Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #988 School Can't

Transcript

#988 School Can't · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
0:05
Speaker 2: It's the podcast for.
0:07
Speaker 1: The time poor parent who just once answers, now well
0:11
Speaker 1: missus Happy Families. Kylie still has a sore throat. She
0:14
Speaker 1: can't speak at all. Mother's Day was a very quiet
0:16
Speaker 1: one for all of us. Because of that. I'm feeling
0:20
Speaker 1: so bad for her. But today something really different on
0:24
Speaker 1: the Happy Families Podcast. Normally, on a Monday, we will
0:27
Speaker 1: talk about big parenting issues. Kyli and I bounced the
0:29
Speaker 1: ideas around. On Wednesdays we do interviews. Today though I'm
0:33
Speaker 1: going to do a bit of both. I've got a
0:35
Speaker 1: special guest joining me on the podcast today to talk
0:39
Speaker 1: about a really big parenting issue. Alice is a Sydney mum.
0:43
Speaker 1: She has one child. Freedom Autism and ADHD are the diagnosis,
0:49
Speaker 1: and Alice joins me now to talk about her recent
0:53
Speaker 1: appearance on four Corners two weeks ago. Today, Four Corners
0:57
Speaker 1: put together a really really insightful television show about what's
1:03
Speaker 1: known as school can't typically known as school refusal, my
1:08
Speaker 1: preferred term and in the research literature is known as
1:11
Speaker 1: emotion based school avoidance, and so to talk about kids
1:14
Speaker 1: that won't go to school, kids that are refusing to
1:16
Speaker 1: show up kids that just you can't get them out
1:19
Speaker 1: the door. Is a mum who's going through it and
1:20
Speaker 1: has done for some time. Alice, thanks for being here
1:23
Speaker 1: on the Happy Families podcast. It's just a delight to
1:26
Speaker 1: have you here and to have you so willing to
1:29
Speaker 1: talk about something that is so hard and so surrounded
1:32
Speaker 1: by so much judgment. Really good to have you here.
1:35
Speaker 3: Thanks, Justin. And you're exactly right about the judgment. It's
1:38
Speaker 3: been judgment since day one. People tend to assume it's
1:42
Speaker 3: just that you're a soft parent, and you know, you
1:45
Speaker 3: just need to crack down in your kids and make
1:48
Speaker 3: them go to school, which you know I did for
1:51
Speaker 3: a while. It was literally dragging my child into the
1:54
Speaker 3: classroom and having the teacher restrain her in the classroom
1:58
Speaker 3: and shut the door and lock the door. And yeah,
2:02
Speaker 3: not surprisingly, that didn't actually work.
2:05
Speaker 1: If we went right back to the very beginning, when
2:07
Speaker 1: did this start and how old is Freda.
2:09
Speaker 3: Nout Frida's now ate just about to turn nine. This
2:12
Speaker 3: happened when she was in her first year of school,
2:14
Speaker 3: so kindergarten or prep, depending on where you are. Even
2:16
Speaker 3: on day one, she had a bit of trouble going
2:18
Speaker 3: in which is not that surprising. But as time wore on,
2:22
Speaker 3: it became harder and harder for her. The goodbuyers in
2:26
Speaker 3: the morning became more and more challenging, and eventually it
2:29
Speaker 3: got to the point where she would become so distraught
2:33
Speaker 3: that she would sometimes try and run across busy roads.
2:36
Speaker 3: She would climb a tree and stay there for an hour.
2:39
Speaker 3: She would try to scale the school fence, and it
2:43
Speaker 3: became almost impossible. Her being restrained by the teachers actually
2:48
Speaker 3: really traumatized her and actually set us back and made
2:51
Speaker 3: it harder because it felt then like school wasn't a
2:53
Speaker 3: safe place. These were the adults who were meant to
2:56
Speaker 3: be keeping her safe, who were meant to be safe people,
2:58
Speaker 3: and she didn't feel safe with them because they had
3:01
Speaker 3: restrained her and made her even more scared.
3:06
Speaker 1: So potentially impossible question, or maybe one of those obvious questions.
