#8 - Understanding burnout in our young people with Dr Naomi Fisher

Dr. Naomi Fisher joins host Leisa Reichelt and School Can’t Australia director Tiffany Westphal to explore how school can contribute to burnout in young people. They discuss recognizing burnout, distinguishing it from anxiety or depression, and what parents can do to help.

Dr. Fisher, a clinical psychologist specializing in child development, trauma, and self-directed education, supports parents of neurodivergent children struggling in traditional schooling. She advocates for alternative education approaches that prioritize autonomy and well-being. Her books, including Changing Our Minds and A Different Way to Learn, empower parents to rethink education, while her latest, The Teenager's Guide to Burnout, offers essential guidance on stress and recovery.

Recommended Resources:

• Naomi’s website (books, courses, webinars) - https://naomifisher.co.uk/
• Think Again: Naomi’s substack/newsletter - https://naomicfisher.substack.com

Transcript

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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. We are joined today by a very special guest, Dr. Naomi Fisher. Dr. Fisher is a UK based clinical psychologist who specializes in parenting and education and has her PhD in autism. On her website, she says 'the thread that ties her work together is her willingness to take a step outside the conventional and to challenge the status quo, even when others disagree.' So I think she's going to fit in perfectly around here. Tiffany Westphal, who is a director at School Can't Australia, is also joining me today to talk with Naomi about burnout in our kids. Where does it come from? How can we recognize it, and what should we do? Alright, then let's get started. Naomi, I think you are going to be pretty well known, amongst the people who are, listening to this and people in the School Can't community in Australia and probably all over the world. I would love to hear from you just like a potted history of Naomi's life. What's the pathway you've gone through to get you to doing the work that you do today?

Dr Naomi Fisher 1:30

Right. Well, I think it really probably started when I was five and I started school and I really, really didn't like it. So my first school experience was one of feeling really unhappy and feeling really alienated at school. So actually, I started to say I didn't want to go to school when I was five and my parents changed the school and that was okay. My next school was very different, alternative, progressive school and it was all fine. But because of my parents' work, we moved a lot. So I actually went in total to about 11 different schools when I was growing up. We lived overseas and then we came back to the UK and when I was about 13 and a half, I started another school, big comprehensive, secondary school and that was where I was really unhappy. I really disliked it in so many ways, and it actually made me start to feel ill when I was at school. My throat would swell up, I would get sore throat. And at the times, this was the, early 1990s, the, the response was to take me to the doctor, and the doctor said I had glanular fever, which I didn't have. I did a blood test and it showed that I didn't have it, but the doctor said, that's okay, we can give you that diagnosis anyway, which was effectively my ticket to attending school part-time or to being out school quite a lot of the time. Anyway, so I have my own experience of, at the time that was called school phobia. I remember even then at 13 or 14 thinking, hang on a minute, this isn't a phobia because I know what a phobia is. That's when you are really scared of something that isn't really scary. This isn't the case with me and school. School is just awful. And I think that in a way I was able to have that thought because I'd been to so many different schools and I had been to other schools where I was happy and I was fine. So I think that perspective has really informed everything I do now as an adult. Particularly when I hear about the things that parents are being told to do in order to get their children to go to school. And I always think about myself and I think, well, would that have helped? And usually the answer is no. That would not have helped. I don't know whether people are told this in Australia, but in the out of lots of parents are told that the problem is that home's too fun. Home's too nice. If your child's having trouble at school and so you're told to make home less pleasant.

