EP 43: "Anxious Mothers" & School Refusal - Bitesize Summaries

Dr KesselHost00:08

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. In this episode, we are launching our monthly Bite Size Summary series. I'll be joined by Tamsin Hendry Sen Advisor and previous guest on the show, to have a candid discussion on the key top tips from the previous guests on the Send Parenting Podcast. We'll encapsulate their expert top tips and what the key points were that we took away.

01:10

If you don't have time to listen to an entire podcast, but would like the key facts to empower you on your journey, then please keep listening. Welcome, tamsin. It is such a pleasure to have you on our first Bite Size Summary. I'm so excited to co-host with you and we're going to kick it off today. Looking at episode 22 and 23, where we had Ellie Costello as a guest and she is the author of Square Pegs, which is almost like a Bible of neurodiversity, and does also a really well-known activist and warrior mom, and she had so many pearls of wisdom in her podcast that I think today you and I are going to have a challenge in picking apart and making a Bite Size Summary of everything she said. In fairness, as you're a co-host today, I thought I'd kick it off to you first to kind of take us through what were your key takeaways from those podcasts.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host02:06

It was lovely to be here, so thanks for having me. It was really tricky to work out what was my takeaways and what were her top tips really because, like you say, there were so many, but I think the things that resonated, the three things that resonated with me the most, was the loss of identity and respect that you can feel as a parent who's trying to navigate the system, and it took me back to all those places I went where words were used like tenacious and it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good at the time and it was really that deficit model in which parents are talked about and what that does to you as a family.

Dr KesselHost02:54

Makes you doubt yourself, doesn't it? It strips you.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host02:58

It strips you and you have to become an expert in so many areas that you are not an expert in, and with the difficulty in reaching out to or waiting for professionals, you're on your own, so it becomes a war. She used so many words that really resonated with me Put your armor on, pick up your mantle and that really I think lots of parents will really resonate with that and feel less alone.

Dr KesselHost03:29

Yeah, and the fact that you have to. You're not being difficult. You're not because you do feel that way. Oh, I'm being difficult with my healthcare provider, I'm being difficult with the school, but you know what you have to. And she really drove that point home and validated, as you said, our own journey.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host03:50

Yeah, absolutely. And the second, moving on from how you feel as a person, is the deficit model of the family. You know that sometimes it can feel that within an EACP application or a sense of support plan that you're doing, there's a family page. But how much is actually? How much of that is actually thought about when they're writing the plan itself and making the decision? Because if a family is viewed, you know, if a school's admission policy says, first and foremost, we find parents are the first educators and the experts of their child, is that actually translating when we're talking about the difficulties the child's having, particularly when they're masking at school? So I think what, within the revolution she talks about a lot and is really inspiring, is about moving families from that deficit model to genuinely engaging with them. And so what they're saying is the case, you know, and that to look at a child, to list it who they are at school is not necessary, who they are at home, vice versa. We've talked about that before. But being the families, not as a deficit model, is so important in the changes that are moving forward and bias into the. You know, under the safeguarding children's board, family resilience is huge. So how can families be resilient when they're being made to feel like they're in a deficit model.

05:19

And the last one that I really took away, which I found really interesting and I haven't looked at it in that way before I completely agree that the education system is based on a medical model. You know, rather than saying this is my child's need and this is how to best support them, we have to have those labels, but the laws that protect those children are a social model. So they just don't work together. And I did some training actually recently and we were talking about EOTAS, which is, you know, educated in school, and I was saying well, that's fine If a child is educated at home for five afternoons, in school for five mornings, but who pays for that? Who pays for the deficit in the school? And the feedback was actually that's not our concern. Our concern is the law and protecting that child's right to an education. So everybody's talking a different language and it's that marrying together the social and the medical model to be able to allow us to move forward. So that really gave me food for thought.

Dr KesselHost06:20

It's a really valid point too, and especially with, you know, diagnosis being so difficult, with CAMS being so overwhelmed that you can't, the medical model isn't working. You know, basically it's completely broken. So and you know we've talked about this before there's so much you can put in place. You know what does your child need. Let's put this that you know what's important is beyond the diagnosis, do you know what I mean? And we don't have the diagnosis. And those children are children right now, and from day to day they change and the problems that you're accumulating by not putting the right support in place get bigger and bigger and bigger. So, yeah, I completely agree. If you being a doctor, even I completely agree with you.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host07:00

I actually go back to. We've done a podcast recently about the graduated response and actually there is a limit available that can be done within schools that doesn't cost any money, but it's giving people within those schools the time and the training to understand what's available to them without any HCP or a diagnosis.

Dr KesselHost07:18

Yeah, and I think that's so key because that's helping the now, you know, and talking about school system, I think that's really where Ellie blew my mind actually in terms of, you know, first of all and I knew this already, but you know, highlighting the fact that misbehavior is not, it's not the problem, it's a form of communication and it's actually getting underneath that behavior to the underlying cause. That's important and the school system stops at the behavior and then the policies around that schools have. That she highlighted to us in terms of behavioral policies and restrictive policies in school really frightened me, if I'm quite honest, you know, I didn't realize how schools were able to, based on a behavior, isolate a child without a parent's knowledge and she talked about her own experience with her daughter and other children and that you know they think that that's somehow going to help and it doesn't. It actually causes trauma.

