An open letter to all teachers of SEN children; Stop telling parents they’re ‘fine’ in school!

Let me start by saying, I totally get why you are doing it. I know you are trying to comfort us, reassure us that some upset is ‘normal’ and generally make us feel better. But the reality is, this is not what it achieves! I’ve come to the realisation, which is prompting me to write this, that the word ‘fine’ is now such a trigger word, that it instinctively causes emotional distress, anger and if I’m honest, distrust! Which is clearly the opposite of what was hoped to be achieved. So let me take this opportunity to quickly share why this is happening.

Firstly, when you say ‘fine’, what I hear is “I don’t believe you”. When I am sharing with you that they have had a bad day, or they are struggling with something in particular, if you tell me they were fine in school, the implied message is, you don’t agree with what I have said. And the trouble is, so many SEND parents have spent far too many years not being believed and fighting for help for their children, that this implied meaning is a trigger to remember all those past negative experiences. So, while you may have the best intentions, your actions have made us remember every time we weren’t believed, every time we were told our child was manipulating us, every time we told our parenting style was to blame, and that automatically harms the trust we are able to build with you.

So, let’s quickly touch on why our perceptions may be different. And this is key, it is a perception, not a fact. Even if my child’s perception of the situation is wrong, it is still valid as that perception is impacting them as powerfully as if it were true. But let’s assume their perception isn’t wrong, why then did they seem ‘fine’ when you checked on them? Well, there could be several reasons. They may have been fine for the 2 minutes you saw them, but the rest of the day they weren’t, they may have been fine most of the day, but one thing happened that overshadowed the positives. But the most common reason would be, they didn’t feel comfortable showing you they weren’t okay. We have this misconception that if it was really bad they wouldn’t be able to hide it. But this just isn’t true! My son once said to me “I work really hard mommy, so they don’t see I’m struggling”. The sad reality is they can hide it, but it takes up so much energy that once they come home, they are often physically and emotionally exhausted and show us (in many different ways) because we are their safe space. So, we get to hear everything that went wrong, every bit they struggled with (not always on the same day, unfortunately sometimes it can be weeks later!), so we are a wealth of information but totally powerless to do anything about it. So maybe instead of telling me they were ‘fine’, you could say “That’s really helpful to know, because that’s not the perception we are getting in school. I wonder if we can work together to help them feel able to show/tell us these things too? But in the meantime, let’s us keep communicating so you can mediate between us and them”.

It’s important to remember that when we say something isn’t right, we’re not criticising you or the school. So often I feel like the instinctive positionality from teachers is defensive , and I get that this is your trauma response, I’ve been there too! But this puts up barriers. All we want as parents, is to have a voice and to be heard, and to help, if we can, make your job easier in teaching and supporting our children.

I just want to conclude by stating, I’m not saying don’t tell us the positives, we all want to hear them, but what we don’t want is for you to suggest it is all positives. Cause we’re not stupid we know it isn’t! And actually, staff reaffirming with me that they know where the difficulties lie, despite the positives, is really reassuring, and counters the past negative experience triggers.

So maybe instead of saying

“he was fine at breaktime, when I went out, he was playing happily with other children”

try

“I know he finds lots of people challenging, but he got involved in a game today and that’s such an achievement, how did he feel about that?”.

This little shift is so powerful, as it tells me you know him, that something positive has happened and that you value his perception, because actually the only person that can say whether he was ‘happily’ doing something is him, not you!

So, to any teachers reading this, Thank You for all you do, and I hope one SEND parent’s perception of the word ‘fine’ (shudder) can help you reflect on the impactful difference between the intended and received message within the words we use.