Year 6 and the neurodiverse girl: the year we ask too much, too soon

Year 6, the last year of primary, is so pivotal, and yet so often underplayed. A bit of SATs stress, a leavers’ hoodie, a few tears at the end-of-term assembly, then off they go.

But for many girls, especially neurodiverse girls, Year 6 is not a gentle ending. It is a perfect storm.

Puberty is often beginning or gathering pace (which can be anywhere from 8 to 13 for girls, with an average start around 11). NHS Friendships start to shift from “play” to “status”. Social life gets more coded, more performative, more political. Teachers expect increasing independence, organisation, and “resilience”. Then, often, a smartphone enters the picture right around the transition to secondary school, just as the social stakes rise. Ofcom notes that in the period before moving to secondary, children become more likely to go online via mobile phones, aligning with the point where most start owning their own phone by around age 11. www.ofcom.org.uk

If your child is what many families affectionately call “neurospicy”, you may already know this: she is bright, funny, intense, sensitive, original. She might also be exhausted. Masking. Trying to keep up. Doing advanced social maths all day and then falling apart at home.

And here’s the confronting truth: the girls who look like they are “coping” are often the ones quietly paying the highest price.

A story I keep thinking about

A Year 6 girl once said to me, very matter-of-factly, “I have two versions of me. School me and home me.” She was academically strong. Teachers described her as conscientious, polite, “no trouble”.

At home she was having nightly meltdowns.

Not because she was difficult. Because she was done.

She described break time like this: “It’s like everyone got a rule book for how to be friends, and I missed the day they handed it out.” That one line holds so many neurodiverse girls. Smart enough to notice they are missing something, sensitive enough to feel it deeply, and skilled enough to pretend they are fine.

Diagnosis or not, if you recognise this, here’s what we can do:

What parents can do

1. Stop treating the meltdown like the problem. Treat it like the message.
   If she falls apart after school, it often means she held it together all day. Home is where the mask comes off. Your job is not to punish the unravelling. Your job is to make it safe.
2. Name the invisible load.
   Try: “Year 6 asks a lot socially. I can see you working really hard.”
   When a girl feels seen, she stops trying to prove herself and can admit that she is struggling.
3. Reduce decisions. Reduce pressure. Reduce “hurry up”.
   Neurodiverse nervous systems can hit overload faster, especially with puberty in the mix. Keep evenings simple. Predictable food. Predictable routines. Predictable support.
4. Become her translator, not her manager.
   Instead of “You need to be more confident,” try, “What bit feels tricky? The noise, the rules, the people, the fear of getting it wrong?”
   Confidence is often a by-product of safety, not a personality trait.
5. Plan the smartphone like you would plan a new pet.
   Do not hand it over and hope for the best. Set boundaries that protect sleep, attention, and self-worth. Keep phones out of bedrooms. Agree check-ins. Make your role relational, not policing.
   Remember: a phone is not just a device. It is a social portal, and Year 6 girls are at peak sensitivity to belonging so if you’re choosing not to have one, help her to socialise in other ways.
6. Advocate early, before the crisis.
   You do not need to wait for a formal diagnosis to ask for support and reasonable adjustments. Schools have duties to support children with additional needs and remove barriers to learning. GOV.UK

What girls can do for themselves

This part matters because neurodiverse girls are often brilliant at blaming themselves.

1. Learn the sentence: “I’m not broken, I’m overwhelmed.”
   Overwhelm is not failure. It is information.
2. Create a “calm kit” for school.
   A sensory object, a chewable, a scent, a doodle pad, ear defenders for loud moments, a plan for where to go when it gets too much. Small tools can be a big help.
3. Practise one brave truth with one safe person.
   Not a big disclosure. Just one honest sentence: “Lunchtime is hard,” or “I get confused in friendship groups,” or “Noise makes my brain fizzy.”
4. Choose quality friendships over popularity.
   Year 6 can convince girls that being included is everything. But being included in something that costs you your nervous system is not belonging. It is survival.

What teachers can do

Many teachers are doing their best in an overstretched system. And still, there are changes that can help, quickly.

1. Make the hidden curriculum visible.
   Spell out expectations that other children pick up automatically: how group work works, what “appropriate” means in conflict, how to ask to join a game, how to step away.
2. Create low-drama exits.
   A card on the desk. A pre-agreed signal. A calm space. A predictable adult. When a neurodiverse girl has no exit route, her body will create one.
3. Watch the quiet girls.
   The “good girl” who never causes trouble may be masking hardest. Praise that only rewards compliance can trap her in that performance.
4. Reduce public correction. Increase private repair.
   Neurodiverse girls are often intensely shame-sensitive. Correcting in front of peers can create a lasting fear response, not improved behaviour.
5. Build transition support that starts early.
   Secondary transition is not a one-off visit. It is a gradual process of familiarity, relationships, and confidence-building.

What needs to change at policy level

If we are serious about girls’ wellbeing, Year 6 cannot remain a pressure cooker.

1. A national, properly funded transition framework for SEND and neurodiversity.
   Not a postcode lottery. Not “best efforts”. A consistent offer: supported visits, peer mentoring, clear information, and transition plans that consider sensory needs, social vulnerability, and mental health.
2. Earlier identification and faster access to support.
   Girls are under-identified and often missed because they mask. Families should not have to reach crisis to be taken seriously.
3. Training that is neuro-affirming, not deficit-based.
   Support needs to be about removing barriers and building environments where difference is expected, not tolerated.
4. Online safety and smartphone readiness treated as safeguarding, not an optional add-on.
   We know mobile use rises sharply around the primary-to-secondary transition. www.ofcom.org.ukThat is exactly when structured, practical education is needed for children and parents, including sleep, consent, coercion, porn literacy, and group chat dynamics.

Most of this would help all girls. Neurodiverse girls just feel it first.

Here’s the thing. Clear expectations, emotionally literate adults, safer online boundaries, and less shame-based schooling would benefit every child.

Neurodiverse girls simply act like the early warning system. They show you where the environment is too loud, too fast, too vague, too socially unforgiving. When we support them well, we raise the standard for everyone.

How Rites for Girls groups support girls at this stage

This is exactly why girls’ groups matter in Year 6. Not because girls are “failing”, but because this stage is a real developmental threshold.

In a well-held group, girls get to practise friendship, boundaries, voice, and self-trust in real time, with skilled adults who understand girl culture and nervous systems. They learn that their feelings are not “too much”, that they are not the only one finding it hard, and that they can be themselves without performing.

Girls Journeying Together (ages 10–12) meets monthly across a year, giving girls continuity, belonging, and friendships that can last well beyond primary school. Girls’ Net (ages 8–18 in same-aged groups) offers a six-week journey that helps girls build inner steadiness for change, challenge, and transition. For neurodiverse girls, that blend of structure, warmth, and social safety can be life-changing.

A hopeful ending

If your girl is in Year 6 and things feel wobbly, you are not imagining it. And she is not “too sensitive” or “behind”.

She is in a year that asks for secondary-school levels of social navigation while her body is changing, her friendships are shifting, and the digital world is moving closer.

With the right support, this can also be a year of deep growth. A year where she learns: I can ask for what I need. I can find my people. I can come home to myself.

And when a girl learns that before she walks into secondary school, she walks in taller. Not because life is easy, but because she is not doing it alone.