#27 - Diana's Lived Experience

In this episode, you’ll meet Diana, a mother of two young people with School Can’t experiences. Diana joins host Leisa Reichelt to candidly share her experiences supporting her son James through his struggles with mainstream schooling.

From early signs like separation anxiety and hating birthday parties and swimming lessons, to the challenges of advocating for access to Distance Education including supports for undertaking the Higher School Certificate (HSC).  

Diana’s story includes topics like deschooling, misdiagnosis, and the importance of tailored support.

Content warning: This episode briefly mentions a suicide threat. Please take care when listening.

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

00:29 Meet Diana: A School Can't Mum

02:12 Early Signs and Challenges

08:03 The High School Struggle

17:29 Navigating Distance Education

19:46 Coping Strategies and Support

24:59 James' Journey to University

37:31 Reflections and Advice

40:30 Closing Remarks and Resources

Recommended Resources

• Uniting Youth Enhanced Support Service (YESS): Northern Sydney - https://www.uniting.org/services/mental-health/facility/yess-youth-enhanced-support-service-yess-northern-sydney-northern-beaches
• Growing Yourself Up by Jennie Brown (Book) - https://www.amazon.com.au/Growing-Yourself-Up-bring-relationships/dp/1925335194
• Understanding Deschooling with Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan (Podcast Episode) - https://www.buzzsprout.com/2447546/episodes/17100428

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 Diana, who is a School Can't mum of two young people, both of whom have had challenges with mainstream school. Diana is based on the northern beaches of Sydney in Australia, and in this episode, Diana very candidly shares her experience of supporting her son James through his School Can't experience. A quick content warning. This episode does make a brief mention of a suicide threat, so please do take care when listening. I hope you enjoy Diana's story. Thank you so much, Diana, for joining us and agreeing to be on our podcast today.

Diana Keyes: 1:04

My pleasure.

Leisa Reichelt: 1:05

What can you tell us about yourself, your family? what's going on for you?

Diana Keyes: 1:11

Wow. That's, where to start. no, look, I suppose in some ways you'd say we're probably a fairly normal actually, what is normal? My husband and I, we've been married for a long time. We have two kids. We have our older daughter, Bella, who's 23, who, in hindsight had her own School Can't journey, although we probably called it truancy at the time. That's a very long and interesting story, probably another podcast. And then we have our gorgeous James, who's now 19. I would say we are a group of shy introverts. I just thought that was us. In hindsight, I think we all have a neurodiversity. You know, one or more, that has made our lives, perhaps more challenging than for normal families. Sorry, I keep using that word.

Leisa Reichelt: 2:06

Yeah.

Diana Keyes: 2:07

that's us. we're all good. but there's been a lot of challenges along the way.

Leisa Reichelt: 2:12

And so today we're going to focus on your son's journey.

Diana Keyes: 2:16

Yes. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 2:19

I know this is always different in retrospect'cause you learn so much along the way, if you were going to look back to the earliest signs of the journey that was to come, where do you think it all starts?

Diana Keyes: 2:33

In hindsight with everything I've learned, I would look back at his separation anxiety as being the first indicator of the challenges to come. At the time, I thought he was shy and introverted and a homebody, and that was okay. In fact, you know, us introverts have to spend quite a lot of time defending ourselves. But it certainly became a real challenge, and I think, when the penny sort of dropped was he was in preschool and I was doing like a little tiny tots soccer activity with him. And I remember all the boys used to like put up their hand when the teacher would say, who wants to do the throw in of the soccer ball? And James looked like he just wanted the ground to swallow him up. And I remember thinking he was enrolled to go to our local public, and the intake that year was going to be 10 kindy classes. So yeah, that's what, that's 200 kindy kids. My daughter was already at that school. She was really struggling. We had decided for her that we were going to transition her to the local Catholic, which was just one class per year. And so we sort of made this last minute, like he will just crumble in a cohort of 200. That was quite a big decision, because we're not Catholic. And yeah, he cried and fell apart every single morning of his kinder year. He had to be peeled off me, and that was a pretty traumatic first year. So, again, I thought it was simply social anxiety. So did everybody else. And then thankfully going back with the same cohort between year one and then until the beginning of year six, it was all pretty plain sailing and I thought we were sort of out of the woods. Again, if I look back, there were further indicators. He just wanted to play with the same friend every weekend, who by the way, got diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum later. So taking him to birthday parties was always a bit of a nightmare. What else? Other things that he just outright refused to do. Swimming lessons. For example, living on the Northern Beaches, everyone's supposed to do things like swimming and nippers and, you know, it was just a solid wall that we couldn't get past. If I fast forward to the fact that we did end up with an autism diagnosis, the neuropsychologist said to me, actually you created quite a autism friendly environment for your son inadvertently, probably because that is how you liked to live too.