Leisa Reichelt 3:51

I was told that last week

Dr Naomi Fisher 3:53

really Yeah, it amazes me that anybody can think that the child's really unhappy in one place. So the answer is make them more unhappy in the other place where they're okay. I mean, from a mental health perspective, I cannot see how that is ever going to work out well. I'm a clinical psychologist. I had a PhD in autism that I did before my clinical psychology, wasn't thinking about. School issues or anything. But then I decided not to send my own children to school. Partly because I thought when my eldest was young, I thought he would be a very bad fit for school actually. I thought that school could go quite quickly, go quite wrong. And so we home educated for quite a while and then they've been to various different alternative schools and alternative settings. So I've got a kind of firsthand view on. What it's like when children don't go to school and how they learn out of school. And then as they started to get a bit, a little bit older and went to a learning setting rather than being at home all the time, I had more time to think and I was starting to think about my first book, Changing Our Minds, because I was thinking as my, my training as a clinical psychologist and what I see happening in schools. So much do not come together. You know, the things that I was taught that children need, the things that I can see that my own children need isn't what we're providing in schools. And then what's happening is when the children don't fit into that system we're pathologizing the children, rather than saying, hang on a minute, maybe we've designed a system that really isn't fit for a lot of our children. We are saying, oh, we've got children who aren't fit for a lot of our schools. How do we squeeze the children in? How do we make the children less different? How do we, you know, make sure they can do everything on schedule that we want for school? And particularly seeing in the last 20 years in the UK, and I don't know if it's the same in Australia. The education system here has got much more exam focused, much more pressured, much more kind of what they call accountability, but what it means is testing children all the way through school. It's become a very anxious system right from the start, and it means there's very little flexibility. And I think it's odd that that system's been changed without anybody ever saying, what the impact will be on those children in terms of their wellbeing. It's like everybody's so focused on exam results are the answer, we've got to drive up standards, we've got to raise expectations. We've got to get a hundred percent attendance. Nobody ever seems to stop think, and if we introduce this test for six year olds, I wonder what impact that might have on their anxiety levels or their parents' anxiety levels or the teacher's anxiety levels? Nobody seemed to ask that at all. And at the same time, so as my children got a bit older, I've worked in various places as a clinical psychologist, but I was working in a neurodevelopmental team in South London. I was seeing lots of children who had waited for about two years for an assessment. They were coming to us for an autism or an ADHD assessment, and they were often desperate for this diagnosis. And the reason was that basically school had said there's can be no extra help available unless you get this diagnosis. And then they were sent and put on this waiting list for two years. And I would listen to the stories the children were telling me, almost always about how school was very difficult and had gone wrong. I would think, but the only thing I can do now as a clinical psychologist is write a report about all the things that you can't do, all the things that you are aware, you are effectively not measuring up. There is no avenue for me to write something which says I'm concerned about what's going on in your school. Actually, I'm concerned that since you brought in this very punitive behavior system, we are seeing increasing levels of highly distressed young people over here in health. There's no feedback system. They very rarely ask psychologists about education. In fact, if you try and say anything, you'll get told very quickly that you have nothing to say and that you don't understand what you're talking about and that you're not a teacher. Of course, I'm absolutely not a teacher. But I do work with young people and I do hear about them. And also I do have training in how young people develop and how they learn. And I feel like we've developed these schools, which unfortunately are not psychologically healthy places for young people. Then what we are doing is blaming the young people and their families rather than thinking about how we could redesign school. So that's an elaborate potted history. I apologize.

Leisa Reichelt 8:17

That's okay. We covered a lot of very relevant ground there. Thank you. So you've written a bunch of very, very helpful books The latest one that you've written is actually to the teenagers. And it's about burnout. Why did you feel that you needed to write a book about burnout and why to teenagers?

Dr Naomi Fisher 8:38

Well, 'cause parents were often saying to me. What about our teenagers? You know, we've read your books. We like your books. They've helped us change our mindset about what's going on at school. They've helped us see that perhaps the problem isn't our children, but perhaps it's actually the system. But our teenagers the books aren't accessible to them. They're not interested in reading them. They don't listen to what I say. And they still very much believe that they are the problem, not the system. And often they're still in that system and they're being told explicitly that they are the problem. I worked with one boy who was told at school that if he didn't keep attending every day, he'd end up under a bridge. And there are lots of other kids I met who were told things like that. And they were so despairing these teenagers because, I think back to my own experience and I remember what it was like to really not be thriving at school and to find school attendance so difficult. At least I knew that there were other places where I had felt happy and okay, and because of that, I had the faith that there would be another place where I would be okay. Whereas I think when you have kids who've gone through one school or two schools, and it's always been like this. They don't have that sense of hope, that actually, you know, you, you'll leave school, everybody leaves school, it finishes. The bizarre thing about school is once you've got over the age of school, nobody will let you go back, even if you really wanted to, it's a one chance thing in terms of age, it is a discreet phase of life, but I think for teenagers it doesn't feel like that. Particularly when they're told school is the only way you're going to succeed.

