Imagine two children in the same class at school.
Child A skips in happily in the morning, giggling with her friends. In class, she eagerly puts her hand up to answer the teacher’s questions. She gets moved up on the behaviour board, as she does most mornings. She effortlessly produces two pages of neatly written text and is sent to show off her work to the headteacher. At lunchtime, she smells something delicious wafting through from the hall. It’s her favourite today, and she clears her plate before running out to the playground with her friends. PE is fun. She laughs with her friends as they run around together.
Child B couldn’t get to sleep last night, because she was worrying about today.
She’s tired, her eyes feel scratchy and she has a slight headache. Her uniform is uncomfortable, and the seam on her sock is digging into her toes. She clings to her mother when they get to the playground. Everyone else is chatting and laughing, and the noise hurts her ears.
In the classroom, the teacher is asking questions. She tries to make herself invisible, terrified of being asked to answer a question in front of everyone. That sock is really uncomfortable, and she bends down to fiddle with it. The teacher reprimands her for not paying attention. She gets moved down on the behaviour chart.
Writing is hard and makes her hand sore. She’s distracted by the buzzing of the lights, the scratching of people’s pencils and that sock. There’s an awful smell of cooking which makes her feel sick. Her stomach is churning and she can’t eat her packed lunch. She needs a wee, but the toilets stink, so she holds it in.
She fumbles the ball in PE and hears people laughing. It takes ages to do up the buttons on her uniform afterwards. That sock is still rubbing, and she still needs a wee.
They both have a sore throat the next day.
For Child A, it’s a minor irritation and she’s a bit quieter than usual at school.
For Child B, it’s the last straw. She begs to stay home to recover.
And that’s the problem with blanket policies — whether about attendance, behaviour, or achievement. Some children arrive at school already carrying an invisible weight. Their baseline comfort level is so low that the smallest additional discomfort — a sore throat, a scratchy sock, a buzzing light — can make the entire system feel impossible.
This is not weakness. This is not poor parenting. This is not a behaviour problem.
This is what it looks like when an environment is designed for Child A, and Child B is expected to simply get on with it.
At DLC, we design for Child B. Because when an environment works for the child who finds it hardest, it works better for everyone.
Inspired by and adapted from a piece circulating in the education and parenting community on social media. At DLC, we are always listening to the voices that illuminate what school truly feels like for children who experience it differently.