If only you knew how it feels to be me… The children who don’t meet thresholds, but aren’t coping either

A young person wrote this because they wanted people to understand something important to them – what it feels like when a child ‘s nervous system is overwhelmed over-and-over, but the world keeps asking more of them anyway.

It highlights the children who don’t always fit neatly into systems or thresholds – sometimes described as the ‘SENDbetweeners” – those who internalise, mask, and keep going until they can’t. Too often, they don’t meet the thresholds for specialist support, but they’re not coping either. They are misunderstood, and pushed to cope in ways that leave them exhausted and overwhelmed, rather than being given support.

Below are parts of a longer poem written by a 15-year-old girl trying to attend school. The young person has agreed to us sharing her work, but we have changed some of the words used in the original to respect the young person’s wishes and to keep anonymity.

 

To be misunderstood,

To be not enough and too much at the same time.

Too manipulative,

Too dramatic,

Too difficult.

 

Not listening,

Not complying.

Not able to to turn off my feelings.

 

This is not ordinary worry or nerves, this is a nervous system under sustained strain. A body responding as if it is not safe, and when a child is in this state, access to reasoning, regulation and choice reduces sharply.

 

You say you’re helpinhg me get into lessons, but you’re not helping, you’re pushing me through a door.

Back and forth I go.

I try, I fail, I try again.

 

I want to be in the lesson, I want to pass.

My body won’t let me.

 

When survival responses are treated as behaviour problems, and when pressure is used instead of regulation, it does not restore learning, it shuts it down, and trust is lost. When children cannot exit survival mode quickly enough, then it leads to harmful consequences.

Threatened with sanctions – no prom, sameday detention, more time in isolation.

I’m only fifteen.

I can’t understand how missing my prom is fair,

When none of this was a choice.

 

Just panic and overload

Taking over my body.

This is what happend when biological stress reponses are treated as defiance, when nervous system differences are met with punishment, when systems built for compliance are applied to children already overwhelmed.

These words didn’t come from being pushed to reflect or calm down, they came from having some space to reflect on her experiences and make sense of them.

She was proud of this poem and wanted people to hear, see and feel it, and asked for it to be shared. A sense of pride she’d never felt before.

How bad must it get before you believe me?

Before you see this isn’t help.

This is control.

This is force.

This is survival.

These words came about in an environment where the work is not to fix, diagnose or move children on, but to slow things down long enough for young people and their bodies to feel safe enough to speak and feel understood.

If any of this feels familiar, you are not alone and neither is the child you might be thinking about. Sometimes we just need to listen differently.

If a young person you know could benefit from support, get in touch with us to find out how we might be able to help.

 

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