Childhood is confusing enough when you’re trying to figure out who you are, but it is even harder when you are misunderstood by the people around you as well as yourself. Some disabilities can be diagnosed easier than others, but because a lot of disabilities develop from a young age, this can be harder to spot, which leads to misdiagnosis or a lack of diagnosis altogether. This misunderstanding usually occurs during primary school. 

 

I spoke to Emily (not her real name) a Yr11 student who is passionate about all kinds of sports and the environment. She has speech dyspraxia and autism, but she was not able to get her autism diagnosed at an early age in primary school because her teachers ‘were not trained to identify special needs and learning difficulties.’ She went through primary school often confused as to why she was being singled out and made to feel unintelligent, and as a result fell behind at school. 

Emily usually learns best when the subject is taught in a practical way, such as through games or visualising, but because lessons were taught in a traditional method of listening and writing Emily found that it was harder to understand lessons and was put on the lowest ability table of the class with the majority of other special needs children, where they were not taught or treated in a way that helped them. This made a lot of the children including Emily feel stupid or small, when all they needed was support and the right method of teaching that could help special needs children. 

 

Another example of Emily and other special needs children being cast into confusion at school was being told off for fiddling. Emily told me how herself and children with ADHD would sometimes fiddle with things on their desk, which would help them to listen and concentrate on the lesson. However, sometimes a teacher would tell Emily or the other children off in front of the entire class for fiddling, which would lower their self-confidence and also wholly embarrass them. This led to further confusion, and a general misunderstanding on both sides of student and teacher. 

‘Teachers would often say stuff to me as a joke or metaphorically and I would get confused and think that what they were saying was true,’ Emily said. ‘I would spend years thinking something they told me as a joke was true.’

Emily’s primary school also conducted a phonics test in which they tested pronunciation. However, due to Emily’s speech dyspraxia (diagnosed, but misunderstood by teachers), she was not able to pronounce some words correctly, and she was moved as a consequence to the bottom table in literacy, where she ended up behind everyone else because she was taught at too low a level. 

It is clear that if the right training had been supplied to primary school teachers, not only would they have understood how to diagnose children with special needs from an early age, but also offer the right type of specialised support to those children and overall motivate them academically and give them a new-found confidence. 

 

In terms of social effects, Emily was constantly paranoid about being on the lowest ability table, because this would make everyone think that the children at this table were generally not as smart as the others, when this was simply a case of a lack of support, not a lack of intelligence. Due to her speech dyspraxia, people also laughed at and made fun of Emily, which could potentially damage self-confidence and lower a lot of chances of forming friendships. However, she remarks how the main thing that affected her socially was autism itself, due to a lot of the children not being taught about autism and therefore not understanding this concept. If they had been educated on this subject, perhaps this would have allowed Emily to be more accepted at school and she would have got along with more people. 

 

However, Emily is very lucky, because she is able to know a lot about her disability through her family, where there are many special needs people. For those who are not provided with this understanding, education is the most important resource to allow children to be taught about special needs from a young age. This would familiarise children with special needs and reduce the stigma of disabled people being dependent and worrisome, and create a new equality between even the smallest communities, such as in the classroom. 

 

Emily finds that the support for special needs children in secondary schools greatly depends on the school. Subject teachers do still need to be trained to recognise special needs and how to make certain lessons more practical. However, although overall secondary schools are better at offering support this is mainly down to two things- one, SENCos (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) at secondary schools are more helpful and are more passionate and experienced than primary school SENCos in Emily’s opinion and two, most people with special needs have already been diagnosed by this time.

 

According to Emily, there is a more positive approach to disability than before, because there is more awareness in society and more of an effort to portray disabled people positively in the media. However, she makes a very valid point that some people make fun of some people’s certain characteristics without realising they have special needs. Although the harm done is not intentional, it still does affect people and this can be avoided if people were properly educated about special needs in detail. For example, autism in boys is recognised more than autism in girls, because boys express autistic characteristics more and are more confident, whereas girls hide their characteristics and are extremely shy. In Emily’s personal experience she was also often told about her voice sounding ‘weird’ wherever she went, because other did not understand the specifics about speech dyspraxia. 