Leisa Reichelt: 5:43

I think it is a really common thing isn't it? Like when we see our kids struggling with different things and then you, you inside yourself go, I totally understand. I wouldn't really want to go to a birthday party this weekend either.

Diana Keyes: 5:55

Exactly. And again, the screaming and what seems like, I think there's this innate seriousness sometimes and things that people find fun and we're like, that's just silly. So in hindsight, those were all signs of what was to come.

Leisa Reichelt: 6:18

How old was your son when he got the autism diagnosis?

Diana Keyes: 6:22

he was in year 10, so he was almost 16. It came late because I, I don't think we went to the right professionals to do the assessment. That is a real learning that I have, if you have any sense that might be the right thing for your child, your local psychologist or psychiatrist, unless they absolutely specialise in it and do the right testing, they're not the right people to make the assessment. So yes, year 10.

Leisa Reichelt: 6:54

Lots of kids who do get picked up earlier. That comes about often because teachers mention something from the school experience when they're really young, but that didn't happen?

Diana Keyes: 7:05

It didn't happen. I think that's the thing with James, other than his social anxiety, he didn't present in a way that made teachers think things. He was always quite popular. Kids liked him. he was not socially isolated and I think he was just, you know, cooperative, kept his head down. Obviously didn't do have sort of repetitive patterns that maybe showed up. To be honest, it wasn't until I found my way to the School Can't community and learnt about PDA, that I was the one that goes, this is James, I need to pursue this. And even then it's like. Of course all you get in Australia is, well, PDA is not a thing. It's like, okay, maybe it's not a thing, but it's a good way of describing a collection of autism behaviours and how they show up every day. So yeah,

Leisa Reichelt: 8:03

Let's talk about the school experience and when the wheels started to fall off. So we went through primary school relatively smoothly, and then came high school.

Diana Keyes: 8:14

Exactly, we decided just to follow his cohort because they were a lovely group of boys to the local Catholic boys school. Big mistake. I think for boys on the autism spectrum and with PDA, I remember him going on the first day. I remember him coming home and saying, I don't wanna go back again. Somehow we managed to get through that year, in year seven they tend to keep a class together and the class moves round together. But I definitely think, you know, his attendance probably did start to slip in year seven, but not to the point where I was getting calls from the school. I think he was still in the band of'normalness' when you don't end up with those calls every day. So got through year seven, year eight. I think that's when you went into the different classes, moving between periods, et cetera. It was also a very blokey school where it was quite normal for the older kids to be a bit rough with the younger kids. A lot of the older, more autocratic style teaching methods were really just shutting James down again. They had very academically rigorous, and not that James wasn't intelligent, but the way in which that autocratic style and calling on people in class and the old styles of shame, did not suit him. So in some ways, I think when those school shutdowns were called in about March, was a little bit of a lifesaver or a bit of a circuit breaker.'Cause I think it maybe brought us another three months or something. He refused to participate in any online classes. I just could not get him to, again, I think the school were a little bit like, okay, it's a really strange time for everyone. But then when the school reopened we really, really, really struggled to get him back. I think that's because, you know, with social anxiety, it's the exposure therapy, it's the going every day or trying to go every day. And then once you have that long break, I think for James it was just a mountain he really struggled to climb. And then that's when the school came in pretty heavy handed with a behavioural program. They would check in every single day. What were we doing? What was he eating? What was his sleep routines like? And of course, at this point he was deep into gaming. And so getting him to bed was a nightmare.

Leisa Reichelt: 11:00

But the assumption from the beginning was it was something you were doing at home that was causing the problem.

