Is My Defiant Child "Masking" at School?

I was so happy to hear from my child's teacher that he was doing so great at school—cooperative, empathetic, a leader—even though I was totally confused by this. At home he is defiant, bosses us around, is mean to his brother all the time.

Then, I started reading that this is called "masking" and is a really bad thing and is harmful to kids—that they are faking it to conform, to be accepted—and not able to be their true selves. Now I don't know what to think or do about this.

Being much better behaved at school than at home is a very common phenomenon for the kids in my practice. Why does this happen?

A recent theory that is getting a lot of attention is that kids are "masking," a term typically used to describe when people with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) try to act like their neurotypical peers in order to conform. As it relates to autism, masking is considered detrimental because it is exhausting and studies have shown that it can increase anxiety and depression.¹

I hear this term now being more broadly applied to kids who do not have ASD but who exhibit confusing behavioral differences at school and home. I'm not a scientist, but even scientists can't always know exactly what is happening in kids' brains that is causing the behavior we observe. Yet based on my work with thousands of big reactors (some with ASD but most just highly sensitive) what I see, by and large, is that when this dynamic is at play, it tends to be positive and not harmful for kids.

Teachers report and I observe that these kids tend not to look stressed or like automatons. They are regulated, positively engaged, energized, and happy. They are experiencing themselves as competent, well-liked human beings—a net positive.

Think about it. Many of us are our "best selves" at work. We manage our emotions and reactivity, we are kind and cooperative, and we communicate with warmth and respect to our colleagues and bosses. Then we get home and dump all of our stress onto the people we care about and love the most. We feel free to do this because we know, no matter what, that our family will always accept us and be there for us.

The same is true for kids. Home is their safe space. It is because they trust you that they are freer to fall apart with you.

Is it exhausting to get through a full day of school? Sure. Kids, especially those who are highly sensitive, are working very hard to follow all the rules, make myriad transitions, and learn to get along with others in the context of a highly stimulating environment.

But this does not necessarily mean that adapting at school is harmful. It means recognizing that your child may need a fair amount of downtime at the end of the day to refuel.

I leave you with a very powerful story from one of my clients—a very tuned-in, sensitive, responsive mom—whose seven-year-old is highly sensitive, very intense, and gets overwhelmed easily. He loves school, where he is a superstar—a well-liked leader and rule-follower.

Yet at home, he descends into dysregulation very quickly and fiercely when he is not completely in control of any situation. He is demand-avoidant and can be explosive and destructive when he is on system overload. ⁠He does not have ASD. His mother shared the following epiphany:

I went from thinking, "What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just come home from school, happily hang up your backpack, wash your hands, have a snack, regale me with all the fun you had a school today, and then just play, instead of falling apart the second you walk in the door, dropping all your stuff on the floor, yelling at me for having the wrong kind of graham crackers, and then being in a rage the rest of the day?" to: ⁠"It's amazing that you can go to school all day, follow a million rules, make transition after transition, sit and listen for long periods, and share and take turns with so many other kids. I am in total awe of you."

Recalibrating her expectations led to her taking a step back and scaffolding weekday afternoons for success.

I was trying so hard to stick with the screen limit of 60 minutes a day for my seven-year-old. Then one day I decided to trust what I know about my child: He is so sensitive and intense that by the time he gets home from a long day at school, he needs to just completely zone out. The screen provides that.

So I started letting him watch (only appropriate content) up to two hours before dinner. And guess what? He is a total delight for the rest of the night—so much more regulated. We have lost of warm, loving connection. Before, it was just one explosion after another with maybe 10 minutes of peace.

That's when I realized that this was good parenting, not permissive parenting. And that it wasn't ruining my child to let him have more screen time than "experts" recommend; they don't know my child or my family and what we all need. We have so much less stress and so much more bonding.

The take-home: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting, and no one-size-fits-all root cause of children's behavior.