There is something I see quite often when I work with SEND parents, and it is something I understand because I have experienced it myself. When you have spent years fighting for your child, eventually you can become so accustomed to the fight that you start preparing for one before you even know whether there is actually a battle to be had.
For some parents, this has been their reality for ten, fifteen or even twenty years. They may have more than one child with additional needs and have navigated multiple schools, local authorities, health services, social care teams, assessments, referrals, waiting lists and EHCP processes. They have sat in meetings where they weren’t listened to, written emails that weren’t answered and chased referrals that apparently disappeared into thin air. They’ve been told to wait and see when they knew their child needed help now, and they’ve been reassured that something was happening only to discover months later that it wasn’t. Somewhere along the way, they learned that if they didn’t keep pushing, questioning and fighting, there was a very real possibility that nothing would happen.
When you have lived like that for long enough, it changes the way you approach the next problem. You stop expecting things to be straightforward. If somebody says yes, part of you waits for the no. If somebody tells you something will be done, you wonder whether you need to send an email afterwards so you have it in writing. If somebody gives you an easier route, instead of immediately feeling relieved, part of you starts to wonder whether it can possibly be that simple. You start researching the alternative route anyway, looking for what you might have missed and preparing yourself for the point at which this apparently easy solution inevitably falls apart.
And that response makes complete sense when you look at where it came from. If touching the metaphorical hot stove has burned you fifteen times, you’re going to hesitate before somebody asks you to touch it for the sixteenth. The difficulty is that eventually we can become so prepared for resistance that sometimes we continue fighting even when nobody is currently fighting us.
I see this particularly in my EHCP work. A parent will come to me absolutely exhausted, often having spent hours going through their child’s plan. They’ve highlighted sentences, researched legislation, joined Facebook groups, read other people’s EHCPs and produced a list of twenty-seven things they believe need challenging. They’re ready to go into battle over Section B, Section E, Section F, Section I and three sentences on page fourteen that somebody on the internet has told them shouldn’t be there.
Then I read the plan and sometimes my response is, essentially, “Okay. Put most of that down for a minute.”
That can feel completely counterintuitive to a parent who has spent years being told that they have to fight for everything. I’m not telling them that those other things don’t matter, and I’m certainly not telling them to accept a poor EHCP. I’m asking them to look at what we are actually trying to achieve. If the problem in front of us is that their child’s needs are not accurately described in Section B and the provision they require isn’t properly specified and quantified in Section F, then those are the places I want us to concentrate our energy first. If the provision is what we are fighting for, let’s fight for the provision. We don’t have to open seven other battles at exactly the same time simply because we can see seven other things we might eventually want to change.
There is a huge difference between giving up a fight and choosing your fight.
Sometimes I will tell a parent not to send the email they have spent an hour writing. Sometimes I will tell them not to make the complaint yet. Sometimes I will tell them that the irritating sentence they’ve found isn’t the thing I want them spending tonight worrying about. We can come back to it. Sometimes the answer really is, “Leave that alone for now. This is the bit we’re dealing with.”
That isn’t passive advocacy. It is strategic advocacy, and I think it is something SEND parents are rarely given permission to practise.
We hear so much about SEND parents having to fight. We call ourselves warriors. We talk about putting our armour on for meetings and preparing for battle with the local authority. There are very good reasons that language has developed, because families genuinely do have to fight systems that should be supporting them. But there is another side to living in that state for years that we don’t talk about nearly enough. When everything has historically required a fight, eventually not fighting can start to feel unsafe.
The easier option can even start to look suspicious.
Someone comes along and says, “Actually, you don’t need to do all of that. Do this one thing first,” and instead of experiencing that as relief, your brain immediately starts searching for the catch. Surely there must be another form. Surely you need more evidence. Surely you should send something else at the same time just in case. You have become so accustomed to having to prove, chase, challenge and anticipate that simply following the straightforward route can feel as though you aren’t doing enough.
Before you know it, you’ve created another six hours of work for yourself.
I’ve watched parents do this, and I’ve done versions of it myself. It doesn’t mean we’re stupid and it doesn’t mean we’re deliberately making life difficult. Sometimes we’ve simply spent so long learning how to survive complicated systems that we’ve forgotten what it feels like when something doesn’t actually need to be complicated.
I think this is also why it can be difficult to accept help. When you’ve had professionals misunderstand your child, dismiss your concerns or confidently give you advice that turned out to be completely unsuitable, you become understandably protective of your own judgement. You know your child better than anybody else does, and that knowledge is incredibly important. But knowing our children intimately doesn’t mean that we automatically know the reason behind every behaviour, understand every piece of legislation or know which part of a complicated process needs our attention first.
That’s why good support shouldn’t feel like somebody taking over and telling you that everything you’ve done is wrong. It should feel like somebody standing beside you, looking at the enormous pile of things you’re carrying and saying, “You can put those five things down. We only need this one today.”
There is an enormous amount of relief in that when you finally allow yourself to trust it.
Sometimes your child absolutely does need you to fight. Sometimes you need to write the email, challenge the decision, request the assessment, escalate the complaint, quote the legislation and refuse to accept an answer that isn’t good enough. I will never tell SEND parents to stop advocating fiercely for their children when advocacy is needed.
But sometimes your child doesn’t need you to fight harder. Sometimes they need you to fight smarter.
And sometimes there isn’t a fight at all.
Sometimes somebody really is offering you an easier route. Sometimes the answer genuinely is simpler than you expected it to be. Sometimes you don’t need to research for another four hours before you’re allowed to trust the answer. Sometimes you can put the laptop down, leave the email until tomorrow and accept that this particular problem does not require you to go to war.
After years of fighting, that can be surprisingly difficult to do. But perhaps part of surviving the SEND system isn’t only learning when to fight.
Perhaps it’s also learning when you don’t have to.
A parent I recently worked with sent me an email afterwards and said something that has really stayed with me:
“You saw me as a parent, not a case. You saw my child as an individual, not a checklist.”
She told me that she had walked away from our session feeling “lighter, clearer, and genuinely supported.”
And I think lighter is the word that matters here.
Because sometimes my job isn’t to give a parent another ten things to do. It isn’t to find another battle for them to fight or another problem for them to fix. Sometimes my job is to look at everything they’ve been carrying, help them work out what actually matters right now, and give them permission to put some of the rest of it down.
You can still be the parent who fights fiercely for your child when they need you to.
You just don’t have to be fighting all of the time.
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