18/12/2025
It starts early.
Earlier than they like to admit.
In nurseries and reception classrooms, there are whispers.
“She’s very sensitive.”
“He doesn’t quite fit the routine.”
“They’ll grow out of it.”
So nothing happens.
Parents are told to wait. To watch. To try sticker charts, firmer boundaries, gentler boundaries, different shoes, different breakfasts.
The child learns early that the world feels loud and fast and confusing and that nobody is in a hurry to understand why.
By the time school begins, the cracks are visible. The child is trying so hard to be good, to be quiet, to get it right.
The system is already documenting the struggle, but still not acting on it.
Assessments are delayed. Referrals are bounced back. Support is “monitored.”
Years pass in review meetings where everyone agrees there’s a problem but nobody agrees whose job it is to fix it.
By primary school, the child has learned the most dangerous skill of all: masking. They hold it together all day, until they don’t.
Meltdowns are treated as behaviour.
Distress is reframed as defiance.
Parents are gently then not so gently- questioned about routines, boundaries, home life.
Support plans are written and rewritten.
Nothing changes.
Secondary school arrives like a cliff edge. More noise. More pressure. More rules that make no sense to a nervous system already overloaded. The child’s anxiety grows legs and follows them everywhere.
Attendance drops. Confidence evaporates. Suddenly the same system that delayed help is asking why things have “escalated.”
This is where the language shifts.
From support to compliance.
From needs to risk.
From child to problem.
Mental health services step in - and then step back out again.
Too autistic for anxiety services.
Too anxious for autism pathways.
Too complex. Not unwell enough. Not the right box.
So families hold the gap.
They leave jobs.
They fight tribunals.
They learn acronyms and legislation like a second language.
They keep children safe while being quietly judged for doing so.
And then, just as the child turns 18 when life is already shifting under their feet the system disappears altogether.
Referrals are closed. Support plans expire. Services say, “They’re an adult now,” as if autism runs on a calendar.
As if neurodivergence politely switches off at midnight on the 18th birthday.
Suddenly the scaffolding that never quite held is removed completely.
Parents are told to step back. Young people are told to self-advocate in systems that have never listened to them before.
Mental health charities offer short-term courses and leaflets.
Local authorities point elsewhere.
Everyone assumes someone else is responsible.
But autism doesn’t end at 18.
Sensory overload doesn’t end at 18.
Trauma caused by years of being misunderstood doesn’t end at 18.
The only thing that ends is support.
This isn’t a failure at one point in time.
It’s a long, slow, systemic letting down from the moment a child first shows signs of difference, to the moment they are deemed too old to matter.
And still, families keep going.
Still, autistic people survive systems that were never built for them.
But imagine what could happen if the system didn’t wait for children to break.
If it listened early.
If it stayed longer.
If it understood that neurodivergence is not a phase, it’s a lifetime.
And support should be too.
We must keep pushing the system for change.
Michaela 🫂❤️🫂