Diana Keyes: 11:05

So it was all parental based. Your parenting style, you are not enough discipline and that's what it was absolutely all about. You are not disciplining him. You are not controlling, you know, you are not doing the right things as parents. yeah, very much. So then we, trying to do the right thing, and because we had had an experience with our daughter where she was sort of, again, I would say School Can't, but we thought it was truancy. And again, we thought it was, and then you start to think, well, this is my second child. It has to be me. We have to be doing something wrong. And look, I was never a, you must sit there until you finish your dinner type parent. Because I always thought, the child knew when they were full. So I suppose you would say I was a fairly relaxed parent, and then there's all this self doubt. We got to the point where, we had probably started to find psychologists to help. This is where the whole, you need to make home really uncomfortable for them came in. And so we tried to make home really uncomfortable. We said to James, if you don't go to school, you have to leave the house for the day. You can't be in the house. You can't have the comfort of the house.

Leisa Reichelt: 12:24

And the school and the psychologists were okay with that.

Diana Keyes: 12:26

think they really knew, if I'm honest, because this is the whole thing, when they go the home really uncomfortable, it's like, what do you mean by that? And they don't really know what they mean. Well, do you just offer what? not, nothing to eat, but I suppose you make them their school lunch and you put that out and there's nothing else. How do you control that when your two parents who are working and out of the house? Well, I suppose you get to the point where you switch the modem off and you carry it to work with you. Highly impractical. But these are all the things you're forced into. And then, you know, many of us have also experienced some of the violence that comes with that. When, with boys, I'm taking the modem and switching it off and taking it to bed with me. Then parents end up having to call the police because there can be violence as a result. I feel like when professionals say make the home uncomfortable, they don't know what they're saying. And, and, and look, maybe there are examples of some people saying, yes, I did do that and it worked But we, I feel like, took it to the extreme and we then ended up with James basically making a suicide threat because he felt so cornered by us that he, he felt like he had no way out. And I think we feel very ashamed about that and very, yeah, that was really, really hard. And we ended up at the local hospital in the emergency ward. And is he going to go into the mental health facility with all the, the time, very, very unwell people. And I just remember sitting there with James and I just said, let's just get the heck outta here. And we just discharged him and got home and I just thought, I'm going to drive my son to a suicide attempt. And needless to say, my husband and I were not coping at all, and we see that all the time on the School Can't Facebook page, people are literally at the end of their tethers because you're trying to satisfy the school, and keep up with society, I suppose. So I think we just let year eight peter out. Kept in touch with school and at this point in time we started, trying to find psychologists who could help us with School Refusal. And again, all the answers were just teach him how to breathe deeply and blow into a tissue if he's feeling anxious. And you know, look, they were all very well meaning, but we just never found our way to anyone that was really helpful. Year nine. We're like, okay, give this another go. He went to school on the first day of year nine, second day of year nine he's like, I can't get outta bed. Now, keep in mind, we paid a huge amount of school fees in year eight for him not to attend,

Leisa Reichelt: 15:40

And for them to give you all of that advice.

Diana Keyes: 15:42

Yes, push the family to the limit. One thing I would say is the school tried. But because of that school environment, sometimes they would say to James, look, you can just do two periods and then go home. When James was walking to the office to be picked up by me, some school teacher would come up to him and challenge him and say, where are you going young man? Why are you walking in the wrong direction? You cannot change a whole school environment, even if you get pockets of understanding. It was that kind of school environment.

Leisa Reichelt: 16:19

Still remains a threatening place.

Diana Keyes: 16:21

a threatening place, and it was like, your socks have slipped halfway down your legs, young man, you know? So it was, for goodness sake, you don't know. I've just been through hell and back for the last two hours to get him there. I get him through the door and he is attacked. My daughter's experience when she would occasionally get to school is sometimes the teachers would say, oh, class, why don't we clap Bella

Leisa Reichelt: 16:48

oh

Diana Keyes: 16:48

for turning up?

Leisa Reichelt: 16:51

no.

Diana Keyes: 16:51

You are like, this is, and, you've been through hell and back to get them there.

Leisa Reichelt: 16:55

How humiliating.

Diana Keyes: 16:57

so humiliating. So look, there's so much that still needs to be changed in our schools. So I guess we worked out we can't change the school. And James is just suffering and we are suffering. So I rang the school. I'm like, okay, we're giving you notice to unenroll. Normally it's a terms notice. They were thrilled for us to be gone and off their books, because we were ruining their attendance

Leisa Reichelt: 17:24

statistics and yeah,

Diana Keyes: 17:27

off you go. So then we started the Distance Ed application process. Now you cannot apply to Distance Ed from a private school. That's a, a nice little tidbit.

