Too Much

Sometimes it feels like too much because it is too much.

People keep telling me that I can just stop thinking/worrying/fighting now that my younger son’s education is sorted. Don’t get me wrong, since his EHCP was finalised a year ago and he finally started getting the support I’ve asked for since he was a year old and I first realised he needs it, it has been wonderful. He received therapeutic education mostly online after six months out of school when he couldn’t return to his mainstream school after lockdown. He couldn’t. He was barely coping before lockdown. Since reception, and even pre-school before that, I knew he wasn’t okay. He’s always been a demonstrative, deep thinking, comedian in the making. However, outside the home and especially in busy environments, life was noticeably difficult for him. But teachers didn’t have time, energy, patience to notice. Except one or two.

Teachers do one of the most important jobs in the world, but that isn’t reflected in the pay and support they receive. How can teachers possibly be expected to support all the children in their care when they don’t have sufficient funding, training, or support themselves? Adults who aren’t coping become adults who are triggered by the children who aren’t coping and need the most support. That’s ‘just’ how things are in mainstream education in the UK and other countries. It’s become normalised that teachers are overstretched and children just have to bear the brunt of the inevitable burnout felt by teachers. The children who need the most care and attention, the ones who are struggling the most, get treated like a nuisance because it isn’t possible to cater for the different needs of 30 children. We need mainstream schools to be places where teaching staff, anyone who has anything to do with looking after children, receive mental health and all other types of support if there is ever going to be a chance that all children get adequate care and attention. There are just too many children who struggle, and too few adults who can cope. The children who can’t sit still (no child really can sit still for 50 minutes plus without disregulating their nervous system), the children who can’t stop touching things, tapping, or fiddling, the children who talk or call out, the children who don’t understand because they learn differently from the way the teacher is teaching. There’s nothing wrong with these children. They aren’t choosing to find the chaotic yet over-structured school environment overwhelming. It’s not their fault that the teachers can’t cope with the only way they can express their difficulties. They are children. But until teachers have enough and suitable support and training, these children who need the most support will continue to be seen as a burden. And their parents, like me, along with them.

This is my lived experience, as well as many other people’s. We are extremely fortunate that now, at the age of 14, our son who can’t cope in mainstream school is now at a specialist placement that is absolutely perfect for him. I can’t tell you how much it means, after he became so ill from dreading school for so many years, that he’s happy, fully understood, accepted and supported in learning the way that is best for him. But I’ve been fighting for the past thirteen years to get ‘professionals’ and teachers to take me seriously when I’ve told them he needs support because he’s not coping. This was at the same time as my older, also autistic, son was being bullied and treated like he’s worthless by both children and teachers in mainstream school. I have PTSD flashbacks and still cry when I think or talk about some of the experiences he had. We had. If that’s how it is for me, just imagine how it’s affected his young mind and nervous system. And we are in no way the only ones to have had these or similar experiences. Not every school is as disgracefully neglectful towards children who are different as my sons’ first school, but no school should be.

One of the books I’m working on addresses the pointlessly perpetuated problems in mainstream education. It’s often upsetting to write because I’m drawing on our experiences and those of thousands of other families. One thing that I can’t stress enough, a teacher will almost never know a child like a parent. A parent sees the child at their worst and most vulnerable, a teacher sees a child holding it all together and often masking how they really feel. Listen to parents.

While dealing with this, we’ve had countless family deaths and ongoing disasters in the wider family. A global pandemic that we’re all apparently supposed to pretend never happened even though it was deeply traumatic and unsettling for people all over the world. And people killing each other over land, resources, hate.

Somehow I nearly forgot I ran a cafe for the past two years while sorting out my younger son’s education, and everything else, too!

Again, I’m very fortunate because I have Buddhist and ancient self-healing training that helps me deal with difficult feelings and thoughts. I’ve developed my compassionate heart so I know not to dwell on angry feelings towards the adults who should not treat my children or anyone else’s in the disgraceful ways I’ve experienced. It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s too much. I know we carry negative feelings in our bodies too, and I know there are millions of people out there who would benefit from the self-regulating exercises I train in and teach. If it’s too much for me when I have spiritual and emotional scaffolding, what’s it like for people who don’t have this? I know what it’s like because we’re all just human. We’re all just trying to do our best. Sometimes it feels like too much because it is.

Tips if you’re feeling like it’s all too much –

• Do less. Give yourself time and space to rest. If you find it hard to do this for yourself, do it for the people you love and who rely on you.
• As often as you can, notice how quickly you’re breathing. Slow your breathing down, breathe through your nose and feel your abdomen expanding on each in-breath.
• Eat and drink thinks that are warming and nourishing to rebuild your inner strength. Alcohol is a depressant and crappy food makes you feel crappy. Look after yourself.

More self care and self healing advice is available here

• Facebook