This Is My Place: Finding Belonging in Schools, Homes and Communities

Belonging can feel distant for many neurodivergent children, especially when early experiences of difference turn into shame and isolation. Emma explores how understanding, acceptance, and the right support can help children grow up feeling secure in who they are.

Belonging is a word we use often, but for many children it feels abstract, distant, or even impossible. When you’re a child, feeling different is intensified. You don’t yet have the language or understanding to explain why you feel different – only the painful awareness that you are. That difference can feel isolating, especially when other children don’t want to play with you and you don’t know why. Loneliness at such a young age cuts deeply.

For many Neurodivergent children, this sense of difference arrives early. Even before a diagnosis, many children are already aware that something feels “off”. Because it takes time to receive answers, that difference often becomes internalised. Children don’t think, ‘something about my environment isn’t working for me’ – they think, ‘something is wrong with me’. This is how shame and guilt begin to take root, and why so many Neurodivergent adults carry the weight of their childhood experiences long into later life.

This is why security, understanding, and acceptance in childhood matter so much. When children are nurtured and shown that it’s okay to be individual, they are less likely to repress their feelings or grow up believing they must hide who they are. Without that support, masking becomes a survival strategy. Children learn to copy, mirror, and suppress parts of themselves just to get through the day. That may help them survive, but it comes at a cost.

So what helps belonging?

For many Neurodivergent people, healing is not a single moment but a lifelong process. When shame has been held for so long, it doesn’t simply disappear. Healing your inner child takes conscious effort, patience, and kindness towards yourself. Belonging doesn’t necessarily mean fitting into every space or being accepted by everyone. It means finding people who want to be around you as you are – people who don’t judge you for unmasking, for stimming, for shutting down, or for showing up differently from day to day.

With time and maturity comes an important realisation: you don’t have to be friends with everyone. Not every relationship is meant to last forever, and that isn’t a failure. Sometimes people don’t gel. Sometimes relationships can’t be sustained. That doesn’t mean they weren’t meaningful or important at the time. Learning this can be freeing, especially for people who have spent years blaming themselves for relationships ending.

Many Neurodivergent people find deep belonging with other Neurodivergent people. Shared experiences of exclusion, bullying, and loneliness often lead to extraordinary kindness, empathy, and understanding. When Neurodivergent people find each other, there is often an unspoken recognition – a feeling of being understood at an innate level. This lack of judgement makes it easier to sustain relationships, because there is space to be human without fear of being perceived as “too much” or “not enough”.

That said, meaningful relationships with Neurotypical people are also possible – especially when those people are informed, compassionate, and aware of Neurodivergence and mental health. The challenge for children is that they don’t get to choose their environments. At school and at home, children are placed into groups by age, class, or family. For Neurodivergent children, this can make it much harder to find “their people” and to realise that others like them exist.

Without life experience, it’s easy for children to believe that the lonely or frightening place they’re in will last forever. When you’re young, being isolated feels permanent. Hearing “it won’t always be like this” is hard to believe when you’re living it every day. That’s why support for children and teenagers is imperative. Isolation amplifies distress, and too many young people suffer in silence, believing they are the only ones who feel this way.

Schools play a crucial role in shaping belonging. When a child is clearly struggling to integrate, early intervention matters. Too often, children are left to “sink or swim”, with adults hoping the situation will resolve itself. For Neurodivergent children, who often feel deeply and are highly sensitive, every lonely lunch break or moment of exclusion leaves a mark. Bullying and exclusion are not small experiences – they shape how children see themselves and the world.

Schools need better systems to support connection: supported friendships, inclusive activity clubs, and intentional spaces for lonely children to meet others. Sometimes, what a child needs most is a trusted adult who reminds them that the exclusion is not their fault.

Education also matters. Neurodivergence needs to be taught in age-appropriate, positive, and human ways – not as a list of deficits or stereotypes. Children are not born fearful of difference; they learn it. If we introduce children early to Neurodivergent people, disabilities, different identities, and ways of being, we create a generation that is more open, compassionate, and accepting.

As we grow older, many of us realise something powerful: there is a whole world out there. The belief that life will always feel small, lonely, or hostile simply isn’t true. There are people who will understand you, spaces where you can exist without judgement, and communities where you don’t have to hide.

Belonging feels different for everyone. For me, it means being able to exist without shame. It means not having to mask, mirror, or apologise for living. It means being able to talk about my interests, express myself freely, and exist in all parts of who I am. That is my place.

And every child deserves to find theirs.