Automated Transcript Episode 16
Episode 16: Self Directed Education: How children can take control of their own learning
Speaker Dr Naomi Fisher Clinical Psychologist and author of Changing Our Minds: how children can take control of their learning
Please excuse any errors as this transcript has been automatically generated
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Welcome to the SEND Parenting Podcast, focused on supporting, inspiring, and empowering parents and their Neurodiverse children. I'm your Neurodiverse host, Dr. Olivia Kessel. We'll be speaking weekly with experts in the world of neurodiversity. No topic is too big or too small for us to discuss. We will include things like, how do you navigate education? How can you understand what your child's legal rights are to an education? Practical advice on neurodiversity, and most importantly, hearing the voices of other parents just like you. Looking forward to having you join US weekly as part of the Send Parenting Tribe.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
School starts back on Monday, and for many neurodiverse children, this can lead to feelings of dread and anxiety, and a desire to never go back to school. The child's anxiety is often looked upon as the problem, rather than looking at the potential that the school is not the right environment for the child. In this episode, we will be speaking with Dr. Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma, autism, and alternative approaches to education. In this insightful discussion, Dr. Fisher will talk about the need to prioritize our children's emotional wellbeing over the need to learn facts and stick to a curriculum. What if we let go of our preconceptions of what learning should be, and instead, let our children take a self-directed autonomous approach to learning through self-directed education? Dr. Fisher's book, changing our Minds How children can take control of their own learning, really broke down a lot of my preconceptions about school education and even made me question some of my parenting techniques.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Welcome Dr. Fisher to the Send Parenting Podcast. I have been so looking forward to talking to you today. Thank you. It's lovely to have you. And I actually have one of our listeners, Francis Hope, who is a mother of a daughter in year six with PDA. For those of those who don't know is pathological demand avoidance, who actually, she reached out to me via the Send Parenting website and said, could you please, have Dr. Fisher on the show? And I'll share some of her questions later on. Great. Because yeah, I am so happy she introduced me to you because I've just finished listening to Changing Our Minds on Audible, and it has completely <laugh> opened my eyes to a different way of learning and education that isn't school-based. I mean, open is a probably too light of a word. It's blown my mind, I would say <laugh>. Excellent. So thank you because it's interesting. I have always thought of my daughter as not fitting into school, but I hadn't stopped to think is the school right for her? And in your book you put, I mean, the statistics that 40% of kids don't get the five GCSEs required to go onto further education shows that the system isn't really working.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yeah, exactly. So failure, failure is built in built into the system.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. Which is, is sad. So I'm so excited to hear your views today, and I wanted to ask you if you could share with us your journey towards self-directed education and maybe explain some of the principles of it.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Okay. Yes. So I didn't set out to be a self-directed educator, and my children very much led me there. Um, and what really started it all off for me was when my children were young and they, I've got two children, they're now 14 and 11, and neither of them have ever been to conventional school. Um, and when they were young, I, I was already a psychologist. I'd already done all my training in psychology and I'd done a PhD in developmental psychology and how young children learn or how children learned. Um, and as my children approached school age, I got more and more concerned that what I thought was gonna happen to them in school wasn't really in line with what I understood about child children's learning as a psychologist, but also about their, the kind of other needs that I thought they had, the emotional needs.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
They had a need to be, you know, they needed, they needed care really. They continued to need care. And I saw that the education system quite quickly starts to prioritize facts learning curriculum. And that's the emphasis at a time when actually I thought the more important thing for children was emotional wellbeing and a sort of sense of safety and security and relationships. And I particularly thought for my son, who was a very active, uh, little boy who was a summer birthday, I could see because of my work I'd already done as a psychologist, um, I could see that we might, he might go into school and things might go quite wrong for him quite quickly. Um, and I know now I didn't know so much at the, at that time, although I did start to look into it, that actually some are born boys are at much higher risk of being diagnosed with SEND than than any other group.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
If you compare them with say, August born girls, it's an enormous, I can't remember the statistic right now, but it's so many, many more of that group of children who go through the system being identified as having special educational needs. And of course it doesn't really make sense that being born in the summer would make you more likely to have difficulties with learning. So it's more likely that's what's going on is that interaction between young children going into the school system at a time when they're not very mature and then, and they're not really ready for it, is actually making it harder for them to learn. And when we follow it through at GCSE, there's still effects of being summer born a as opposed to the autumn born young people. They get less good results at GCSE.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
So I was like, Hmm, okay, <laugh>, maybe I just don't want to do this. Maybe I want to do something different. And at the time, like many parents, I think I thought I'll keep them out of school for a bit. We'll do a lot of play when they're younger. When they're a bit older, they will probably really get to school. And I kind of thought that we would maybe replicate a lot of what goes on at school, at home. And I think most parents think that because, you know, we were all schooled mostly, most of us were, we went to school. I went to school for a long time. Um, I thought that schooling was what you needed in order to learn. And then my children came along and they essentially refused to do any kind of school at home thing that we might have wanted.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
It was enough for me to buy a workbook for them to say no <laugh>, or in fact, it was enough for me to make most suggestions. And they'd be like, no. In fact, the sort of theme of my son's early childhood would be, I'd make a suggestion. He would say, mummy, I have a better idea, <laugh>, and we would do his idea. Um, and so I started to see that he had this amazing capacity to explore the world and to be curious and to learn, but that it wasn't following the kind of learning that other children were doing at school. So by the time he got to seven, which is the stage that I had thought, you know, by the time everybody says they're seven, things change a bit, they might be ready to go to school. I actually found that what happened is the gap between what he was doing and what school children were doing was just huge.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