3:10
Speaker 1: It could go either way. But where did it come from?
3:12
Speaker 1: Like day one, it's pretty much as soon as she
3:15
Speaker 1: starts school. I mean, I'm doing the maths here, and
3:17
Speaker 1: I'm thinking this was around around COVID if she's nine
3:21
Speaker 1: years old.
3:21
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, it.
3:23
Speaker 3: Did start before COVID, So I don't actually think that
3:27
Speaker 3: COVID was a factor for her. I know that it
3:31
Speaker 3: has been for a lot of kids, but not so
3:33
Speaker 3: much for her. She's never really been able to articulate
3:37
Speaker 3: what it is. She's always wanted to go to school.
3:40
Speaker 3: She really likes it when she's there.
3:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it. I really want to
3:44
Speaker 1: be there. But tell me that I've got to go
3:46
Speaker 1: and I fall apart.
3:48
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So she says, you know, I really want
3:50
Speaker 3: to be there, I just don't know how. And you know,
3:53
Speaker 3: you sort of ask is it because of this? Is
3:55
Speaker 3: it because of that? You know, you kind of let
3:58
Speaker 3: her talk for a while, and she still can't put
4:00
Speaker 3: a description to it. One thing that I've observed at
4:04
Speaker 3: school is that they're quite intense places, right you know,
4:08
Speaker 3: you get into the playground at the start of the day,
4:10
Speaker 3: it's noisy, it's busy people running around everywhere, and then
4:14
Speaker 3: the bell rings and then there's more noise and more
4:16
Speaker 3: business to line up, get into the classroom, et cetera.
4:19
Speaker 3: And then there's all of these transitions throughout the day,
4:22
Speaker 3: which is something that a lot of autistic kids. Frind
4:25
Speaker 3: challenging and Freda certainly does and sometimes unknown. So you
4:31
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, there's last minute changes or you
4:35
Speaker 3: don't have a good idea of what's happening that day,
4:38
Speaker 3: and just the sensory overwhelmed throughout the day, the noise,
4:42
Speaker 3: the business, the lights. They're having to sit still is
4:46
Speaker 3: pretty it's pretty intense for neurodivergent kid. So I think
4:52
Speaker 3: that that certainly is a factor in it. You know,
4:55
Speaker 3: for her, certainly, the trauma of being restrained at school
4:58
Speaker 3: was a big one.
5:00
Speaker 2: And I know.
5:02
Speaker 3: Certainly now that one of the reasons why she finds
5:04
Speaker 3: it hard to go when I take her is that
5:07
Speaker 3: she most of those instances of restraint actually happened when
5:12
Speaker 3: I was dropping her off rather than her father, and
5:14
Speaker 3: so she sort of has links that to me a
5:18
Speaker 3: little bit, not that it was my fault or anything
5:21
Speaker 3: like that, but that it occurred then. So there's a
5:23
Speaker 3: kind of an association.
5:25
Speaker 1: I suppose, Alice, you have a reasonably flexible work life.
5:30
Speaker 1: You've got a little bit of autonomy in when you work,
5:32
Speaker 1: where you work, and how you work, which certainly is
5:35
Speaker 1: to your advantage. What would you be doing if you
5:37
Speaker 1: were a typical parent with a standard nine to five
5:41
Speaker 1: and you've just got to show up at work. How
5:43
Speaker 1: did you get around this?
5:46
Speaker 2: I do not know. Honestly, I do not know.
5:51
Speaker 3: I don't know how anybody can manage that unless they literally,
5:57
Speaker 3: you know, had their child restrained every morning. Yeah, yeah,
6:01
Speaker 3: you know.
6:01
Speaker 2: And that's assuming you can.
6:02
Speaker 3: Get them out the door and into the car again
6:05
Speaker 3: without physically dragging them into that, which is, you know,
6:09
Speaker 3: terrible for your relationship and obviously for their mental health.
6:12
Speaker 2: So I don't I really don't know.
6:15
Speaker 3: I'm very very fortunate to be able to work from
6:17
Speaker 3: home and to have very understanding manager and head of
6:21
Speaker 3: department who just trust me to just get my job done,
6:25
Speaker 3: you know when and how I can.
