#44 - Understanding School Can't with Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers

In the first episode of the 2026 School Can't Experience Podcast, host Leisa Reichelt discusses the challenges 'School Can't,' with the Directors of School Can't Australia, Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers and discuss some of the content of the new ebook, Understanding School Can’t published by School Can’t Australia in January.

Download a copy of the Understanding School Can’t ebook here: https://www.schoolcantaustralia.com.au/minibook

We explore the early and often missed signs of School Can't, harmful but well-meaning advice, and why it's essential for parents and carers to invest in their own mental well-being. 

Our conversation explores stressors that impact children’s school attendance, building trust, self-regulation, and the importance of community support. 

Tiffany and Louise emphasise compassion, curiosity, and support for both children and their caregivers. 

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

01:57 Personal Summer Break Stories

03:08 Defining 'School Can't'

05:02 Distinguishing 'Can't' from 'Won't'

07:25 Early Signs and Patterns of School Can't

08:42 Parental Experiences and Insights

24:01 Common Stressors and Challenges

29:39 Effective Strategies and Support

32:29 The Importance of Self-Care for Parents

44:40 Final Thoughts and Resources

People & resources mentioned in this episode:

• Download a copy of the Understanding School Can’t ebook here: https://www.schoolcantaustralia.com.au/minibook
• Dr Ross Greene, Lives in the Balance: https://livesinthebalance.org/
• Shankar Self Reg - https://self-reg.ca/
• Carers Gateway - https://www.carergateway.gov.au/

Transcript

Leisa Reichelt 0:05

Hello and welcome to the first episode for 2026 of the School Can't Experience Podcast. It is great to be back. My name is Leisa Reichelt and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who's 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. So we are going to kick off the new year with a bit of a back to basics episode with our friends of the pod and Directors of School Can't Australia, Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers. We are going to be talking through some of the amazing content included in the recently published ebook called'Understanding School Can't'. If you don't have your copy yet, please stop everything and go download it immediately. You can find a link to download in the episode notes. So today we're going to talk about some of the earlier signs of School Can't that are often missed. We're going to talk about some things you can do that might help kids who are experiencing School Can't, as well as some of the well-meaning advice that's often given that's actually quite harmful to our kids. And we're also going to talk about why it's good for our kids, for parents and carers to take time to really invest in our own mental health and wellbeing. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers. Welcome back to the School Can't Experience Podcast. Thank you so much for finding time to come and talk to us today.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 1:41

A pleasure to be here

Louise Rogers 1:42

Pleasure to be here.

Leisa Reichelt 1:43

It's summertime, it's January. This is our first episode for the year. And we wanna start this series for this year, kind of similarly to how we did last year, with the two of you going back to basics on School Can't. But before we get into that, I wonder whether, you can share with us what was one of the favorite things that you've done over this summer break?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 2:06

Well, my holiday was interrupted by fire in Victoria, so I only had a week. I have been just enjoying watercolors, since we had a watercolor workshop here in Victoria, last November or early December. I've just been painting little tiny watercolors that are just a couple inches, you know, this big by this big.

Leisa Reichelt 2:30

That sounds manageable. What about you, Lou? what have you enjoyed doing this summer?

Louise Rogers 2:34

went to Brickvention with my kids a couple of days ago. That was lots of fun. Really interesting to see all the creations that people come up with.

Leisa Reichelt 2:42

For those of us who don't know what is Brickvention?

Louise Rogers 2:45

So Brickvention is an exhibition of Lego builds. It's held in January every year, my kids have been going to it since they were three or four years old. So it's become a regular part of the summer holiday tradition

Leisa Reichelt 3:05

that's lovely. Alright, Let's get into this. We wanna do a School Can't 101 following along with a lot of the content that we'll find in the wonderful ebook. So let's start at the very beginning and let's just try to talk a little bit about what even is School Can't, what is going on?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 3:31

What is School Can't? Well, this term School Can't, refers to the child's perspective or the young person's perspective about how they feel about going to school. It refers to a loss of capacity to be able to go to school and participate in full-time education. It occurs across the spectrum from mild through to quite severe distress. At the mild end, it can look like a student who's just expressing a reluctance to go to school, but still managing to go most days or maybe is late to school, but you manage to get them there. Right through to a student who can't get out of bed in the morning or can't leave the house, leave the bedroom, get in the car, or get out of the car at the school gate.

Leisa Reichelt 4:23

School Can't is a weird term. Let's be real.

