Your Child Isn’t Broken
Imagine a little boy standing in preschool,
frozen because someone moved his coat peg.
His coat is still there, his teacher is nearby,
But he’s overwhelmed and screaming.
Why?
Not because he’s ‘bad’ or ‘broken’.
Not because he has a diagnosis.
But because his body and brain
are reacting in a way he can’t yet control.
Today, many children are being diagnosed
with anxiety, autism, ADHD, or other conditions.
These labels can be helpful in some cases,
but they can also limit how we understand
what’s really going on.
What if many of these behaviours
aren’t signs of disorder,
but signals that a child’s nervous system is under stress
and doing its best to cope?
The Brain Predicts. The Mind Reflects.
At the heart of this story is a simple but powerful idea:
Our brains are prediction machines.
From the moment we are born (and even before),
our brains are constantly trying to guess what will happen next.
That guessing helps us feel safe.
It helps us prepare.
It helps us survive.
When a child expects to hang their coat on a specific peg,
and that peg is suddenly moved,
their brain has to deal with a broken prediction.
For an adult, this might be annoying.
For a child whose brain is still developing,
It can feel like the world is falling apart.
The brain predicted one thing,
And reality delivered something else
and the child may not yet have the tools
to pause, reassess, and adjust.
Those tools belong to a different part of the mind.
We call it reflection.
Reflection is what allows us to
pause, think, and choose a different response.
It helps…