The School Can't Experience

#11 - Lived Experience - Solving problems using low demand parenting and collaboration with Marissa Taylor Part 2

• School Can't Australia • Season 1 • Episode 11

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In this second part of Marissa Taylor’s Lived Experience episode we learn about how discovering low demand parenting and particularly the importance of collaboration through Dr Ross Greene’s CPS (Collaborative and Proactive Solutions) method was transformative for Marissa at a time when she was unsure how best to support her School Can’t children. Marissa shares some interesting ways she’s used CPS in her family and shares how she maintains confidence in taking a non conventional approach to parenting.

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The content of this podcast is based on personal lived experiences and is shared for informational and storytelling purposes only. It should not be treated as medical, psychological, or professional advice under any circumstances. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please seek guidance from a doctor, therapist, or other qualified professional.

Leisa Reichelt:

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia Community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. Today we continue Marissa Taylor's lived experience story, which we started in our last episode. In part one, Marissa shared the story of how each of her children experienced School Can't in their own unique ways, and how she felt forced into Home Education

in today's episode, Marissa talks us through how she has used low demand parenting skills, and particularly Dr. Ross Green's collaborative and proactive solutions or CPS method, and how that has been really transformative to her approach to parenting.

Leisa Reichelt:

This is not exactly a CPS tutorial though, so before I hand over to Marissa, I thought it might be helpful to give just a quick summary of the key concepts of CPS for anybody who's not familiar, and there is a lot more information freely available online if you wanna dig into this further. Essentially, CPS is a model for parenting without relying on rewards, punishments, or power struggles. The key idea is simple, but powerful kids do well if they can. When they can't, it's because they're lacking the skills to meet expectations, not because they're unwilling. To figure out what's getting in the way CPS uses a tool called the Assessment of Skills and Unsolved Problems. This helps us to identify the specific skills a child is struggling with and the exact situations where those struggles show up. Once we've identified the problem, CPS then offers three options. Plan A is when the adult imposes a solution. It's often what we go to first. It's a pretty traditional parenting approach, but it does tend to escalate things. Plan C is when we temporarily drop the expectation to reduce conflict. And Plan B, the sweet spot, this is where we are working with the child to understand their concern, share our concern, and solve the problem together. It's about collaboration, not control, and for many families it's been a real game changer. Now let's get back to Marissa. We're gonna pick up the episode now as Marissa begins to talk us through how the move to Home Education coincided with some big new challenges.

Marissa Taylor:

Home is a safe space. Trying to say to them, well, now you're gonna do schoolwork. On top of that wasn't necessarily going to be the right thing. For my third oldest child, they went into a complete, full burnout. So they completely shut down at home. There was no way I was gonna get any kind of learning happening. So I really had to rethink and reexamine everything. And that will kind of segue us into Dr. Ross Green's work.'Cause this is where it all came to a crunch

Leisa Reichelt:

Beautiful. Let's hear about that.

Marissa Taylor:

Where that played into my life was really because I was stuck. I was really stuck. I knew I had to change things. I knew I had to change my approach. I didn't know how, I didn't know what that was. I didn't understand how to make it all work and what steps to take. When I learned about Dr. Ross Green's work, I was like, cool. I kind of get that, like it's, I was kind of on that space anyway. So if you understand Plan B, Plan B is basically a collaboration between you and your child. I was kind of already on that page. I just didn't really realize that I was still a Plan A parent. So Plan A parent is the traditional type of parenting, where you're still thinking about rewards and punishments and all that kind of stuff

Leisa Reichelt:

And you have a way to get things done, and your job is to get the child to do what you want them to do. Yeah?