Louise Rogers 4:26

Yeah, it is. It is.

Leisa Reichelt 4:29

Why do we keep using that term?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 4:31

It's a deliberately disruptive term. It doesn't roll off the tongue easily, but we, we use it because it's a reminder that we're reframing the way we view school attendance difficulties. In the past, it's been viewed as a failure of a parent or a failure of a child or young person. So a misbehavior a failure of parenting, or a psychopathology, a student blowing things out of proportion. So it's really pushback against those sorts of attitudes.

Louise Rogers 5:02

Yeah. This isn't defiance. This is a child who is struggling. And it's really important to make the distinction between can't and won't.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 5:13

When we think about can't versus won't, we have two very different kinds of responses as adults. But when you conceptualize that somebody won't go to school or won't do something, you're instantly having this kind of judgmental mindset. Whereas when you conceptualize that somebody can't do something, you're more likely to be curious. So it's a very powerful shift because it opens the pathway to curiosity and connection, and trying to find out and understand what's going on for a young person.

Louise Rogers 5:45

We start asking why. And the why is everything.

Leisa Reichelt 5:50

I have a sense that a lot of people's default thinking will be school won't rather than school can't. Like do we think school won't is a problem, and that step one is to distinguish between is my child a school can't or a school won't

Louise Rogers 6:04

I don't think it's helpful. I think the kids can look angry and they can look oppositional, or they can say, no, I'm not doing that. But again, what is it about going to school or being at school that is causing this young person so much distress? Kids want to do well, they want to meet the expectations of their grownups. Why is it difficult?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 6:31

There's an evolving body of research that suggests that for, in particular, for our neurodivergent students, that their experience of school is one that's filled with a multiplicity of factors that are causing them stress. Stress can occur though in other contexts as well and impact a person's capacity to do things. Stress in the context of family physical illness. So stress in the context of, of one's physical body, or lack of sleep or chronic pain health condition. As well as experiences of community events. So things like fire, flood. We've just recently had fires here in Victoria, floods in New South Wales and up in Queensland and these sorts of things all cause stress as just things like cost of living, housing crises, all those sort of things.

Leisa Reichelt 7:25

So if a parent has a child and they think that they might be experiencing some School Can't, what are the kinds of things that you're looking for? What are the kinds of clues that you might be in the early stages of a School Can't journey?

Louise Rogers 7:43

I think there are a couple of things you have to do if they're showing signs of potentially being unwell, you've got to have those sorts of things investigated because sometimes all that fear and anxiety shows up as physical symptoms like headaches and stomach aches and if there's something physically wrong, you need to go and, and that addressed. But other thing we're looking for, I think is patterns as well. We are looking for patterns. Perhaps they're not school can't every day. Perhaps there's days that they're more than happy to go into school, but maybe, maybe they're not going in on the day they have a particular specialist subject.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:23

I think it is important to recognize that sometimes those early signs can be missed. We're often very busy too,

Louise Rogers 8:29

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:29

know, and it can take time to get appointments with doctors or pediatricians to investigate what might be going on. It can sometimes take a long time to put puzzle pieces together.

Louise Rogers 8:42

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 8:42

I remember when my daughter's first expressed difficulties about reluctance to go to school. She was suffering severe migraines. It took us waiting for an appointment with a pediatrician, we saw the pediatrician over several months before we were referred for an MRI to check, was there something going on in her brain? But there wasn't. Turned out to be stress. You know, there can be a bit of a process for trying to figure out what's going on for my young person if the symptoms we're seeing are physical manifestations of stress and difficulty, If there's sleep difficulties, we try different things to resolve those sleep difficulties. Sometimes the first signs of distress are not actually the first experiences of distress for a young person too. So, understanding that by the time a student stops being able to go to school, sometimes they've actually been distressed for some time before then too. And so what we're seeing is a really distressed child by that point.

Louise Rogers 9:45

Yeah. I think sometimes there can be things that are kind of like false flags. Some people will think, well, they're not sleeping, that's why they don't want to go to school, but maybe they're not sleeping because they know that the next day they have to go to school and there's something about going to school that is really distressing for them. You get the same thing about gaming. People think, well, they're gaming, so maybe it's gaming that's causing the problem. But, sometimes gaming is that respite. It's that place where they can feel good about achieving something and connecting with friends online. I really do think there's lots of distractions from us actually sitting down and having a conversation with the young person and being patient and listening and, taking what they have to say seriously. There's also the push on us, because many of us have very busy lives. We've got jobs to get to, so we get the kids to school and then we can go to work. But it the kids aren't going to school, we can't get to work. There's this sort of domino effect because we've built our lives around the assumption that this thing's going to work. And I think also we're kind of hoping that, certainly at the start this is just a little niggle and that whatever was causing them a problem will resolve itself. everything will be right and we'll be back to everything going well and no problems. But yeah, sometimes it's not just a little niggle. Sometimes there's something really big.