It was, and in, you know, in a ways that he wasn't, for example, he hadn't learned to read by that stage. He wasn't at all good at sitting down and following instructions, putting his hand up, all the things that children learn at school. He wasn't learning, but he was so curious and engaged and doing stuff and interested. And I was like, wow, maybe there, there's something really going on here that I just wasn't aware of. And I, that's where sort of writing my book came in. Because I just started to see learning can be so different when we can let go a lot of our assumptions about what it should look like. So it was quite a long answer. Sorry,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
<laugh>. No, it's brilliant. And you know, I completely, you know, it resonated with me and my daughter's a summer baby as well. And I've had to fight to keep her, um, behind. And, you know, uh, even with the EHCP journey, like they wanted to put, you know, in their ultimate wisdom, they wanted to put her ahead a year. So just skip your six, go into a large secondary school and yeah. That, that wouldn't hurt her or damage her <laugh>.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Wow. It's very isn it like, when I, I remember with my son when I, I, I did raise with this, cause we had a place at a local school and I raised it with them. Could he, might he be able to stay down a year? And they said, but you know, you don't want him to be behind his peers. Do you want him to be with his peers? And I was like, well, he's born in July, who decided that his peers are the people who were born from the last September right through to the August as opposed to any other year group. You know, why did, this get decided that these are his peers and the others aren't? And of course, one of the things that I've really appreciated as my children haven't gone to school is seeing how they didn't learn to divide the world up into year groups.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Because I don't know if you had this experience, but certainly when I was at school that year, groups were really firm. You know, it was hard to be friends with someone in a different year group. It felt, they felt older or younger than you when they were in a different year group at school. And my children have friends of very different ages. They don't have that kind of feeling of this is my group and everybody else is older or younger, and I, I stay within my group at all. And of course, why should they, you know, why? It's something, it's arbitrary. School year groups are arbitrary.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Absolutely. I totally agree. And I, I like that about my daughter's specialist school now is because they all have playtime together. So she plays with kids that are younger and older. You know, has, has great friends with them. But you know, listening to your book and, and hearing about how you've educated your children. Both you know, doing it at home and then doing it in, schools mm-hmm. <affirmative>, self-directed schools. Yep. Um, you know, and then thinking to myself, how would I ever make that work? <laugh> and, uh,
Dr Naomi Fischer:
<laugh>, it's a big challenge. Yeah. <laugh>,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
That's a huge decision. How did you know, come to that decision to educate your kids that way? And how did you manage it?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Well, it's never easy. I say to parents, it's almost never obvious. It's, you know, the easy decision, at least at the beginning is always, is always school. That's what the world makes, makes available to you. And that's the obvious choice. And certainly that was a, it wasn't part of my plan for my life that my children would not go to school. I'm a clinical psychologist. I love what I do. I was, I went back to work from after maternity leave. You know, we, um, yeah, from the first year I was back at work, but it seemed so strong. My conviction that my children would learn better out of school was really strong. But also I think my conviction that I could see that school might be damaging to them, particularly for my son, because he was so active. So, um, young for his age really, when he was four, he was just really young for his age.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And he really disliked being told what to do. He really hated being instructed of any kind. And, you know, what does school do to you? <laugh>? He expects you to kind of stop being so active and it expects you to do what you're told. And he just, it was enough to be what to told. It was enough to be told to do something for him not to want to do it at all. So I was like, he's very quickly going to hate reading. He's gonna hate maths, he's gonna hate all these things because he's gonna be being made to do them. And his reaction to being made to do things is to say, no, I'm not doing it. So that was, that was in a way made easier because I could see how clearly that I thought it would go wrong for him. But we had to completely rearrange our lives.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
I gave up my job, I was worked in the NHS at the time. Um, what I did was my husband continued to work full-time for a while and I worked in the evenings and on Saturdays, which I would absolutely not recommend if you could possibly avoid it. It was absolutely exhausting. I would like be with the kids all the day and they would be, they were young, so they were four and one at this point when we started. And it was really hard work being with them all day. And then I would, my exhausting, it was exhausting. And my husband would come back and I would go straight out the door and I would go and see a couple of clients in the evening. And I remember stopping off on the local shop on the way on the way and buying like, Lucazade you know, sports drink.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Literally glugging it down to get me through those couple of hours, um, that I could do it. But anyway, we did that and then as we got, as they got a bit older, my husband went part-time a bit so that we juggled it so we weren't both, you know, so I wasn't having to kind of take all the career damage as it were. And we also sometimes got help. My mother came and helped like a day a week and would look after them. We juggled. It was just this, when they were younger. It was this huge process of juggling all the time, looking for people who might be able to help, looking for things they might go to. You know, it was never easy. Uh, but it got, has got easier. It's got massively easier because now obviously they're old enough, but they go to a part-time self-directed learning community now in the mornings. And even when they are around, you know, now they understand now it's okay to say I can't be interrupted for a bit. I'm doing some work. Uh, but when they were younger, it was a constant process and it was never, it was just never easy. But, but looking back on it, I'm glad we did it. I'm glad, you know, it was worth it.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. And I mean it's, it's, it was before the time of Covid where people get used to having, you know, children coming in, et cetera. It's become more, you know, accepted now. Yes.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