Marissa Taylor:

Exactly. A lot of, I'm the parent, you are the child. You do, as I say, kind of parenting. And that's when I started learning about the process and the reason why we don't wanna do the Plan A parenting anymore or traditional parenting, also collided with me learning about PDA. So when you learn you've got a PDA child or Pathological Demand Avoidant child, you're starting to learn already. Okay, traditional things aren't working. We've been there, we've done all the traditional things, and if they were gonna work, they would be working. We wouldn't have School Can't kids, we wouldn't have kids in burnout. So I already had this general idea that those things don't work anymore. What is gonna work? So once I started really taking a deep dive into it, and I do mean a deep dive, I was Googling it. I was living and breathing every single YouTube I could think of to learn about it. I read the Explosive Child, and then Illume Learning this beautiful, beautiful company in Queensland, I think they are, they're Queensland based, decided to run some online workshops and I was like, yes, I am on board. That just kind of brings it all together when you can actually talk to Dr. Ross Green and really get the niggly questions you want answered, that really does help. You don't necessarily need it, but it does help the process. But what I really had to focus on was the Plan C, which was letting go of your expectations. You know, letting go of the things that you thought were important in your life really aren't. When it comes right down to the nitty gritty of it, your children's mental health, their life, their wellbeing, prioritizes everything because. I didn't have kids to bring them into the world, to watch them fade away. That's not why I became a parent. It's not why I became a mom. It's not what spurred me to have a family. Even though you might have an ideal of what your family's gonna look like and the direction you wanna head in life, they are still expectations. It doesn't mean that they won't happen if you let go of the expectations, but they're still expectations. You're, asking your kids to live up to a fantasy world that doesn't exist yet. So that was really a lot of the hard work was letting go of the expectations.

Leisa Reichelt:

So Marissa, can you give us some concrete examples of some of the things you remember Plan C-ing as being an important part of that process,

Marissa Taylor:

Everything, everything.

Leisa Reichelt:

but like what gimme a couple of examples.

Marissa Taylor:

Letting go of the fact that the kids learn from books., and I'm still fighting this point, but, devices are still such a divisive, topic in the community, and

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah.

Marissa Taylor:

I just had to learn to let go of those expectations too. I really had to see things from a different point of view and that if devices is what got my children engaged, if it's what regulated them, I'm not doing them an injustice by allowing devices into the home. I'm not doing them injustice if they are getting a benefit from devices. It's a whole shift in the way you think and view the world. And then you really have to, your mind really has to make that shift. Because if you're still stuck in, this is bad and this is good. If you're putting morality into the, the equation, you are missing the development stages. You are missing the skills stages

Leisa Reichelt:

And not just morality. So like, if I think about two things that I really struggle with, one was toothbrushing. Like having that fight twice a day every day. It's not ideal. I don't love it, but, you can't have a good relationship with a child when you're having that same fight twice a day. And then the other one that I, for some reason found really, really difficult was meals at the table. Like,

Marissa Taylor:

That. That was one of ours.

Leisa Reichelt:

It kind of pains me a little bit that he still eats in his room, because we're not at the point where anyone's got the energy to have that kind of conversation. It's funny, it's big things and also teeny tiny things. And sometimes the tiny ones, can be really hard to give away.

Marissa Taylor:

I had to really undo that myself too. The way I explained it to a friend of mine who questioned me on the same thing about the dinner table.'cause for some reason we have this, I don't know if anyone is of the age to remember, Leave it to Beaver the 1950s family where you're sitting around the dinner table and everyone's happy and telling you about your life and your day. And it's all airy fairy, like it's all happy families. That's kind of how we grew up, even though, you know, I was a child of the eighties. It's just kind of how we all grew up. Like everyone comes together at the dinner table and that's how it is. And because I'd already gone through that process of letting that go and letting go of that expectation. And when a friend came to me and said, you know, how did you do it? I said, the first thing you have to remember is that a table is just a table. It doesn't represent anything. It's a piece of furniture. It's a plank of wood on some steel. You can't have a relationship with a table. You can't connect with a table. So you have to really start to empathize and use your own skills and empathy to really say, I don't need to connect with my child through the dinner table. It's not a conduit. It doesn't represent anything. It's just this ideal that we've held onto for so long.

