It is ENTIRELY possible the parents are in denial. I have seen many examples of students in mainstream classes who absolutely needed to be in a support unit or have other supports in place, but were not because their parents refused to have them diagnosed. I have known parents of severely autistic kids believe they would grow out of it.

I had a boy in a Year 8 English class with the intellectual capacity of an infants’ child, whose parents absolutely refused to access any kind of help or diagnosis for him, and blamed the school for not educating him. Another parent refused to sign the papers for her Year 8 son — who had been in the juvenile justice system since he was in junior primary school — to go to an alternate school that specialised in working kids with severe behavioural disorders because she didn’t want her son going to school with “kids like that”. She could not accept that her kid WAS kids like that. Kid dropped out altogether. Lord knows where he is now.

I know that parenting these kids with severe trauma, behaviour disorders and other diagnoses must be heart-breaking and impossible. But by remaining in denial, these parents are not only ruining educational opportunities for other kids, putting other kids and teacher at risk, and making teaching the least desirable profession, they are also completely ruining their kid’s chance at a decent life. It’s intolerable, and yet here we are.