#15 - Unpacking Resilience for Neurodivergent Kids with Monique Mitchelson

In this episode of the School Can't Experience Podcast, host Leisa Reichelt chats with clinical psychologist Monique Mitchelson, co-host of the Neurodivergent Woman Podcast. 

They explore the often misunderstood concept of resilience, especially for our neurodivergent young people.

Monique, who is autistic and ADHD herself, shares her journey and highlights the challenges and necessary shifts in education systems to support neurodivergent children and young people. Together, they discuss the limitations of traditional exposure therapy, the impact of sensory overload, and the importance of adopting neurodiversity-affirming practices in schools. 

This conversation is invaluable for parents, caregivers, and educators striving to support neurodivergent students effectively.

00:00 Welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast

00:27 Introducing Monique Mitchelson

02:36 Understanding Neurodiversity Affirming Therapy

05:30 Challenges of Mainstream Schooling for Neurodivergent Kids

07:21 Defining and Misunderstanding Resilience

11:38 Exposure Therapy and Its Limitations

18:41 The Importance of a Supportive Environment

25:41 Advocating for Neurodivergent Children

30:58 Resources and Final Thoughts

Recommended Resources

• The Autism CRC updated guidelines Supporting Autistic Children Guideline | Autism CRC - https://www.autismcrc.com.au/best-practice/supporting-children
• National Autism Strategy | Department of Social Services - https://www.dss.gov.au/national-autism-strategy
• Dr. Ross Greene - https://drrossgreene.com/
• Polyvagal Theory — Rhythm of Regulation Deb Dana - https://www.rhythmofregulation.com/polyvagal-theory
• Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client-Centered Practices (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology): 9780393713855: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com by Deb Dana - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393713857?tag=&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
• The Sensory Pyramid of Learning - Foundation for Development - DEVELOP LEARN GROW -

Transcript

Leisa Reichelt: 0:05

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 are joined by Monique Mitchelson, who amongst to other things is a clinical psychologist and the co-host of the Neurodivergent Woman Podcast, of which I am a big fan. On a recent episode about Unschooling, they included a brief conversation on a topic that really resonated with me. So I am delighted that Monique has agreed to join us to dig into the very misunderstood concept of resilience, particularly for our neurodivergent young people. Now, typically this topic will send a big shiver down the spine of our School Can't parents, but today you'll discover Monique issues some real challenges to the educational orthodoxy, and I hope you find it both validating and thought provoking. Quick content warning, we do mention suicidality briefly in the podcast, mostly in a statistical context and not in any individual detail, but please take care when listening and reach out for support if you need it. Let's get cracking then. Monique, thank you for joining us. It's an absolute pleasure to have you talking with us on our podcast today.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 1:29

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really happy to be here and get to chat about this with you.

Leisa Reichelt: 1:35

Can you just give us a little bit of a, a story of Monique and how you've come to be doing what you're doing today?

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 1:40

Yeah, absolutely. so I'm a late diagnosed autistic and ADHD woman and I'm also a clinical psychologist. And, yeah, like working in private practice in Brisbane, Australia. When I went through my diagnosis process, and realization process in my early thirties, I sort of decided like, wow, I feel like there isn't enough information out there for adults who were autistic and ADHD, particularly adult women. and like specific to our experiences and often being late diagnosed. so yeah, myself and my colleague, Dr. Michelle Livock, who is a neurotypical, clinical neuropsychologist, we worked together at the private practice, Redlands Psychologists. We decided to create a podcast to get some free information out there that's from a neurodiversity affirming lens. One other thing I wanted to highlight for people, to show some of the positive changes that are happening, and will roll out over the next five to 10 years, that the Board of Psychology in Australia has updated their competencies for us. So from December this year onwards, all psychologists must demonstrate competency in working in a neurodiversity affirming manner, and working in an affirming way with anyone with a disability. a lot of psychologists are going to have to upskill from older models of care that were more behavioral or compliance focused to strengths based and client centered.

Leisa Reichelt: 3:19

So that, as I understand it, that's about shifting from this idea that you need to fix the person to being able to help them understand how the world could potentially accommodate them better, or skills that they could use and learn that will support them in being themselves, but maybe more effectively in the world. Is that a not too terrible way of describing it?