Leisa Reichelt:

And that battle destroys the connection. It doesn't build the connection.

Marissa Taylor:

exactly, and if you are constantly in battle, then you are on opposite sides. You're not connecting, you are not together. You're not on the same page. So you're really in battle with your children rather than in connection with them. So you just have to let that go, let that fantasy go. If your child is naturally watching TV around dinner time and they wanna have their food while watching TV. What's stopping you from eating with them, watching the same thing and saying, Hey, I know nothing about this. Can you tell me about it? That is connection that is opening the lines for connection to happen. It might not be something that interests you and it might be boring and not stimulating for yourself at all as an adult. But you wanna get to know your child. You wanna get to know what's going on in their life, in their world. And if that's what it is, exciting them, then you wanna know about it. You don't have to like, you don't have to make it your world. You just have to know about it and no enough about it that you can say, oh, hey, the next episode's on, oh, did so and so fix whatever's happening? And you're getting their attention. You are connecting in with them. And if you have those micro moments of connection and your kids are with you, they're on the same page as you, that's more important than battling over some fantasy ideal that we somehow keep in our head

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah, it's a really useful way of thinking about picking your battles, right? And reducing the demand and reducing the friction between you and your kids. Is it something that you're still using on a daily basis now?

Marissa Taylor:

every day. And my kids Plan B me now. They just don't

Leisa Reichelt:

Oh, really?

Marissa Taylor:

they just dunno what it means. So, you know, if my child wants something to eat and I'm off making it, and I'll say, Hey, can you come and grab this on your way through to wherever you are going? They might say, well, you can do that, I'll just go to the table. Sure I can do that. There is no reason to make that a battle. You don't have to go down that road. You can just think about it and go, you know what? I can do that. I can take myself over to you. The goal is that they have something to eat and drink so their bodies are nourished. That is the most important part about the whole issue.

Leisa Reichelt:

It's all such a massive mindset shift, isn't it? From, how I assume you grew up, certainly how I grew up, of like discipline and do what you're told and don't be lazy and all of these things. And I think it's just, even if you've been doing this for a while, it's still a daily struggle, isn't it? To remind yourself away from that old way of thinking and keep yourself in the new way of thinking and trust the new way of thinking.

Marissa Taylor:

Yes, I am a very strong advocate in this area because I've seen it work and I know it works I put myself into a position where I was like, okay, if I'm gonna have therapists on board, the therapists are gonna be on board with what we are doing.'cause I know it works. The therapists that we have in our lives now, they, they are, purposely built team, I guess you could say, where I said, look, this is how we are as a family. This is the path that I'm on. I really need you to be on board with this. If it's something that you have a problem with, then we're probably not gonna get on very well. So I wanted to set it up from the outset before we got, seven, eight sessions into it and realized, okay, you're the wrong supports for us. So I really put it up front and I am so thankful that I did, because I have built such a really wonderful care team that supports the way we do it. Not only that, I, I really put faith in the therapist that they were gonna, trust me and my process and trust my children because we do all our therapy via telehealth. I have children that will not show their face on screen. I've got children who won't talk to therapists. So a lot of the time they're seeing me, they're not seeing my kids. So I really had to ask for them to trust me and trust the process. And even when they started having doubts, I'm like, look, all I can say to you is please trust the process because I've seen it work. I know it works, and I know I just need you to have faith. And I'm so thankful that they were on board because they're starting to see the benefits. Even if they just get a glimpse of a child as they walk through where they never would before, whether the child pops their face on the screen and says Hello and waves, and they disappear, they're now seeing the benefits of the Plan C, you know, letting, letting go of the expectation. Following through on my instinct as a parent. Its

Leisa Reichelt:

such a reversal of the, traditional power structure, isn't it, where it's like, Ooh, they're the experts. I have to sit here and listen to them and do what they say. And it feels like from a therapeutic point of view, from educational point of view, you've really sort of flipped the script on that and you are setting the agenda and

Marissa Taylor:

Absolutely. And it, it's a lot like you really have to find the right people who you can say, look, I know myself, I know my kids. I know the path that we're on and this is the way I wanna move forward. Can you move forward with me? And it's not easy to, ask someone in that kind of a position to do that because, there are some therapists who won't, there are some therapists that want what they find, whatever their agenda is,

Leisa Reichelt:

Mm-hmm.

