If I Could Go Back
If I could go back, I know exactly where I would find her.
The mother sitting in the room with the white walls, filling out yet another form. Endless circles of no, not yet and rarely.
To the mother in the waiting room:
Who thought she had packed enough food in the baby bag for the hungry older sibling and remembered enough of the only food her younger child would eat that day. She was wrong.
To the exhausted mother:
Hair unkempt. Clothes worn. Searching for answers. Searching for a solution. Knowing that time was ticking. Time for answers, yes, but also the immediate countdown of about 30 minutes before reaching massive meltdown territory. Again.
I would not tell that woman the diagnoses that were coming. I would tell her something else.
I would tell her that it would be okay.
I would tell her that being able to support her child and fix her child are two vastly different things.
I would tell her that she would make mistakes. That she would make the same mistake more than once without realising it. She would lose her patience. She would feel frustrated. She would attempt to walk away to gather herself, only to be blocked by the very child she needed a minute away from. She would handle situations poorly and realise, what felt like the twentieth time, that she had made things harder.
And I would tell her that it was still okay. That these moments in time were just a blip in the bigger picture. That they did not define her as a person, a mother or a teacher. That they did not define the relationship between her and her child.
I would tell her to stop measuring progress by comparing it with others.
To the teacher:
Who entered the world of education wanting to make a difference. Who brings a unique perspective to the students they teach. Who wants to empower little humans to become the best versions of themselves.
All while navigating competing demands: curriculum, school agendas, parent communication. The list never ends.
I would tell the teacher that the child who made today feel like an eternity, with their endless questions, big feelings and big behaviours, might indeed feel difficult to support in the moment. But that child might be having a much harder day than you are.
I would encourage the teacher to become curious about what sits beneath the behaviour.
I would remind them that the quiet child is not always the child who is coping.
And when a parent describes a version of their child that the teacher does not recognise in the classroom, I would ask them to consider this: both versions can be true at the same time.
Inclusion is not simply having a child in the room. My son sat in a classroom where his desk was isolated at the back, facing the wall.
As a teacher, I now understand inclusion differently.
It is the ability to create environments where students can truly belong.
Environments that are emotionally safe, where every student can experience success and challenge. Where every student has the right to be known.
The right to develop a sense of self, celebrate their strengths and work towards their goals.
To the tired, overworked teacher who goes home each day wondering whether it was enough:
You will not always get it right. Neither did I. What matters is leaning into curiosity. Noticing, listening, questioning and adapting.
To the onlookers:
You only know what you see. You make judgements based on your own experiences. It is human nature. But in a world that is often critical of differences, be kind.
Of all the advice, assessments and reports we received, some of the words I remember most came from a stranger. He pulled a chair up beside a wooden train and said, “It is okay. We can talk out here if it is easier.”
I doubt this doctor remembers the encounter. I will never forget it. Before I even understood what inclusion was, he showed it to me.
If I could truly go back, I would not tell my younger self to stop searching for answers. Those answers mattered. Instead, I would tell her not to become so focused on finding answers that she forgot to look at the child standing in front of her.
I would tell her to notice him.
Notice the boy clinging to the train chute because another cold, white room felt impossible.
Notice the boy refusing to wear his hat because he believed that if rules were important, they should apply equally to adults.
Notice the boy holding everything together until he reached the safety of the car.
Notice the logic behind his actions, even when that logic involved throwing chunks of brick into a tree.
I would tell her that one day, she would stop listing all the skills he could not do. That one day, she would begin to ask why these things were so difficult for him. She would look beyond the behaviour. She would try to understand what the behaviour was telling her about her boy. She would begin to lean into curiosity. She would begin to be vulnerable.
Most importantly, she would eventually look up. And see her child. She would see that her child was here, right in front of her. That he was not a list of things he could not do. That he was fierce, loving, enthusiastic, curious, kind, loyal and truly resilient.
There would be people who judged. People who did not understand. People who thought they could do it better. There would be strategies that failed. Strategies that failed at the worst possible times, especially on a morning when nobody brushed their teeth. But there would also be people who simply pulled up a chair beside a wooden train and said, “We can do this differently.”
Those people matter.
Be one of those people.
It has taken me years to understand something my son had been trying to show me all along. Sometimes the child is not the part of the situation that needs to change.
Sometimes, we do.
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