Written by Millie Carr, Inclusion Outreach Coach, Warringa Park School
There’s a sentence I’ve heard many times, as a teacher, as a parent and as a student when I was at school. “She’s fine here.”. Sometimes it’s said kindly. Sometimes with relief and sometime with genuine confusion. Often, it’s true, at least on the surface. But for many students, being “fine” at school comes at a cost that isn’t always visible in the classroom.
What Masking Really Looks Like
Masking is what happens when a student hides their needs, distress or differences in order to fit in, avoid standing out or to stay safe. It can look like quiet compliance, perfectionism, people pleasing or emotional restraint. It’s particularly common among autistic students, students with ADHD, anxiety, trauma histories and those who have learned early that being different attracts unwanted attention.
I’ve seen this from multiple angles. As a teacher, I’ve had students who never raised their hand, never broke a rule and never caused concern…. until, suddenly they couldn’t come to school anymore. As a parent, I’ve watched my own child hold it together all day, only to unravel the moment she walked through the front door. The tears, the rage, the exhaustion didn’t mean school was “bad”. It meant school required an enormous amount of effort just to get through.
As an educator working in inclusive education, I’ve come to understand that masking isn’t behaviour choice. It’s a nervous system response.
The Disconnect Between Home and School
One of the strongest indicators of masking isn’t something we see at school at all, it’s what families report happening afterwards. At school, the child appears calm, capable maybe even thriving. At home, they collapse. Meltdowns. Shutdowns. Withdrawal. Emotional explosions. Complete exhaustion.
This home-school disconnect is often misunderstood. Parents are sometimes told the behaviour must be learned, reinforced or situational. But what families are seeing is often the release, the nervous system finally letting go after hours of self-monitoring, suppression and effort.
Research supports this. Studies on autistic camouflaging, show that prolonged masking is associated with increased anxiety, exhaustion, depression and identify confusion (Hull et al., 2017; Livingston et al., 2020). Yet because masking often presents as compliance or achievement, it is rarely flagged as a concern. In fact, it is often rewarded.
Quiet Does Not Always Mean Regulated
In schools, we are trained to respond to what we see. Disruption draws attention. Distress that spills outward gets support. But masking students are often distressed inwardly. They are constantly checking themselves, their body, their tone, their facial expressions, their responses. They are managing sensory overload, social expectations and cognitive demands simultaneously. This level of self-regulation leaves very little capacity for learning.
Neuroscience reminds us that learning is only accessible when the brain feels safe (Perry & Szalavitz, 2017). When students are focused on surviving the environment, academic success becomes secondary.
A quiet classroom can still be a dysregulated one.
When unmasking Feels Uncomfortable
One of the hardest moments for educators is when a student who has always seemed “fine” begins to struggle more openly. Emotions increase. Behaviour shifts. The mask slips. It can feel like things are getting worse. But often, this is a sign of safety.
Unmasking is vulnerable. It can look messy, and it challenges our expectations of what progress should look like. Emotional expression is not failure, its information. It tells us that the student trusts the environment enough to stop pretending.
The Quiet Power Educators Hold
The hopeful part of this conversation is that supporting masked students doesn’t require identifying every individual need or having a diagnosis in place. Many of the practices that reduce the need to mask are universal supports that benefit all learners:
- Predictable routines and visual supports
- Scaffolded tasks that reduce cognitive load
- Choice and agency in how learning is shown
- Regular emotional check ins
- Movement breaks and sensory regulation options
These strategies don’t single students out. They create classrooms where safety is embedded from the start. For families, what often matters most isn’t perfection, its partnership. A willingness to listen, a willingness to believe what they’re seeing, a willingness to try something rather than default to “we don’t see it here.”
Look Beneath the Surface
Masking invites us to ask different questions:
- Who might be working harder than they appear?
- Which behaviours are we praising and why?
- Who is being missed because they’re not disruptive?
When educators shift from managing behaviour to understanding nervous systems, classrooms change. Not because expectations disappear but because safety becomes the foundation for learning.
No child should have to pretend to belong in order to succeed and no educator needs to have all the answers to make a difference, just curiosity, compassion and courage to look a little deeper.
Refences
Hull, L., et al. (2017). Putting on My Best Normal: Social Camouflaging in Autism Spectrum Conditions.
Livingston, L. A., et al. (2020). Camouflaging in autism: A systematic review.
Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.
Millie is speaking at the Brisbane Diverse Learners Symposium on ‘Spotting Hidden Struggles and Creating Classrooms Where Students Don’t Have to Pretend‘. View the Full Conference Program Here.