Matthew was three and a half and in nursery when I got my first real taste of what I can only describe as exclusion — the quiet, well-meaning kind that stings just as much as the obvious sort.
It was the Easter Bonnet parade, and we had been so excited about it. Matthew still wasn’t talking at this point, but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm one bit. We’d spent the weekend making his bonnet together — a plastic one from Home Bargains, covered in every Easter decoration we could get our hands on. Cotton wool balls stuck on with a truly alarming amount of glue, a few slightly wonky paper chicks, yellow shredding crepe paper, colourful eggs, the works. It wasn’t exactly a work of art — in fact it was far from it — but that was never the point. I was never the kind of mum who took over her child’s project just to make it look perfect for the other parents. I wanted him to lead, to enjoy it, to have fun. And we did.
The children had been rehearsing — walking up on stage to show their bonnets to the parents — and Matthew had been part of that. So when the phone call came, the day before the parade, I wasn’t prepared for it.
They didn’t think Matthew should go on stage. They were worried he might have a meltdown in front of everyone, and they didn’t want him to feel overwhelmed or disrupt the parade.
I took a breath and asked the obvious question — had he had a meltdown during any of the rehearsals? Yes, he had. The rehearsal hadn’t gone well, and he’d been extremely unsettled.
And there it was. The automatic answer. Take him out of it.
Not “how can we help him get through this?” Not “what would make this easier for him?” Just — remove him. Problem solved, at least on paper. Except it isn’t a problem, and it isn’t solved. It’s a wee boy who wanted to show his mum and dad his bonnet, being quietly written out of the day because it was simpler for everyone else that way.
I was really hurt by that call. Probably more than Matthew, if I’m honest — he was too young to fully understand what was happening. But I understood exactly what was happening, and my heart was breaking for him. If they’d come to us sooner to explain their concerns, we could have worked with them to prepare him properly. Instead I found out less than twenty-four hours beforehand that my son wouldn’t be involved in the parade at all.
Here’s the thing though — I don’t think that nursery was full of bad people. I genuinely don’t. I think it was full of people doing their best with absolutely no training in how to include a child like Matthew, so they defaulted to the only tool they had: take him out of the situation that might cause a problem. And that’s the bit that makes me so sad, because I know this wasn’t unique to us. This happens to families up and down the country, every single day. A sports day here, a school trip there, a nativity, an assembly, a class photo. Different setting, same story — a child on the spectrum quietly lifted out of the moment because nobody quite knows what else to do with him.
And when that keeps happening, parent after parent, year after year, is it any wonder so many of us end up feeling like we’re on the opposite side of the table from the school, rather than on the same one? You start to brace yourself before every phone call. You start going into meetings expecting a fight, because so often that’s exactly what it turns into. Two sides, dug in — the school trying to manage risk and keep things running smoothly, the parent trying to make sure their child isn’t the one who gets left out yet again. Nobody actually wins that. And worse, the child is stuck in the middle of it, usually with no idea any of it is even happening.
But it doesn’t have to go that way. Fraser and I talked it through that night. Of course I would have been upset if Matthew had a meltdown on stage — no parent wants that for their child, in front of a room full of people. But I didn’t want him automatically excluded because of one bad rehearsal. The answer wasn’t to leave him out. The answer was to find a way to make it work.
So we sat down with the nursery and came up with a plan together. Fraser would walk beside Matthew — holding his hand, helping him up the three steps to the podium, and back down again. And instead of sitting on stage with the other children, which had been causing him distress during rehearsals, Matthew would come and sit with us in the audience straight afterwards. If he started to get distressed, Fraser would quietly scoop him up and bring him back to us, while the next child simply stepped up in his place. No fuss, no big announcement — just a quiet swap that most people probably didn’t even notice.
It worked perfectly. He walked up those three steps holding Fraser’s hand. His bonnet was wonky and glorious — and he came straight back down to us without a single meltdown in sight. And I was so proud — of Matthew, of Fraser, and honestly, of us as a team.
That’s really the whole message, isn’t it. It took about ten minutes of sitting down together to find a solution that worked. Ten minutes. Not a formal meeting, not a battle, not weeks of emails back and forth — just a willingness on both sides to ask “how do we make this work” instead of “how do we avoid this going wrong.” Mainstream schools and nurseries are so often just not set up, not trained, not resourced to include children like Matthew properly — and I understand that. But the answer to that gap can’t keep being exclusion by default. It needs to be a conversation.
I know not every parent gets the chance to have that conversation. I know some go into these meetings and hit a brick wall, and end up feeling like they’ve got no choice but to fight for their child. I’ve been there too, in other moments, with other battles. But that night, with the bonnet parade, we got the version where two sides actually met in the middle instead of standing in opposite corners. And I wish more schools, more nurseries, more parents got that same chance — because when we work together instead of against each other, it’s our children who benefit. Every single time.