6:26
Speaker 1: Watching you on the show, I can imagine that there
6:28
Speaker 1: would have been some blowback. People would have been saying,
6:30
Speaker 1: oh this soft parenting, Look at how soft and gentle like.
6:33
Speaker 1: This kid just needs boundaries. You've already described that, you've
6:36
Speaker 1: gone through the forceful I'm taking you. You will be restrained,
6:38
Speaker 1: you're staying, we're locking the door. That didn't work, no doubt.
6:42
Speaker 1: You've had psychological intervention, You've had experts trying to guide
6:47
Speaker 1: you in this process. Clearly nothing is working at this point.
6:51
Speaker 1: What has been the most useful the most effective, the
6:53
Speaker 1: most successful process for you in getting free to school.
6:59
Speaker 3: To be honest, moving schools was a big factor. She
7:04
Speaker 3: had trauma around that particular school. They were not at
7:07
Speaker 3: all helpful in terms of disability support, and in fact,
7:10
Speaker 3: they again blamed it directly on parenting. In fact, her
7:13
Speaker 3: first learning plan included a point that their parents were
7:18
Speaker 3: to do a parenting course instead of them talking about
7:22
Speaker 3: their disability adjustments they were going to make. So it was,
7:27
Speaker 3: you know, even the principal restrained her at one point,
7:31
Speaker 3: which you know they're not allowed to.
7:33
Speaker 2: Do at all. But so we moved her to a
7:36
Speaker 2: new school. We were really lucky.
7:39
Speaker 3: It's just such a lucky dip with public schools as
7:41
Speaker 3: to the one that's in your area and how good
7:44
Speaker 3: they are or not. Up the road from where I live,
7:47
Speaker 3: there's another school that is fantastic with autistic kids, but
7:51
Speaker 3: we're not in the couchment for that. So fortunately her
7:54
Speaker 3: dad moved in the couchment for this other school and
7:56
Speaker 3: they have supported us from day one. Day one, she
8:01
Speaker 3: had a learning support person with her. Her teacher was
8:05
Speaker 3: really open to trying new things, and Freda's very very
8:10
Speaker 3: good at masking, and so people often don't see They're like, oh,
8:13
Speaker 3: she's finding class. But her teacher could see through that
8:17
Speaker 3: and knew when she was having a bit of a
8:19
Speaker 3: hard time, so she'd go and suggest, you know, do
8:20
Speaker 3: you want to go and get a drink? Do you
8:21
Speaker 3: want to go for a walk. She even set up
8:24
Speaker 3: on her desk, for instance, three little pictures and Freda
8:27
Speaker 3: could walk up point to one of them, and the
8:30
Speaker 3: teacher knew that that meant she just wants to needs
8:33
Speaker 3: to go outside for a minute, just to help her
8:35
Speaker 3: sort of to calm her nervous system down. They have
8:39
Speaker 3: been so wonderful. She had a bit of fear around
8:42
Speaker 3: going to the library, for instance, so they said that's okay,
8:45
Speaker 3: we'll just take library completely off the table for now.
8:48
Speaker 3: She would stay and do some drawing with one of
8:52
Speaker 3: the learning support officers, and eventually they introduced that the
8:56
Speaker 3: learning support person would choose a few books for her.
8:59
Speaker 3: They'd look on the catalog together and she'd choose it
9:01
Speaker 3: for a few books for her. Then Frieda. It was
9:04
Speaker 3: all led by Frida. Frida then said I'm ready to
9:08
Speaker 3: go to the library, so she would go and she
9:10
Speaker 3: would sit there, didn't borrow any books. I didn't put
9:12
Speaker 3: that pressure on, and then eventually it got to the
9:15
Speaker 3: point where she, you know, is good to borrow books.