Leisa Reichelt 10:13

It might be a once off thing, but it's like if you mess this up, the consequences

Dr Naomi Fisher 10:17

will be lifelong life. Yes. They're told that all the time, and I just wanted to present something that said, you know what? That doesn't have to be that way because that hopelessness is, I think the worst thing. It's the thought that not only is my life really awful now, it's going to be like this forever because of this particular phase of life.

Tiffany Westphal 10:38

It's really important that we challenge that, sense because there's such a strong narrative and schools drive it and governments drive it, this idea that you have to get an education to make a success of yourself, you know that you have to have been to school. And it's just that people don't know any of the other alternatives really. I always get really distressed when people say to me, the pediatrician said, we shouldn't home educate or we shouldn't do distance education.

Dr Naomi Fisher 11:03

People say things and I think with home education or with education outside of school, it's one of those things that professionals are often very prepared to say things on when they actually don't know. You know, it's like they present societal misconceptions as a medical opinion, which I think is really dangerous because it gets such a lot of extra weight because it's being said by a professional. And yet all it is is what they've read in the newspaper or what someone said to them, or what they've seen happen to the child down the road. They're not medically trained to know about home education or alternatives.

Leisa Reichelt 11:35

Let's dig into burnout.

Dr Naomi Fisher 11:37

Yeah, Sorry.

Leisa Reichelt 11:38

No, no, that's fine. Like it's hard 'cause there's just so, there's so much to cover, I think we have people who, definitely know that their child is in burnout because they like literally collapse into a darkened room., yes. but my experience with my son is a little bit different we gave him enough accommodation that he could just keep his nose above the water. He didn't quite get to collapse, but he absolutely was not fun at all for him. He's still very much in recovery at the moment. How can a parent know, what are the signs that what you're seeing is actually burnout? That it's not, they're a bit tired or they need to get some more exercise and some fresh air. It's not anxiety that it is actually burnout.

Dr Naomi Fisher 12:21

Yeah, so burnout is really interesting because it's not in the diagnostic manual that we use as psychologists and psychiatrists to diagnose what would be called mental disorders is the manual. That isn't the terminology I'd use, but that's the terminology. Um, it's because it's defined as an occupational phenomena rather than a medical problem. I like that. The fact that it's like that because basically what it's saying is burnout isn't actually a problem in the person. It's a problem of the environment of chronic stress. So essentially when you're in an environment of chronic stress for a long time, you feel trapped in that environment. At some point, your body and brain goes, no more can't do it anymore. I'm just cutting out effectively. And I do think it's related to this kind of hopelessness. It's like, there's no way out of this for me. The only thing I can do is grow up to the point where nobody's going to make me go to school anymore. There's no other way out. So I just cut out and it's absolutely not intentional. It's an unconscious thing of your brain and body. Just say enough. I think you're right. There are the young people are very clearly in burnout and it's like, I can't leave the house. I don't want to do anything. Nothing brings me any joy anymore. I have no energy for anything. And then there are the young people where it kind of seems to be bobbing along. And I think the really key thing that I say to parents to look out for is a loss of excitement about doing anything, even the things they used to enjoy. That can gradually creep up on people. People often say they lose their spark, so they lose their spark about school stuff quite quickly. Often, you know, none of it's interesting. Doesn't matter what the school offers, it's not interesting. I don't want to do it. I'm not curious anymore. I'm not asking questions anymore. But then when it starts to spread to, I'm just not curious about anything anymore. So, you know, maybe they used to really enjoy making really complicated Lego models and now they're just like, just don't want to, can't be bothered. So there's kind of just sense of apathy and lethargy that spreads to everything. I think that is a really key sign that this is something quite serious. Life is now, you're just going through the motions and you're just going through the motions at home and at school. It doesn't really matter what happens, you are still just going through the motions. There might be a couple of days when people are like that in life, but if that's happening on a sustained basis and you're looking back and thinking, you know, for the last six months it's just kind of like nothing is interesting. I think you need to start being concerned. And of course the thing is that teenagers move a bit more into that kind of stage slightly anyway, so there can be confusion of is this just being a normal teenager? But I think that when there is just no desire to do anything. Even like when they're with their friends, they're not animated. When they're playing a video game, they're not animated. There's no kind of, oh yeah, that would be nice. That sort of spark. When that's not there, then I think that's a sign that you are either in burnout or that they are heading. Quite quickly towards that.