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 3:40

it's a good way of describing it. the term neurodiversity affirming therapy, basically means, rather than trying to fix or cure autism or ADHD because they are genetic. you know, autism is 90% genetic. ADHD is around 70 to 90% genetic. It runs in families. and also because as well, like it's a neurodevelopmental difference and it's doesn't just mean that your development and your neurology is different as a child, that actually means that you develop along a different pathway or a different trajectory over your entire lifespan. People may need some form of support at different parts of their life or over their entire lifespan, and that's okay. But yeah, it's not about maybe making the autistic or ADHD child or person into a neurotypical person because that just isn't possible, to be honest. And it actually can be extremely draining. you know, so there's been more recent research come out around autistic people and masking. teaching people how to socialize and appear like a neurotypical person and talk like a neurotypical person and interact. And some of the research has showed that that actually increases stress anxiety in autistic people. And it actually, uh, is linked to more fatigue and worsened wellbeing and even, uh, you know, trigger warning, uh, suicidality as well. And difficulty with identity formation too. people are told, who you are isn't acceptable or okay. that message is often reinforced at school, unfortunately, by the system or by peers, other kids and teasing and bullying. So, yeah, like a lot of people learn to observe others how they act and behave and mimic them as a survival strategy, particularly through school, that contributes to, the overload that the mainstream school environment has for many autistic people. it can lead to issues with forming a good sense of self and self-worth as well.

Leisa Reichelt: 5:53

So much to unpack there.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 5:54

Absolutely. And you know, the people that I work are often people who, some of them may have made it through a mainstream school to grade 10 or grade 12 and graduated. Others haven't. They burned out maybe, or were unable to keep attending for various reasons, and did an alternative pathway. A lot of people who make it through the 13 years of mainstream schooling are pretty burned out by the end of it and often have quite poor mental health. Around 70% of autistic, people have a co-occurring mental health condition. And so the stress of school on the neurodivergent nervous system can really take a toll. And we see people really trying to push through in adulthood, and live according to neurotypical expectations such as attend university full time or work full time. And often they end up burning out and maybe not realizing that it's autistic or ADHD burnout, but that it, you know, maybe they thought, oh, I'm having a depressive episode, or why can't I cope and keep getting sick or having to take all these sick days, when people are often in their twenties, thirties and forties, they are very burned out and, finding it hard to cope. And that's where they may then go for a diagnosis and look at, well, is Neurodivergence maybe part of this?

Leisa Reichelt: 7:22

Yeah, that's a good pivot, back to our resilience topic, because I think this notion of pushing through hard things is something many of us have been socialized to believe is a good thing. Resilience is a word that we hear more now maybe than ever before, as also a good thing. I would love to hear from your perspective, how would you define resilience as a concept? and how does that compare to the way it's used a lot in the world? That that may be not quite accurate to that.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 7:57

Yeah, so resilience as a concept for me would be the ability to adapt to your environment and adapt to stresses in your environment, and to be able to do that in a way that you are able to regulate your nervous system. Our body is designed to try to keep us in a state of homeostasis. So homeostasis basically means balance. So for example, if you haven't drunk enough water, you have signals in your body to tell you that you're getting dehydrated and make you thirsty so that you drink more water so that your body is back in balance again from being dehydrated. So a lot of people misunderstand the concept of resilience. As you know, I need to face stress and be resilient to that stress and not have a stress response to whatever that stressor was, and just keep going, even though I'm becoming more and more stressed. And resilience really works in different performance situations where perhaps a, you actually have safety in your environment, you have the resources that you actually need to lean on to be able to overcome maybe a challenging situation or a difficult situation, and you have support that you know that you can lean on, and you actually have the capacity in your nervous system and your cognition to overcome that challenge and like problem solve and make your way through. And there'll be challenges that you don't have capacity to overcome or there'll be challenges where you don't have that particular skill perhaps, or, maybe you don't have the support or safety. people assume you can just overcome things and it not affect you, but they don't understand, you actually need all these other building blocks to successfully overcome challenges and have your nervous system to a point where it's maybe a bit stressed in terms of it's stretched and it's engaged in like, you know, say if you go from like a walk to a jog, right? You can kind of rev up and like. Increase your performance and meet that demand, but that demand's supposed to pass. You know, the challenge is supposed to be passed and then you're supposed to be able to kind of go back to a walk and back to your baseline level of regulation and energy use. And yeah, people assume that you can just meet that challenge and yeah, overcome it and, and not be stressed by it. But that's actually not the case. You need all of these building blocks first, if that makes sense. And if you don't have those building blocks, and also if the stressor is ongoing and there's no relief and no way to overcome that challenge or problem, it actually just wears people down and leads eventually to burnout.

