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Different Minds

How We Can Help Our Autistic School Children Thrive
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Different Minds

By: Pete Wharmby
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Brought to you by Penguin.

If you have an autistic child, you will be painfully aware of the challenges they face in education. Beyond the headlines on SEN provision are real children who struggle from day-to-day – how can we help them?

In Different Minds, neurodivergence campaigner and former teacher Pete Wharmby shines a light on what it’s like to be autistic in Western school systems today, so that we can understand how to support our children through the most important years of their lives. Through a blend of story-telling, polemic and empathetic advice, Wharmby exposes the inadequacies of the current system, explains how differences have been mislabelled as ‘challenging behaviour’ and provides a blueprint for understanding and supporting young autistic minds.

Galvanising and compassionate, this important book empowers parents, teachers and carers to take a stand against the vilification of our autistic school children and provide the scaffolding they need to thrive.

© Pete Wharmby 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Children's Health Education Relationships Special Education & Disabilities
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Critic reviews

Different Minds is a book I wish I had years ago when my autistic child first started school and it's a book I wish my parents had to help them to understand my anxiety around school. Not only does it help parents feel less alone when navigating the school system with a child with SEND, but it also helps you to step into your child’s shoes and see the world through their eyes. This is a book that every parent and teacher needs to read and a book that will help so many to understand why children are not coping at school. (Lisa Lloyd, Sunday Times bestselling author and SEN parent)
One of the most important voices on autism and education today. (Jessie Hewitson, SEND agony aunt, The Times and the Sunday Times)
I truly wish this book had been around when my child started to struggle in school. Back then, I knew nothing about autism, and how being autistic can make school unbearable if the child isn’t being supported in the ways they need. This book covers everything that I spent five years researching, at home, alone. And more. It is a bible for parents of school-aged autistic children.
Different Minds asks the forgotten question at the heart of modern education: are the kids alright? Compassionate, urgent and deeply validating. (Leanne Maskell, coach and author of AuDHD and ADHD an A–Z)
Beautifully written and deeply human, Pete reframes the behaviour that exhausts and worries parents as information rather than failure. He gives families something far more useful and needed than just strategies, he gives them compassion and understanding. It’s warm, wise and long overdue. This is the book I'll be recommending to every parent who tells me their child is struggling. (Anna Mathur, psychotherapist, author and speaker)
Pete Wharmby has written the book many families will recognise in their bodies before they recognise it on the page. Different Minds refuses to mistake autistic distress for disobedience, or parental advocacy for overreaction. It is tender, furious, deeply clarifying and exactly the kind of book that can shift a conversation. (Dr Emma Offord, Clinical Psychologist and founder of Divergent Life)
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