Leisa Reichelt 11:18

Yeah.

Louise Rogers 11:19

Sometimes it's multiple things. one thing that's left unaddressed and then the next thing happens that's also left unaddressed, and then suddenly the straw breaks the camel's back. And we've got a really distressed young person who's got lots of problems, lots of difficulties that they're experiencing. They're all kind of happening at the same time.

Leisa Reichelt 11:43

I feel like in talking to people who have shared their lived experience and my own lived experience as well, it feels as though a lot of the time those early signs are rationalized away. I. I think the tummy aches one is a really common one. You go to the doctor and they do their checks and go, oh, no, everything's fine. And you go, oh, well it's not getting worse. So it will just resolve itself, presumably or you know, the not being able to go to bed at night, we're just like, well, they're maybe just going through a phase where they're just not going to bed.

Louise Rogers 12:13

And sometimes there can be reassurances from school because they seem to be doing all right. They look like everything's fine at school. And so school will reassure you and say, Hey, they're doing fine. They're doing fine here. Nothing's wrong.

Leisa Reichelt 12:27

It makes me think of the other one that I feel like people talk about frequently, which is the separation anxiety. That they can observe in kids from really, really young. A lot of the time the people in those educational settings will just go, well, the best thing you can do is just walk away. This happens to everyone, it's fine. They'll get over it. But sometimes they just never do.

Louise Rogers 12:46

Sometimes they're not okay.

Leisa Reichelt 12:48

What should we be doing when we are seeing these early signals? Because I know a lot of us have gone down a pathway of going, oh, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. And it's not until the child is in really significant distress that finally we realized that we do have to take it very seriously. if you could give advice to somebody who is seeing some of these signs early on, what would you advise them to do?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 13:16

I think we need to listen to our children and be curious and noticing what's going on with them. I think that sometimes we just don't have background knowledge about all of the things that might be difficult young people at school. So, I didn't know anything about autism before my first child was diagnosed as autistic. I didn't know anything about learning difficulties. I didn't know anything about ADHD before one of my children was diagnosed with that. And all of those things have help explain why some of the things school are really stressful for my children. It's a process of discovery and lived experience. And I think that's what's fantastic about an organization like School Can't Australia, is that you have this giant brains trust who's been there beforehand. Who can go, oh, that sounds so much like my child. And this is what it looked like when they were in grade one or two, or this is what it looked like when they were in grade six. And, this is what we found helped or made it worse. It's the power of community insights and learning from each other. That's been so helpful for me personally as a parent. And I know for thousands of others who've been part of our group. You can't know it all. And hindsight is a dreadfully harsh thing to have sometimes when we look back our experience and go, oh, I wish I could have done it better. I wish I could have a do over, you know? But we just can't, do that. But we can use what we know now to help other people understand. And I think that's what we've endeavored to do with the production of this mini book is share some of those insight that parents have had about what helped and what doesn't. So that we can get set on the path towards avoiding some of those mistakes that some of us may have made early on. But I think it's unrealistic to expect that we can circumvent all of the pain and suffering that we or our children experience. I wish it was some kind of magic for that.

Louise Rogers 15:32

Two things I wish I'd been introduced to Dr. Ross Green's Collaborative and Proactive Solutions a lot earlier because his model is so very different from the traditional rewards and consequences style parenting that we're taught. His framework actually says, let's look at what happened. Let's look at the difficulties that young person's experiencing and let's work with that young person collaboratively. We'll talk to the young person. We're not just observing. We're not just making assumptions. We are not just imposing our adult solutions. We're actually working with our young person to try and find out what's difficult and how we can come up with solutions that meet both the adult's concerns and the child's concerns. That was one of those light bulb moments for me discovering his model. Also Shanker Self Reg. I think I discovered these with in a very short timeframe and they fit together so nicely and learning about how to support my own regulation needs be a safe presence with my young person and to be a supportive presence for my young person means that I as a grownup have to look after myself. I have to pay attention to how I'm feeling inside. So attending to my own regulation needs helps me show up in a way that I have patience and compassion I can listen and recognize when I'm starting to catch my child's distress and starting to escalate and I can do something about that then. This is also something for teachers to learn. The way we show up for the kids, really depends on us looking after ourselves and parents looking after one another as well. Teachers looking after one another.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 17:36

I agree. Ross Greene Shanker Self Reg are really fantastic resources to draw on in terms of providing support to how we, you know, understanding how we can respond in ways that are helpful for our young people.