I had a great feeling actually when I, when Covid happened and my children were at home, I was like, oh, now finally it's okay for them to bang on the door. But they did used to bang on the door. I used to have things set up so that if they did bang on the door and came in, cuz I would worked online even before Covid. But they would come in so that the person could see them. You know, I'd have the door angled so that I could be able to, okay, not right now <laugh> without the, without the people in the meeting immediately seeing that I had a small child coming in the back. But it did happen. It happened that I was interrupted, um, multiple times. It just did happen. But I didn't use. But, but you know, it was juggling. It was, it was all a process of trying to make things work.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Well, I take my hat off too because it's a, you know, I, I can, I can't even begin to imagine how hard that was to, to juggle both of those things and to be successful at it. You know,
Dr Naomi Fischer:
It got a lot easier once they started going to self-directed learning community. Uh, because then there were somewhere else where they could go. And, and I definitely, um, you know, I couldn't have done things that I do now if they, when they were younger, absolutely no way when they were younger. It was just about surviving and getting through the, getting through the day. Um, but I think my, in a way, my professional background really helped me because I did think, and I do still think that emotional wellbeing is absolutely the fundamental of what I'm, what I'm aiming for in my parenting. And so I would always say to myself, this is the key thing, is that I am trying to look after their mental health and their emotional wellbeing. And even if I don't think we are having a great kind of educated experience today or tomorrow, I am looking after their emotional wellbeing. I am being with them. I am showing that I care about them and that I love them. And that's the most important thing.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
And, you know, that's a great motto to live by. And, and one that, uh, puts you in good, uh, standing for when you're an adult and having to deal with different things to have that foundation. Um, a lot of kids I think, yeah, don't, have that. How, how do self-directed education schools work?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Okay. Um, so let me tell you a little bit about self-directed education cause I didn't really get into that. So basically self-directed education is education where the learner retains control of what they're doing. So they retain the responsibility for what they learn, how they learn it, and when they learn it really. So what that means for children is that adults concentrate on providing opportunities for them to do and providing good relationships for them. But the children are the ones who choose what they do. And actually the most easy way to think about it for most people is to think about a really good nursery setting. Most nursery settings are pretty good self-directed learning environments in the sense that adults set up activities for kids to do. And they set up activities that they know the children will like to do. And the adults are around to be involved and to chat to the children.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
But they don't make the children do things. So they don't say, you know, today you must play on the sand table. Everybody is doing sand play today. Or, you know, tomorrow it's water play for everybody. They don't do that. And that's because they understand that what the children are developing is a, something about this capacity to choose what you do and to say, I want to do this right now. I'm really interested in this. And of course they're not saying that cause they're not at that level yet. But that's what they're practicing. They're practicing making choices. They're practicing being creative, they're practicing problem solving, they're practicing playing. All of those things are going on in a good nursery classroom. And really what you do in self-directed education is you carry on those principles. So the environment changes. There isn't a sand table. We did have a sand table when they were little.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
We don't have one anymore. We do much less water play than we did. Uh, but you carry on as an adult providing the opportunities for them to, to, to learn from and the relationship which supports them in doing so. But then you don't insist you allow them to, to choose what they do. And that's quite hard because it can mean that they take a very different developmental trajectory to how children at school do. So for example, it's very common for children to read, to learn to read a lot later out of school when they're self-directed learners. And both my children learned to read much later than they would've that they would've been taught to do it at school. And that was a surprise to me cuz I was an early reader. I went to the school already able to read. And so I kind of expected that my children would be the same, you know, that they would be.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And I was an avid reader through my childhood. I read books all the time. I loved reading. So then to have children who didn't learn to read and weren't that interested, my son in particular was not very interested in reading. So I thought, you know, we'll read loads of books together. No <laugh>, he wasn't into reading books together at all. He would take them off me and put them away and say no. So I didn't insist, I kept on providing the opportunities that I didn't insist. And I think that's really the key of self-direct education, that you, the child is the one who says yes or no. And the parent doesn't say, yes, we're going to do this no matter what. Not when it comes to learning, of course they do say they deem say that and they need to say that about things for safety.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
People will sometimes say to me, so you mean you let them run across the road? No, of course not. You keep your children safe. But that doesn't mean you have to control every aspect of their learning. In fact, it has a detrimental effect, I think, on their learning to control it to that extent. So to get back to your question, which was about self-directed learning settings, they basically carry on those. So same principles. So they do it in loads of different ways, but they are providing opportunities for young people and they're providing relationships, but they are not insisting that they do what the teacher thinks is the right thing to do, for example. So there might be, there are loads of different ones like, um, a Summer Hill, which is a boarding school where a sort of one of the original democratic schools and they have a court, they have lessons that young people can sign up to, but they don't have to.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
So the lessons are there if you want to do them, but you don't need to. There are other self-directed settings. So my children went to one in Paris for two years, which didn't have lessons at all. So there, the children went there and there would be rooms with different things. They had a music room, they had an art room, they had a kind of sofas playroom, and they had a computer room, they had a quiet room. And you could go and do your things with other young people in that space. And there were adults available to do it with you if you wanted, but you didn't need to. But there weren't lessons at all. And that place that they're at at the moment, which is in um, Hove or near Brighton, is there are learning advisors and they, they offer things. So in the morning they have a meeting and the learning advisors might say, so today I'm going to do, um, a group maths if you want to come, or I'm also available for one-to-ones.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And the young people can again, choose to do it or choose to not do it. And the idea is that they self-manage their learning. So they continue to be the person who's saying, I'm doing this because I'm interested and I want to do it. And really what it's based on, and I talk about a lot about this in my book, is, is self-determination theory, which is a psychological theory about what helps people be intrinsically motivated to do things. And really we find that when we take autonomy away from anybody, adults or young people, we lose a lot in terms of their, their, their motivation to do stuff and to, and what we want in learning is really high quality motivation. And we want people, because we know from the research that children and adults, when they've got a sort of high quality intrinsic motivation to do something, what they do is better. You know, they do, they learn more deeply. They get, they go more deeply into the things that they're learning it, they retain it better if we can get that motivation right. So that's what we're doing in self-directed education. We're trying to get the circumstances for intrinsic motivation. Right. And what that means is that we have to give young people some autonomy, which of course means that they might not choose to learn things that we as adults would like them to be learning. So that's a long answer. Yeah. You there still? Yeah,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