Leisa Reichelt: 17:43

this is in New South Wales.

Diana Keyes: 17:44

South Wales. Yes. So we had to go cap and hand to our local public boys school who didn't really wanna know about us. This is where parental advocate is, you just have to be, you know, your child's advocate and you, and I'm like, I don't care. We live an area. You have to enroll us. And then now you have to go through this process. I'm sorry, school counselor, if you don't know us and you don't know James, but you have to do this big application. We gave them all the reports we had from the private school and look, they did it, but I was on them every second day. I did end up calling the Department of Education. I called Distance Ed, and said, look, we're going through this process once they know you're going through the process, they did actually send us some paper materials, which was really kind.

Leisa Reichelt: 18:36

Diana, I assume you had plenty of time on your hands to do all of this advocacy work, and you weren't working a big job or anything like that.

Diana Keyes: 18:44

Okay. No. So I was working full time in a very, very full on job. I worked for multinational who was going through one of the latest round of global restructures and redundancy. I think by this point I was reporting offshore you know, so I couldn't really talk about it with anybody.

Leisa Reichelt: 19:06

How on earth did you manage to cope with supporting James and everything that he's been through and having your whole approach to parenting challenged and all of that, and manage your job?

Diana Keyes: 19:22

Yeah, I don't know. I, I think it's sort of like, if you're bush walking and you're 10 Ks in and you break your leg, somehow you manage to drag yourself out and afterwards you go, I don't know how I did that. Because you have no choice. I'm not saying I didn't have meltdowns along the way. I absolutely had meltdowns at work and at home, I didn't feel like I could talk about it with anybody. How I managed was finding my way to that School Can't Facebook group. Someone mentioned it to me some point, and then it's like, oh my goodness, I am not alone. I am not a terrible person. There's a whole lot of good people going through this experience. We just gotta keep going through it. I I have to survive and I love my son and we are just going to get through this.

Leisa Reichelt: 20:13

Yeah. So you're in the midst of all the paperwork and administration of trying to get James into DE.

Diana Keyes: 20:19

Yes, that's where I learned about this concept of Deschooling Or just letting him be. And that, for parents it's like letting go in a really scary way because it's the absolute opposite of everything you are being told and everything that the school is telling you. So he got accepted into DE and then, like so many parents from the School Can't Facebook page. He sat down in front of the computer and he said, I can't do this. And that's when you feel like you've lost touch with reality and you're just literally out of ideas.

Leisa Reichelt: 21:00

Especially after all that effort to make it happen.

Diana Keyes: 21:04

And I think, thankfully I was learning about this concept of deschooling, and I also knew through my daughter's experience that year nine is a little bit of a nothing year. It's like, it's not year 10 where there's sort of some mandatory requirements and I just thought if he logs on every now and then and does a tiny bit, that will be enough for us to get through that year. I mean, I feel like he didn't leave his room for a lot of year nine. What I call year nine, you know, age 14,15, and again, I think so many people have been through that or are going through that. That is the biggest thing, when I get on the School Can't Facebook group I see those desperate parents and they go, my son or daughter is 14, 15 and they don't leave their room. And I, chime in and go. if they're safe in their room, then maybe that's okay, and maybe that's just what they need to do. Because you think about hard it has been. Like in reality, James would've been masking the whole way through primary, and he just had two horrendous year seven and eight years where he was just like a shell of himself. And I know that he was so full of shame and he was so upset with himself.'Cause he would cry and he would say, why can't I do what everybody else is doing? And of course we didn't have the diagnosis. In the end, the psychiatrists and psychologists recommended the same program. It was through Uniting, it was called YESS. Youth Enhanced Support Services and they're like, look, we think they're running a really good program that might suit you guys. So we found our way there and they started advocating also, just leave him, just let him be, just take the pressure off and, it was sort of coming via this concept of Deschooling and it was coming via them.

Leisa Reichelt: 23:00

What a relief to hear that from somebody in an authority position.

Diana Keyes: 23:04

It was, it, it really was. I was looking back on my notes with them though. I suggested autism and they were like, no, no, no. They started suggesting things like Cluster B Personality Type, which is like the whole BPD, bipolar, schizophrenia, or severe depression. I look back on my notes now and go no, that doesn't feel right. But course we were treating it like severe depression. So that's the other thing. You look back and you go, we were trying to heavily medicate James. And for some kids that's helpful. I don't ever think it was for James.

