I sat in more of those meetings than I can count before I said anything true out loud. Every time, the same pattern: someone reading from a file, a plan built around consequences and motivation, and me, watching my daughter freeze at the door every single morning, knowing none of it matched what I was actually seeing. I have letters after my own name too. In that room, my read of her still lost to their notes. But what I was watching in front of me was right. It was never defiance. It was a nervous system that had decided the school gate wasn’t safe, years before any of us worked out why. A room can have every resource in the world, a $12 million wellness centre, beanbags, a whole department, and still miss the child sitting in front of it. I learned that the hard way. If you’re in one of those meetings right now, holding a truth the room isn’t ready to hear, credentials or not: you’re not the difficult parent. You’re the only one in there who’s actually been watching. Univ...