledge around neuroaffirming approaches, your child’s neurotype, or any other relevant areas, provide them with links to organisations and businesses that can help improve their practices

Making 2025 Better

As well as meeting with your child’s school, there are many other steps you can take to help your child thrive in 2025. Changes at home, goal setting, advocacy, and changing perspective, can all make an immense difference to a school year.

Please reach out to More Than Quirky for support and guidance, so that 2025 can start with many of 2024’s hurdles already kicked aside.