Acts of kindness take many forms. Sometimes they are big and unmistakable; at other times they arrive as small gestures, offered with little effort yet carrying a depth that remains long afterwards. These are the quiet, unmistakable signatures of human-to-human kindness.
We may recognise human kindness in the ways others show they are truly listening and truly present with us — a pause long enough for us to feel seen, a shared moment of focus that becomes connection, a softness that asks for nothing in return. These are moments that can help to keep us steady through the weather of living; safe spaces, created with love and trust, yet open enough to allow our spirits to breathe, and room for our bodies to be.
Such moments of kindness are always more than a one‑way path. They widen into a shared highway where unconditional togetherness can travel freely. In these moments, we create a place where ‘we and us’ can exist as equals. These caring moments become the foundations of strong, respectful relationships, the anchor of belonging, and the ground on which wellbeing and community can take root and grow.
On our journey through education with our Autistic child, the presence of such human kindness has sadly too often fallen short of our lived reality. Kindness has been given in the name of care, ‘We want the best for you and your child', yet instead of being cared for, we have frequently felt discarded. In physical schools, the presence of power created distance - decisions were made far from us and our child, and expectations were shaped by those who framed what constituted kindness through a very different lens.
What was offered to us in the name of 'kindness', frequently hurt and was hurtful - the exclusions, the restraints, the pressure to conform and to fit in. We were all simply never quite good enough, and at its worst, we were broken and in need of 'fixing'. Our Autistic child was labelled as 'volatile', and our parenting skills were questioned to the point where a training course was deemed imperative. Kindness in this context meant making us and our child ‘better’, shaping our reality to fit the mould of expectation, and not valuing us for simply being human. Inevitably, when every encounter seemed to bring pain, it felt impossible to see how education could ever be a kind place for our child and our family.
In the moments after leaving our child's last physical school, our focus was on survival. We were offered an online provision as a stop‑gap, an 'emergency fix' to 'hold everything together'. The system welcomed this solution as proof that something was finally being done and progress made. Meanwhile, we were simply grateful for a place of rest so we could gather together the pieces we felt we had become, realising it would take time to put ourselves back together.
What we didn’t realise at that time was that an online school would become the space where we would finally reconnect with human kindness in education. Nor did we know what that kindness might look like, or how it might grow and then bloom— replacing hurt with hope, and despair with possibility.
In the early days of online home education, just getting through each day felt like an achievement, and in a way, we were re-learning what it meant to be kind to ourselves. In understanding what kindness meant for us, in reclaiming the time we needed, not the time that was given, and exploring safer, kinder sensory spaces, we began to experience what it was like to lean into a more authentic way of being. Through kindness to ourselves we were slowly able to journey back to trust, to respect and to safety in the presence of kindness from others.
Such kindness showed up first in the quiet flexibility around what our child needed: camera on or camera off, mouth‑words or text‑words or no words at all. Sometimes it was a doodle on an interactive whiteboard, sometimes a gif or emoji, at other times it was silence held gently and respectfully without pressure to take part in any other way.
Kindness was also the freedom to move — to sit, to twirl, to curl beneath a blanket, to crunch a snack without judgement, to lean towards what brought joy for as long as needed. It was the reassurance that just being there was enough, and that when even being there became too much, that too was understood.
This space for self compassion and exploration felt important. Communication and movement were authentic, embodied ways in which our Autistic child was trying to both connect and reconnect, not just with people but with everything, both internally and externally. A way of sounding out and feeling through space and time to know the meaning and extent of being whole.
It was in these moments that the anxiety that had shadowed so much of our child’s education up until that point slowly began to give way to an authentic and intrinsic interest in learning that we had almost stopped believing was possible.
With human kindness as a framework, our child began to re‑emerge. The tide of daily anxiety — the fear of judgement, the weight of sensory overwhelm — started to ebb. And as the pressure lifted, we could finally name what had made “life before” so daunting. With clarity came recognition: we could now see what was natural, essential, and life‑giving in the learning environment around our Autistic child and for us as a family.
Knowing the meaning and value of authentic human kindness in education — both in what we continue to explore and what we are now more confident in asking to receive — has been a shared, unfolding and ongoing journey. We have needed time to heal, and we still seek reassurance that we will not be broken for refusing the performance of expectation and following a more authentic path for our child. Yet we are stronger now than we once were.
Strength has not only come from understanding, but also through belonging. In stepping away from what we thought we knew and had always known, we also found our tribe — the community and companions already travelling a more affirming journey, and those who joined with us.
Human kindness has gently and powerfully dismantled barriers that once towered before us and enabled a strength that flows within, through and around our relationship with education— a reminder that even in the newness of this part of our journey, we are supported, and never truly alone. With each step, our confidence has also grown, and we have all reached toward human kindness more readily; recognising its shape has shown us what to trust, what to welcome, and what to let go.
And now, although our child may still experience moments of anxiety and distress, there is trust that these moments can be met with compassion rather than correction. In this way, when a shutdown was looming recently during their first ever formal test, they knew they could reach out for help. We were able to explain to their teacher, in real time, what was happening. The teacher responded with immediate reassurance, offering without hesitation for the test to be taken in their own time and with their tutor present as ‘body-double’ and ‘energy-giver’. The relief was tangible. Our child knew that they had been heard — that their wellbeing mattered more than the test itself.
Whilst it feels so simple, human kindness asks for a depth of empathy that can only grow from valuing another’s wellbeing first. This kind of selflessness says, 'I see you. I hear you. I value you. You are the centre of my care'. What might once have spiralled into fight or flight, perhaps even exclusion, and certainly into a deeper erosion of trust and self‑esteem, instead became a moment where everyone gained. The focus was shared sensitivity and togetherness; the outcomes were human.
When human kindness is woven into learning environments, it becomes more than an accommodation. It creates the foundation on which education rests — a home where learning can unfold in safety for all. Individual journeys are centred and protected, not steered toward destinations that only some can reach without harm. Togetherness is given room to form in its own time too, kindness showing itself in the sensitivity we offer one another and in the connections that honour different ways of being in the world. We begin to recognise the quiet, yet invaluable worth of attunement — meeting a person as they are in each moment, rather than measuring only the distance between who they are and who they are expected to become. In that recognition, space opens for shared strength, shared wellbeing, and a gentler way to learn.
These are insights that are more meaningful than any grade or number, and shape lives far beyond the classroom. They remind us that with human kindness we learn how to live a good life, not merely how to perform the life we are told to strive toward. And in these quiet moments, where mutual care, respect and authenticity may flow freely, we offer bold statements on how education could be a kinder, more inclusive and a human space for all.
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