Leisa Reichelt 17:53

Yeah. I think for me it's that being more curious early on and not just assume that, you know, this is a kid who's trying to get outta doing something that he doesn't wanna do. And that we all feel like that, you know, we just gotta push through and deal with it. And I think particularly if, your experience of being parented was push through and deal with it. it's often the only thing, you know, isn't it? I would just love for people to feel much more empowered to take the things they're seeing and hearing from their kids seriously sooner. Don't wait for it to get bad. Be curious about it earlier on, even if the rest of the world, GPs and teachers and whoever else are telling you that it's not a big deal. To Ross Green's point about like, kids will do well if they can, if they're not like, what's going on? Yeah. On that point, if you do find yourself in a situation where your child is struggling to attend school, it is highly likely that you will be given advice, which is along the lines of just push through it. Just make it happen. You know, they'll get used to it, it'll be fine. When they're here, they're okay. Why is that not necessarily great advice to take to heart?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 19:13

It assumes that there's no problem to be fixed or that the problem lies within the child and it's the child that needs to be fixed. But the reality is that for lots of our kids, there's a lot of stuff that the're struggling with, not just one or two things. Sometimes it is just one or two big things. But a lot of the time, when you look at the school-based stressors research that School Can't Australia's done you see that, out of 57 listed stressors, respondents identified an average of 28 being relevant to their child's experience of school. It's hard to understand what's going on for our kids.'cause sometimes there's a just a lot of things to come to terms with identifying and understanding, and you might only them a few at a time, or it might take seeing an occupational therapist to learn about the impact that the sensory environment might be having on this young person's experience of school.

Leisa Reichelt 20:14

Because very often the child is not going to be able to tell you what the problem is. Right?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 20:19

It's been their normal and it's been a problem since their first day of school and they've just had to learn to live with it. But it takes energy away from them as they go. And the more things like that there are, the less energy they have, the less capacity they have be able to cope with things or learn or engage socially connect with others or be creative.

Louise Rogers 20:48

I think there's some other issues though too. Like, masking, a lot of kids will mask, they will pretend they're okay because they don't feel safe to say, hang on, this thing is bothering me. Or I'm finding this really hard. so they'll look fine when they're at school, but then they'll come home and they've just spent the whole day holding it together and they get home and it's, boom. You've got the kid who can't function anymore. They've, just let it out.

Leisa Reichelt 21:16

The older the kids get, and the more complex the social situation is and the more demanding the academic environment becomes, this is not going to get easier for them, is it? It's just going to get harder and harder until. Something kind of gives and it can give in a really dramatic way, right? Like I know for lots of people that I've spoken to who have had kids where this is really broken for them in that kind of early high school stage, that can result in devastating burnout.

Louise Rogers 21:46

And then we get advice to do things at home differently, like, to make home boring. and making home boring just means that, well, okay, now they're not getting any respite from the difficult situation at home in that environment that's supposed to be their safe place. That kind of response really adds to the stress that young person is feeling. It creates a snowball. When the adults aren't responding in a way that helps, they're actually making it worse.

Leisa Reichelt 22:20

And the mental health impacts can be really serious too, right? Like I think, you know, if we don't address this, it's unfortunately extremely common in this community to hear of kids who have had really significant mental health issues.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 22:35

I just wanna double back a bit. Leisa, you know, my experience was a bit different to Louise's in terms of, you know, my child was highly empathic and very concerned about causing me distress or making things difficult for anybody else. So her response was less behavior. And the internal distress got quite significant to the point of shutdown because she was trying to hold it all together so she wouldn't be a bother to anyone, for a very long time. So that meant that there were delays until things were quite bad for her, in terms of her mental health, before we started to realize, hey, there's something here that needs addressing. So when our kids have the behavior of, not going, refusing to eat breakfast in the morning or get dressed for school or, verbalizing lots of concern about going to school, but others don't. And some just go quiet and try and hold it together for the longest period of time until they can't function anymore and the toll that it takes on their mental health, is quite significant. So that can mean that there's delays in responding too.

