Fighting for Invisible Disabilities
Having a child with a disability changes you. After years as an education policy advisor and reformer, I found myself in a club I had never asked to join. I became a special education mom. Parents of children with disabilities are a daunting group. We fight harder than a mama bear, yet we can cry at the drop of a hat.
His Unrecognized Disability
I think there is a common assumption that my daughter, Vanessa, is my why. I don’t have to convince anyone that Vanessa has a disability. She has Down syndrome; her disability is obvious.
But my motivation stems more from my experience with my son. Trey is tall, dark, handsome, and gifted. He also has ADD and struggles with short-term processing and executive functioning.
When he was young, Trey was the stereotypical hyper child–running around and jumping from his seat to proudly answer each question. He would forget books, homework, and directions. One day, he tearfully told me that he could never get straight ‘A’s, no matter what he did, how much he studied, or how much content he mastered. I could see his growing stress and anxiety.
Yet the school refused to give him a 504 plan. They said his grades were too high, and I didn’t know enough to fight. I needed a Champion.
“Outgrowing” ADD
As the years passed, Trey grew and matured. Not understanding enough about his disability, I assumed he had “outgrown” it. (We later learned that ADD isn’t something you truly outgrow – the symptoms just evolve and become more internalized over time.)
He wasn’t running around anymore, but he was struggling more than ever. I just didn’t realize it.
His internalized struggle came to a head during his senior year when I discovered he had never checked his Advanced Placement test scores. Why? He knew he hadn’t passed. He hadn’t had enough time to finish the test.
Even with an education advocate for a mom, he didn’t know this was something he should tell someone.
Later that week, we were watching his basketball game. During a time out when all the other players were looking down at the coach’s white board, I saw Trey looking around, seemingly not paying attention. And then it suddenly all made sense. All those years, he had never had a Champion because his teachers and coaches assumed he was zoning out.
We had one last round of parent-teacher conferences before Trey graduated from high school. With his permission, I shared his diagnosis with the teachers. One by one, they all told me that they wished they had known. They had just assumed he wasn’t paying attention.
Like so many other parents, we didn’t want to medicate our son and believed that he would outgrow his ADD. We were in denial. We didn’t realize that the adults around him had already formed their own opinions.
Champions for All Kids
Trey needed a Champion.
Someone who could be a voice for him — someone who could recognize the challenges he faced, speak up on his behalf, and help navigate a system that often overlooks students like him.
A Champion is someone who helps identify the most frequent issues families encounter, shares common experiences, and works to break down systemic barriers.
But Trey isn’t the only student who needs someone like this. Thousands of students with invisible disabilities are walking through school hallways without the support they deserve. The number of students qualifying for special education services continues to rise — and yet, I’m convinced we are still under-identifying those who need it most.
About 70% of students with disabilities have challenges that aren’t always visible — things like dyslexia, chronic fatigue syndrome, ADD, hearing loss, or autism. These students may appear unengaged, bored, frustrated, disruptive — or sometimes, they’re just not present at all.
I wish we didn’t need to identify the differences in students’ beautiful, creative minds as “disabilities.” But currently, schools won’t accommodate them otherwise. So, they are why I fight.