9:18
Speaker 3: And that really personal and compassionate approach and also an
9:27
Speaker 3: approach that understands how kids work was the thing that
9:31
Speaker 3: made the difference. So with Frida, the second that I
9:35
Speaker 3: put any pressure on in terms of going to school,
9:38
Speaker 3: in terms of going into the classroom, her nervous system
9:41
Speaker 3: at that point is already so fired up. She's already
9:45
Speaker 3: in fital flight, and you put that extra pressure on
9:48
Speaker 3: and it just pushes it like completely, you know, off
9:53
Speaker 3: the scale. So I know that for me, I have
9:57
Speaker 3: to calm my own nervous system and let her do
10:02
Speaker 3: it in her time and tell me when she's ready.
10:06
Speaker 3: And that might sound like self parenting, to me, that
10:09
Speaker 3: sounds like working with the kid you have, working with
10:12
Speaker 3: what works for their brains.
10:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Alice, thanks for being here on the Happy
10:19
Speaker 1: Families podcast. Have you ever thought about homeschool? Sorry, dumb question.
10:24
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've thought about homeschool a lot of times,
10:26
Speaker 1: but you've persisted with regular school. Why have you stayed
10:29
Speaker 1: with keeping her enrolled and trying to get her to
10:33
Speaker 1: go to school?
10:34
Speaker 3: So, first of all, it's because she loves school and
10:37
Speaker 3: she wants to be there first and foremost. She has
10:41
Speaker 3: a great group of friends. She's always always gotten on
10:44
Speaker 3: very well with other kids and made friends easily. She's
10:47
Speaker 3: going fifty percent of the time at the moment, which is,
10:49
Speaker 3: you know, a fast improvement on the I think it
10:52
Speaker 3: was fifteen percent one term that she has.
10:56
Speaker 2: So there's that factor.
10:58
Speaker 3: There's also finances life. I cannot afford to stop working.
11:04
Speaker 3: I live in It's expensive, and her father works in
11:09
Speaker 3: a job where he needs to be on site every
11:12
Speaker 3: single day, so he wouldn't be able to do any
11:14
Speaker 3: of that, so it would fall entirely to me, and
11:18
Speaker 3: financially it's not sustainable. But also in terms of mental health,
11:21
Speaker 3: you know, that's an enormous load for one person to bear,
11:24
Speaker 3: and it's not That's not how we meant to live,
11:27
Speaker 3: you know, isolated in our homes, teaching our kids. I
11:31
Speaker 3: know the people who do home school very successfully, and
11:35
Speaker 3: I know that that can be done, but at this
11:37
Speaker 3: point in my life, I don't feel like that's a
11:39
Speaker 3: feasible or sustainable option for us.
11:43
Speaker 1: We had a couple of kids who were really struggling
11:45
Speaker 1: with school, and one who was just not fitting in
11:49
Speaker 1: that we weren't dealing with school refusal at a pathological level,
11:52
Speaker 1: although there was definitely a thing we're having the kids
11:55
Speaker 1: at home too many days, But it was really a
11:59
Speaker 1: question of this child does not fit in school. The
12:03
Speaker 1: school curriculum, the school requirements, the school parameters, boundaries, frameworks,
12:08
Speaker 1: they just don't work for this particular child. It's been
12:12
Speaker 1: we did a complete nothing term at the end of
12:14
Speaker 1: last year. Term one. This year was really really hard.
12:17
Speaker 1: Term two, it seems like it's finally coming together for
12:20
Speaker 1: this particular child and we're starting to really enjoy having
12:25
Speaker 1: her around. But I'll tell you what the impact that
12:28
Speaker 1: it has on your life. It is, like you said,
12:30
Speaker 1: it's full time, Like there's no capacity, there's no room,
12:33
Speaker 1: there's no space for anything except hardcore. Let's go, We've
12:37
Speaker 1: got to get some school work done. And then there
12:40
Speaker 1: are still challenges, like it is so hard, such a
12:43
Speaker 1: hard thing to be a homeschool parent.
12:45
Speaker 2: So yeah, it really really is.
12:47
Speaker 3: I have so much admiration for people who do it
12:49
Speaker 3: and bring that energy and creativity and you know, just dedication.
12:56
Speaker 3: I have so much admiration for people who do that.
12:58
Speaker 1: Ye hardest thing hardest thing is just keeping away from screen.