It may, it, it, yeah. I'm, I, you know, it makes so much sense. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And yet it is so alien to what we do in education
Dr Naomi Fischer:
<laugh>. Yes. It really is. Because in education we focus on the curriculum. So we focus on content. We say that this is what is important, learning this curriculum. And the moment we do that, the moment we say, all children must learn the same curriculum, we've taken the autonomy away because no wauy can children choose. And really, you know, it's like you started off with talking about GCSEs and how it's 30% who fail. It's, it, it, I dunno who decided that everybody of this age group should have to go through the same motions. Because the moment you have a child who struggles, or a child who finds this really difficult or who is just developmentally a bit out of sync with the rest of their, you know, with what's expected by the school system. And that can be things like being a summer birthday, which immediately puts you a bit kind of out of sync of what the school system's expecting. The moment that happens, then you, I think parents start to think about, well why, you know, why are we making them go through this whole system where effectively they're having lots of experiences of failure or they're having lots of experiences of not quite being ca you know, not not doing as well as the others. And I don't think it's a good way to, to prepare young people for adult life to put them through this process where we know that 30% of them are gonna fail at the end. And they're continually,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
It's 40% actually.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
I think it's, I think that was in your book that, is it 30? I must be wrong
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Think it's 30, but it may, it may be, who knows, it'll vary from year to year. But it's a, it's a lot of kids <laugh>. It really is. Um,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
And it, it's really funny because when I didn't wanna let my daughter go up into you know, reception from nursery Yeah. Because she was a summer baby. Because she has cerebral palsy. Yeah. Because she, you know, has, uh, learning difficulties. Yeah. They're like, well let's just put her up and see how she has. And I'm like, you know what? I don't want her to fail. No. And you know, that's, that's going to be scarring. I know.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
You know, <laugh>. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? And it's also weird that the kind of obsession with getting them through by a certain age, because I think that's so unhelpful. Like why do we have this obsession with everybody taking GCSEs at age 16? So I've, I've talked to lots of parents in a sort of situation of that you are describing where all the way through the school system they're trying to put that child back in the group. They're meant to be in, you know, if you hold them back, like I've talked to parents who've been, who've been told, you know, we want 'em to go to secondary school a year early. Or we want them to take GCSE a year, a year early in terms of the group that they're in because we want to put them back with their proper year group. It's like, what is this thing about year group?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Why does it matter? You know, it doesn't actually matter if you take GCSEs when you're 16 or 18 or even 20. What, why it wouldn't it be better? I would like to see a system where we were saying, you know, there are exams at the end of school. I can see that it'd be good to have some tests at the end of school, which basically say to employers or further education, yes, this person has a certain level of literacy, certain level of numeracy, but why do those have to be done in this kind of everybody at 16? Like, why couldn't it be more like the driving test where we say, when you're ready, if you can take it, if you fail it, you can do it again. You know, wouldn't that and that and then we would take the stress off these years. Because the teenage years in particular, parents and young people are so worried, they're told that these exams are everything and there's this real feeling.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
And they are.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yes Well,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
They're not, you know, they are. They they are. And it's ridiculous at that age. And I, you know, I, their brains are going through changes then. And it shouldn't just be, you know, channeled into taking an exam.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
No. And they're really vulnerable as well. Teenagers are really vulnerable. You know, we, the, all the research coming out now from neuroscience shows that this, there's a massive period of development in the teenage years. Brains are changing hugely. And it's a time of great opportunity, but also great vulnerability. And what are we doing them with them? We are putting them under intense stress and telling them that these exams are gonna determine the rest of their lives. I mean, it's not a good way to prepare vulnerable young people for life.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. It's, uh, it's definitely, uh, a system that needs a revamp and you know, in, in, you know, those are, you know, kids that are function and there's also kids that are, you know, like my daughter ha or have a neurodiversity. Yeah. Or have been diagnosed or suspected. Then, you know, how how does self-directed learning work within that group? And I know you have a another book coming out, which probably is going to answer all my questions on that subject
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yes. So, so I mean, yeah. I have a new book coming out in June, which is specifically about neurodiversity and self-directed education. And for it, I talked to lots of families about what it looked like in their houses, in their homes. Um, and I mean, I think that the most, the thing that many people don't realize until they start home educating, for example, something I certainly didn't realize until I was a home educator is that there's, there's a very, very high level of neurodiversity within the home education community and very, very high level of, of s e n as well. And of course it makes perfect sense to be, I can believe that because they're the children for whom school isn't working. So, you
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Know. Well I love, I love in your book where you say like the, the canary in the mind Yeah. Kind of, uh, scenario. Yeah.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
