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School accommodations that backfire

Every accommodation is a trade. It buys a calmer day now and it usually costs something later. The ones worth having are the ones where you know what the cost is.

Nothing on this page is an argument against accommodation. A child who cannot get through the door needs the door made smaller. The problem is the accommodation that was meant to be temporary, has no end date, and has quietly become the reason the fear is not shrinking.

The pattern to watch for

An accommodation backfires when it removes the discomfort at exactly the moment the discomfort peaks. That is the moment the child learns something, and what they learn depends on what happens next.

• An open pass to leave class. Used at the peak, every time, it teaches that the peak is unsurvivable.
• Calling home whenever the child asks. The call ends the feeling in seconds, which makes the next call more likely.
• Going home from the nurse's office. A nurse plan that returns the child to class after a set time does the opposite of one that ends the day.
• Reduced timetables with no schedule for increasing them. Half days that stay half days for a term.
• Skipping presentations indefinitely. The exemption is easy to grant and hard to take back.

What to ask for instead

The same accommodations, with three things attached.

• A review date. Not "we will see how it goes" but a date in the calendar.
• A step-down plan. What the accommodation looks like in two weeks and in four, written down before it starts.
• A return path. Where the child goes after the pass is used, and what happens after fifteen minutes.

Schools generally say yes to this. It is easier to agree a plan with dates than to renegotiate an open-ended arrangement six weeks in, and it gives the staff something specific to follow when the person who set it up is out.