Leisa Reichelt 24:01

Now I know Tiffany, there are, like dozens and dozens and dozens, almost innumerable different stressors that can impact kids at school. I wonder though, if you'd be able to maybe pull out a few that are really common for kids to struggle with in the school environment?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 24:21

Our School Can't Australia research showed that barriers to communicating distress is actually a really big issue for the young people who our parents and carers care for. Difficulties feeling safe, disclosing that you're not feeling okay or that something's difficult or stressful. Teachers or parents not noticing what's going on for a young person. If you are struggling at school and you present at the sick bay, they try and convince you to stay and minimise or dismiss your concerns. and so that makes it hard to get help or get relief. So they can end up stuck in chronically stressful states. They can end up hiding in toilets, or they can go unnoticed if they're in shutdown. Beyond that, so we know that there are issues around the sensory environment for some kids. It's too loud, too quiet, too busy, strong smells, difficulties being able to concentrate. There's a whole collection of cognitive difficulties that our students who have ADHD for instance, or working memory difficulties, maybe our autistic students who might have trouble holding things in their working memory. So when a teacher gives instructions, once they've got the first instruction, their brain is starting to think about how they're going to do that and they don't hear the rest, or they can't remember the rest, can't hold them in their mind, they don't know what's happening next. They're constantly feeling confused or, unsure and, needing reassurance or support. Toilets. I hear from so many young people about how they won't use the toilet at school because it's an unpleasant or fearful experience for them. We need to rethink toilet design and the way that toilets exist in schools. that's a basic bodily function to be able to relieve oneself, during the school day. But also eating is another thing. Another really basic thing, it's too busy in the classroom and so I can't concentrate on eating or the texture of my food changes during the course of the day and I don't like the way, or I can't eat a peanut butter sandwich'cause you're not allowed to bring those to school and that's the only thing that I'll eat. I'm worried about losing my lunchbox in the playground so I won't take my lunchbox with me. So I don't eat because I don't wanna get in trouble for losing my lunchbox and mom's always telling me off for losing my lunchbox. All sorts of little things like that. So you can't sustain your blood sugar during the day. There are all sorts of social issues between students and other students or interactions between students and teachers Sometimes if you've seen a teacher yelling at another student, that might make you feel less safe in the presence of that teacher or sharing information with that teacher. If you've been excluded by peers, there are experiences, related to bullying or exclusion. Feeling judged, needing things differently, needing to use assistive technology those things can make it difficult for our students who might need to use a, a screen reader, to speech, speech to text facility. And then all sorts of stuff around rules and, the structure of a day and, rigidness of, of, of policies and, you know, uniform, has to be a certain way, but for some kids it's a sensory nightmare. So there's those, some of the common ones.

Leisa Reichelt 28:06

I think to your point, it's not that each child is experiencing one of these things and that's the reason why they can't go to school. It's like layer upon layer upon layer, and most kids who are experiencing School Can't, are having many of these stressors every day at school, and that's why it becomes overloading. Yeah.

Louise Rogers 28:29

Well, I think for some kids there can be, a really big event, a bullying or something like that, that happens at school and when that is addressed they're fine to go back and they feel safe. I had a friend who moved their child to another school after a bullying event, and he was fine at the new school because he was away from the kid who had been bullying him. And he had a really fine experience. But for a lot of our School Can't kids, it's not as simple as a school change.

Leisa Reichelt 28:58

Yeah.

Louise Rogers 28:59

A school change is only going to work if it actually reduces the stress that the young person experiencing. If all the things that were difficult about going to school are still the same at the new school, then on top of that there's a new school and learning new people et cetera, then you know

Leisa Reichelt 29:17

You also have to change school at the right time. Like my experience, I moved my son from one school to another but by the time I did it, he was just so burned out. That even though the new school was, was great and probably really suitable for him, he didn't have capacity left for that anymore. So we had to switch and do home education, because that's all he had capacity for. that was very customized to what he was able to do are,

Louise Rogers 29:42

it seems radical, but sometimes our kids need a rest. It's not in line with department policy, but sometimes they need time out to recover to rest, to start to find joy in life again, start to trust themselves again. Before moving on to a new school, before going back to school.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 30:08

Trust has been broken with adults, the school too, the first thing is learning to trust people outside of the home again,

Leisa Reichelt 30:15

Honestly, sometimes, the first thing is building trust inside the home. I feel as though with my son, my inability to recognize this as School Can't and act appropriately cause a massive breach in trust between us. And so he couldn't trust his adults at home to help him with this. He couldn't trust adults at school to help him with this. So yeah, step one for us was like rebuild trust at home, even before thinking about school. So yeah, don't, don't be like me.