That's from Carla Shalaby book, which is a fantastic book if anybody wants to read it called troublemakers. But yes, exactly. We are looking at the children who are more sensitive to what's going on and they are saying, they're not saying it because they're saying it through their behavior or through their emotional reactions, but I think of them as like, they're waving little flags going, this is not good, this is not good help, help <laugh> and lots. And their parents often try really hard to get, keep them in the system and get the system working for them. And then lots of the parents at some point say, this isn't working, we have to do something else. And so they end up home educating. Um, so I think it's, and I, and it is very different to the view of home education that lots of people have from the outside, which is often kind of hot housing children, you know, accelerating them through school that they, they talk about it being a sort of privileged choice.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And I, I think it's absolutely not a privileged choice to be in a situation where school doesn't work for your child because there are very few choices in that scenario. You know, like you, I meet families who've made all sorts of choices in order to be able to home educate their kids just because they see the impact on their children and they're like, we can't do this. So, you know, I see parents, I've met families who've moved back in with their parents in order to cut their housing costs so they can afford to do it. I've met families who do things similar things to what we were doing where they basically pass the children between the parents so that one parent works in the day and another parent works in the night. And you know, parents make enormous sacrifices in some cases to make this work for their children because they don't, they see the impact of what's going on at school on their children.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Um, yeah. So with neurodiversity and then in particular, sorry, do you want me to, do you want to ask something else? Yeah, no, yeah, so No, no. Uh, so I think, I think um, self-directed education can be amazing for neurodivergent kids. And the real reason I think that is because I think it gives them the capacity to develop at their own rate. So school kind of puts this timeline on them, you know, you should be doing this at this stage, this at this stage, this stage is reading, this stage is what, and it moves you through consistently. And for lots of neurodivergent kids, their development is, isn't on the same, it's not happening at the same rate. It's happening in different ways. And I think one of the things that I noticed, which first made me really think was, um, imaginative play, so I have a PhD in autism before I did my clinical psychology doctorate.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And one of the things that we talk about a lot in autism research, they talked about a lot in autism research then anyway is about imaginative play and how one of the diagnostic criteria for autism at the time, it's all changed now, but it was a lack of imaginative play in early years. So they would say autistic children aren't playing imaginatively in the way that other children are. Okay, fine. And you know, there were definitely, I saw lots of children around me who weren't playing imaginatively, but then as a home educating parent, I knew lots of other home educating families. And what I saw was that lots of these children who hadn't been playing imaginatively in their early years, so, you know, they weren't doing the tea parties and the small world play and all that kind of thing when they got to seven or eight or nine, they often did start doing imaginative play.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And it was, but it was quite different. It was often imaginative play through the realm of, in the realm of video games or it was imaginative play based on ideas from TV programs or video games. So they would be playing things like real life Minecraft or they would be playing, um, you know, they would, they would be setting up elaborate, elaborate imaginative games. But it was at a stage where if they were in the school system, imaginative play was no longer valued. So, you know, the school system values imaginative play in the early years, but after that it basically says now it's time to sit down and do your work. Play is for playtime. And I saw that the schooled children, we knew when the home educated children would want to play imaginatively, the school children would say things like, oh, we're too old for that.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Or, you know, we don't play anymore because we're too grown up. And I would see that the home educated children might carry on, like doing things like playing with dolls or playing in these imaginative games for years and years longer. Well on it well into their teenage years even. And I started to think maybe there's something really important about allowing, particularly neurodivergent kids to have this space where they can do these things later on without it being a source of shame, without it being a source, you know, without it being seen as them being behind. And they're just allowed to have their interests at whatever stage they're at right now.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
You know, that is so, um, refreshing to hear and on a very personal level because even in her specialist school with my daughter, I've had a teacher say to me, well, she's still playing with dolls. So, you know, obviously you know, that's an issue. Yeah. And I said, you know, I played with my doll house till I was 12, you know. Yeah. What's, you know, and I'm a doctor.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
<laugh>. And it's weird, isn't it? Because we value play, but only in this very early stage. And then it's like now playing is a problem. But I think it's great particularly for, you know, I just think any, I've always, that's always been my philosophy, education, anything we can get into play, let's do it. That's great. Let's preserve that time when they're playing because it's one, it's the real thing. You know, when people sometimes say things like, aren't you worried they're gonna have gaps? Aren't you worried they're gonna miss out on things? The things that I'm really worried that my children might miss out on are the things like play because you can't go back. You know, like you can never go back. Like I can't now go and play with a doll's house and enjoy it. I just can't. And when I,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
It's so true. In Covid I had to with my daughter and it almost killed me.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yes. That's the strange thing. And I noticed this with my children when they were quite, when they were young or a bit older, when they started doing, wanting me to play imaginative for me with them because I thought to myself, you know, there's something really weird about this cause I'm not playing imaginatively, although they are. And I apparently am, I'm not, I'm playing at playing imaginatively <laugh> and it's really hard work. Yeah. Really, really hard work. And I find it quite boring and I really don't want to do it. Whereas they can carry on for hours and hours and hours because they're in this amazing imaginative world. And I, at the time, this was another one of these things that made me really think, because I was like, you know, I've lost this ability to go into this imaginative world and I want to let them do that for as long as they possibly can because, you know, you can go back when you are 30 and do GCSEs, but you can't go back and play like you could when you were six or seven. You can never do that again. It's a stage of your life. And once it's gone, it's gone. So I've always been like, the longer they play, the happier I am. Really?
