When my sons with autism are sent home from school, they’ve learned the problem is them — not the system

This First Person column is written by Wendy Litner, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

Within an hour of dropping my son off at junior kindergarten, I’m called to pick him up. The excitement of the first day of school quickly gives way to sadness and embarrassment. He was sitting on a chair in the office sucking his thumb while the secretary chastised him for misbehaving. I feel the need to chastise him, too; to signal we don’t condone whatever it is he did. But on the steps of the school after we leave the office, I kneel in front of him. I tell him he’s a wonderful boy. I promise him we’ll figure school out together.

It’s a promise I haven’t been able to keep. 

My twin boys, now in Grade 5, have autism and complex needs. At one point, both of them were not attending school full-time because the public system does not support them. 

These days, with one of my son’s schools, we’ve developed an “understanding.” I pick him up early. Sometimes earlier if I get the call. And I always get the call. 

My body exists in a permanent state of readiness, waiting to be told my child is “having a hard day.” The euphemisms vary, but the message is always the same: get here. Every time I collect my boy, I see him as I did on that first day of JK: confused, overwhelmed, trying to comfort himself.

​​For so long I thought his schooling was my failure. But somewhere between the exhaustion and embarrassment, something else has taken hold: a fierce, clarifying compassion for my brilliant boy who needs accommodation to participate. I have not failed. The system is failing me. 

My son’s needs are not abstract. They are also predictable.

When he’s triggered, his distress can become physical. He needs skilled, consistent support to stay regulated and safe. Instead, he is often restrained. Recently, he came home with a bloody face. No one meant to hurt him. But this is what schooling looks like for us. 

Inclusion becomes theoretical when children have complex needs. Safety of others becomes the justification for exclusion, instead of the need to be accommodated. Families are told this is as good as it gets. 

I understand the instinct to protect other children’s learning. I want that, too. But my son’s presence isn’t the problem. Lack of support fails everyone. Real support, on the other hand, teaches something no curriculum can: how to live alongside difference with empathy, patience and respect.

My husband and I keep advocating for our sons – in emails, hallways, parking lots – trying to convince a system they deserve to be there. How do we get others to see what we see? A child who desperately wants to belong, who loves the library and sciences, his friends and caring for Georgia, his class’s pet tortoise (she’s been at school more than he has). 

“I don’t know how to homeschool,” I cry to the school social worker, as my son falls further behind. 

“Who said you have to?” she asks.

But what does she think happens when I pick him up? His day doesn’t become magically enriching. It becomes a fragile patchwork: improvised lessons, managing his — and my — emotions, more YouTube than I want to admit to keep him occupied, as I try to work enough to pay into a system that keeps failing us. What fills the rest of my son’s day is love – anxious, improvisational, exhausting love. And it’s not enough. Love is not a substitute for education. 

According to advocacy group Inclusive Education Canada, about 40 to 50 per cent of Ontario principals have asked children with disabilities to stay home. It’s framed with sympathetic smiles as administrators have apologized “for a broken system.” 

I don’t want apologies. I want a fundamental shift in how my children with complex needs are seen. I want policymakers to see my son not as a disruption, but as a whole person: thoughtful in the way he picked Valentine’s stuffies for each classmate, funny in the way he described terrible traffic as “peccable” — the opposite of impeccable. A child who is observant, loving and deeply alive in the world if given the chance. A child whose life is no less valuable because supporting him is hard. My family is incredibly grateful for educators who’ve shown patience and kindness. But gratitude cannot replace policy. Kindness cannot replace funding.

Meanwhile, my son learns in fragments. He learns he’s the problem. No one says it, but children notice who gets to stay, who gets to sing in the school concert, who gets to play on the soccer team, who doesn’t get invited to the birthday parties. I worry about the cumulative effect of this. Of never fully participating. Partial schooling is not a small compromise. It’s a slow erosion of confidence and future. It’s families carrying systemic failure on their backs.

This year, seven-year-old Max Simao, a child with autism, was killed by a Hamilton city bus at midday because there wasn’t enough support to keep him in class. I cried as his father said, “He wasn’t where he had the right to be.” I grieve with him, thinking how easily children like ours disappear from where they’re meant to be. 

Recently, Georgia, the class tortoise, laid eggs. My son showed me the incubator, glowing with pride as if he laid them himself. He worries he won’t be there when they hatch. I squeeze his hand and tell him how wonderful it is that she has someone as special as him to care for her. I try as I always do to alchemize disappointment into meaning.

I cannot fix a system that keeps sending him home. I cannot force it to see what I see. But I will keep screaming without apology: my son deserves an education. Tomorrow morning, I will walk him into school – hopeful that nothing will happen. That he’ll stay, learn, play and come home. I’ll sit by my phone, waiting for it not to ring.  

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