Leisa Reichelt: 23:42

The other thing with depression too is it's always like get outside and do things and engage with the world and that's how you help with depression. And I'm sure it does help a lot with depression, but it adds all the pressure onto the kids and for you to get them out as well, doesn't it?

Diana Keyes: 23:56

exactly. When I think about year nine, or that probably 15-year-old, we decided we're just going to let him be because our family is not going to survive otherwise. And he started to do some really, really simple things, which was he started to go grocery shopping with my husband once a week with his hoodie on. He would go three suburbs away we'd take him to a Coles and we'd just say, put whatever you want in the trolley. You know, anything to just get him out of the house. So that was once a week. And then the other thing my husband was doing, like volunteer work, food delivery, and we said to James, Hey, you know, we'll give you$50 if you go on this food delivery with Stewart. It wasn't confronting for James because he was just in and outta the car with his dad and dropping food on the, on the footsteps. So that was kind of for him a little bit of a dipping his toe back into the world. Okay. So then I think by year 10, that's when we were like, you know, if you want to put yourself in a position to maybe do year 11 and 12, and the only reason, like we are not, those sorts of parents are like, you must go to university. You must do year 11 and 12. I had always been happy, you know, if you wanna go to TAFE, if you wanna get a job, But just knowing James, he's a smart boy and I think the sorts of jobs that would suit him would probably require a uni education. So we just didn't wanna sort of not keep that option open. And I think that's where we thought, okay, year 10, he will have to hand in some work. And we probably then decided as a family that it was going to be a little bit of a group effort. So I would sit with James and work through the curriculum with him. Now I'm working full time. And again, what I would say to some parents is if they get an hour and a half of quality learning a day, then that's probably more than they were ever getting in face-to-face school anyway. So I think sometimes we set the bar so high, we're like, I can't Distance Ed my kid, or I can't homeschool them I'm like, well, you probably got an hour in the evening that you can find, or again, with this hybrid working, I was working from home two days a week. So if my lunch break was spent with James, then it was spent with James. And again, we feel a lot of guilt. should we be helping our child? Well, I had to know that he was taking the information in because he's gotta do written exams. We did help scaffold the learning, I suppose is one way to say it. And this is probably around the time when we finally said, let's go to a proper neuropsychologist who does the autism assessment. She was like, yes, he's a ASD2. And it's like, you know, at this point he's almost 16 and everyone I've ever asked is like, no.

Leisa Reichelt: 27:14

All of those opinions are mostly from having a talk to him and

Diana Keyes: 27:17

Absolutely.

Leisa Reichelt: 27:18

he is masking his face off.

Diana Keyes: 27:21

And it's also some of the things like, okay, some presentations I think are quite sort of classic and then other presentations are not. I think the speech for him is just like, he's quite well spoken, but it was our daughter who said he's a teenage boy on the Northern Beaches. He should not sound quasi-English you know?

Leisa Reichelt: 27:49

Speaks like a middle-aged man. Yeah.

Diana Keyes: 27:51

Exactly. Any sort of, sensitivity to texture or food, he never really had that. But I think he's got sensitivity to sound and noise, but that didn't present particularly obviously. He was always really upset with the high school bus that was really crowded and jam packed. Now I would think that was an oversensitivity to that stimulation.

Leisa Reichelt: 28:16

I think with high masking autistic people as well, they internalize those sensory sensitivities so much that they just think, and I, you know, including myself in this, honestly, you think everyone's experiencing it the same way, right? And so you're just like, well, I just need to like suck it up and deal. So you get to the point where you're like, I don't have any sensory sensitivities. I just don't understand why anybody else isn't wearing their sunglasses today.

Diana Keyes: 28:46

Yeah, Exactly. At all my crazy work events that go on to three in the morning, and I'm like, can I politely exit at 9:00 without ruffling any feathers? You know? And, again, I would have just put that down to just being an introvert. But now I think, I'm struggling with the overstimulation. Also, I've learned so much about autism with the whole, how it actually presents in your body. Like James has, you know, his posture is not ideal and I've learned about, I'm not going to say it right, but the prop system or, so that's the whole where, the perception of distance and that sort of thing.

Leisa Reichelt: 29:30

I am thinking proprioception.

