Why Does my Child Mask at School?
Many parents are frustrated because their autistic child masks at school. By ‘masking’ they mean that their child is deliberately hiding their neurodiverse condition such as Autism or ADHD. Parents find this very frustrating because it means that the school does not see the difficulties that they see and the child does not receive the appropriate help.
But what if the child is not deliberately hiding their autism, but simply trying to protect themselves and survive the school day? What if they are desperately trying to stay ‘below the radar’ because they have no idea how to explain their difficulties?
How is a child supposed to know why they think about and experience the world differently? Even if they could articulate their difficulties, nobody would believe them.
While many aspects could be causing problems at school that then manifest at home, there are three key reasons why a child hides their difficulties at school:
- Processing issues
- Exposure Anxiety
- Lack of understanding and inability to explain why they are struggling at school.
1. Processing Issues
All kinds of processing issues cause difficulties understanding what is going on around you in real time. This makes a child very vulnerable to bullying and they may not even perceive they are being bullied.
A child with processing issues will struggle to understand what is said to them. They will process only for the literal meaning and will miss out on any context. This leads to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Depending on the actual processing issue they have and any coping strategy they are using, they may miss parts of what is said to them.
If they are struggling to understand what is said, then they will not be able to process much if anything else of what is going on around them. Alternatively, they may be processing what else is going on and not be able to process what is being said to them.
Many children with processing issues become adept at making it look like they understand when they don’t. For those with delayed processing, this can be less of an issue in the classroom because they will process it later. But for others, this can be a real issue.
Worse, many children with processing issues will genuinely think that they have understood and then discover later that they didn’t. This is because they know the meanings of the words and even each sentence. It is only later that they realise that they failed to process the meaning as a whole.
In a school environment, it feels better to just muddle through. If you admit to not understanding, you will be called all kinds of uncomplimentary names and you invite bullies to take advantage.
Even in the classroom with the best teacher, many children will think it is better to keep quiet and not draw attention to yourself. The exceptions are the children who play up - and they are the ones who get noticed.
2. Exposure Anxiety
Exposure anxiety is anxiety that is triggered when someone shares something personal about him or herself. This can make it difficult for a child to say their name. It makes sharing feelings with people virtually impossible. The child may want to share something personal but find themselves unable to do so.
Parents get frustrated because their child does not tell teachers when they are struggling and when asked always says they are fine. This is not necessarily a lie: in the busyness of the school environment, the child may not have a chance to process how they feel.
For children with exposure anxiety, being able to tell a teacher they need the toilet is a major achievement because it exposes a need.
There are things that these children will not disclose to teachers or healthcare professionals both because of embarrassment and because of the anxiety backlash that will generate.
3. Lack of Understanding and Inability to explain
An example, is probably the best way of making this clear. Consider Kieran. A large part of his autism is explained via synethesia.
Kieran’s synesthesia means that he sees colours and shapes for numbers, letters, words, sounds, textures and emotions, and objects. He is very good at remembering number plates because to him they make a colour and a shape. He doesn’t remember them as lists of numbers and letters but as a shape and a colour. Kieran is good at arithmetic because operations on numbers produces a shape and a colour which translates to a number.
Kieran’s mother could see that Kieran was struggling at school, but his teachers could not see it at all. Kieran sat by himself and got on with his work. School could not see that there was a problem. Kieran did try to explain to his mother but she didn’t understand and thought Kieran was deliberately hiding his difficulties at school. This is a problem because anything to help a child has to go through the school.
In desperation Kieran’s mother came for an autism profile for Kieran. It was obvious from the reports that Kieran has synesthesia. One question was enough to confirm this. The assessment process gave Kieran the words to explain what his difficulties are and why he is struggling. He is now able to express his feelings to his teachers and tell them when he is struggling.
Kieran was not hiding his difficulties he simply did not have the words to explain his difficulties.
Synesthesia is a relatively simple difficulty to explain. If a child has a combination of difficulties, explaining this to people with no knowledge of the integrative cognitive profiling tool becomes very difficult.
We can help
Accusing your child of ‘masking’ means you are accusing them of doing something deliberate to make life harder for themselves, whereas actually, they are protecting themselves and doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. You really need to find out what is really going on.
If you want the opportunity to work this out for yourself, then join the Minds in Depth Community. In this community, you will find learning materials and discussion forums to help you analyse your own child. If you feel that this would be too difficult then contact us to explore having us do an integrative cognitive profile for your child.