Louise Rogers 30:45

yeah, it's like Tiffany was saying, hindsight, you know, sometimes we do things and we just made things worse. We really wish we hadn't. You just gotta apologize. You gotta say, hang on, hang on kid. I did the wrong thing. I'm really sorry I did that. I'm really sorry that we turned off all the devices and, and, or I'm really sorry that there, you know, there was, I let them restrain you at school to I let you hold them at school. You know, that should never have happened. It just made things worse. Sorry, I'm going to cry now.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 31:18

Apologies, apologies can be really powerful, can't they, Lou?.

Louise Rogers 31:22

That can be really powerful. you have to go, What happened was not right. I'm really sorry. We're going to do it differently now there has to be a reset.

Leisa Reichelt 31:32

I think the explanation too, like what you were saying before, Tiff, like, we don't know, at the beginning of this journey, so little compared to how much you know at the other end of it, if I look back a couple of years ago I just knew nothing it's been such a learning curve on so many different fronts. That's certainly what I've said to my son. I'm really sorry, but I just had no idea. And now we know so much more. We can do differently. We can do better.

Louise Rogers 31:59

Yeah,

Leisa Reichelt 31:59

And chances are, if you're listening to this, there's probably stuff that you've done that you wish you might've, learned earlier, but you're in good company. So many of us feel that way.

Louise Rogers 32:10

So many of us do, you know, when you know better, you do better. You have to have self-compassion because the energy we need is for the, present, to be with our children in the present. We can't be spending all this time beating ourselves up. We just gotta make a commitment to move forward and to do it differently.

Leisa Reichelt 32:29

Let's talk a little bit about self-compassion and self-care, because if you're listening to this as a parent or carer, chances are you are on this journey and it hasn't been fun and probably won't be fun for, at least a little while. it's can cause all kinds of stresses. You've got the stress of helping your child supporting them dealing with schools, working out what to do there, and very often places stress into the family situation. You, you might be having stress with your partner, that's very common Stress with other siblings is really common. Loads of us have had to reduce our work time, stop working altogether, which introduces a whole level of financial stress that possibly you weren't anticipating. Not to mention, lack of identity and all of that sort of stuff that comes with not being able to work anymore. It's a really tough time as somebody who finds himself in a caring situation for this.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 33:25

For our community, you know, I think the most disturbing statistic that came out of our research prior to the Senate Inquiry was that 67% of the parent care community surveyed, stated that overwhelm and exhaustion impacted them so significantly that they weren't able to access personal supports. They were too overwhelmed. They were stuck in this state of overwhelm with no capacity to shift themselves or move on from that distress. And that being stuck is a, a really, we talked before about how those barriers to. Communicate about distress exist for students and, cause difficulties in resolving, what's going on for them, but also for parents, when you are so stressed and so distressed, so overwhelmed and exhausted that you can't do anything or see your way through it, that's very concerning state to be in. So self-care is really important and sometimes it seems completely unachievable for us. If you're one of those 67% of parents, it can seem just too much and you need to ask for help. When you're in that state, it's not reasonable to expect yourself to be able to get out yourself of that hole. Okay? That's a crisis state and your kids are dependent on you as well. You need to seek help. Go see your GP or call Carers Gateway. Ask for help or support from your circle of friends community or family that is compassionate and supportive of you. I can remember getting a lot of support from my friendly green grocer, who used to see me come in tired and exhausted and go, oh, you know, you're doing such a great job with those kids. And just that little encouragement, even though he didn't know all the other stuff was enough to help me shift that sense of I'm a failure as a parent. My kids are miserable. I must be a failure as a parent. To have someone say to me, you're doing a great job. Look, kid's sitting here on an upturned milk crate in my shop, eating beans. There's a lot of kids who wouldn't eat beans. Little things like that. Focusing on those, those little glimmers.

Louise Rogers 35:55

Yeah, I think too, micro moments of self care when you can't find time. Micro moments, five minutes outside with a coffee, watching the birds, in the trees. If you've got a pet, taking your dog for a walk or, or if, if you can't leave the house,'cause you, you know, you, your child can't leave the house and you can't leave them alone, then, maybe,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 36:20

a quick shower.

