The Story Behind the Mask:  Part 2 — The after‑school crash and the cost of coping

The Story Behind the Mask:  Part 2 — The after‑school crash and the cost of coping

If you’ve ever watched your child walk through the door and fall apart, you are not alone.

This is the part many parents recognise immediately. Masking takes effort. A lot of it.

In psychology, cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort used at a given time.¹ Research on camouflaging suggests masking can be effortful, involving ongoing self‑monitoring and behavioural adjustment.^{2 3}

When a child sustains this level of effort throughout the school day, it may reduce the cognitive and emotional resources available for flexibility and regulation. As a result, what parents may be witnessing after school is not deliberate misbehaviour, but the release of accumulated strain.

Qualitative research consistently highlights the emotional cost of sustained camouflaging. So when we hear “They were fine all day,” it’s worth asking: fine on the outside, at what cost on the inside?

When my children were younger, I struggled to understand this. I remember feeling as though my kids never wanted to be at home, because when they were, they would have meltdowns until they settled.

When I took my concerns to a clinical psychologist, she said:

“Your child behaves like this when they come home, not because they dislike you, but because YOU are their safe person and home is their safe place.”

Her words lifted years of doubt about whether I was a ‘good’ parent.

Suddenly, it made sense. From that day on, when meltdowns occurred, I shifted my focus from doubting my parenting skills to sitting with my child so they were not alone in their vulnerable moments.

Is masking linked to anxiety and mental health?

There is growing evidence linking higher levels of camouflaging with increased anxiety, depressive symptoms, and emotional exhaustion in autistic people.^{4 5}  These findings are correlational and do not mean that every child who masks will experience mental health difficulties. But they do suggest that masking can carry a psychological cost and should not be automatically treated as benign.

From a stress‑regulation perspective, sustained psychological strain is associated with prolonged activation of the body’s stress‑response systems.

Over time, chronic stress can contribute to allostatic load, the cumulative physiological burden associated with repeated adaptation.⁶

Masking has not yet been directly mapped onto allostatic load in longitudinal studies, but the framework offers a useful lens for understanding why prolonged coping effort may have downstream effects. Understanding this helps us move away from “they’re coping” towards the more important question:

What is this costing them?

In Part 3, I want to speak directly to professionals and to the system about what helps, what harms, and why listening and implementation matter just as much as assessment.

Key Takeaways from Part 2

1. The after-school collapse is common.
   When a child falls apart at home after “coping” all day, it may reflect the release of accumulated cognitive and emotional strain.
2. Masking requires effort.
   Research shows camouflaging can involve sustained self-monitoring and behavioural adjustment. That effort has limits.
3. “Fine” does not mean unaffected.
   A calm presentation in one environment does not guarantee internal ease.
4. Emotional cost matters.
   Higher levels of camouflaging are associated with increased anxiety, depressive symptoms, and exhaustion in autistic people. These findings are correlational, but they suggest masking is not neutral.
5. Safety changes behaviour.
   Children often release distress in environments where they feel most secure. Home may be the place where effort finally drops.
6. The real question is not “Why are they behaving like this?”
   It is:
   What has it cost them to cope all day?

References

1. Sweller, J. (1988) Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.
2. Hull, L., Petrides, K.V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C. and Mandy, W. (2017) ‘Putting on my best normal’: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), pp. 2519–2534.
3. Cook, J., Hull, L., Crane, L. and Mandy, W. (2021) ‘Camouflaging in autism: A systematic review’, Clinical Psychology Review, 89, 102080.
4. Perry, E. et al. (2021) ‘Understanding camouflaging as a response to autism-related stigma’, Autism, 26(1), pp. 179–191.
5. Khudiakova, V. (2024) What we know and do not know about camouflaging, impression management and mental health and wellbeing in autistic people.
6. McEwen, B.S. (1998) Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), pp. 171–179.