What September Used To Mean

September 8, 2026

Today is the first day back to school and this morning Warren and I were talking about a guy he works with and his wife whose son is on the spectrum. We have talked about their son over the last few years as they have moved through diagnosis, figuring out supports and now into the school years. He is still quite young, I think this is only his second year in elementary school, so hearing about where they are now naturally brings me back to where we were about twelve years ago. Those aren’t easy years for me to think about. I don’t tend to talk about them often because I am always very conscious that my son’s story is his to tell if he ever chooses to. There are things that happened to him, things he experienced and things he may one day want to talk about in his own way, and I don’t think being his mother gives me ownership over all of that. So when I do write about those years I tend to leave a lot of time between what I share and stay mostly within my own experience of parenting a child with disabilities inside a system that, for us, often felt impossible to exist in.

I think talking about their son this morning hits differently because I remember being exactly where they are now. The beginning of school, trying to figure out what supports will actually look like once they move from meetings and plans into a classroom, and trying to understand how much of what is being promised will translate into what your child actually experiences every day. I remember the anxiety leading into each school year. Buying the supplies, new clothes, shoes, whatever else was on the list, while also knowing that none of those things were really what I was thinking about. I was thinking about whether he would be okay. Whether the year would be different. Whether the teacher would understand him. Whether I would get a call. Whether something that had already been discussed and planned for would somehow become a surprise once it actually happened.

The transition into school itself was one of about a thousand separate issues. Getting there was one thing. Actually leaving him there was another entirely. I remember trying rewards because of course I did. At one point I became convinced that a steamed milk from Starbucks on the way might help. One morning I thought it had actually worked. We had the steamed milk, we made it to school, he got out of the car and for a very brief moment I thought I had successfully completed drop-off. Then I looked in the mirror while driving away and saw my son chasing the car down the road with his steamed milk in his hand.

Every crosswalk gave him another chance to catch up with me, which he did. I would get moving again and there he was still coming. Then eventually there was the stop sign at the end of the road and that was pretty much the end of that attempt. He was back in the car, steamed milk still somehow not spilled, and we were heading home as though the drop-off had never happened. I had managed to fail at school attendance while still providing the reward, which really summed up quite a few of my parenting strategies at the time.

The bonus was that after that particular attempt he had absolutely no interest in letting me out of his sight for the remainder of the day. So not only was he not at school, I now had a child who wanted me within grabbing distance and a steamed milk confirming that the morning had apparently gone exactly as planned. There were a lot of days like that. Not always involving Starbucks and a pursuit down the road, but enough variations of the same struggle that I learned very quickly not to assume that making it to the school meant we had actually completed the task.

And then there were the mornings when I did successfully leave him there. Those were not exactly better. I would get back into my car in a full-on sweat from the effort it had taken to get through something that looked completely ordinary from the outside. More times than not I would sit in the car and cry afterwards because I could not believe how difficult something as basic as school drop-off had become. Other parents were pulling away and starting their day and I was sitting there trying to recover from getting my child through the front door. It was one of those things that wore me down slowly. Not because every day was some massive crisis, but because even the most ordinary parts of life required so much effort.

Every year I would still try to make school sound positive. New teacher. New classroom. Maybe this year will be different. Meanwhile I completely understood why he didn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm. His reluctance wasn’t irrational. He had already learned from experience that school was hard for him and that many of the environments he was being placed into did not make him feel safe or understood. I was trying to convince him to feel differently about something when his actual experience had given him very little reason to.

Every year seemed to come with another version of the same conversation. We don’t know how to support your child, but somehow we also know more about your child than you do. I would explain what worked, what didn’t work, what I could see happening before he became completely dysregulated and what I knew would make a situation worse, only to have much of it dismissed or ignored because apparently having training in child development meant the person who had lived with the actual child every day for his entire life was mostly there for administrative purposes. The sarcasm I feel writing that is still fairly strong.

