When You Worry About Your Child's Future
Updated: Aug 31
When your child finds everyday life harder than other children seem to, it's difficult not to wonder what that might mean for their future.
Often I meet children who find school, and the wider world, a challenging place to be. There can be a lot to manage in an ordinary day: noise, bright lights, transitions, busy classrooms, lots of people, changing expectations and the complicated social task of working out where you fit.
For some children, particularly those who are anxious, sensitive or neurodivergent, getting through the day can take a huge amount of effort.
Some become very good at holding things together. They learn what's expected, watch what other children are doing and work hard to fit in. At school they may appear to be coping well, but by the time they get home they're exhausted. This is often where parents see the tears, irritability, meltdowns, withdrawal or complete refusal to do anything.
Other children show us much earlier that an environment isn't working for them. They might avoid school or activities, struggle with transitions, become overwhelmed or dysregulated, or need more support to participate.
When this is your child's experience, it's very easy to start worrying about what it means for their future. If they find school this difficult, how will they manage university or work? If friendships are hard now, will they find people they connect with? Will they be able to live independently? How will they cope in a world that already seems to ask so much of them?
These are understandable worries. But one of the things I've been privileged to see through working with children and families over many years is that growing up can also bring something we don't always factor into those worries: more choice.
Children don't get to choose very much
It's striking how much of a child's life is decided for them.
They generally don't choose where they go to school, who is in their class, what time they need to arrive, what they learn, when they can take a break or how many people they spend their day with.
A child who is sensitive to noise can't simply decide to work somewhere quieter. A child who finds constant social interaction exhausting can't choose to spend more of their day somewhere calm. A child with a deep interest in one particular area still has to move on when the bell rings.
There are good reasons for many of these structures, of course, but children have relatively little ability to shape their world around how they function best.
As they get older, this begins to change.
They have more choice about the subjects they study and how they spend their time. Their social world expands beyond the children they happen to have been placed in a classroom with. Eventually, they have more say in where and how they work, the people they spend time with and the routines they build around themselves.
Adult life comes with plenty of demands of its own, and growing older doesn't mean that anxiety, sensory sensitivities, disability or neurodevelopmental differences disappear.
What changes is the amount of agency we have to work with them.
Having somewhere you can be yourself matters
For children who spend a lot of their day working hard to manage expectations or fit in, having people and places where they can relax and be more fully themselves matters.
I see this often in therapy. For some children, part of what makes the therapeutic relationship important is simply having a place where they feel seen and understood, where they don't have to work quite so hard to get things right or be what other people expect them to be.
Children can find this in other places too. It might be at home, with a grandparent, with one particular friend or teacher, or through an activity or community where they feel comfortable. These are the places where they can talk enthusiastically about the things they love, be quiet when they need to be, move their bodies, be silly, ask questions, get things wrong and let down some of the effort involved in navigating the rest of their world.
When children are young, they rely heavily on adults to help create these spaces for them. They can't easily change schools, choose who they're surrounded by or seek out a community of people who understand them.
But as their world gets bigger, so do their opportunities to find places where they fit.
The child who talks endlessly about a particular interest may eventually find people who are just as interested. The child who struggles with the social dynamics of the playground may find friendships easier when they're built around shared interests. The teenager who finds constant interaction exhausting may eventually choose study or work that offers more independence, predictability or quiet.
For some children, having more freedom to seek out people and places where they can be more authentically themselves can make an enormous difference.
What your child struggles with now isn't necessarily a prediction of their future
When a child is struggling, it's natural to look at what they can't manage now and imagine those difficulties continuing indefinitely.
But the environment around a child changes as they grow, just as the child themselves does.
The eight-year-old who struggles every day in a noisy classroom may eventually choose a quieter working environment. The ten-year-old who hasn't found their friendship group has years ahead of them to meet people beyond the relatively small group they happen to go to school with. The twelve-year-old who needs a lot of support now may develop skills, strategies and an understanding of themselves that changes what support looks like later.
We can't know what any child's future will look like, and there will always be parts of life they can't control. Growing older doesn't make anxiety, disability, sensory sensitivities or neurodevelopmental differences simply disappear.
But what a child can manage now isn't a fixed measure of what they'll be capable of later. They will change, but so will the world available to them.
Alongside helping children develop the skills they need to navigate situations they can't choose, we can help them understand themselves: what gives them energy and what drains it, what they enjoy, where they feel comfortable, what they need when things become too much and which relationships allow them to feel most like themselves.
As they grow, that understanding gives them something to work with. Rather than measuring success by whether they eventually become comfortable in every environment, we can hope they develop both the skills to navigate situations they can't choose and the confidence to make different choices when they can.
For parents looking at a child who is struggling now, it can be difficult to imagine that future. The problems in front of you are immediate, while adulthood feels a long way away.
One of the privileges of working with children and families over time is seeing that the things which worry us when children are young don't always predict their future in the way we fear they might.
Their world gets bigger. They meet more people, discover new interests, understand themselves better and have more say in the shape of their lives.
For some children, being able to build more of their life around who they actually are - rather than spending so much energy trying to fit into environments that don't suit them - can make an enormous difference.
Worried about how your child is coping?
If you're worried about how your child is managing school, friendships or everyday life, parent support can give you space to step back and make sense of what's happening, understand what your child might need, and think about how you can support them.
You don't need to know exactly what kind of help your child needs before getting in touch.
