"They Were Fine at Home." The Most Frustrating Sentence in Special Education (And What It Actually Means)
- Sarah Heller
- Apr 4
- 6 min read
By Dr. Sarah Heller, Ed.D., BCBA, LBA-NY · Meaningful Metrics
If you have a neurodivergent child, there is a good chance you have sat across a table from a teacher, a principal, or a well-meaning school psychologist and heard some version of the following: "It's interesting, because in school we really don't see that."
And if you are the parent in that scenario, you have probably done one of two things. Either you smiled politely while something inside you quietly snapped, or you started to wonder whether you are, in fact, the problem.
You are not the problem. But that sentence contains a lot of important information that rarely gets explained to the people who need it most. So let's unpack it properly.
Why kids hold it together at school and fall apart at home
Here is the short version: school is exhausting in ways that do not show up on a behavior chart.
Many neurodivergent children spend the bulk of their school day doing something researchers call masking, or camouflaging. They are monitoring how they sit, how loud they are, whether they are making the right amount of eye contact, when it is okay to talk and when it is not, whether their interests are coming across as "too much," and approximately forty-seven other social calculations that their neurotypical classmates are running on autopilot. All of this is happening simultaneously with, you know, learning fractions.
The research on masking is striking. A 2023 systematic review published in Scientific Reports found that higher levels of camouflaging are consistently linked to increased anxiety, depression, and poorer mental health outcomes in autistic individuals (Hull et al., via Scientific Reports meta-analysis, 2025). A 2019 study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders found that autistic people who camouflage heavily across many contexts report significantly worse mental health than those who are able to be more authentically themselves in at least some environments (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019). In other words, the effort of appearing neurotypical is not neutral. It costs something. And the bill comes due when your child walks through the front door.
This is what psychotherapist Andrea Nair named "after-school restraint collapse" (ASRC). The concept describes what happens when a child has spent an entire day maintaining self-control, emotional regulation, and social performance, and finally arrives somewhere safe enough to stop (Nair, 2017). A 2018 study in the Journal of School Psychology found that higher self-control demands during the school day were directly associated with greater emotional exhaustion and reduced self-regulation in the hours that followed (Journal of School Psychology, 2018, via A Day in Our Shoes).
The meltdown at 3:30pm, the shutdown the moment they walk through the door, the complete inability to do homework even though the teacher swears they were "totally engaged" in class ... that is not "defiance". That is your child's nervous system finally exhaling after holding its breath for six hours.
Here is the part that is easy to miss: the fact that your child can hold it together at school is actually a sign of real skill. They have developed genuine self-regulation capacity. The collapse at home is not a failure. It is the cost of that skill being used for hours on end in an environment that was not designed for them.
The "both versions are real" problem
When home and school see completely different versions of a child, the instinct is often to figure out which version is "real." That is the wrong question. Both versions are real. What we actually need to understand is what each environment is asking of the child, and what the child is spending to meet those demands.
Research on camouflaging makes this especially clear. A 2023 mixed-methods systematic review found that in study after study, camouflaging caused children's difficulties to go unnoticed by teachers at school, which in turn left their support needs unmet and contributed directly to their psychological distress (ScienceDirect systematic review, 2023). This is not a flaw in the children. It is a flaw in how we read them. A child who is working very hard to appear okay at school will, by definition, appear okay at school. And then they will not be okay somewhere else.
This is exactly why information from home is not just anecdotal "parent perspective" to be noted and filed away. It is clinical data. It is part of the picture. A team that is only looking at school behavior is only looking at part of what is happening.
What a good functional behavior assessment actually does with this information
An initial assessment or a formal functional behavior assessment (FBA) does not just look at what a child does. It looks at the conditions under which behavior occurs, what is happening right before and right after, and what function the behavior serves for that child across different environments. When behavior looks wildly different at home versus school, that is not a mystery to be suspicious of. It is data. Useful, specific, actionable data about what the child is working harder to manage than anyone realized.
A well-conducted FBA should be gathering information from all the settings where a child lives, not just the school building. Parent interviews, home observations when appropriate, caregiver data, descriptions of what after-school looks like (all of this belongs in the picture). If you have ever been handed an FBA report and felt like the version of your child described inside it barely resembles the child you know, that is worth asking about. A good evaluator should be curious about the discrepancy, not dismissive of it.
The FBA also opens the door to a different kind of conversation with the school team. Instead of debating whose version of the child is correct, the question becomes: what is this child managing, across all of their environments, and what do the adults in each place need to understand to support them better? That is a conversation worth having.
What to actually say at the next meeting
If you are heading into a meeting where you expect to hear "we don't see that here," it helps to go in with a reframe ready. Try asking about the full cost of the school day rather than defending what happens at home. Questions like: "What does my child look like at the end of the day compared to the morning?" or "Are there unstructured times or transitions that seem harder?" or "What is the team doing to reduce the masking load during the day, not just manage behavior at its peak?". This helps to shift the conversation from "who is right" to "what is the child managing, and how do we support it across both places."
You know your child. The professionals at school know one version of your child, in one context, under one specific set of conditions. Neither perspective is complete without the other. The goal is not to convince anyone of anything. The goal is to build a complete picture accurate enough to actually help.
Needs help supporting your child at home or in school?
If you are trying to make sense of what you are seeing at home versus what school is reporting, a functional behavior assessment can be one of the most clarifying things you do. At Meaningful Metrics, our FBAs look at the whole child across environments, not just to explain behavior, but to change how the adults around them respond to it. Schedule a free consult to talk through what that process looks like for your family.
If you’re ready to explore how our services can support your family or school, know that help is available! You don’t have to navigate this path alone. With the right guidance, every child can flourish.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Cage, E., & Troxell-Whitman, Z. (2019). Understanding the reasons, contexts and costs of camouflaging for autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(5), 1899–1911. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-03878-x
Hull, L., et al. (2025). A meta-analytic review of quantification methods for camouflaging behaviors in autistic and neurotypical individuals. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06137-z
Nair, A. L. (2017). After-school restraint collapse. Referenced in clinical and parenting education literature.
Pearson, A., et al. (2023). Psychosocial factors associated with camouflaging in autistic people and its relationship with mental health and well-being: A mixed methods systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37741059/
Journal of School Psychology (2018). Self-control demands and emotional exhaustion after school. As cited in A Day in Our Shoes (2025). https://adayinourshoes.com/after-school-meltdown/
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