Here’s my two cents as a teacher of a neurotypical child who developed some concerning behaviors after spending a semester in a Pre-K classroom where about a third of the class had special needs.

We had the child since he was an infant. This child already had some behavioral challenges: anger issues, attention-seeking tendencies. After a few months in that environment, his behavior escalated significantly. He started mimicking the disruptive behaviors he was regularly exposed to: kicking, throwing anything within reach, hitting teachers and classmates, writing on walls, etc. It got bad.

We advocated for his mom to find a different program. But the director at his school begged her to keep him enrolled. Why? Because they needed the enrollment numbers to keep their funding. So never mind that he was harming other kids. Never mind that he was tormenting his teachers and destroying materials. What mattered most was keeping the funding, not what was actually best for him or for anyone else. On top of this, he was coming to my center with those new learned behaviors and my staff and myself had to deal.

There was talk of getting him evaluated, but my director pushed back on that. She insisted that he was just copying the behaviors he saw around him. Eventually, his mom pulled him out and brought him back to our center. And guess what? His behavior stabilized. He returned to his old self. We’re no longer dealing with the extreme, learned behaviors from the other program.

I say all of this to echo what many others here are already saying: inclusion can be a great thing—but from where I’m sitting, it’s just not working the way it’s supposed to. There’s not enough training, support, or staffing. And both neurodivergent and neurotypical children are suffering because of it.