Marissa Taylor:

to be the only thing that matters. And I really had to come from a place of, look, I've got kids and I'm not gonna force them. So you have to really work with us the way we work, and then have the patience to see. But before we move on the other crucial part to Dr. Ross's model, which I think a lot of parents forget exists, is the Assessment of Skills and Unsolved Problems. That is huge. Because as you're Plan C-ing, as you're letting go of those expectations, which I always explain to parents, especially when you've got PDA kids, this is your low demand parenting, this is where you're letting go of those expectations, and really just sort of letting, letting your child have some autonomy and taking over a little bit. A lot of parents will go, okay, I've done this, but what next? This is where Dr. Ross Green's model really starts to come to life because it's giving you that next step. It's giving you that checklist of skills that we all need as humans to be well in life. You know, we can't make decisions if we don't have our skills in hindsight, forethought and reflection, like all of that. They're their skills. These are skills we need in life. We can't move forward if we can't communicate with people regardless of what kind of communication that is. We all have to have a form of communication with other human beings so our needs can be met. So, that is a huge piece to the puzzle that you really have to bring into the model, and you can't forget about it because that's what helps you do all the investigative work that you need to do as the parent, as your Plan C-ing. So you're not stuck, you're not doing nothing at all. You are going, okay, my kid has issues in transitioning. Who do I see about that? What help do I get for that? What does that even mean? So, you know, whether you're reaching out to a psychologist or an occupational therapist, or a speech therapist or you know, reaching out to a community. You're trying to figure out what that means for your child and how you can help your child through transitions. That's a huge part of the model that you can't forget and we're always constantly working on or towards something, and resolving that unsolved problem that's getting in the way of your child doing well.

Leisa Reichelt:

Marissa, do you think people forget it or do you think they just get overwhelmed by it? You know, speaking on behalf of a friend... like I've downloaded the thing and looked at it and just gone, oh my God. even the examples you gave are very granular and it's like, I'm gonna have the biggest, longest list, how is this gonna make life easier for me? Just having more things that I know we have to do.

Marissa Taylor:

we've been at this for about four to five years now. One of my children still ticks all boxes. So it's not like we've resolved like a lot of things. We have resolved some things and a lot of that comes with time and development. If we look at the brain science of child development, the brain itself does not stop developing till the mid to late twenties. So if you've got a 10-year-old child, they're still looking at 15 plus years of development of their brain. You're not going to resolve things overnight. You're just not going to, that's, so, that's the realistic part of growing up and developing. You are not going to resolve everything overnight. So if you come into this thinking, it's all gonna happen and, you know, in two months time, everything's gonna be great and on its way. No, it's an unrealistic expectation from the simple fact from child development. Our brains don't work that way. And that's why these things do take time. A lot of parents will go into the questioning side of it, so the Plan B, trying to figure out from the child what's going on for the child. But if the child doesn't have the words or the articulation to say, this is the problem, how can they explain to you what's going on for them. You're going to get a lot of, I don't knows, I'm not sure, or they're just gonna shut down on you because even they can't articulate. I'm a 47-year-old woman, sometimes I can't articulate what's going on for myself in my own experience. And my brain is supposedly fully grown and developed now. I'm still having to go through, okay, what skills am I missing? Where have I not developed the right skills? Or where do I need more development for myself in order to do well as a person and as a parent?

Leisa Reichelt:

Have you done your own lagging skills audit on yourself?

Marissa Taylor:

Exactly. Plan B yourself. You can Plan B your whole family.