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. I I completely agree with you. And uh, yeah, uh, I, I took my daughter sometimes takes her dolls out with her and she goes, mommy, I feel a bit embarrassed. And I said, own it. And so she took the doll outta the bag and she goes, mommy, I'm gonna own it. I said, there we go. You know?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's, yeah. It's so sad that we stop valuing play. It's, I think it's a tragedy because I think that's the, the really big thing I've seen with home educated kids. They just carry on playing and it doesn't ever stop because they're not shamed for it. And why are we shaming kids for play?
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. It boggles the mind. It really does. And you know, uh, having education kind of send that message out to children Yeah. Is also, you know, misdirected maybe, you know?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Totally. It's a devaluing of play and play is the way that children learn things. You know, it's the natural way of play, of learning and play. Wouldn't we all benefit from a bit more play in our lives as adults too, <laugh>, you know, wouldn't we all be, wouldn't be good if we could retain that capacity to play more
Dr Olivia Kessel:
And have fun. Yeah. You know, it, it's sad though and like the, you know, with reading your book and with the struggles that I've had in in school, it's like, is there any hope for mainstream school and how, you know, um, you, you're amazing and be able to do the self-directed yourself as are all the other families that are kind of Yeah. Making these difficult decisions. And my mind then goes to, well what, what can be done in mainstream? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, can education be shifted? And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
I think we, what we need in mainstream is a lot more flexibility basically. And I don't think, I don't think we can keep certain things about it and it changed. So for example, I don't think we can really change mainstream whilst we've got this idea that what we're aiming towards is test results at 16. I think that while we've got that it restrains everything else, it constrains us and you know, it means that the focus is always how are these children going to perform in these tests? And I think whilst that's the focus of education, I don't think we can really in, we can really focus on other things. You know, it's like, one of the things I talk about quite a lot is how emotional wellbeing becomes just, uh, it's, I don't know what's the word? It's like a sticking plaster where you know, you've got very unhappy, anxious children and then psychologists are sent in to do a mindfulness workshop and it's like teach 'em how to breathe.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And it's like that's a sticking plaster of mental health teaching children how to breathe. We need to look at why they're so stressed. Why is the system making them stressed and change those things? That's the only way that actually we're going to help our young people have better emotional wellbeing. But that's much trickier to do because we can't do that without giving up this idea that what matters is test results. Because our whole school system is based on the idea that what matters is retaining the curriculum and doing well on the tests. There's, it isn't based on the idea. How can we help children thrive and flourish and learn and all, you know, when they talk about educational research, it's all about what raises test results. It's not about what makes children happier <laugh>. And I think that's where the change needs to come. You know, it needs the, the starting point needs to be how can we help these children learn and flourish rather than how can we help these children perform well in the next test?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Because they're just, the two things are just not the same. And they'll, people will tell you that they are the same. They'll say, you know, children, you get two best good test results are happier. Well yes cuz they're the winners. <laugh>. But, but we always have to think about <laugh> the losers. You know, I'm always asking this because there's so much focus in the education system and then talk about education or, you know, get success, drive towards success. They're never all going to succeed. That is just not ever going to happen. Our education system is built so that they can't all succeed. And that's partly because one of the purposes of it is to rank children and it's competitive system where we want to know which children are gonna go to university and which aren't. So we cannot have a system which is built on the premise. So they're all at one point to go to succeed at G C S E. They won't. So therefore we need to build a system which acknowledges that some children aren't gonna do well and they also need a really good educational experience. You know, we need an educational experience that isn't all based on getting those test results. That's what I think is change.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah I can hear that And that, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, it's also interesting to me though as well that with self-directed learning, um, and I think you mentioned the book Unschooling in the Future. Yeah. Um, unschooling to university, like, uh, your stories in your book also illustrate that by having this self-directed learning, it doesn't mean that they're gonna end up being, you know, non-functioning members of society. Which is kind of what you think <laugh>
Dr Naomi Fischer:
When
Dr Olivia Kessel:
You, you know, think of not sending your kids to school.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
You totally do. And that's what everybody tells you, isn't it? If they're not in school, they're not learning. It's so not true. I mean, it has just blown my mind seeing my son and his peers become teenagers. So he's 14 now, 14 and a half. And to see how their motivation has not been destroyed by being made to do things really. So they are the, the four, the 14 and 15 and 16 year olds I know who are unschooled or self-directed learners, they're so motivated to do stuff because they're interested and they see the point in things. So it's not, people say, what about GCSEs? What about GCSEs? And the thing is that I don't think young people have to be made to do these things. Cause I think when we make them do something, we lose some, we lose their, the, their choice. We lose their ability to say, yes, I want to do this.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
But I think young people are highly capable of thinking, starting to think about the future. And this only happens in the teenage years, by the way, which is part of why people find it difficult. Cause younger children, they don't think about the future. I think that's fine. They live very much in the moment. They make their choices very much based on what do I want to do right now? But what I see is that as they get older and they go through puberty, they start to think about the future. They start to set goals for themselves. So my son's decided he wants to take some GCSEs for example, because he wants to go to college and he wants to go to university. So he is making those choices for himself. And <laugh>, you know, I i I can't see why we don't trust young people to make those kinds of decisions. Because I make those kinds of decisions for myself all the time. I'm sure you have as well. You know, I set myself goals if I wanted to go to university and study psychology, or I wanted to get a clinical psychology doctorate and I went about doing the things that I would need to do in order to get into that doctorate. And, but yet we somehow assume thats that