The IEP meetings were probably one of the worst parts for me. I would go into those meetings feeling like I had to be completely prepared because if I wasn’t, the conversation could very quickly shift away from what he needed and into defending what the system could or could not provide. There were always so many people. I used to wonder how many adults could sit around one table to discuss one child and somehow still manage to make the meeting less about supporting the child than about explaining why certain supports weren’t possible. Apparently the answer was quite a few. I never understood why it needed to feel adversarial, but it often did. I wasn’t walking into those rooms looking for a fight. I was walking in knowing from experience that if I didn’t push, things that were important to him could very easily be minimized or talked around until we were somehow discussing everything except what he actually needed.

One of the most frustrating narratives was that he was too unsafe for the environment or that they didn’t have enough staff or funding to keep him or the other children safe. I understood the reality of staffing and funding. I understood that schools have limitations. What I struggled with was the way those limitations could slowly become a description of the child. Instead of asking what was happening in the environment that was causing such a level of distress, the focus became the behaviour itself. He was unsafe. He was difficult. He couldn’t manage the classroom. There was much less interest in asking whether the classroom could manage him.

It also created this strange situation where I was simultaneously being told that they didn’t know how to support him and expected to defer to their expertise about what he needed. We don’t know what to do, but please stop telling us what to do because obviously we are the experts. That was always an interesting bit of logic to sit through while trying to keep a straight face. I think that was one of the things that made those years so exhausting. It wasn’t simply advocating for support. It was constantly having to defend what I knew about my own child while being told, directly or indirectly, that the system knew better even when the results were repeatedly showing otherwise.

Looking back now, that part feels even clearer to me. A child who is spending most of his energy in fight or flight is not going to have much left for learning. His body is already doing the job it thinks it needs to do, which is getting through an environment that feels unsafe. Yet so much of the response at the time seemed to be more expectation, more prompting, more structure, more consequence or another behaviour plan. There were times when I felt like I was watching people try the same thing repeatedly and then act surprised that it continued producing the same result. It truly felt like the definition of insanity.

Years ago we eventually enrolled him in a distributed learning program. His teacher has a graduate degree in special education and the difference in our lives has been enormous. I don’t think I realized how much anxiety I had attached to school until school stopped creating that anxiety. Our home doesn’t really change that much between the school year and holidays because routine is important here regardless. There isn’t a massive shift when September arrives anymore. His teacher contacted me this morning because today is the first day back and it just felt normal. That alone would have been difficult for me to imagine twelve years ago.

The program has been a gift to our family. Not because it changed who my son is, but because it changed the environment around him. He was supported in a way that made sense for him. He was given room to learn without having to spend the majority of his energy managing an environment that overwhelmed him. And he thrived. The school will sometimes use his journey when speaking with other families because he is such a clear example of how dramatically things can change when the environment actually fits the child.

That part always makes me think about all of those meetings years ago. The child I was describing in those rooms is the young man we have continued to see emerge over the years once the supports around him were designed differently. He didn’t suddenly become more capable because someone finally found the right behavioural strategy. He was always capable. What changed was that his mind and body were finally being given enough safety and support to show us what had been there all along.

So this morning, talking about where Warren’s colleague and his wife are with their son now, I think I was feeling two things at once. I remember being at the beginning of those school years and how much I didn’t know yet about what was coming. I also know enough about their journey from the conversations we have had over the last few years to know that they are already doing what so many parents do, learning a completely different language around diagnosis and supports while also just trying to raise their child. I don’t want to project our experience onto theirs because their son is his own person and their experience will be their own. I just know that hearing about that stage of their life takes me back to ours.

My heart really does go out to families whose children do not fit neatly inside the version of typical that schools are generally designed around. Not because every experience will look like ours did, and not because every school or every teacher gets it wrong, but because once your child falls outside that box, ordinary things can become very complicated very quickly. Things other families barely have to think about can take enormous planning, advocacy, adjustment and emotional energy.

Maybe that is why the first day of school still carries something for me even though our life looks completely different now. There was a time when September meant preparing myself for another year of wondering how much damage I was going to have to prevent while also trying to convince my child that school was somewhere he should want to be. Now his teacher sends me a message in the morning, we continue with the routine we already have, and school fits into his life rather than his entire life having to bend around school.

I don’t take that ordinary feeling for granted. I also remain slightly impressed that the steamed milk survived.