Louise Rogers 36:22

being in another room for a moment, having a shower, listening to a piece of music doing some breathing exercises. Anything that's going to feed you. and it, you know, just making these sort of when you can, when you can,

Leisa Reichelt 36:39

Yeah. The episode that we did with Dr. Naomi Fisher on parental burnout last year, there was a point in that episode where she talked about self-compassion and dealing with your critical inner voice that really, really resonated with me because I think there are so many people in society and just general society who are willing to criticize us for what we're doing or we're not doing, or we should be doing or all of the things, and it's very easy for you to pick up that voice and be extremely critical of yourself and, you know, Naomi's advice to just think, well, what would you say if you were talking to a friend and talk to yourself like you would talk to a friend That vicious inner voice, I think just makes everything so much harder than it needs to be. Everyone can do that right now. It's not easy, but we can work on it and be kinder to ourselves on this journey because, you know, there's, there's plenty of people who are, are already going to be on Team Criticize Parent. We don't need to join that team.

Louise Rogers 37:46

You know what? And those people who are doing all the criticizing, Are they helping? No. This should be, we help one another. That's what we should do as people. Don't just say, this is your fault. We help one another. And that's one of the things that our community does. They help one another. Somebody doesn't know about the rules for getting supports and somebody else does. And, somebody asks the question, how do I do this? we're helping one another. We're supporting one another. it's something that's so missing because day-to-day School Can't, is so hidden. And we're so isolated as parents through this experience. That's,

Leisa Reichelt 38:29

also feel very shameful, can't it? And I think that's one of the consequences of shame is that, you hide away and you don't necessarily openly share what your experiences are.

Louise Rogers 38:39

Yeah, but if all the other kids are in school and you are in the car park by yourself with your child in the car, you can't get outta the car. You are there by yourself.

Leisa Reichelt 38:48

I've never heard a story from a School Can't parent who has said, you know what? I went and I talked to the school, and the school said, don't worry, there's at least 10 other kids who are having the same issue. I'll put you in touch with those parents and you can all support each other. I don't think schools do that. Right?

Louise Rogers 39:02

it be great if they did though?

Leisa Reichelt 39:05

Let's switch gears a little bit and go back to some more of this great guidance from the ebook For our folks who are kind of newish on the journey and, realizing that they've got probably a, a kid who's experiencing School Can't, What are the do's and don'ts as much as it can be that clear?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 39:25

I really like in the book that the first one is'put student experience at the center',

Louise Rogers 39:30

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 39:31

try and understand what is it that my child is experiencing, what's happening for them? What are they seeing? What are they feeling? And be curious about that. Communicate curiosity and love and connection. I think those are the foundations for everything else that has to happen.

Leisa Reichelt 39:54

And I think that layers on top of that trust and belief that kids do well if they can. They don't wanna be sad and alone and isolated and not doing well. So I think having that faith all the way through is like, that's the foundation for so much of this much,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 40:09

Yes.

Louise Rogers 40:10

We've gotta be the holders of hope for our kids. We have to be the holders of hope. We've gotta be the holders of, there is a way through this and we'll find it.

Leisa Reichelt 40:21

What are some common things that people think they should do that actually they should probably avoid?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 40:29

I think punishing distress.

Louise Rogers 40:31

very true. Punishing distress. There doesn't always have to be a consequence. An imposed adult consequence. Sometimes the consequence can be that we go, ah, my kid's having a hard time. What's going on?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 40:46

Physical restraint is an other thing that you just don't do.

Louise Rogers 40:52

Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 40:53

That's,

Louise Rogers 40:54

you don't carry your kid in their pajamas to the school gate and hold them over to a staff member. You don't let a staff member hold them to stop them running down the street.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 41:04

Shut the door or the gate and stand in their way

Louise Rogers 41:06

because that whole experience is traumatizing. It's, it's totally traumatizing. You don't do it

Leisa Reichelt 41:13

So what do you do in that situation when that's what the school is trying to get you to do?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 41:18

I'd suggest sitting and staying with your child and

Louise Rogers 41:23

say no,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 41:24

Yeah,

Louise Rogers 41:25

you say no.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 41:26

to my child. That's not safe.

Louise Rogers 41:28

that's not happening. My child's not going to have a safe experience with school. They're not going to trust this environment. They're not going to trust these people if you do that to them.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 41:36

In most jurisdictions, physical restraint is against Department of Ed policy too. So reminding people that that's the case.