13:01
Speaker 1: So we've had an institute really full on screen limits
13:05
Speaker 1: to make sure that the work gets done, because otherwise
13:08
Speaker 1: the kids will just sit there and do it all day. Anyway,
13:11
Speaker 1: let me ask you, in your experience with this, and
13:14
Speaker 1: clearly you've been doing this for several years now, what
13:19
Speaker 1: advice would you give to parents who are just struggling
13:23
Speaker 1: with kids that won't get ready, won't get out the door,
13:26
Speaker 1: won't go and get stuck in and make school work.
13:30
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't really have a good answer to that,
13:32
Speaker 3: because I'm still figuring it out myself. I mean, I
13:36
Speaker 3: think I would say, first and foremost, trust your instincts.
13:41
Speaker 3: Don't listen to the world that is telling you you're
13:44
Speaker 3: a bad parent, because every single parent I know whose
13:48
Speaker 3: child is struggling to attend school are some of the
13:51
Speaker 3: most engaged, passionate parents I have ever met. It's not
13:55
Speaker 3: about neglect. It's not about being lazy, by any stretch
13:58
Speaker 3: of imagination. Fact quite the opposite. But I would say,
14:02
Speaker 3: you know, try and dig a bit deeper to find
14:04
Speaker 3: out what's going on, why it's happening. If you can,
14:07
Speaker 3: if your child's able to articulate that, and the biggest
14:11
Speaker 3: thing for me has been joining the school Can't Facebook group,
14:15
Speaker 3: just knowing that you're not alone, talking to other people
14:17
Speaker 3: about things that have worked for them and things that haven't,
14:20
Speaker 3: and advocating for your child at school as much as
14:23
Speaker 3: you as much as you can, because I mean, I
14:26
Speaker 3: think my experience with Frida's first school was quite negative,
14:30
Speaker 3: and I hope that that's not the case for everyone.
14:33
Speaker 3: But we had to push really really hard for even
14:36
Speaker 3: quite quite basic accommodations that should have been provided under
14:40
Speaker 3: the Department of Own policies, you know. But yeah, I mean,
14:44
Speaker 3: if you have any answers to that, I would love
14:45
Speaker 3: to hear them, to be honest.
14:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I don't know that we've got really great
14:49
Speaker 1: research around this. It's such an underresearched area. It's very
14:53
Speaker 1: hard to get research on this, especially from a prospective
14:56
Speaker 1: point of view, because you don't really know that a
14:58
Speaker 1: school a child is going to have an emotion based
15:02
Speaker 1: school avoidance response until you're sort of two weeks, three weeks,
15:06
Speaker 1: four weeks in and then you suddenly go, oh, we've
15:08
Speaker 1: really got a problem here. So it's hard to get
15:10
Speaker 1: in prospectively before the problem and get that data. We're
15:14
Speaker 1: going to be talking about it a fair on the
15:16
Speaker 1: podcast over the next little while. But basically, I think
15:19
Speaker 1: Alice and our experience has been this and yours likewise,
15:24
Speaker 1: having really concerted, empathic conversations with the school, making sure
15:28
Speaker 1: that you can be on the same page and that
15:30
Speaker 1: there's good alignment, and making sure that you're advocating, as
15:33
Speaker 1: you said, for your child. I love that you moved
15:35
Speaker 1: your child's school. It's horrible, it's frustrating. You shouldn't have
15:39
Speaker 1: to do that, but I love that you were courageous
15:41
Speaker 1: enough to do it when you realize that the school
15:43
Speaker 1: that you were attending, or that she was attending or
15:45
Speaker 1: not attending, as these might be, was not working. I
15:48
Speaker 1: still think things like the kids being invited to be helpers,
15:53
Speaker 1: making sure that they've got great relationships with other kids,
15:56
Speaker 1: and of course that's hard when you've got kids with
15:57
Speaker 1: all these additional needs, they tend not to have have
16:00
Speaker 1: strong relationships.
16:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it depends. Like I have found.