Leisa Reichelt: 11:07

I wonder whether if we take all of those ideas that you're thinking about and put them into the school environment, because I think there would be very few School Can't parents who haven't been told that their job is to keep pressing the child to get to school, because that's how you develop resilience, you know, and you do the hard things. if you go in enough times it'll eventually be okay and you'll get used to it, Maybe they think you'll adapt. I would love to hear your thoughts on this notion of resilience and the school environment for those kids for whom it is a challenging thing.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 11:37

Yeah. So I guess, part of the encouragement to get kids to keep going to school comes from some of the principles in psychology like behaviorism. So, you know, back in the day we would expose an animal like a rat or something like that in a cage, unfortunately, to a stressful situation. And, at first there would be a stress response, but over time, if the rat was exposed to that same, stimulus or situation it basically would learn that that situation is not going to harm it or it's not actually a threat. And the stress response extinguishes over time. There's a lot of assumption within psychology and different therapies for phobias, if you slowly expose yourself to something you're anxious about, your nervous system will habituate. But that's based on the assumption that you have a neurotypical nervous system, that does habituate. There's not a lot of research on this. So this is more from clinical observation and working with a lot of autistic people over 10 years and, you know, being autistic myself is that there will be some situations that maybe exposure therapy actually works. But there will also be situations where you're actually stressed about that situation in a way that's not neurotypical. It's because of your autistic brain, your autistic nervous system where you have a lot of sensory overload when you go into that situation. And that is not going to habituate, you're not actually going to get used to it. It's an ongoing stressor. And actually the more you're exposed to it, the more it disregulates you and your nervous system. It actually is the other way. It's more and more dysregulating. Also, situations that you don't have autonomy or control over, you don't have a sense of agency in, like nothing you do will fix the situation. You are powerless. You are helpless. Things are being done to you. it's not collaborative, that's not going to work with exposure therapy.'Cause the idea is in exposure therapy, that we don't want people to get flooded to the point where they're extremely distressed, especially if they already have a trauma background. A lot of the kids that are going to school every day are getting flooded and their nervous system isn't able to habituate to that, or develop resilience to that. And then there's trauma. So a lot of the exposure therapies were designed around a phobia. So maybe you have a phobia of birds or the dentist if you have had many years of bad experiences with birds or the dentist or whatever, and if we take that to school, you've had many, many negative experiences. Just reassuring someone verbally or exposing them to that same environment is actually not going to extinguish that anxiety and dysregulation because they're having a trauma response. When you have a history of trauma, you actually become more sensitive to stress, more sensitive to threat. You actually become less resilient over time as well. So, you know, working with a lot of adults who have, clinical PTSD, maybe from workplace trauma, from being bullied at work or being in a toxic work environment, often they will actually not be able to return to that same environment often they need to, go to a completely different environment, a completely different way of working, even a different industry. Going back to the same thing doesn't work because it re-triggers their nervous system and their sense of fight and flight because their trauma's being re-triggered. And so like a lot of the exposure therapy, sometimes isn't done in a trauma informed way and it can cause further dysregulation and burnout. I think there's a few different factors where a lot of the practices maybe haven't updated themselves with how autistic brains, and bodies and nervous systems work. The other factor that often isn't taken into consideration with, exposure therapy and the idea of resilience is how information processing works for both autistic and ADHD people is quite different. So for autistic people, what ends up happening in, often in mainstream school environments there's just so much going on and autistic brains process 40% more information at rest than neurotypical brains. And so if you are processing all of this sensory information, all of this social information and all of the social interactions going on and trying to figure that out. And then you are trying to learn, and process all of the learning information and the executive functioning skills. What ends up happening for a lot of autistic people, is that we get a traffic jam in the brain. So it's like, you have a computer. And the processing chip in the computer is from the nineties, but the computer itself is like high tech