Diana Keyes: 29:32

Yes. There we are. Thank you. Again, it's like lack of coordination. He was quite sporty, so that didn't come out, but he's very slowly learning to drive because I think he cannot maybe screen out lot of the things that, kids who are super confident and like, I can't see that car around me. I think he can see everything, it's been such an interesting journey.

Leisa Reichelt: 29:56

So he got through year 10 with the team support.

Diana Keyes: 30:00

Yes. Then again, I suppose that's how we approached year 11 and 12 too. Now, Distance Ed said to us, if he's not doing maths, he should not do ATAR. And I just thought to myself, I'm a lawyer. I know lots of lawyers that cannot add up numbers. I do not think not doing math should exclude you from an ATAR. I think that's a really weird thinking that's got into the school system.

Leisa Reichelt: 30:28

Hmm.

Diana Keyes: 30:29

So no, he didn't do maths. only because he just missed so much of it. And I think so many subjects, it doesn't matter if you've missed the building blocks, but I think with maths it builds on itself. That was a learning gap that was just too hard to make up if I'm perfectly honest. Whereas with a lot of humanities, you just sort of pick them up and go with it. We made it through year 11 and 12 together, as I think many neurotypical kids in face-to-face school do. Whether it's coaching or parental assistance, sometimes people just need help.

Leisa Reichelt: 31:11

What does doing your HSC look like if you're doing Distance Education as a ASD2 individual.

Diana Keyes: 31:18

Yeah. Well that was interesting because we got a bit of a shock when they're like, oh, he'll just have to go along to his local high school that he's never set foot in and sit his HSC amongst all these kids. And we were like, oh, wow. I don't know if he'll be able to manage that. So we said, well, what alternatives are there? And look, there, there is lots and lots of support, including he could have sat the HSC at home and he could have had someone from the Department of Education come into our home and observe him. I think that's really good. I don't know why that's not more widely known. In the end, James actually did go to his local high school and sit

Leisa Reichelt: 32:04

Wow.

Diana Keyes: 32:05

all of those exams We just take our hat off. We didn't know every morning whether he would be able to do that. And of course if he hadn't been able to do that, we would've been able to do the misadventure form if we'd been able to get to your doctor on that day. That didn't end up being necessary, but I think it's really good for people to know that. There's writing support, there's additional time. But there is this thing where they can actually sit their HSC at home. This is in New South Wales. I can't speak for the other states.

Leisa Reichelt: 32:37

Yes, but New South Wales not renowned for its support of kids who are struggling at school.

Diana Keyes: 32:42

Absolutely. And look, what I would say about Distance Education is it's just school, but remotely. And some of the teachers, they couldn't care less if James had autism, all they say is, oh, you can do your HSC half time, like, spend two years on half the subjects and another two years on another half of the subjects. That seems to be all that's on offer. And I said, well, that's just death by a thousand cuts. I'm sorry. We're not doing that. Because at Distance Ed, some of the kids are actually brilliant and performing in musicals every night or they're on the professional tennis circuit. It is not super well set up other than the fact that you are doing it remotely. But again, I was, fairly not fierce advocate, but I stood my ground where I felt like there has to be a disability discrimination claim against the Department of Education because it's like, how is it possible that these kids are not given any support.

Leisa Reichelt: 33:42

So where are we today? He managed to get through the HSC. How are things going now?

Diana Keyes: 33:47

Yeah, look pretty good. He got a low ATAR, as we knew he would get because the scaling with Distance Ed and the subjects he had chosen. But with his autism diagnosis, with Distance Ed, you get a few extra marks and he applied to a uni that's considered sort of in area. So with those concessions, and I just think because universities have discretion, he got into his course of choice for the first round offer. So think we are all killing ourselves trying to get our kids a ATAR of 75 or 80 or whatever. Well, I can say you can get to uni with an ATAR of a lot less than that.

Leisa Reichelt: 34:31

That's very good to know.