16:06
Speaker 3: You know, there is that stereotype of autistic kids not
16:09
Speaker 3: having great social skills, but I find that that Frida,
16:13
Speaker 3: a lot of her friends are neurodivergent and there's great
16:17
Speaker 3: social skills with it. They just get each other. It's
16:19
Speaker 3: because their brains are similar and they give each other
16:22
Speaker 3: space for their differences, and you know, they can find friends.
16:25
Speaker 3: But I understand too that is challenging for.
16:28
Speaker 2: Some other kids.
16:28
Speaker 3: It's not the case in freeda situation, but yeah, that
16:32
Speaker 3: is hard, and I guess building that bond with school
16:36
Speaker 3: can help and certainly does help engage some kids who
16:40
Speaker 3: are having some challenges. Like you said earlier about one
16:44
Speaker 3: of your children, that I think schools are just not
16:47
Speaker 3: suited to some kids' brains. You know, the schools work
16:52
Speaker 3: for a really certain type of kids, and that's great,
16:55
Speaker 3: but there are a lot of brains that don't fit
16:58
Speaker 3: into that, you know, not just not just kids with disabilities,
17:01
Speaker 3: kids who you know, might learn in a more hands
17:03
Speaker 3: on way or learn by doing different things.
17:06
Speaker 2: And I think that's one.
17:09
Speaker 3: Of the challenges too, Like most schools are kind of
17:11
Speaker 3: set up in the same way they were, things in
17:13
Speaker 3: a similar way, and it doesn't allow for us being different.
17:19
Speaker 3: And that's no shade on teachers at all. They do
17:22
Speaker 3: an unbelievable job, but you know, when they're in classroom
17:26
Speaker 3: with twenty five to thirty kids, how do you accommodate
17:30
Speaker 3: these different ways of learning?
17:31
Speaker 2: You kind of have to take a broad approach. I
17:34
Speaker 2: suppose to.
17:35
Speaker 3: Try and capture as many as you can, but that's
17:38
Speaker 3: not going to fit for all children. And that's a
17:41
Speaker 3: real shame because I think, you know, some kids get
17:45
Speaker 3: through school, they struggle through school, and they end up
17:48
Speaker 3: coming out and feeling like they're you know, like they're
17:52
Speaker 3: a bit stupid, or like something's wrong with them. And
17:55
Speaker 3: those kids could have been could have done amazing things
17:58
Speaker 3: had they been able to learn in a way that
18:01
Speaker 3: works for them, you know, And so I think the
18:03
Speaker 3: world misses out in a way.
18:06
Speaker 2: Is that kind of what you've found with your child
18:08
Speaker 2: who struggled with school? Yeah?
18:10
Speaker 1: Not just us. We asked the question on back on
18:14
Speaker 1: Saturday the third Back on Saturday the third of May,
18:16
Speaker 1: we said, is it just me? Or am I the
18:18
Speaker 1: only one who can't get their kids to go to school?
18:20
Speaker 1: And the number of responses it was just enormous. At
18:24
Speaker 1: the end of this month, we're going to get a
18:25
Speaker 1: whole lot of listener responses. But people pretty much said,
18:28
Speaker 1: that's why we went to homeschooling. A whole lot of
18:30
Speaker 1: people pointed back to the Four Corners episode and one
18:34
Speaker 1: person said, they just drag them kicking and screaming. Advice
18:38
Speaker 1: given by most is damaging children care givers beyond measures.
18:42
Speaker 1: There are a whole lot of people who just said,
18:45
Speaker 1: when you've got kids that are refusing to attend school
18:47
Speaker 1: or who are struggling so much to be there, even
18:50
Speaker 1: if you do get them, they're not mentally present enough
18:52
Speaker 1: to learn.
18:53
Speaker 3: Exactly if their system is in fight or flight mode.
18:58
Speaker 3: Their rational brain is off line. They're not taking anything in, right,
19:02
Speaker 3: So it's you know, they're going to be present as
19:05
Speaker 3: a body, but their brains are not online, right, They're
19:08
Speaker 3: not taking anything in and that's so it's kind of
19:10
Speaker 3: pointless doing that, pushing them when they're in that state.