and so much input in a mainstream school with 36 kids in the class and all these subjects in high school it actually gets even worse So often, if you're in a bigger school with much more students, there's much more noise. In high school you don't stay in the same room, you don't have the same teacher for the whole year or even the same people sometimes for the whole year in your class. You have to move around, and there's a lot of, change as well in high school. And that's the point where a lot of autistic kids drop out of mainstream school is often in grade seven, when they're trying to transition to high school. And so that's also why exposure therapy doesn't work for a lot of autistic people, because none of the environments are really designed for us. You can add in some support, you can try and add an accommodation, but it's kind of like, putting a bandaid on something when actually you need to go and like, redo the entire system. it doesn't resolve any of that information overload. the processing chip in the brain literally melting down and not being able to process anything more. And that's part of why people often, like kids won't make it through the week. They might be able to go for a day and then, or like a morning and then maybe by mid-morning or after an hour or two. Their chip has melted and they don't have any more capacity for the rest of the day. And actually just forcing you to stay in that environment will just lead to worsening distress, autistic burnout, nervous system dysregulation, and health issues across the week or the term, you'll see people really struggle to maintain full-time attendance. And the things that often isn't talked about with autism, as well, is basically there's an expectation, you know, whether you're autistic level one with low support needs, which is what my diagnosis is, or autistic level two with moderate support needs, autistic level three with high support needs. For a lot of the level one people, I work with mainly level one and two people. so low support needs, moderate support needs, but I work with a lot of high support needs people, when I worked as a disability support worker, during, my university degrees in studying. a lot of level one people. often, throughout adulthood, it's better for them to attend school uni or work four days a week. Actually attending five days a week ends up burning adults out and you really do need an extra day off a week to rest. A lot of level two people, people with moderate support needs their information processing can't process as much stuff as quickly they need longer processing time that's where there ends up being more meltdowns and shutdowns and high levels of distress. So the pattern that I've observed clinically is that for a lot of level two people, what their nervous system and information processing and sensory processing can handle is two to three days a week. You know, and that may not be an eight hour day or a six hour day. It may be more spread out across the week and then needing the rest of the week to actually recover your nervous system, to then be able to have capacity to do things like prepare food and eat, hydrate, do personal hygiene, be able to engage in things that you enjoy and that's not spoken about. There's this expectation, you know, if you are autistic, that you must attend school full time, if you attend university or TAFE afterwards, that has to be full time and work full time. And that just doesn't work for us. And that leads to a lot of really poor outcomes. And it's not talked about. And I really wanna reassure people Talking about this more openly and about what actually works for us as autistic people will help you understand why your child is really struggling with full-time schooling, and in a mainstream environment. And yeah, like the school system doesn't allow for going to school part-time, it's kind of like you have to attend mainstream school or not, like, and then go to homeschool or, unschooling. There's a lot fewer options that offer enough support as well. Like a lot of autistic people, particularly if they're ADHD as well, need one-on-one support. You don't really get that, particularly once you get to high school. We see a lot of level two autistic kids really struggle and often drop out of mainstream school in primary school. You know, they have tummy aches, headaches, go mute and can't speak, because of the overload. Whereas you might see in more level one kids, that starts in high school, if that makes sense.

Leisa Reichelt: 21:56

So Monique, a lot of people are in a situation where they would really like their child to go to school full-time.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 22:03

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 22:03

Probably their child would like to be able to go to school as well. And for it not to be a distressing experience. And definitely the school would like the child to be there full-time also. What I'm hearing you say really clearly there is that for a lot of our neurodivergent kids. That's probably just not going to be realistic If we also want to allow them to have good mental health and have other things going on in their life other than just trying to get to school and cope.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 22:36

