I don't know what's wrong with my child. Am I a bad parent?

If you have found yourself searching 'I don't know what's wrong with my child' or 'am I a bad parent', take a breath. You are not a bad parent. You are a parent who is paying attention, and that is the single most important thing you can be doing right now.

Most parents I speak with have been quietly worrying for months, sometimes years, before they reach out. The behaviour at home is harder than it 'should' be. School has hinted at concerns, or said nothing and left you wondering. Friends and family offer well-meaning opinions that don't quite fit. You start to question yourself before you question anything else.

It helps to separate two questions. The first is: is something going on for my child that needs understanding and support? The second is: am I doing something wrong as a parent? These feel like the same question when you are inside it. They are not. A child can be finding the world genuinely harder, for reasons that have nothing to do with your parenting, and still need different support than the children around them.

Common patterns parents describe include: behaviour that looks defiant or 'too much' but feels driven by overwhelm rather than choice; difficulty following instructions or sitting still; finding socialising harder than other children; meltdowns out of proportion to the trigger; sensory sensitivities around food, clothing, noise or transitions; school raising concerns about focus, behaviour or learning. None of these on their own mean anything specific. Patterns over time, across more than one setting, are what matter.

Before you go down any formal route, it is worth writing down what you are actually seeing. Dates, situations, what came before, what helped, what didn't. This is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the foundation any teacher, GP, paediatrician or Local Authority will eventually ask for, and it helps you see the patterns more clearly yourself.

From there, the calm next steps are usually: talk to school about whether your child is on, or should be on, the SEN register; ask what the graduated 'Assess, Plan, Do, Review' approach looks like for a child with these signs; and decide whether to explore an assessment pathway through your GP, CAMHS or privately. None of this commits you to a diagnosis or a plan. It just gives you better information to make decisions with.

If you take nothing else from this: not knowing what is going on does not make you a bad parent. It makes you a parent at the start of a path that thousands of UK families walk every year. You do not have to walk it alone, and you do not have to have the answer before you ask for help.