Hi ,

Last week I shared some information about burnout, what it is and how it links with masking. If you missed it, you can read last week's newsletter here. This week I'd like to share my son's recovery story and I hope to highlight that what is needed most of all is time, patience, love and compassion.

There is no quick fix for burnout. In fact, if the recovery process is rushed then children can go backwards and end up needing even longer to recover. In the home education world there is a concept called ‘deschooling’. It is the period of transition time that is thought to be required after coming out of school and before starting home education. It is time for both the child and the parents to adjust to learning without the rigidity and formality of the school system. The amount of time required for deschooling is commonly recognised as one month per year of schooling. So for example with my son, he came out of school in Year 4 (aged 9) and he started formal education in Nursery aged 3 so his deschooling was expected be to approximately 6 months. 

Whilst deschooling is not the same as burnout recovery, I found that for my son this ‘calculation’ of one month per year of schooling was surprisingly accurate for the amount of time that he needed for his initial recovery period. By no means was he back to his old self after 6 months but things did start to get better after this period. It took 5 months for us to see any improvement at all. In fact initially, things got even worse than when he was at school (I now understand this is common – the child responds to feeling safe and stops ‘holding it together'). This was the hardest time. This was the time when I regularly doubted whether I was doing the right thing. The time when I wondered whether having my son at home was making things worse. The time when well-meaning family asked us questions about what my son did all day and I felt guilt, shame and doubt. But…deep down I knew. I knew what was best for my son and I knew he needed time. I had an image of him as a little bird with a broken wing and I felt in my heart that I needed to help him mend before he could attempt to fly. It was at this time that I was fortunate to come across a wonderful lady called Heidi Steel. Heidi is an ex teacher who home educates her children and she has a company called Live Play Learn. She teaches families about deschooling and unschooling and supports them on their journey. Heidi helped me feel confident that I was doing the right thing and learning about the deschooling calculation really helped me to ‘wait it out’ and not give up too soon. 

After 5 months of my son not getting dressed, sitting wrapped in a blanket watching YouTube with the curtains closed he seemed to be ‘ready’ for the next step. I wish I could be clearer about how we knew. I suppose it was little things; him letting me sit and watch YouTube with him or play Roblox, him not getting angry with us so easily, him dressing his lower half rather than being naked. I felt that he was ready for us to gently encourage the next step but I knew we couldn’t push too hard and that it needed to be something linked to his interests. I knew doing anything in a group would be too much but I thought it would be helpful for him to spend some time with an adult other than me and my husband. I was also aware of the importance of exercise for mental health and wellbeing. My son loved watching parkour/free running on YouTube and I was recommended a local gymnastics instructor. The instructor was fantastic and I will be eternally grateful to him (thanks Jun at Infinity Gymnastics). Jun called his gymnastics sessions parkour so that my son would go for it and it got my son out of the house twice a week. This was massive – getting dressed, leaving the house, doing exercise, communicating with another adult and regaining some confidence and self-esteem.

After another month this led to us getting my son to do one-to-one skateboard lessons once a week. He also managed to join a small group of 3 children doing fun outdoor education type activities. If I skip forward to exactly a year since my son left school, out of the blue one day he said that he thought he’d like to go back to rugby. This was a big deal - rugby was in a school hall with lots of other children and he hadn't been for 2 years. We took him and he was excited on the way there but when he walked through the door, he froze. You could see that he wanted to go off and play and all the kids were saying "come and play" (they were so lovely!) He just stood there bright red and cried. He literally couldn’t move from the spot. After about 20 minutes he managed to join in a little. That was in January and he’s still playing every week now.

The boys at rugby would say to each other “see you at school tomorrow” and they would talk about things that happened at school. One day my son asked me whether he could go to their school! We took it slow and he did 3 days initially and he’s been full-time since Easter. It’s hard for him as it’s quite a long journey so it’s an early start and he is not a morning person! He’s a perfectionist and is so hard on himself so even though his teachers say he is doing well, he thinks he is “dumb” (his words). Being around other children all day is a lot for him and he is exhausted when he gets home. He worries about everything.

I’m not sure what is going to happen next. My son has recovered from burnout and has made it back to school so in terms of the burnout story then we have a successful ending. However, in terms of the school system and whether it’s right for highly sensitive children like my son, sadly I don’t think so. My son’s new school have been amazing and I hope he can make it to the end of Year 6 but I just don’t see how a child like him is meant to survive secondary school. And look at my use of language…'survive'…I don’t want him to be in an environment where his energy is spent on trying to get through the day and counting down the years until adulthood - that’s not living! Anyway, he's in Year 5 so for now we're trying to take it day by day and being self-employed means that I can home-educate again if we make that decision at any point. 

If you’ve got to the end of this newsletter then thank you. Thank you for listening to my story. If it would feel helpful for you to share your story with me then please do reply – I read and reply to all my emails and I’d be honoured to witness your journey. 

I’ll be back next week with some burnout recovery tips in bullet point format so that you have something a bit more straight to the point to follow but I do hope that you have found this newsletter helpful. 

Hanna