When Your Kids Face the Same System That Failed You
- May 6
- 3 min read
By Beven Byrnes
School was brutal for me in many of the ways it tends to be brutal for most neurodivergent children. The fluorescent lights would hurt my head, cafeteria noise was overwhelming and the constant instruction to sit still when my brain needed to move to think nearly drove me insane.
Sure, I survived it through an alternative school that worked for how my brain functioned, I made it through. But why is it that when I, or other neurodivergent people talk about our education, we have to speak in terms of survival in the first place?
That question always stuck with me, and it wasn’t until my own children had to go through the same system that I decided something had to be done about it.
The first time a teacher suggested one of my children just needed to "try harder," something broke inside me. Not because the teacher was cruel, she wasn’t, but because she was working within a system that only knows one way to teach and my kids, just like me, didn't fit that mold.
So I did what any mom would do, I thought for my children and sat through IEP meetings while demanding accommodations that should have been automatic in the first place, and I watched my children's confidence crumble as each time the response from the education system was that they were the ones failing it, and not the other way around.
By then, I'd already spent years in nonprofit work, starting my own organization as a young single mom and I understood what it meant to build something from nothing. So when I came to the conclusion that I was done with the system, I decided to build my own, one where neurodivergent brains were respected and recognized.
When I joined what became Bridges Middle School in 2012, it felt like I finally had a chance to build the school I wished had existed for me, the school my kids deserved.
Since then, over the last fourteen years, I've helped transform Bridges into Oregon's only middle school specifically designed for students with learning differences, which I’m proud to say is the realization of that vision.
Now, not only do my children not have to listen that they are the problem, but they are part of a whole community of children and even parents who, much like them, have brains that work differently that now can thrive at what they do best.
I've led this school through my own cancer diagnosis, had twins while serving as Executive Director. Through every challenge, I’ve been able to stay grounded through meditation and making art because that's how neurodivergent brains process the world.
But here's what I wish I could tell every parent watching their child struggle in a system that doesn't understand them:
You don't have to accept it.
The teachers who tell your child to "try harder" aren't the enemy, your enemy is the system that only knows one way to teach. And systems can be changed.
It might not look like starting a school, like I did, it might look like fighting for your child's IEP or finding an alternative program that works. It might also look like becoming the loudest advocate in the room until someone listens.
But, most importantly, it starts with refusing to believe your child is the problem.
My kids don't talk about school as something they have to survive anymore. They talk about what they learned, what they built, who they're becoming.
And that's why no parent should have to watch their kids face the same system that failed them.
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