From Flight Risk To Homeschool

THIS STORY BELONGS TO…

Louise

Our middle child is autistic. We had the diagnosis, professional reports and recommendations, and long meetings with learning support before he started kindergarten. The day before school began, I had a five-minute chat with his actual teacher. Not much had been passed on. The school told us no support would be put in place until they saw whether he was going to have problems. The warning signs were there from the start—we'd seen them at preschool occasionally.

They knew he was a flight risk. The school had low fences by a main road.

At school, fight or flight responses that weren't minor started showing pretty quickly. He trashed his classroom. He bit a teacher. One day, he ran off school grounds. A member of the public pulled him back from the road just before a car drove past. My anxiety was already high, but from this moment on was debilitating.

Constant early pickups. Suspension after suspension. Support came too late, and not enough of it. He was already in a state of high alert. His body had learned that school wasn't safe. His behaviour was his warning signal. Behaviour is communication and we needed to listen to it, but we didn’t and put our trust in the ‘experts’.

Eventually, we were told to try reduced hours. We did. We also saw all the specialists, trialled medications, despite not wanting to, because school told us he wouldn't succeed without it. At home, though, we didn't see the same issues. It was school where everything came apart.

Then school can't really began. First reluctance, then hiding. He'd strip off and wedge himself under the bed, knowing I couldn't get him out or take him anywhere like that.

School told us: carry him to the car in his pyjamas. When he gets to school he'll realise he made a bad decision.

We were also told by school not to make home enjoyable. No screens, no fun. So we followed the advice.

The meltdowns didn't stop. They just started happening at home too.

Every day we could, we drove him to school. Most days he stayed in the car. Still the advice didn't change. "Keep trying. Don't give up." Then, without warning, his support was pulled. No notice to us. No notice to his teacher. It was the beginning of term, the hardest time of adjustment. And guess what happened that first week? Suspended.

Eventually, the school told us he needed to be in a support class, but there wasn't a place available and we had to join the waitlist.

By then, we had a better understanding of his profile, autistic with a pathological demand avoidance (PDA) profile, and we had strategies we knew could help.

We met the support class team. Eight kids, a teacher, and an aide. They seemed experienced. But on his first week, he tried to run and was physically restrained. The school had tall fences and locked gates, so he couldn't get off the grounds. The trauma of that moment was huge. He couldn't even be near that teacher again.

He was moved into another class. The teacher had decades of experience in support, but had never heard of PDA. Her advice? "Get him to practise doing what he's told at home." We shared research, resources, examples of what works. It was all dismissed. Their compliance based strategies weren't just ineffective, they were making everything worse, escalating his distress and pushing him further into shutdown.

The school ran out of ideas. We were told that recommended PDA approaches "wouldn't work in a school setting." We were told again and again to just keep trying.

We had a meeting with his paediatrician, psychologist, teacher, principal, and the Department of Ed's psychologist. The plan from the school psychologist? Keep doing what we were doing. It might take a year. Maybe longer.

No one questioned the damage this was doing. No one said: "He’s in distress, this shouldn't be happening." Just to keep trying everyday.

Term 2 of year 3, we'd had a full term of sitting in the car at the school gate each morning, never going in. We gave up. We started homeschooling.

And then, finally, he came back to us. The child we hadn't seen in years started to reemerge. It took months of low demand, quiet recovery, and nervous system repair. But slowly, the constant distress faded. The 45-minute meltdowns stopped. That was three or four years ago. I genuinely can't remember the last time he had a meltdown.

Everything the school advised us to do was wrong. Not just ineffective. It caused harm. The funding system rewards crisis, not prevention. No professional ever suggested alternate education pathways.

This took a toll on our whole family. Our other children were affected. So were we. The anxiety, the constant phone calls, the dread every morning. The stress of having to fight for help while holding it all together. Instead of earning an income and paying taxes, I now rely on a carer's pension. I’d lost my independence. Every part of our life was rearranged around trying to survive school.

Our youngest lasted six months in kindergarten. Refusing school in the mornings. Suspensions. Reduced hours. We saw the writing on the wall. And this time, we didn't hesitate in pulling him out of school. But there's a three-month wait to be approved for homeschool, we had psychologist and paediatrician letters stating school was detrimental to his mental health and he should not attend school, which clearly his behaviour was communicating. The school's response? "It doesn't really matter what the doctor has to say, he legally has to attend school."

Sorry, no. I won’t ignore the advice of two medical professionals. My child’s mental health will not be compromised to satisfy school bureaucracy.

I'm pleased to say they are both absolutely thriving with home education. When children can learn in ways that match their neurological needs rather than being forced into systems that harm them, they flourish.

What I Wish Professionals Understood:

• In survival mode, learning is impossible.

• "Just keep trying" is slow harm, not strategy.

• PDA is neurological, not defiance—it needs collaborative approaches.

• If school isn't emotionally safe, it's trauma, not behaviour.

• Crisis-based funding causes preventable harm.

What I'd Do Differently:

• Trust my gut and homeschool sooner.

• Never sacrifice mental health for school expectations.

• Push harder for alternative education pathways.

Authors Info: Louise is a mum to two now homeschooled neurodivergent children. Above is her story of their early primary school can’t experience in NSW.