 

I also spoke to Jess (not her real name), a student who is passionate about reading and drawing, and was diagnosed as deaf at the age of three and a half. Unlike Emily, Jess’ argument does not lie on the academic side but the social aspects of primary school. Prior to Year 3, Jess was doing well socially and academically in her opinion, but was moving around from time to time so did not have a firm friend for more than two years. Although her deafness was the cause of bullying in Year 1, this was quickly shut down and she does not recount a time after that when she was left out due to her disability. 

‘Hearing aids are just a part of me I never needed to grow into’, she said. ‘It was a small part of me that seemed inconsequential most of the time.’

 

However, post-Year 3, teachers seemed to be slower to stop bullying, and were not effective when there was an effort to stop bullying. This led to Jess feeling as if her disability was a negative thing. This isolated her, and as a result she joined friendship clubs and a friendship rota; it was explained that this was ‘a rota where a student was forced to spend time with me for the whole of break.’ She also joined a speech and language club, which focused more on how to socialise and read situations, but due to ‘forceful means’ to get others to form friendships with Jess, she was alienated further, which led to bullying all the way to Year 5, when ‘things went too far’. This deliberate vagueness only forces me to imagine the amount of pain and loneliness Jess went through, all because she was simply misunderstood. Her deafness seemed to be an easy target, so she spent the majority of primary school with one or two friends from her year group, when most of her friends were a year or two older or younger than her. 

When asked about the more positive approach to disabilities today, Jess responded that an emphasis and show of how we are not so different due to disability would be beneficial. Clearly, although there is an effort to de-alienate people with disabilities there is still a lot of work to be done. It is not by thinking that there are no differences, but by accepting these differences that we will move forward, because if we do then we will realise, in Jess’ opinion, that we are not so different after all. 

 

In terms of improvement to primary schools’ approach to disability, Jess said that ‘teachers should be more aware of their actions and what they enable.’ She also emphasises that by making someone spend time with another person is not a good idea, because this will only alienate them further. In terms of her speech, Jess told me that her primary school had not done anything to improve her pronunciation. Despite one meeting, she has been offered no support with this matter and remarks that her nursery did a better job with improving her speech. Therefore, it is clear that attention to specific requirements for people with disabilities may have has fallen behind, and attention to someone’s specific needs needs to be re-focussed. Although these issues could seem small and specific to one person, whether this is making a lesson more practical or improving social skills, this could have a ripple effect on others who may be having the same difficulties but haven’t spoken out about it yet. 

 

I would like to end with a message of what Emily and Jess would say to their younger selves.

 

Emily: ‘I would say to be honest about how I feel and not to hide my feelings. When I was little I was so scared to admit to anybody about how much I could not stand school, and how boring I found the neurotypical children, and how I found it difficult to talk and be friends with other people, particularly neurotypicals- though I did not know that word and who they were when I was that young, I just knew that the ones who were normal and not similar to me were difficult. I never told anyone because I was scared I would be told off for it so instead pretended to be normal and to like school. I always regret not being honest and not telling people this. If I had, then maybe I would have gotten diagnosed earlier and would not have had to suffer through 7 years of primary school.’

 

Jess: ‘If you keep being shut out, look for alternatives. Tell the teachers everything and keep at it, if it continues to be a problem get dad involved. He has shown he will fight to make a difference and it has worked. Your social skills should not be stunted due to a teacher's poor choice or ignorance. Look into how others look at you and don't take it to heart but keep it in mind. And for the love of god - don't try to make friends through pleasing people, especially in the wrong environment (noisy cafeteria). It can turn a harmless peer into a bully. Also deafness is something that makes you you, don't let others ruin that for yourself.’

 

I would like to thank Emily and Jess for contributing to this article and for giving valuable knowledge to everyone out there. In general, I would like to acknowledge anyone who has had to suffer in silence through no fault of their own- you truly are the best of all of us.