Leisa Reichelt:

I love that.

Marissa Taylor:

It's a free little list that you can do it for everybody. And that's the brilliant thing about Dr. Ross Green's model too. It's not just about parenting. It is about being a human and moving through this world as a human being and the skills that you need to move forward in life. So this relates to your relationship with your partner or spouse, It's how you get along with your colleagues, your bosses, your employees. It's how you relate to other human beings. If you have a breakdown in communication, communication is a two-way street. So if you're breaking down with communication, then you have to figure out, okay, where am I going wrong and how can I meet the other person on the other side? You have to be working in collaboration with whomever you're speaking to. It's the same thing, empathy's a two way street. We are not just asking you to receive empathy from people. You have to then understand how can I see life through their eyes and understand what issues they're facing? It's a two-way street. That's why collaboration is so important because a lot of the skills that we want our kids to exhibit are not one way street skills. They're two way street skills. We have to be able to model them in order for our kids to learn what that looks and feels like in order for them to demonstrate it. And if we are not doing that'cause we don't have the skills or we don't know, then yeah, you're gonna struggle. I had to do my own learning in emotional intelligence. Which directly leads to emotional regulation. And I started learning this around 41, 42 ish. it kind of blew my mind. I thought we just fumble through life and we all figure out how to handle our own emotions from our experiences. But no, turns out that's not the case. There's actually a, a really good, skillset that we have to learn in order to control our emotions, in order to deal with our emotions. And 99% of us did not grow up understanding that at all. And then when I started learning about emotional intelligence, I was just like, oh my gosh, no one told me about this. No one pulled me aside and said, okay, Marissa, you need these skills. Let's build them up for you. So, I'm going through my own therapy and building that up and doing all the work myself now, as an older woman and I'm going, this would've been really helpful when I was a teenager, or, this would've been really helpful when I was a kid. And now I have to learn it so I can then teach my kids. And a lot of that is through co-regulation.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah,

Marissa Taylor:

You learn it through co-regulation and being regulated from the outside.

Leisa Reichelt:

That's such a big part of the job, isn't it? Assisting with that co-regulation, and I think that's a really good point that you make, that you need to have your own set of skills in order to be able to provide that to the kids. Everyone just assumes that we come with it ready built, right?

Marissa Taylor:

Yeah. And that's, it's another good point that it's really confronting as an adult because You are the one that's supposed to know everything, and you are the one that's supposed to have all the answers, and have it all figured out. And then when you get to a point where you're like, well, I don't, I don't have all the answers, I don't have it all figured out, and you really have to start moving forward from there. You do get stuck feeling the weight of all that, all the pressure that you get, particularly where there's a lot of parent blaming and parent shaming. You do start to feel that and, and you start to think, well, maybe it is me. You really have to learn how to numb all the noise out and bring it back to yourself and bring it back to your family and say, Nope. What do I need? What do my children need, and how do I move forward from here? And that's hard. It's, it's not an easy process. It, it does take time, especially when you've got friends and family who also do not have faith that you can do these certain things. You really have to learn how to shut them out. And say, you know what? I know myself, I know my children and I know what we need. And even if that is just basic mental health, like we need to make sure that we're in a good mental health space and we are not, constantly in dysregulation and constantly in a spiral of anxiety and depression. Even if that is just your main focus, that is still one step forward.

Leisa Reichelt:

It's very true, Marissa, but I wonder whether you have had moments where you've stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night going, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the right thing?

Marissa Taylor:

I still do, I still do.

Leisa Reichelt:

I find that so reassuring to hear you say that.

