Is my autistic child masking at school? What some parents notice, and how support with friendships can help

Masking is when a child works hard, sometimes without fully realising it themselves, to hide or suppress autistic traits in order to fit in socially. Many autistic people describe it as common and exhausting, and it can be easy for the adults around a child to miss, because it can look like a child who is simply coping well.

The National Autistic Society's guidance on masking covers this in more depth for parents who want to read further.

Masking can look like several things at once.

• Copying other children's expressions and phrases
• Holding eye contact that doesn't feel natural
• Holding in reactions they might otherwise show
• Staying quiet rather than risk saying the wrong thing

One pattern some parents describe is a child who seems fine, even sociable, at school, and then comes home and falls apart, with meltdowns, withdrawal, or complete exhaustion in the hours afterwards. That gap between how a child seems at school and how they are at home is worth taking seriously rather than assuming the at-school version is the whole picture.

Masking can become more pronounced around friendship specifically, if a child senses that showing their natural way of communicating might risk exclusion. Many autistic people describe sustained masking as exhausting, and some say it becomes harder, over time, to stay in touch with their own natural way of being underneath it.