21/11/2025
FINE AT SCHOOL.... BROKEN AT HOME. ..THE HIDDEN COST OF MASKING
𝒲𝒽𝒶𝓉 ℳ𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓃ℊℯ
“𝘞𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭. 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵…”
This is the message a parent revealed to me recently, and it left them utterly frustrated. In school, their child is quiet, polite and “no trouble”; a model pupil who appears to cope well, join in with friends and get on with their work. Yet the moment that same child gets home, everything changes. The mask drops and what looks “fine” in the classroom turns into hours of screaming, sobbing, lashing out or completely shutting down. There may be refusals to eat, refusals to talk, extreme anxiety about the next day and a level of exhaustion that would alarm any professional if they saw it directly.
What is happening here is often described in the context of autism, but it is not unique to autism. Many neurodivergent children and young people including those with ADHD, dyspraxia, learning differences, PDA profiles and other forms of neurodiversity, survive the school day by masking.
They push themselves into a kind of performance mode watching other children and copying them, forcing eye contact or smiles that do not come naturally, suppressing stims, tics or fidgeting, working hard to hide confusion, and enduring noise, lights, crowds and social demands that feel overwhelming. To staff, this can look like resilience, maturity or “high functioning”. Inside, the child is running on adrenaline and fear of getting it wrong, standing out or being judged.
Home then becomes the only place where it feels remotely safe to unravel. Parents are not “causing” this behaviour by being too soft or too strict; they are holding the child at the point where all that effort finally runs out. The after school explosions, tears, shutdowns and refusals are often the bill for the school day being paid in full. That is why families can see a child who is apparently calm and compliant from 9 to 3, and then broken with overwhelm by 4pm.
The real harm comes when the contrast is misread. When schools say, “We don’t see any of that here,” it can unintentionally invalidate parents and derail support. It shifts attention onto the home, rather than onto the invisible labour the child is doing in the classroom. Referrals and assessments are delayed because the child does not fit the stereotypical picture of distress. Reasonable adjustments and support are withheld because the child appears to be coping. The child learns that their struggles do not “count” unless they break down where professionals can see, something many will go to great lengths to avoid. This contrast of behaviours so often slides straight into parent blame. When professionals only see a quiet, compliant child at school, it is easy for them and sometimes social services to assume the problem must lie in the home or in the parenting. Families find themselves subtly (or openly) judged, told they are overreacting, or even treated with suspicion, when in reality they are the only ones seeing the full impact of a school day that is far beyond their child’s coping capacity.
We need a more honest lens. Instead of “fine at school, problem at home”, we should be thinking “highly masked at school, decompressing at home”. School behaviour shows what the child can force themselves to do under pressure. Home behaviour shows what it costs them to do it. Both pictures are real. Both must be taken seriously especially for neurodivergent children whose difficulties are more internal than external.
For any parent hearing “we don’t see this in school” and starting to doubt themselves please be assured, you are not overreacting and you are not alone. Whether your child is autistic, ADHD, has another form of neurodiversity or is still undiagnosed, that split between “fine” at school and broken at home is a red flag that something about their day is unsustainable. Your observations are not inconvenient but vital evidence that must not be dismissed. What you are describing is not a failure of parenting... it is the hidden cost of the mask.