Marissa Taylor:

I still do it. Like I said, we are so conditioned by society and the world and it's really hard to flip it on its head and say, you know what, no, that is not the way it's supposed to be. You really have to trust the science and trust the knowledge that we are getting through. And I think this is something that's really, really difficult because we are up against governments and systems that are still very much on the behaviorist point of view. And so it's really hard to come back on that and say, well, hey, you're wrong. And this is how it is. It's really hard when you are inside those systems that are saying, no, this is the way forward. And you are coming at it from a completely different approach. But this is where a lot of the, like for example, Dr. Ross Green, Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Steven Porges, who does a lot of the polyvagal theory, Dr. Mona Delahook, who does the interpretation of neuroscience and puts it into parental education. Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, who works with our own Maggie Dent. There are alternatives. We have the research over decades, not just a decade, but over 75 years of research into human behavior, child development, brain development, emotional development. There is a lot of science to back this up. And when you put your faith and trust in that and you go, okay, let's give it a go, it works. But it does take a lot of us letting go of those expectations and demands and just letting the process take over. And surprisingly, when you do that you start to reflect upon yourself and say why didn't I have this as a child? Or why couldn't this have happened in my early twenties when I was fumbling through life? Why couldn't someone just say, Hey, you know, this is the way forward and you can have this, it would've made life so much better. But unfortunately it's us now as parents with kids that are struggling and we're starting to learn it from scratch now. But once you put the work in, you get to the other side of it. And I mean, my life now is not picture perfect, but we are not in crisis anymore.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah, I was gonna ask that you've been doing this like four, five years now. How is the family doing?

Marissa Taylor:

Better. Like I said, it's not picture perfect. Two of my children are now adults who are still trying to find their feet in life, but they are moving forward in their own way, in their own time, getting the support that they need for their goals. It's not about school anymore. It's not about me or what I hope for them, it is about their life and how they wanna lead their life. It's not that you stop being a parent, you are always a parent, but you take a little bit of a backseat you start to become the supporter and the champion for your child. With my younger two kids. I put them straight through to home education. I didn't put them into the mainstream system because I'd already had experience with not being supported. They are two kids that have much higher needs. They are, nine and seven now, and they are starting to become aware, that they school differently. They're different to other kids. This is one of the brilliant things about them being exposed to certain things on YouTube, which a lot of people don't like, they're starting to understand like, you know, kids, grow up and they get detentions and kids grow up and get into trouble and kids get into trouble from doing homework. You can still have Learning Can't issues, especially when you have neurodivergent children and PDA kids. But inside Home Education, you have the flexibility of going, you know what, if this can't be done right now, that's okay. We don't have any deadlines and we don't have any pressure to, to meet anything or meet any expectations except for our own. And if we're already in a place where we can let go of those expectations, it's okay. My kids are still learning and they're thriving. And I think that's the most important part

Leisa Reichelt:

Absolutely.

Marissa Taylor:

So I'm still reflecting on my life and figuring things out for myself. So I don't feel like I've got it all together. But all I can say to you is it's working and we're in a much better place. I've got kids that want to live now. You know that it's the opposite of where we were. I've got kids that are thriving. We are getting a lot of help and support now, and life is just, it's working. It's not perfect. It's not exactly where we thought we would be. but it's working I can't ask for better than that, honestly.

Leisa Reichelt:

Let's move on to our final three questions.

Marissa Taylor:

Okay.

Leisa Reichelt:

If you could go back in time and tell yourself something, when would you go to and what would you say?

Marissa Taylor:

For myself personally, I'd go back to myself as a little child, because when you start doing this work of reframing everything, you realize that it starts way back when you were a little kid and you were first learning things in life. If I could say anything to myself, I would probably go back to about 4 or 5-year-old little me and just tell myself that you're gonna be okay.'Cause I think especially when you're an undiagnosed person moving through the world, you really take on board the negativity that people say about you. You really start to believe, well, maybe I am just lazy, or maybe I am just a helpless, hopeless human being. You really start to onboard all of that negativity from such a young age. So if I could, I would just say to myself, no, you've got this. You'll get there and you'll know how to do it and you'll do it well. And just give myself that confidence from such a young age to hopefully change that negative experience that we generally have. And it all starts from childhood.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. That's beautiful. For everyone who's listening, who's on whatever part of the School Can't journey that they're on right now, what would you like to say to them? What would you like them to know?

