Simon Currigan: 0:44

Are you worried a child that you know might be putting on a brave face at school? Do you think they might be masking? If so, you're not alone. Many autistic kids become experts at masking their true feelings and needs. This can be helpful in the short term, but over time, it can leave them feeling drained and exhausted. So if you're ready to find out more about supporting children with masking behaviours, then join us for the latest School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when class room behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there. Simon Currigan here with another bite sized episode of School Behaviour Secrets where we crack open the vault of an earlier episode revisiting essential strategies and insights that can make a real difference in your classroom. And today, we're heading back to an interview I had with parent and educational adviser, Amanda Sokell, where we discussed what masking looks like in young people and why listening to their behaviour, not just their words, is vital when trying to support their emotional well-being. Before we dive in, I wanna take a quick second to thank all of you amazing listeners out there. If you're finding the School Behaviour Secrets Podcast helpful, please don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends or colleagues about the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Alright. Enough chit chat. Let's get into the interview. So we're talking about kids who are disguising their true feelings. They're hiding their true needs. I suppose the next question is, why do they do it? What drives that masking behaviour?

Amanda Sokell: 3:00

Well, children do it for the same reason that adults do it. They do it to fit in. Who wants to be the person that says, when asked the question, how are you? Oh, actually, life's rubbish. You know, what do we do with that? So children want to fit in just like we do. And often the children that might be masking might be neurodiverse. If they're autistic, for example, they've probably spent their entire life watching others to try and understand how to behave. And so they see other children doing certain things and they try and fit in with that. Within school, there are lots of expectations. There are expectations on how you sit, how you walk down the corridor, putting up your hand. The anxiety that might be formed by those expectations or too much sensory overwhelm or whatever it is, can cause a huge amount of stress for children. But because they're looking around them and understanding what's expected and trying to fit in, you know, that's where the disconnect is. And I think also often there are children that mask have a very strong sense of justice and what's right. And they don't want to be the ones to break the rules because they're very clear about what the rules are. And yet, when they get home, that's their safe space. And so they can behave in a very different way at home.

Simon Currigan: 4:20

That brings us neatly onto the topic of after school collapse and kids holding in, in inverted commas, their behaviour all day. As anyone who has experienced a strong emotion will know, you can only hold it in for so long. I once heard a description that it our emotions were a bit like a beach ball that you blow up at the beach. If you try and hold it under the water, at some point, it's gonna bob back up. Mhmm. So can you tell us a little bit about parents' experiences of their children's behaviour at home and touch on and unpack what we mean by after school collapse.

Amanda Sokell: 4:51

Yes. That's absolutely right. And actually, this can often be one of the first indications that what's going on is masking. Because there's a great video that was put together. It's on YouTube, if anyone's interested, by Time To Thrive. And they use the analogy of a bottle of Coke. And the the idea is that, you know, the child is the bottle of Coke and they get jostled around a bit on the bus on the way to school, and then the teacher says something that they don't like, and then, you know, something happens in the playground and the Coke bottle falls over. And then at the end of the school day, they greet their parents, and the parent essentially takes the lid off the coke. And of course, it goes everywhere. And that's the after school collapse. That's a fantastic video that explains it. And I think it's because home is their safe space. So home is where they can relax and to use your analogy, you know, they can bob back up. And the consequence of that is that parents see a very different experience of their child's world. And it can be very stressful for parents because in my case, because I have firsthand experience of all of this, my child was physically threatening at the age of 7. He withdrew from all the activities he was happy to go to. So he stopped wanting to go to gymnastics. He stopped wanting to go to swimming, to tennis, to Cubs and Beavers. You know, it was very, very challenging in his behaviour at home. It was a very difficult time.

Simon Currigan: 6:16

How did it feel as a parent to be on the other side of the screen, as it were, and seeing your child suddenly change like that?

Amanda Sokell: 6:23

You feel completely desperate because he's our second child. And so I felt like a really reasonably experienced parent. And yet this was completely different. So, you know, we were parenting our children in the same way. And one was behaviour one way and the other was behaving in a completely different way. And it didn't seem to matter what we changed. Nothing made a difference. You know, we could be more strict at home. We could raise expectations. We could remove expectations. It didn't matter what we did. So it was very, very difficult to navigate emotionally draining, feeling quite desperation at times and despondency at times because, you know, we had no support. And I think that's one of the challenges because we asked for support. I asked the school for support from, you know, behaviour specialists. And because there was no behaviour problem to fix in school, those services couldn't get engaged.

Simon Currigan: 7:19

So that must have been frustrating. You're talking to educational professionals who aren't seeing what you're seeing. What were their reactions when you brought this up? You know, how did they respond when you said, look, we're having these issues at home? What was their response? Because this is really important because most of the listeners to this show will be teachers and school leaders. And I have actually said to parents, I've had the conversation. I'm not sure how to help you, well, earlier in my career, because we're not seeing this in school. Mhmm. Tell me about your experiences and and the reactions of the professionals you spoke to.

Amanda Sokell: 7:50

I'd say that's really common. Lots of parents I speak to have said that teachers have sort of said, well, you know, we don't see this behaviour. So what can we fix? You know, there's nothing in our tool bag that helps us fix a problem we haven't got. I've also heard teachers who have, as I said, been completely unable to comprehend that a child as young as 6 or 7 could hold it in for an entire school day because they don't think an adult would be able to do that. And often, I think the feeling is that from parents is that the school is kind of going, if there's this big problem at home, look at home. What are you doing? You know, what's not happening at home? At school we've got these really clear boundaries and these really clear rules and this very big structure. Maybe that's lacking at home and that's why you've got this problem, which is very hard as a parent when you know that's not the problem. I'm not saying that's not always the case, and I'm sure there are families out there where that is the problem, Especially in a family where there's more than one child, you would expect if that was the problem, all of the children would be behaving in the same way. So if that's not the case, that's a really good indicator that maybe there's something particularly afoot. So it's very difficult to get support as a parent and to be listened to and heard by teaching staff in many cases.

Simon Currigan: 9:08

It sounds like part of the problem here is professionals aren't taking sort of a 360 degree view of what's affecting the child. If everything's fine at school, then the problem must be with the parenting. But, actually, the issue here is around the school environment and the child's reaction to it, and they're basically running out of emotional space at the end of the day and then experiencing this after school collapse, which isn't the fault of the parent. It's the fault of the experiences during the day that the child is having.

Amanda Sokell: 9:40

That's exactly right, Simon. That's exactly right. And if we could shout that from the rooftop loud and clear and put it on a banner in every school staff room, that would be amazing. But if teaching staff could really understand that that's what's going on, and that for some children, the experience of a school environment is very stressful even if they're not showing it. We'd be a big step towards helping these children to have a better school experience.

Simon Currigan: 10:10

So that was just a small section of my discussion with Amanda Sokell explaining the warning signs of masking behaviours in the classroom and potential drivers behind it. There's so much more to unpack in the full interview. And if you'd like to know more, head over to the show notes for this episode. There'll be a link there waiting to take you right back to the full conversation with Amanda from episode 87. Definitely worth a listen. Thanks for joining us today for another score behavior secrets episode. Your feedback is like rocket fuel for the School Behaviour Secrets team, so please rate and review the podcast. It's a huge help for us if you do. I hope you found this episode valuable, and I'll see you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.