08:20

But I couldn't believe it. Almost. It was interesting actually, you know, as things happen in life. Then start speaking to another parent who told me about one of our local schools where something similar is happening. So it's not the anomaly in the situation it actually is in, particularly in England where we have this kind of language of I'm tough on crime, you know, but I'm tough in school kind of lingo which isn't working and it doesn't work. It doesn't work for any children, but it particularly doesn't work for neurodiverse children, and so I don't know.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host08:53

I mean, what were your thoughts on that? I think it's something that actually the education system could learn a lot from early years, because early years we talk all the time about the iceberg effect. So what we can see above the water is just a very small portion of what's going on underneath the surface. Or another analogy is this calm duck swimming along the water and paddling desperately underneath. But what I think is even more concerning is when you have a child that is actually really masking at school and is compliant, and it's when they get home that they explode. They are less likely to get the help and support than the child that's throwing a table in the classroom. Yeah, because you know, in a way, when someone says, you know they have a motion about bus at school and I've got no support, there's part of me, this terrible Pop of me professionally, that things excellent, good, so the school is, something's gonna be done, and it also feeds into that.

09:53

We all know a little bit about something and so, for example, occupational therapy huge, very, very, very hard to get an occupational therapist on board. But actually the understanding that occupational therapy, even written, even if you're dealing with a child in an EACP situation, isn't just about movement breaks and that's why it's important to have the occupational therapist into review Every term, because it's about that regular input and teachers understanding that it's. That regular input allows the regulation for it not to To escalate to that point. Otherwise you end up just dealing with the here in the, here in the now. So it's really lack of knowledge, lack of education, lack of time to to Read everything. You know.

10:40

We have access to OT packs and different things, but actually I think perhaps a way forward and in lots of the podcast we talk about what's the solution is Using insert insert days not necessary for internal training, but get occupational therapist in, get speech therapist in to say it's about, it's about a whole school approach, that's, you know, rather than, like you say, these Deficient models of family, deficit models of behavior, because they are the silent voice of the child that's telling you it's not working Absolutely and you know you could really turn it around by by, by switching that, and actually you see that in Scotland they have pockets of, you know they are.

Dr KesselHost11:22

They are shifting the way that they look at things and they're having good results because of that, and I think you know. The final point that I wanted to bring up, which also has been echoed in other podcasts, was this idea of, oh, natural wastage. So you know there's a third of children who are just natural wastage. So you know the GCSE is actually successful in the fact that it fails a third and that means the algorithm is working well. And you tell these children you have to do well in your GCSEs. This is going to determine the future of your life.

11:53

Those are the messages that kids get, but no one gets the message that a third of you are going to fail, um, or realizes that. You know what the GCSEs aren't the end all and be all of everything. But you know, I think that that mentality of, instead of looking at potential of our children, but rather looking at, okay, two-thirds are going on, one-third is just natural wastage, was just is not how we should look at education, no, or our children no no, it really isn't, and I think it also comes down to the.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host12:20

You know, I was thinking about it when I was listening to her and going back to that medical model. If a child, um, you would never, ever hear a school or a professional say well, I've never seen them have an epileptic fit, so therefore I won't be given the medication at school. Or I've never seen them slip into a diabetic coma, so I'm not going to be giving them their insulin, um, you know, or I'm afraid, their, um, their sugar level detector that's been um Given to them by the health authority and you know it won't connect to our, our wi-fi. Sorry, you know, you don't any of that.

12:55

In relation to behavior and trauma and Anxiety, there is this feeling of if we're not seeing it in the way that we think we should be seeing it, so a child's not shaking in the corner, really nervous, but they're actually acting out then it can't be that. So it has to be a whole school approach and it has to start from the top, I think of the head and the senco believe in in trauma, believe in anxiety, believe in a holistic view. It feeds down, so it's got, and that even starts at policy level.

Dr KesselHost13:30

Yeah, it does, and I think you know. You see schools where they make this work and have great success at it, and then you see schools where they crack down on behaviorism and you see kids, you know, basically being excluded from school. Is is the is is where it goes there. Well, I think that you know. That sums up our bite-size summary. Hopefully we've whetted the appetite. So for those listening who have been, you know, interested by what we're talking about, please go and listen to episode 22 and 23, because you can hear in Ellie's own words, and she does a great job of explaining it. She's been in this for 10, 11 years now and she's a real warrior Towards this cause.

Tamsyn HendryCo-host14:07

So thank you, tansan before we finish, can I just add what I think were her three top takeaways, which I think I really absolutely To the three things that I think she felt the message to all of us was is recognize your own drivers, the why behind what you're doing. Find your own tribe, which was echoed by by many people, but also Recognizing that make sure that tribe isn't isn't an echo chamber of your Worries and anxieties. Find that tribe that help and support you and the best one is tomorrow is another day.

Dr KesselHost14:43

Hold on to that hope those are great words to end on. Thank you, tamsen. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Send parenting tribe. I hope you've enjoyed the first bite-sized summary with me and Tamsen co-hosting. Please reach out and let us know by either commenting on the episode at wwwsendparentingcom or reaching out to us on Instagram at send parenting podcast, wishing you and your family a good week ahead. You.