Diana Keyes: 34:32

yes, absolutely. Now where he is today, he is at face-to-face uni. Thankfully a lot of it can be done online. We said to him, just do two subjects per semester, and he got through last semester. It's not to say he finds it easy, but he has found it manageable. This semester, which we're only two weeks in, and we said, try three subjects. Now on Thursday, I said you're going in. I know you've got a big day. And he was just like, we were back in year eight again. He's like, I can't, I just, can't, I can't. My husband and I like, literally like, you know, you know what it's like, like the, your, your heart sinks and you're like, no, no, we can't go back to this again, but we had a really good conversation with him and said, just go to two subjects. Or, or one. Let's help find a way to go to Disability Services. Because what the trigger has been is in the tutorials, the lecturers call on the students, and that for him is a fate worse than death. So I've said you can actually find a way to make it known to the lecturers that you are on the autism spectrum, and that for you, you cannot be called on in class. And this is where the world has moved on because that would've been seen like a discipline thing in high school. Whereas now I'm hoping they will put some supports in place to make it possible for him to feel safe. So look, we're in a good place. But it's also understanding that this is a lifelong journey. we are so focused on School Can't, but then sometimes, you know, you'll hear parents say, well, we've now gone into Life Can't. So that's a little bit scary too. Now we are not in Life Can't, but we are also in life has to look different for this young man. And we need to support him in different ways he is going to need support. But we are confident that together with the right support and with everything that we've learned, he is going to have a good life.

Leisa Reichelt: 36:53

I'm sure he has learned a lot along this journey as well.

Diana Keyes: 36:57

Yeah, he, he absolutely has. And I think, you know, when he got his diagnosis, we said to him, we're so sorry, James, we're so sorry that we haven't understood. The way you've been treated hasn't been right for you. You know, we said to him, you, you can let go of all that shame that you were carrying around. And that was really, really healing. And it's healing for parents too.

Leisa Reichelt: 37:25

Diana, let's move on to our closing questions. If you could go back in time and say something to yourself, when do you think you would go back to, and what do you think you'd say?

Diana Keyes: 37:38

I'd go back to before my kids started school, and I think this is the hard thing for working parents. You don't get to observe your children enough sometimes in social settings. So you don't see, hey, they are a little bit different. But I think if I could go back, I would say be really thoughtful about the school that you choose. Don't just rock on up to the local public and think it's all going to be fine. I would've chose a really little K to 12 school if I could have, in hindsight. But also don't try and keep up with everybody. You've just gotta live your own life. That's really what it's all about. And just look at your child and you and just adjust to their needs and not keep the world at large happy.'cause that's an impossible task.

Leisa Reichelt: 38:33

And if you could say one thing to everybody who's listening, who's on their own School Can't journey at the moment, what would you like them to hear?

Diana Keyes: 38:43

Well, first of all, I would like to acknowledge how tough the journey is and how isolating it is. It's like nothing else I've ever experienced. It is a very tough journey. I would also like to say that education based trauma is real. Sometimes when our kids don't go to school, it's for their own preservation that they're trying to protect themselves. And I think there is an art in knowing when to go enough is enough and, it's okay to say enough is enough. And I'm going to do homeschooling. You know what's enough for you and your child and nobody else knows that.

Leisa Reichelt: 39:31

You mentioned a couple of really useful resources but if you were going to pick out one that was particularly helpful to you, what would you recommend to people as a School Can't resource.

Diana Keyes: 39:42

I did find that book, Growing Yourself Up by Jennie Brown, really helpful because it does, I think sometimes we do have to do a lot of work on ourselves to emotionally regulate and look after ourselves. I realized that I was making a lot of decisions when I was in that fight or flight stage.And so, just learning about how you calm down your amygdala and then you, you, you're making decisions with the hippocampus or whatever it's called. So I, I would say if there's any good books that you can read on on your own self-regulation to help yourself with this journey. That would be good too.

Leisa Reichelt: 40:21

Well, Diana, thank you so much for sharing the story that your family has been through. Really, really appreciate it.

Diana Keyes: 40:29

Thanks so much.

Leisa Reichelt: 40:30

So many thanks to Diana again for sharing her story. There were so many nuggets of insight in there, and I hope there was something that really resonated for you. I have put links in the episode notes to the YESS program that Diana mentioned, as well as the Growing Yourself Up book that she recommended. If you have found this podcast helpful, please do take a moment to subscribe. Maybe even give us a rating or a review. It really does help us get the podcast in front of more people who have School Can't kids, and who haven't yet found our community and all the information that we share. If you've been inspired to share your own School Can't lived experience, and I would love that, please drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. It is such a relaxed process. Anyone could do it, and I'd love to hear from you. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, please 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. We will talk again soon. Take care.