The Square Peg in the Circular Saw: Navigating the Playground Jungle

Bullying is often dismissed as a "childhood rite of passage"—a bit like losing your milk teeth, only with more psychological scarring and fewer visits from the Tooth Fairy. But for the families I work with, it isn't a fleeting memory; it’s a daily, grinding reality. While we like to imagine schools as bastions of inclusion, for many neurodiverse children, the playground is less "social hub" and more "Hunger Games," just with less cool outfits and more sensory overload.

The Cost of "Being Different"

Research tells us that being "outside the herd" is the primary reason kids are targeted. For an autistic child, particularly those with Pervasive Demand Avoidance (PDA), a high-stress environment doesn’t lead to "fitting in"—it leads to more stimming, more vocalizations, and more visible distress. It’s a cruel irony: the more they are pressured to conform, the more their neurodivergent traits surface, painting a larger bullseye on their backs. 

In my two decades as an educator and coach, I’ve seen "inclusive" schools fail spectacularly. My eldest, Olivia, is the poster child for this. By age ten, after bouncing through various "supportive" environments, they were dealing with total school avoidance and depressive psychosis. Olivia is kind, empathetic to a fault, and funny as heck, but they were treated as an outcast for things they couldn't help—like their palilalia.Currently, Olivia’s "anxiety loop" phrase is: "The world’s in chaos. Burn it down." Honestly? They aren't wrong. I’ve taught them that it’s okay to shout that bizarre phrase in the middle of a shop if their brain is busy. We ignore the odd looks. We’ve spent years mastering the "art of the shop"—the aisles, the teller, the minimal conversation—step by agonizing step.

Context Blindness and "Foot-in-Mouth" Disease

Then there’s my middle child, Harri. He inherited my "foot-in-mouth" disease. He’s getting better at reading a room, but he still has his moments. Like the time he approached a woman with one arm in a restaurant. He was polite! He checked on her wellbeing, asked how she lost it, expressed genuine sympathy... and then told her it "didn't look very good" aesthetically. It’s context blindness, not malice. But to a neurotypical peer, that innocence looks like a target.

"I have been my children’s 'context' for years, talking through every situation so they can learn to navigate a world that wasn't built for them."

Equipping the Toolset

This is why I spend my life creating social stories and building toolsets. We are teaching neurodiverse kids to navigate neurotypical environments, but why is the burden of change always on the one who is already struggling to process the lights, the noise, and the unwritten social rules? The goal is to develop understanding from the ground up. Most children are inherently kind and, more importantly, malleable. We can teach them to recognize and accept their neurodiverse counterparts. It starts with education—real, raw, and honest conversations in the classroom.

A Call to Arms (The Friendly Kind)

To the schools that have already welcomed me to speak: Thank you. You are the ones moving the needle. To the schools that haven't invited me yet: I’m coming for you. (Okay, that sounded a bit more "Liam Neeson in Taken" than I intended, but you get the point).We need to stop ignoring the "scarred adults" that childhood bullying leaves in its wake and start building a world where a child can stim, loop a phrase about the apocalypse, or comment on aesthetics without being cast out. The world is indeed in chaos—the least we can do is make the playground a little kinder.