it's hard because, there is, a lot of pressure on parents that if your child is not in mainstream school you need to homeschool, and supervise if that ends up being what you do, it's actually really, really extremely difficult to exist on a single income in the world right now. it's tough because it really can depend on a lot of environmental factors. So if we're in the right environment, we thrive. If we're not in the right environment, it's extremely difficult. So for example, a smaller school with less students is very helpful because it means that there's less people around, there's less sensory overload. One of the things that helped me to go to school as a kid was growing up in a regional area. And yeah, like the primary school I went to was pretty small. Working with a lot of level two people. the best environment, the one that they were able to succeed the most in was when they were working in small groups of four to six children with one teacher. And so very small class, much more time with the teacher, much more individualization, much more sensory breaks, regulation breaks. but yeah, like often it's hard because it's like parents and children that need support and a different environment and a learning in a way that suits their brain. A lot of the systems just aren't set up for that. And actually, you know, it might be looking at your expectations and going, do I want my child to come out of school with intact mental and physical health? You know, or, or, and what's the alternative? Like, what is the priority? And it's remembering too that for schools they, you know, have, try to make sure that students have their wellbeing, you know, taken care of, but they're really designed to get people through the education system. Like that's what they're designed to do. And that may sometimes conflict with what is actually in someone's like wellbeing, physically and mentally.

Leisa Reichelt: 24:49

Yeah, as you were saying that, it really made me think, you know, just coming back to resilience that again, particularly for our neurodivergent kids or ourselves, a big part of that resilience is actually trying to work out how do we choose to do things in a way that fits to the capacity that we have

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 25:05

Yes.

Leisa Reichelt: 25:05

instead of constantly stretching, stretching, stretching until the point that we fall in a big heap.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 25:10

Yeah, and it might be, you know, it's hard'cause a lot of parents, of course, really want the best for their kids. They want their kids to have the best life. They want their kids to have the easiest, smoothest life. And being different isn't easy and you know, you want your kids to be able to be able to be living a life that's a good quality of life. Being able to look after themselves and take care of their needs, for one day when you are not there. that's a big worry for a lot of parents. yeah, like I think it's advocating and trying to educate teachers and professionals, well actually, my child does have a disability what you're expecting of them is actually, not acknowledging the fact that you can build capacity to so far before it actually then becomes un unhelpful, or, you know, worsening the person's distress and is that building capacity or is that actually causing harm? there's a fine balance with that

Leisa Reichelt: 26:13

Yeah.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 26:14

there is more education for. mental health professionals around that. But also there needs to be more reeducation for teachers because unless you actually do a master's in special education, you don't really learn much about autism and ADHD and a lot of teachers are really stressed because there's so many more autistic and ADHD and dyslexic kids in class and they don't have the training and resources to support them. They don't know what the expectations should be as well, if that makes sense. And a lot of them, aren't educated in trauma, in mental health and nervous system regulation as well. But when you're in fight, flight or freeze, your frontal lobe turns off and you're not learning anyway. So you could be physically present at school in distress, and not be in School Can't, but not learning and then your body is taking the toll and your mental health is taking the toll. So that's why a lot of children learn better the home environment because your home when you're autistic is your safe place. You have

Leisa Reichelt: 27:21

control Yeah.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 27:22

Over your home environment. You know what to expect in your home environment, and that frees up that information processing to actually focus on learning and taking in the information. So then of

Leisa Reichelt: 27:36

Yeah,

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 27:36

you go back to school and you're overloaded again, your brain shuts down and you can't learn. The whole education system really needs to understand the nervous system regulation.

Leisa Reichelt: 27:48

I think some people would think that by switching from a school education to a home-based education process, that you might then be undermining the child's opportunity to build resilience. Like, because you've just set up this environment that totally caters to what suits them. So how are they gonna build resilience, and what would you say in response to that?