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Well. We are kind of trained them not to, you know? Yes, you sit them down, you have to do your homework, you have to do this. You we do, I mean, I'm guilty of it and I have to say like, my parenting has changed since reading your book too. And it, and it has had an impact. You know what I mean? Like it makes Yeah, it makes sense. You know what I mean? Give them the control. Yes. And you know, it, it's, you know, my example is I had an early morning call. I'm like, she's, she'll normally never get ready. I'll be like, get dressed, get dressed, eat your food, da da. Instead I just let it go. I said, please help mommy if you want to. You can. And you know what, she did everything by herself. I was, I I was, I was dropped on the floor, you know, I was like, oh my God, what have I been doing all these years? <laugh>, she can do it by herself. Yes.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And also, once you start to see that ability at that, that the, I think it's seeing it a skill as well. It's a skill to be able to choose to do things and to make those choices. And that's a really important skill for children to develop. And when we control them too much, we take away their capacity to develop that kind of skill.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. It's uh, it, it's definitely opened up my, my mind. Now I wanna make sure we have time to a ask these questions from Oh yeah, sure. The lovely Francis Hope who who gave it, um, gave me the recommendation to reach out to you mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So her first question, um, was, is it inevitable that a child with escalating EBSA, which stands for emotionally based school avoidance? Yeah. Um, is it inevitable, um, that they will descend into isolation in their room? Or is it possible to walk with them so they don't actually have to reach a lonely depth before climbing their way out again?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Mm. That's a very interesting point.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
It's a big question. Yeah. Okay. So EPSA is emotionally based school avoidance and it's a descriptive term that is applied to many children when they find school really distressing and they start saying they don't want to go because of, because of the distress. Um, I don't think it's inevitable that they then descend. But I think unfortunately a lot of the things that are happening in schools or that parents are being told to do, have the opposite effect to what is hoped for. And that's because the general approach to EBSA is that you need to get that child back into school as quickly as possible. And whatever you do is kind of, well it depends on the, the approach, but, but it's justified to put a fair amount of pressure and force onto that child in order to get 'em through the school gates. Because the philosophy is that avoidance of school reinforces the anxiety about school and therefore we mustn't allow them to avoid school because that will make the anxiety worse.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
So I could talk for this a lot. I'm not going to, because I, it's something I know quite a lot about and I've done a bit, quite a lot of research about it recently. But basically, um, I think it's based on an erroneous understanding of what's going on because it's, it's basically conceptualizing the problem as anxiety, which for some children it may be, but, but I think for a lot of children, it's not actually anxiety that's the problem. It's what's going on at school and the way they experience that, that's the problem. Do you see the difference so effectively?
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah, absolutely. And if she's experienced PDA, then that could be the, the reason not the anxiety, correct?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Absolutely. So she's, she's, she's the way she is, she's demand avoidant, therefore school is quite a stressful environment for her. She starts to feel anxious and then what happens is the anxiety gets labeled as the problem. So it's like if we could just make her less anxious, then school would be okay. And I think, you know, this is a model which is from cognitive behavior therapy. I've, if it's, it's a very well established model. I've used it lots of times with people who are phobic of all sorts of different things. You know, if you are scared of dogs, then what you do is help people's associate see dogs that's both time with dogs and they get less scared of dogs, that kind of thing. But I think when it comes to school, there's a basic assumption that school as it is, is good or neutral and therefore if the child's anxious about school, it's the child who is making the error.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Do you see what I mean? So we need to change the child's anxiety. Absolutely. Then the child will be all right. So obviously I come from a slightly different perspective where I'm saying the very way that school runs, I think isn't a place that means that for a significant proportion of children is not a place where they can thrive. And they, they, they show us that by refusing to go. So, and then I think by, in continuing to push them to go to continuing to say to them, you must go and you must go and you must go in or you'll get more anxious. And parents do this with the absolute best motives because they're told things will get worse if you don't do it. Um, unfortunately what that does is create lots of bad experiences for the child of being forced into school. It also damages their relationship with their parent because it's usually their parent who is being, who is forcing them into school because the parent has been told they've got to do that.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And that's when the child starts to go downhill really dramatically. This is the story I hear at least from lots of parents. Um, and then also parents are often also told that they should make home boring when the child's at home and not interact with them too much because that will also mean that there's more of a push for them to go to school. And I've actually, I was reading a book recently for professionals which recommended to parents that they create a atmosphere of solitary confinement around their child if their child doesn't attend school, which I just think is a horrendous thing to be written in a book for professionals. And I can't understand how they managed to get that through. Anyway, so, so basically what we've got there is a number of interventions. Yeah, absolutely. Shocking <laugh>. So we've got a number of interventions with the potential to make the child unhappier and more anxious.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