Louise Rogers 41:47

Yeah. It's hard when you ask me to give a whole list of all the things you don't do, because as coordinators of peer group, we've seen all the dreadful things that can happen. It can be hard to imagine that things can actually go well in school, but they can, what we're seeing is where things have gone wrong. And it's built and built,

Leisa Reichelt 42:09

if I look at this list that we have in the ebook of what hurts when you're trying to address School Can't. I can go through this and, tick the boxes of all the things that I've done at various times, like the trickery. So I've definitely tried to trick my kid into going to school at different times. I've tried to shame them into going to school at different times. The school has definitely said, just get them here. You get them to the front of the school and we'll take it from there. I've definitely been party to that and had people come down and not physically take them into school. But I think that was kind of shaming them into school in a way. The rewards charts and punishments was just like a standard go to, isn't it? I've done so many versions of, well, if you go to school for this many hours, then you can have this, this making home more boring. these are things that sound logical on the surface, but if you understand the mechanism behind School Can't, then that logic just completely is destroyed.

Louise Rogers 43:04

You reminded me of something else. We need to make sure we do Life can't be all about whether this kid goes to school or whether they don't. You have to have some moments of joy and connection and fun. Love and laughter with your young person. Nothing to do with school. Play a game, watch a movie together. Shared experiences, have a conversation while you groom the dog. Things that are connecting, things that, where there's no judgment, where there's no, you are not enough or you're not doing the right thing, or you know, I can't go get to work because you are not going to school. You know, I think sometimes we put the weight of our adult concerns on our kids when the young person has their own difficulties with going to school. know, I can't get a job if I don't have a job. We can't pay for the house. I will say to schools, don't tell children that their parents will go to jail or that they'll be taken from their parents if they don't go to school. Don't say that

Leisa Reichelt 44:08

It just creates more stress, doesn't it? Which reduces the capacity, which exacerbates the problem and doesn't solve it

Louise Rogers 44:13

We need the space in our minds and the capacity to think through what's going on, to problem solve, to collaborate, to work together. If we are overly stressed, that's going to be even harder. And so when people add pressure and say some of these unhelpful things, it just adds more stress and makes it even more difficult to solve the underlying problem.

Leisa Reichelt 44:37

You talked about reaching out for help and support before Tiff. if folks are thinking about looking for professional support on this, what are options that we should be considering?

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 44:48

Get a mental health care plan, speak to a psychologist, ask for recommendations from others who've been through this about psychologists to speak to, some of them are not up with, understanding this as a stress response.

Louise Rogers 45:03

I'd say go see an occupational therapist as well because they, they can help, they can go to the school, and help work out, how this environment's impacting the young person and what supports they can put around the young person to help them.

Leisa Reichelt 45:20

Okay. Well I think we've covered a lot of territory here So I wanna thank you very much for talking us through all of this and sharing so much of your experience. And again, thank you for all the work that you and others in the community have done to create the ebook that we launched in January. We'll put links to that in the episode notes. We'll also put some links to Ross Greene and to the Shanker self reg resources so people can dig into that if they haven't come across that as well.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 45:51

And you'll probably edit this out, Leisa, but I ask you please don't... I. But I just wanna say on the anniversary, of this podcast, the School Can't Experience Podcast. Thank you for everything that you have done in this past year, producing, interviewing people, and being an incredible, person and running this.

Leisa Reichelt 46:13

Oh,

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 46:13

I hear constantly from both parent carers and from clinicians and educators how much they value, listening to these episodes, especially the lived experience episodes where parents and carers are interviewed about their experience and how it deepens their knowledge and understanding. So thank you. I know it's something you are very passionate about and I think you do an excellent job.

Leisa Reichelt 46:36

Well, and shout out to all of our guests if you're listening, anybody who's been a guest, thank you so much for offering your time and experience to help us get through a year of podcasting. Another whole year ahead of us. looking forward to sharing lots more stories and information in the coming year. Thank you so much, you two. We will talk again soon, I'm sure.

Louise Rogers 46:56

Alright. Bye.

Leisa Reichelt 46:57

Well, I hope you found something in that conversation that was helpful. And remember, there is so much more helpful information in the ebook that is available for free. You can find the link to download the ebook in the episode notes, as well as all of the other great resources that Tiffany and Louise mentioned as we were talking. Please do share this ebook far and wide. We would love to get it in the hands of everybody who is helping to support young people experiencing School Can't. whether they are parents and carers or health and education professionals. If you have some feedback for us, a suggestion for a future topic or if you would be willing to share your own lived experience story and people love our lived experience stories, please do drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, and many of us do a lot of the time, please remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Thank you again for listening and we will talk again soon. Take care.