How Long Will She Need Services? The Wrong Question and a Better One
A friend I love asked me recently how long my daughter would be in special education services. She's in preschool, about to start kindergarten. The question sounded simple. But underneath it I could feel something else — a quiet attempt to figure out how "behind" my kid is, how serious this is, how worried they should be for us. I know that instinct didn't come from a bad place. It came from not knowing. So let me say the things I wish more people understood.
I'll say them wearing two hats. I'm this child's mother. I'm also a child psychologist who has spent my career specializing in autism and early development — the person other parents get referred to when they hear these words for the first time. So when I tell you what a five-year-old's "functioning" does and doesn't mean, I'm not telling you what I hope. I'm telling you what the science shows and what I have watched play out in many children who are not my own.
Services are not a scarlet letter. They're scaffolding.
There is a stubborn stigma around the words "special education." People hear them and picture a permanent label, a ceiling, a diagnosis that defines a whole life. Families of kids who receive services feel that stigma directly — the sideways looks, the lowered expectations, the sense that they have to explain or apologize for their own child. The research on this is clear, and in my clinical work I see it constantly: parents describe judgment, isolation, and the feeling of being quietly written off. That stigma does real harm, and often it hurts more than whatever the child actually needed help with in the first place.
So when the question is "how long will she need this?" what I hear is "how broken is she?" And that's the frame I want to gently flip — both as her mom and as someone who assesses child development for a living.
A five-year-old's "functioning" is a snapshot, not a forecast.
Here's the thing I tell every family in my office, and now I get to tell it to you about my own daughter: how a child is doing at five tells you remarkably little about who they'll be at fifteen or twenty-five. Early childhood is the most rapidly changing, most malleable period of brain development there is. A gap you can measure today is not a fixed trait — it's a moment in time, on a curve that is still being drawn.
That's the entire logic behind acting early, and it's the principle my whole field is built on. It's not that something is catastrophically wrong. It's the opposite: the window when support does the most good is wide open right now. Waiting to "see how it shakes out" wastes the very time when the brain is most ready to respond. I have never once regretted telling a family to start early. I have seen plenty regret waiting.
Early support isn't a sign things are bad. It's the smartest possible move.
Children who get early intervention do better down the road — better language, better academic skills, more kids meeting grade-level standards years later. And the part that should reassure every worried parent: the kids who benefit the most from early support are exactly the ones who go on to need special education. Services now don't lock a child in — they change the trajectory. They are the reason a five-year-old's starting point doesn't get to be the ending point.
So no, I can't tell you how long my daughter will need services — and I say that as someone whose job is literally to make those predictions. I've stopped treating "how long" as the important question. Maybe it's a season. Maybe it's longer. What I know, professionally and personally, is that "how long" matters far less than "starting now."
If you love a family walking this road, here's what actually helps:
Drop the timeline question. "How's she doing?" beats "Is she still in that?" every time.
Skip the reassurance that isn't reassuring. "She looks so normal!" tells a parent you were measuring.
Treat services the way you'd treat glasses or physical therapy: a tool, not a tragedy.
Celebrate the kid, not the prognosis. Ask what she loves right now.
My daughter is not a case to be assessed — and I say that as someone who assesses children all day long. She's a five-year-old who is getting exactly the support she deserves at exactly the right time. That's not the sad part of our story. That's the bright side. And if my years in this field have taught me anything, it's that the bright side is usually the true side, too.
Warmly,
Kandice Benallie, PhD
Founder & Psychologist
Bright Futures Neurodevelopment
