Our Kids Aren’t Broken: How Parents Can Help Reclaim the Future for America's Youth

I see you.

You - the fierce parent walking through fire for your kids.

You - navigating diagnoses, therapy waitlists, school meetings, medication decisions, hospital discharges, insurance battles, and IEP updates - often while working, caregiving, and parenting alone.

Some of you are co-parenting across hard divides.

Some of you are counter-parenting, pushing against someone who doesn’t believe what your gut already knows: your child is worthy of support, understanding, and freedom to grow.

Society blames the parents, and we carry that shame. But why? Why should we be ashamed of keeping our families afloat in deadly rapids? We live in entirely different conditions than any generation of parents before us. Yet we're forced to operate under the same infrastructures.

Fix Broken Infrastructures, Not Kids.

A new study released today by Frontiers in Psychology highlights something too many of us have lived without language for: Parents of children facing mental health challenges and neurodivergence are often shamed, blamed, and isolated by the very systems that claim to help.

Instead of support, many parents report feeling punished - made to feel like they caused their child’s struggles, or failed to do enough to prevent them. The research confirms what we already knew in our bones: Our kids are not broken. We did not fail them . The infrastructures around us - from healthcare to education to public policy - is failing our families.

As for me? I didn’t need a study to tell me this - but reading it confirmed matters. Without sharing my kids’ private journeys (because their stories are their own), I’ll just say: I’ve lived this. I am this. And I am still standing - shoulder to shoulder with you.

We were told our kids were broken and that it was our job to fix them. We were told that being different was dangerous. That emotional responses to impossible expectations were symptoms of illness. That righteous pain was pathology.

So we fought. We fought to help them fit into those infrastructures - the schools, clinics, and systems that were never designed for them while navigating societal progress without guidance or support. Impossible.

We twisted ourselves into every version of “reasonable” just to get one more service, one more accommodation, one more ounce of dignity.

A parent and her children step beyond ruins toward a sunlit field. Their future begins now.

But look around. Look how many of us there are.

And look how much sheer, electric love lives in this assembly of parents. The kind of love that organizes. That learns. That refuses to give up. The kind that builds movements. The kind that says:

The ruin of backward thinking ends with us.

Their future begins now.

Our kids aren't broken.

If you’re in this fight, I’m asking you for the same two things I’ve asked of teachers:

1. Resist.

Resist the shame.

Resist the pressure to normalize what never was.

Resist the broken narratives that treat difference as danger.

2. Come to the Table.

When the inevitable rebuilding begins - and it will  - our kids will need us doing what we do best: advocacy.

Lend your voice to meaningful healthcare reform.

Lend your passion to radical, humane education reform - not just for access, but to Educate Greatness.

Let’s stop expecting our kids to fix what took generations to break without any tools.

You don’t make room for greatness by saddling kids with baggage. You don’t raise tomorrow’s leaders by chaining them to yesterday’s ruins. Let the wreckage end now - and let's finally give our kids the tools to build the future they need.

The ruin of backward thinking ends with us.

Their future begins now.

This movement is powered by love.

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