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 28:09

well, I mean like for when, when kids grow up and become autistic and ADHD adults, we get choice and control over our environment I'll just give myself as an example, as an adult now, I work three days a week in a clinic. my bosses are neurodivergent. A lot of the other staff are neurodivergent. all my clients, you know, are mainly neurodivergent and my husband is neurodivergent. My entire family's neurodivergent. All my friends are, and I don't do anything in a neurotypical way. Like I don't go out and do neurotypical things. You know, if someone asks me, do you wanna go to a cafe or a restaurant? I go, oh, that sounds awful. Why would I want to do that? the sensory overload, I wouldn't even enjoy myself. So, you know, I think it's again about thinking about your expectations of your child and going, am I having neurotypical expectations of them? And like, is that what they're going to want to do once they have choice and control? So I have friends now. It took me until my mid twenties to make real friends. I eventually did, and now we hang out online, we chat online, we do chill activities or visit each other's houses where it's lower sensory, I have a very supportive boss and work, but I still can only work part-time or I go into burnout. I don't have any neurotypical people in my life, so I don't need to mask my autism and ADHD. Whereas, you know, a lot of parents are worried like, will my kid ever make friends? How are they gonna get along with people in the workplace and neurotypical people you have to find a way as an autistic and ADHD person to find the right people in the right environment. And that works, I was in a lot of different wrong environments, where it didn't work until I found the right one. sometimes when you hear from someone that has lived experience as well as professional qualifications, it's a different take because you've lived it yourself, even though there's a lot of diversity in, neurodivergence and people's personal experiences, but. When you've lived it yourself and you've come through hard part of life, which often is school, to be honest. You've survived school and then you're an adult. you find your own places that you feel comfortable in and again, like developing resilience. When you are already struggling day to day in extreme distress, do you really need to build resilience? You actually need to reduce the stressors.

Leisa Reichelt: 30:56

Okay. Let's try and wrap this up by thinking about how we can give parents who are trying to support their kids through school stress, to navigate, being told about the importance of resilience and these resilience building measures that schools put in place, and which basically means continue to attend more and more and more all the time.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 31:22

Yeah. So you can refer to theories like polyvagal theory. if you Google Polyvagal theory you are referring to a psychological theory that a lot of trauma therapies are based on everything we do in these therapies and around this theory is about where is that person at in their nervous system? Are they in fight? Are they in flight? Have they gone down into freeze and shut down? Are they regulated? And when you are regulated in polyvagal theory, it means that you feel safe, you're safe enough to then connect. You can actually engage in play and you basically are in the present moment, You're able to pay attention. I would also look into the work of Ross Greene, Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, which is a bit more of a child-focused, person focused approach, rather than the typical behavioral approach of, let's extinguish this behavior because this behavior isn't quote unquote normal. You can also refer to occupational therapy. So for example, it's something I didn't learn in psychology. I've done extra training in sensory based assessment as part of my adult autism assessments. if we think about it, it's like a triangle of learning. at the bottom is our sensory regulation. then things like proprioception our emotional and behavioral regulation, then our executive functioning, and right at the top is learning.

Leisa Reichelt: 32:59

Oh gosh.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 32:59

actually have the sensory stuff in our body regulated. None of the middle or the top of the pyramid actually happens.

Leisa Reichelt: 33:09

Yeah.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 33:10

if you back yourself up with some resources like this, you know, you, and you shouldn't have to be doing all of this backing yourself up, but yeah, you can actually look this up I'll give you a couple of books. Like, Deb Dana has a great book. Its very practical and simple polyvagal exercises. that you as a parent can look through and even look at, adapting to do with your child. but yeah, if you learn that language and refer to these concepts, you can kind of back yourself when you are asserting the boundaries of your child and your child's disability with teachers and educating them about what your child can and can't actually do. I know that you want them to attend, school full time. The sensory environment causes distress. How you are approaching this isn't trauma informed. It's causing distress to my child. it's causing mental ill health. How can we problem solve this together? So building a collaborative relationship with the teacher as well, because they're trying to do the best they can in a system that's not really. Working very well. And that's really reflecting, you know, in a lot of teachers are leaving the education system because

Leisa Reichelt: 34:32

Yeah,

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 34:32

stressed and it's not working for them either. It's not working for them, it's not working for children, and it's not working for parents.

Leisa Reichelt: 34:40

someone really needs to redesign this whole thing, don't they?

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 34:43

pretty much, and you can also reference. if you're a child's autistic, the National Autism Strategy, so it's available, with an easy read section on the, the Department of Social Services website, and it's in place now and for the next 10 years. It has specific things around, ensuring that no harm occurs to autistic students in the education system at all levels of education. So you can ask the school, have you updated your practices to be in line with the National Autism Strategy and best practice guidelines. You can also go and have a look on Autism CRCs website, and they have updated, like in the past year or two, their guidelines for professionals working with children and families of kids and carers. For autistic children, and that talks about neurodiversity affirming goals. Okay. So that's changed to everything must be neurodiversity affirming. And it talks about things like not forcing eye contact, educating children about autism from an affirming lens, recognizing that autism can be an important identity and not aiming to cure or fix autism in therapy goals. So, yeah, I think if you reference, if you go and look through some of these things, in all the spare time with all

Leisa Reichelt: 36:10

Yeah.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 36:10

of energy that you have, I'm being sarcastic,

Leisa Reichelt: 36:13

no. I hear you.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 36:15

Well, I don't read sarcasm very easily, so I like to flag it,

Leisa Reichelt: 36:18

Yeah, no good.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 36:20

but yeah, you can use these to back yourself, because people are still catching up with all the changes in best practices.