19:13
Speaker 2: Anyway.
19:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one person said this, and this is what
19:16
Speaker 1: we did when when our kids were at school, or
19:18
Speaker 1: when our youngest was at school, we had this approach
19:22
Speaker 1: where rather than fighting in the morning, because because Kylie
19:25
Speaker 1: is at home as a full time caregiver for the kids,
19:30
Speaker 1: Kylie basically just said, all right, the morning will be
19:32
Speaker 1: what it will be, and by taking the pressure off,
19:35
Speaker 1: the kids would get out of bed they would get
19:37
Speaker 1: themselves organized and they would eventually get to school, sometimes
19:39
Speaker 1: on time, sometimes an hour late, sometimes two hours late.
19:42
Speaker 1: But when they were moving themselves through the morning the
19:45
Speaker 1: right way, it just it made a huge difference and
19:47
Speaker 1: one hundred percent.
19:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, and probably to you as well, right, Oh, once
19:51
Speaker 3: you drop that, everybody is calmer. And that's what I
19:55
Speaker 3: found I had to do with Freda as well. In
19:57
Speaker 3: the mornings. You just kind of drop your expectationtions of
20:01
Speaker 3: what it's going to be, and you know you.
20:03
Speaker 2: Can go through.
20:04
Speaker 3: You can have exactly the same outcome whether you're you know, pushing,
20:08
Speaker 3: pushing or not pushing, but you know one way is
20:11
Speaker 3: going to make you, yeah, have fewer gray hairs, and
20:16
Speaker 3: you know, keep your relationship with your kids positive.
20:19
Speaker 1: I think, well, Alice, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm
20:21
Speaker 1: really grateful for it. There are no easy answers. That's
20:23
Speaker 1: a really, really big difficult thing. We're going to link
20:26
Speaker 1: to the Australian School Can't Facebook page in the show
20:30
Speaker 1: notes as well as the Facebook page where we've asked
20:33
Speaker 1: the question is it just me, so more people can
20:35
Speaker 1: join the conversation and participate. Good luck. I'm hopeful that
20:39
Speaker 1: over the next little while you see progress. Do you
20:42
Speaker 1: think that Freda will get back to school in a
20:44
Speaker 1: full time capacity anytime soon?
20:47
Speaker 3: I am not sure. It's sort of a take it
20:50
Speaker 3: day by day, yeah situation. You know, when you have
20:53
Speaker 3: a positive day, you know, her dad said so many times, Oh,
20:56
Speaker 3: I think she's turning a corner, and I'm like, don't
20:58
Speaker 3: say that.
20:59
Speaker 1: And today's she turns another corner and starts heading home
21:02
Speaker 1: again exactly.
21:03
Speaker 3: So it's you know, one good day is one good day,
21:06
Speaker 3: and I think you just you take it like that.
21:10
Speaker 3: I am not sure, honestly, I am not sure, but
21:12
Speaker 3: I think she's in a far better place to be successful.
21:16
Speaker 2: At returning to school full.
21:17
Speaker 3: Time than she was previously, and that's the biggest difference.
21:21
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for chatting with me and thanks for speaking up.
21:23
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it.
21:24
Speaker 2: Thank you. Justin I'm really looking forward to hearing this podcast.
21:27
Speaker 1: That's Alice is a mum to Freda based in Sydney
21:31
Speaker 1: and dealing with the challenges around school refusal or motion
21:34
Speaker 1: based school avoidance. Look no easy answers, but we are
21:38
Speaker 1: going to continue to talk about this on the podcast
21:39
Speaker 1: over the next little while and see if we can
21:41
Speaker 1: be as helpful as we can, try and get hold
21:42
Speaker 1: of some experts some guidance. The Happy Family podcast is
21:45
Speaker 1: produced by Justin Rowland for Bridge Media. Craig Bruce, our
21:48
Speaker 1: executive producer. For more info about how you can guide
21:50
Speaker 1: your children successfully, regardless of whether they're attending school happily
21:53
Speaker 1: or not attending school at all, visit us at happy
21:56
Speaker 1: families dot com Today no