So the problem is that the, the tools that the parent is told to use make things worse for the child and make things worse for all the family actually. So when I meet families, they'll say they've been trying this for months, sometimes even for years. Because often when parents are told to do these things, there's no time limit on it, parent. They don't say, you're tried for six weeks, it doesn't work, try something else. They say this is what you must do. And the children do withdraw completely and the parents start to withdraw completely as well because it's so difficult. But I think the problem is, it's this assumption that getting that school is okay as it is and therefore we need to make the child realize that. And I don't think that's the case for all children. I think it has to start with what's going on at school, how can we change what's going on at school so that it's better?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And I think that needs to start with relationships, really relationships and safety needs to start with the school forming different kind of relationships with young people. And it's needs to start with thinking about what, you know, for example, if a child has PDA it might be thinking about how the how more low demand, a more low demand approach could be put in place at school. How teachers might be able to respond to this young person in a way that didn't trigger their anxiety response all the time. So effectively putting the onus on school rather than on the young person to change. And I think in that case, I don't think we have to go down this spiral. Um, but also, yes, I suppose the other thing I think is that it's really what the, what the point of the intervention is. And I think the point of lots of interventions for EBSA is to get that young person back into school and it's kind of dressed up as mental health, but actually it's not really mental health, it's about school attendance.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
And I think that's a kind of, yeah, I mean it's a very different approach to how we would have it with adults. If you think about with adults, if we had an adult who was really unhappy at work and was didn't want to go into work anymore, we'd be really unlikely to say to them, this is, um, you know, emotionally based work avoidance and you must go to school, work must go to work every day because if you don't go to work, it's just gonna get worse. <laugh>, I dunno if you've had jobs, Olivia, where you've really hated it, but I've had a couple which I really, really, really hated. And the thought of, yep. If someone had told me, you have to make yourself go in there every day no matter what, or it will feel worse, it would've just made me feel really trapped Um, and you know, ultimately the best thing with those jobs was that I resigned from them <laugh> and moved on <laugh> because they weren't environments in which I could thrive.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. And maybe that, you know, this leads into a second question too. So is, is it best that, you know, I, um, you know, go to a self-educated school or go to a different school environment and you know, from everything you've just said there, and I know we can't tell her what to do? No. I think trying a different environment if the environment is the issue Yeah. Has got to be a step in the right direction.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
I would say so too. And not, I mean, you know, and you need, it depends on what place is the right place for your child. There'll be different places that are right for each child, but what I usually say to parents Yeah. Is you need to find somewhere where you can be honest about your child and about what they find challenging and where you feel that they get it, you know, that they understand and that they're ready to be flexible around the child. If you go into a school and you are visiting and you kind of feel like, oh gosh, you know, I'm, I'm kind of having to pretend that I think my child's gonna be all right here and actually they're not, then I wouldn't go there because that's what your child's gonna feel too. They're also going to feel, I can't really be myself here. Um, but yes, I think moving. Yeah, I mean you need a school that's gonna work with you. You need a school that's gonna be flexible. It's because you need to relocate. The flexibility needs to be with the school rather than with the young person.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Yeah. And a school that wants to reach, you know, have have your child's needs met instead of changing your child to meet their needs. Exactly.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yep. Exactly. Yeah. That's, that needs to be their first approach. How are we gonna help this young person thrive? Really?
Dr Olivia Kessel:
And it's very, very sad. I think that it's actually usually the other way around, you know, um, how can we make this child, how
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Can we make them comply? How can we make them comply? Yeah. And how can we get them to stop protesting <laugh> stop telling us that they're not happy. Um, yeah, I think it is
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Very, I mean, if you took out the, all of our discussion of children and, and neurodiversity and that and, and pretended that this was an adult world that we were talking about, people would be up in uproar. There'd be like, yeah, how can this be happy? This is a human rights issue. You
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Know, I no, they would absolutely, they would completely. And also this thing that I know people, when children are diagnosed with EBSA another one of the things that they're often told is, don't move schools because it will it will reoccur at another school. And I think in a way that's a bit of an indictment of the school system <laugh>, if that's really the case. But I think again, with work, we just wouldn't say that, you know, if I'm saying I really, really don't like this job. I, I've had jobs where I've gone into them and I've felt physically ill, you know, I've had jobs that I've gone into and they make me prickle all over with a kind of physical, this is not the right place for me. And I've left those jobs and I've found other jobs where I felt really different <laugh> and it's been about the relationships and the pe and the expectations and whether it's in line with my values and whether I felt good working there, all of those things. And I think that can happen for children and young people as well.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
No, I agree. Well, thank you so much Dr. Fisher for coming on the show. It has been absolutely amazing and I would love to have you back when your new book comes out and I'm looking forward to reading it because that'll
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Be great. Yeah,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
It, oh good. I'm glad. Um, and it's coming out, you said in June?
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yeah, it is June with Jessica Kingsley. I'm not sure if it's available for pre-order yet or not actually. I haven't looked, but it might be. But people can come and follow me on my Facebook page and then they will get any alerts when things do come out. Um, Dr.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Brilliant and I will put all of your,
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Yeah,
Dr Olivia Kessel:
I will put all your information on, um, on my website as well as, as well as a link to the book that you currently have out, which I would recommend everyone to read. So thank you very much.
Dr Naomi Fischer:
Great. Thank you Olivia. It's been lovely to talk to you.
Dr Olivia Kessel:
Thank you for listening. Send Parenting Tribe if you haven't already. Please follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Send Parenting. Also, if you wanna purchase Dr. Fisher's book, visit our website at www.sendparenting.com and when it's available, I will post a link for her next publication, which is called A Different Way to Learn Neurodiversity and Self-Directed Education. Wishing you and your children the strength to face School next week.