Marissa Taylor:

Understand regulation. In our community, we are highly stressed. it's not just our kids that are going through it. We are going through it too. And we can't do our best thinking, we can't do our best decision making when we are emotionally hijacked ourselves and living from our own fight flight response. If I reflect back on my own journey, it wasn't until I made the decisions to get us to a place of regulation where we could just have that moment to breathe, get supports in place, and really start to figure things out, that's when the path became much clearer for us. Before then, I was just fumbling my way through trying to figure out what what we needed. But once you have that moment of time and space where you can really calm your nervous system, start thinking rationally about things. Really start planning out how is my life gonna look realistically if I go down this path, or if I do this? You can start to logically put things in place and explore all your options rather than just putting up a wall going, no, this is too hard and I can't do it. Find your space of regulation, find what's gonna ground you as a human being, so you can make the decisions you need to make for yourself and for your family.

Leisa Reichelt:

That's excellent advice. Not always easy to do, but, worth the effort.

Marissa Taylor:

definitely

Leisa Reichelt:

And then finally, and I feel like I might know the answer to this one, what is the resource that you think everybody who has School Can't young people should know about?

Marissa Taylor:

There's kind of two really. So, well, three, the obvious one is the School Can't, website and parental peer support group. The second one is Dr. Ross Green's Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model. I do believe this is really the way forward for every human being. Because I've lived it, I've experienced it, I've seen the rewards from it the fact that it does work. So, and our group values is that kids do well if they can. And that is so true and it's just the same, parents do well if they can. Educators do well if they can. Everyone does well if they can. And the third one is to really explore your options. School is not the only way forward. We do have two other options in Australia, which are legal, viable options, which is Distance Education and Home Education. There is a group called the Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling group. It is the place where you can go to, to really just ask questions, get to talk to other parents who've been in the same place as you, who've made the choices, who've made the decision, who've made the transition, and ask the questions that you really want answered. Ask the questions how do you make it work when you're a full-time working parent? How do you make it work when you're a single parent? How do you make ends meet? How does it all work? And you will find the community there. And it doesn't matter if you make the decision or not to home educate or distance educate. It gives you that space to explore that option. And I think once you realize that there are thousands of parents making the same choices every single day, and there are parents that are in and out of the School Can't situation where kids are going to school, then they're home educating or distance educating, and then back into the school environment. There are parents on various paths and various journeys. But once you realize that you're not alone in this situation and you have ways of making it work, it can give you that sense of ease in order to make a decision you never thought you had to make. Even if you didn't think your life was gonna go a certain way or be a certain way, it gives you hope that you can get back to, to where you want to be in life. And yeah, create your community.'cause without community, you're, you are really isolating yourself.

Leisa Reichelt:

That is excellent advice. Well, Marissa, thank you so much for spending all of this time with us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for sharing so much of what you've learned on your journey as well. I know people will find it really reassuring and inspiring and helpful.

Marissa Taylor:

No, thank you for, having the time for me to come on.

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, whether you are just learning about Dr. Ross Greene and CPS, or if you thought you were a bit of an old hand, I suspect all of us will be able to take new ideas away from Marissa's experience. For a start, I'll be going back to the assessment of skills and unsolved problems worksheet and having a look at it for both my son and myself. We've put links to CPS resources and all the amazing researchers that Marissa mentioned in the episode notes, as well as links to the School Can't Australia website, which has more resources, information about the Facebook support group, and a link to donate to School Can't Australia. Your tax deductible donations assist us to raise community awareness, partner with researchers, produce resources like webinars and this podcast, which all assist people who are supporting children and young people experiencing School Can't. We hope to share many more lived experience stories. So if you have a School Can't story that you would like to share, please email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. It is not a scary process to share your story, and so many people benefit from hearing it, so please do give it a thought. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state. A link with the number to call is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and we will talk again soon. Take care.