Forum: Look beyond what we can see when it comes to a child’s well-being

I have been encouraged to see The Straits Times continue to highlight stories that build greater awareness and understanding of autism through The Spectrum series.

As a mother of three neurodivergent children who also works with neurodivergent children and their families, I would like to encourage us to ponder over a couple of questions: How do we know when a child is “okay”, and how do we define well-being?

In mainstream schools, we use observable functioning as a proxy for well-being. A child comes to school, participates, laughs, jokes and plays with friends, and appears “normal”. We may therefore conclude that the child must be okay. But we are seeing only one part of the child.

For some children, particularly neurodivergent children or children experiencing anxiety, the ability to hold it together in school can make their distress less visible, not less real.

A child may be able to function in that moment, but this tells us little about how much anxiety they are experiencing internally, how much effort they are expending to regulate themselves, whether they are masking distress, what happens after they leave school, how long they need to recover, whether the demands are sustainable over time, or whether attending school is affecting their overall mental well-being.

This is why I believe we need to look beyond what we can see. Don’t just ask, “Can this child do it?”. Ask, “What does it cost the child to do it?”.

As we continue to build greater awareness of autism and neurodivergence, perhaps we can also broaden how we understand well-being in our mainstream schools.

Hana Alhadad