I hear it constantly from other parents: “I don’t know how you do it—I could never fight the school like that.” Sometimes it comes wrapped in admiration, sometimes in uncomfortable recognition that they’re grateful not to be in my position, sometimes as a way to end a conversation that’s gotten too heavy, too political, too uncomfortable.
What they mean, usually, is something like: you must be so passionate, so committed, so naturally inclined toward advocacy work—as if the endless meetings, strategic documentation, and careful tracking of broken promises reflect my personality rather than the conditions forced upon my family.
This framing essentialises something that should be recognised as structural violence. It treats disability advocacy as a choice certain parents make because of who they are—their temperament, their capacity, their particular brand of fierce parental love—rather than as forced labour extracted from families when systems refuse to do their jobs.
We don’t want to be doing this. We don’t enjoy spending hours preparing for meetings where administrators will gaslight us about what they promised last month. We don’t find fulfilment in recording conversations because districts routinely lie. We don’t choose documentation as a hobby—compiling incident logs, tracking broken commitments, organising emails to prove patterns schools pretend don’t exist.
This article maps what advocacy actually requires, why it’s necessary, what it costs us, and why treating it as personal choice serves political interests
The complements said on the school yard
“I don’t know how you do it—I could never fight the school like that.”
This compliment lands like an insult, every single time.
It assumes advocacy is a personality trait, a parenting style, an optional intensity you’ve chosen because you’re passionate or neurotic or particularly committed to your child’s education. It treats the endless meetings, the documentation labour, the strategic follow-ups and careful note-taking as hobbies you’ve taken up instead of recognising them for what they actually are: survival work forced upon families when systems refuse to do their jobs.
You think we want to be doing this?
You think we enjoy spending hours preparing for meetings where six administrators will gaslight us about what they promised last month? You think we find fulfilment in recording conversations because districts routinely lie about what was said? You think documentation brings us joy—compiling incident logs, tracking broken commitments, organising emails chronologically to prove patterns the school pretends don’t exist?
This isn’t a choice. This is what happens when your child’s right to education depends entirely on your capacity to enforce it personally, repeatedly, without rest.
What neurotypical parents don’t see
When you “drop your kids off and hope for the best,” your hope is structurally supported. The system is designed for your child. Class sizes might be too large, resources might be stretched, but your kid can still access learning because the environment doesn’t require constant accommodation just to participate.
When we drop our children off, we’re sending them into systems that:
- Close playgrounds instead of providing supervision
- Document dysregulation without providing regulation support
- Frame distress as danger requiring removal
- Cancel activities rather than arrange accommodation
- Deploy collective punishment that engineers peer resentment
- Refuse supports while allowing crisis cycles to continue
- Build paper trails justifying exclusion while withholding the labour that would enable success
Your “hope for the best” operates within a system built to serve your child adequately—or at minimum, not actively harm them.
Our children face institutional machinery designed to make their presence unsustainable while framing that outcome as their personal failure.
So yes, we “fight.” Because the alternative is watching our children systematically excluded, harmed, and blamed for harms systems inflict upon them.
Why we can’t just “hope for the best”
When you suggest we’re admirable for “fighting so hard,” you’re missing something crucial: we don’t have the option you do.
Hoping for the best means trusting systems will serve your child adequately without constant enforcement. For our children, that trust produces:
- Shortened days masked as safety plans
- Room clears normalised as behaviour management
- Playground closures framed as protecting peers
- Suspended learning masked as necessary intervention
- Collective punishment engineering social isolation
- Accommodation denial justified through resource constraints
- Documentation building toward permanent exclusion
We’re not fighting because we’re passionate advocates. We’re fighting because without this labour, our children are traumatised and lose access to education entirely—and the system will call that loss their own fault for being “too complex” to serve.
The politics of making this our problem
Positioning disability advocacy as personal choice serves a clear political function: it ensures the province never faces organised pressure to fund schools adequately.
If advocacy appears to be something only certain parents do because of their personality, commitment level, or particular intensity, then:
- Inadequate support looks like individual failure to advocate effectively, not systemic design
- Parents remain isolated rather than recognising shared interests
- The massive workload required to enforce rights stays invisible
- Government avoids accountability for funding choices that make inclusion structurally impossible
This is convenient for everyone except disabled children and their families.
What it costs us
This forced labour extracts:
- Time: Hours daily managing institutional dysfunction instead of working, resting, or spending energy on anything beyond survival
- Money: Reduced employment capacity, professional advocacy services, legal consultation, therapy to process institutional trauma
- Relationships: Strained partnerships, reduced capacity for other children, isolation from community because advocacy consumes everything
- Health: Chronic stress, sleep deprivation, nervous system dysregulation from constant institutional combat
- Trust: Watching professionals gaslight you erodes faith in all institutional relationships
And through all of this, people tell us they “don’t know how we do it,” as if we’re running marathons for fun instead of being chased.
We’re doing this because we have no choice
So when you say you “could never fight like that,” what you’re actually saying is: you don’t have to.
Your child’s access doesn’t depend on your capacity to enforce their rights personally, repeatedly, without institutional support. The system—however imperfect—functions adequately enough for your child that you can trust it to do the minimum.
We don’t have that luxury.
Our choice is: do this exhausting, consuming, psychologically damaging work—or watch our children excluded, harmed, and blamed for system failures.
That’s not a choice. That’s coercion.
What would it look like if we didn’t have to do this?
Schools would:
- Provide adequate supervision enabling sensory exploration instead of closing playgrounds
- Allocate specialist support as sustained therapeutic relationships instead of brief consultation triage
- Implement regulation support preventing dysregulation instead of documenting incidents and withholding help
- Modify environments addressing sensory needs instead of treating overwhelm as behaviour requiring management
- Facilitate repair work after incidents instead of allowing peer relationships to deteriorate
- Fund staffing ratios permitting individualised attention instead of rationing adult presence
- Offer professional development as sustained implementation coaching instead of one-off workshops
In other words: schools would do their jobs.
And we would get to be parents—supporting our children’s learning, celebrating their growth, helping with homework, attending performances—instead of performing enforcement labour the province refuses to fund.
Stop complimenting us for surviving what shouldn’t exist
We don’t want admiration for “fighting so hard.”
We want you to recognise this labour as violence—the deliberate provincial choice to underfund schools while engineering disabled children as scapegoats, forcing families to either perform endless advocacy or watch their children excluded.
We want you to understand that when you “drop your kids off and hope for the best,” you’re benefiting from a system designed to serve your child while requiring ours to fight for scraps.
We want you to stop treating advocacy as personality and start recognising it as forced labour.
And most of all, we want you to get angry alongside us—not at disabled children for “requiring so much,” but at the government choosing austerity while making families pay the cost.