The Hidden Challenges Behind the Smile

You look around your daughter’s fifth-grade classroom and start forming impressions. Some kids look effortlessly stylish. Others appear to be wearing hand-me-downs. A few look like they rolled out of bed just minutes before carpool arrived.

Now, tell me — which four children in this class of twenty have an invisible disability?

Hard to tell, isn’t it?

That’s because you can’t. There are no signs, no obvious clues. These kids look just like their neurotypical peers. You’d never know that behind the bright smiles and fidgety hands, some of them are fighting battles you can’t see.

I was recently listening to a conversation between an adult and a tween with a learning disability. The adult mentioned that a relative had gone to Vancouver — assuming, of course, that the child would know where that is. (We live in Ontario.) I caught the blank look on his face and gently explained that Vancouver is on the other side of Canada. Throughout the conversation, I noticed moments where the boy clearly wasn’t following, but instead of slowing down or rephrasing, the adult’s tone grew curt and impatient.

I’ve seen this dynamic play out in classrooms, too. When a disability is visible — a wheelchair, a brace, a speech difference — children often respond with kindness and understanding. They can see the difference, so they process it and adjust their expectations accordingly. But invisible disabilities — ADHD, autism, learning disorders, anxiety — are harder. They ask us to be aware without visual cues, to be kind without reminders.

And it’s not only classmates who struggle with this. Parents do too.

Children don’t come with manuals. They can hit every milestone, beam up at you with big brown eyes and a drooly smile, and you assume everything is typical. When they start school, you set expectations — as every parent does. But when those expectations aren’t met, frustration builds. Sometimes it shows up as sighs or stern looks. Sometimes, heartbreakingly, it comes out as words like lazy, stupid, or why can’t you just try harder?

I know a parent who was helping their neurodivergent daughter with math homework. After explaining the same problem five times, the child still wrote the wrong answer. The parent, exhausted and exasperated, slammed their hand on the table. No words were said — but the sound was loud enough to make the little girl jump. The message of disappointment was received loud and clear.

When these invisible disabilities go undiagnosed, they can leave long-lasting scars. A child who grows up hearing sighs of frustration or feeling like they’re always failing eventually internalizes those messages. The words become self-talk: I’m dumb. I can’t do anything right. I’m a disappointment.

And then that child grows up — into an adult still battling those same thoughts. They search for belonging, for peace, for happiness — sometimes in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people, or through all the wrong substances.

We pass people like this every day. We work beside them, teach them, raise them, and sit beside them at dinner. But we don’t always see them.

It’s time to start looking.

Open your eyes. Be kind. Pay attention. Because not all disabilities are visible — but all deserve understanding.