Leisa Reichelt: 36:29

Yeah, and I think one of the things, like it's that attendance metric that, schools don't have a lot of wiggle room on you know, and, we see a lot of stuff coming outta schools about how, every hour counts, every day counts. I think

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 36:41

Mm.

Leisa Reichelt: 36:41

for us then to just go, do you know what, it's well and good that they have those goals, but actually I'm not gonna set that goal for my child because of the toll that it will take on them. I will allow more rest time for them and not subscribe to this a hundred percent attendance is what we're aiming for. I think that's a big shift.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 37:03

It's not trauma informed, it's not neurodiversity informed, it's compliance based. I really do believe that if your child has a diagnosis of autism particularly, or ADHD, that that a hundred percent attendance mandate should be lifted. you shouldn't be punished as a parent and stress placed on you because you have children with neurodevelopmental differences. That's not fair. That's having a neurotypical expectation. And that's actually, what we would call ableist. there's things like sexism and racism. what's often not talked about is ableism. ableism is implicit bias in society towards people with disabilities. it's embedded in a lot of systems like the workplace where people with disabilities are punished or excluded because they don't fit into those systems. So that's an example of ableism Disability discrimination, I would argue

Leisa Reichelt: 38:06

Lots to think about. Then I think the very first thing we can do is release ourselves from the shame of feeling like it's our job to get our child to school a hundred percent of the time and just go, actually in not doing that, we're protecting them. We are looking after them. we're helping them be well.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 38:20

the number one job, honestly, is the child's wellbeing and quality of life. Because if you don't have wellbeing and quality of life, that's where we have extremely, poor outcomes. And just also trigger warning again, um, high rates of unfortunately autistic people committing suicide and dying younger. You actually want your child to be able to get through, and survive. the best outcome would be with intact mental and physical health. it's reframing it to, this is actually the goal. Not necessarily getting through mainstream school or even passing school, but getting through alive. And with okay quality of life, hopefully wellbeing would be nice. But the reality is for so many autistic people, because of all these systems issues, a lot of people they make it through, but in severe distress and with physical health issues,

Leisa Reichelt: 39:17

And I think as you said before, there is potential pathways that are different to the mainstream neurotypical pathways that can allow. a way to a really, happy and fulfilling life.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 39:31

yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 39:32

doesn't necessarily mean full-time school.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 39:34

That's right. And every child is different. There will be absolutely some autistic children that may enjoy attending school, and maybe do make it through mainstream schooling, but there are a lot that don't and won't, and it's important to speak to the breadth of diversity here.

Leisa Reichelt: 39:52

Amazing. Alright, well

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 39:55

well

Leisa Reichelt: 39:55

thank you very much, Monique. We'll pop all of the great, resources that you've suggested in, links for people to access, and get more deeper information on that. But I really appreciate your time and all of your knowledge today. Thank you so much.

Monique Mitchelson She/Her: 40:07

Thanks for having me on.

Leisa Reichelt: 40:09

Well, I hope you found that conversation as validating and informative as I did. It's so easy for us to make neurotypical judgements and place neurotypical expectations on our neurodivergent kids, even when we ourselves are neurodivergent. The neurotypical conditioning is real. I've added links in the episode notes to all the wonderful resources that Monique mentioned in this episode, and I think I'm going to be printing out a copy of the Sensory Pyramid of Learning, which she mentioned that I have never heard of before, but makes so much sense. I've also put a link to the School Can't Australia website 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. If you have another topic you would like us to cover, or if you have a School Can't lived experience that you'd be willing to share, please email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com We would very much love to hear from you. 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 episode notes. Thank you again for listening, and we will talk again soon. Take care.