Leisa Reichelt 15:21

I think that's really helpful because I think especially when you have teenagers, like you say, there is a little bit of that natural inclination anyway, and I've heard so many people and I've definitely had the feeling myself where you go, is this kid just getting lazy? Is he, can he just not be bothered anymore? Is my job actually to push that? What I should be doing now is to not let him get lazy, keep him motivated, keep pushing and it can take time, I think, can't it to distinguish.

Dr Naomi Fisher 15:46

It's very subtle.

Tiffany Westphal 15:48

I just want to ask, a lot of the, signs of burnout seem very similar to signs of depression too? Yeah. And I think, that was the first thing that our general practitioner, did an assessment on my child for depression. Mm-hmm. And so then that, ensued a certain treatment plan, I just wonder if you have some reflection on the difference?

Dr Naomi Fisher 16:10

What were they asked to do for depression?

Tiffany Westphal 16:11

Oh, medication. Okay. And, you know, CBT and coping skills, but

Leisa Reichelt 16:18

Get outside. Go for a walk. Get some fresh air and go talk to people. All of these things which,

Tiffany Westphal 16:23

More demands, which do sound like a good idea. Exercise. Yep.

Dr Naomi Fisher 16:26

Yep. So, I mean, it's. First thing to know is that this whole area is much more vague than everybody thinks it is. When we say given a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, that means that we know what that is and that's different to everything else. In fact, it's all much more blurred. We know now from science that basically you can't divide people up easily into different diagnostic groups. They're all much more. It's just a lot more complicated. So I think the main problem with a diagnosis of depression is that basically, again, puts the problem back into the child. Yeah. So it says we need to change their reactions to this environment, which is, why you've got the medication or the CBT and I think the absolutely key thing is that people need to be thinking, so what's going on in this child's life that isn't working for them? Rather than, what's wrong with this child right now? And that should be the first port of call. Because even if a child's depressed, the first question should be, so why are they depressed? It isn't just something that arises out of nowhere. Yeah, a lot. Depression is about reaction to life circumstances in the same way as burnout can be. So let's think about what's going on in their life before we think about how to change them. I'm a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so I don't prescribe medication it can sometimes help, but none of these things should be used to try and push a child back into an environment that wasn't working for them. That's the thing. I don't think any intervention should be used in that way. The first thing should be why is this not working for this child? We need to be open with, there needs to be the idea, maybe school isn't the right place for this child. Maybe this school isn't the right place for this child.

Tiffany Westphal 18:06

I agree. One of the things we say at School Can't Australia is that we need to look upstream of mental ill health. Because mental ill health is like smoke in relation to a fire. It's what's caused the house to catch fire. What's going on for that kid? What are the stressors? Often mental ill health is. Like physical ill health. If you are stressed for long enough, you become mentally unwell. You become eventually physically unwell, and that's what's happening to our kids.

Dr Naomi Fisher 18:37

Yeah. One of the things I say in the burnout book, is that these things are signs, not causes. So I think there's a, there's a picture from one of my other books where a child holding up semaphore flags and they say on them things like self harm, meltdowns and controlling behavior. They're all signs that things aren't going right in this child's life. Signs of distress. Yeah, signs of distress. Exactly. And people show their distress in different ways, people develop depression. Some become very anxious, some go into burnout, some develop eating disorders or OCD. There are all sorts of different ways to respond to distress and we can get overly fixated on which bit of distress is you and how do we deal with that rather than what's going on upstream to cause so many distressed young people. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 19:25

So we have a child, we think to ourselves. It's quite possible that they're not being lazy, that they're actually having a reaction to an environment, and this is what I'm seeing here is some burnout. In an ideal world, as a parent, what do I do then?

Dr Naomi Fisher 19:43

Oof. Only there was an ideal world. It's funny we alluded already, didn't we, to how this period of life is always talked about as being particularly crucial, which effectively means there's less flexibility in this stage of life than any other stage of life. And also a kind of catastrophic projection about this stage of life that there isn't about another stage of life. Because if an adult is heading towards burnout. It might be okay, you need a bit of time off, you need to take some time off and just regroup a bit and have time to think about what's going on. I think often what parents want and what young people want as well, actually, and certainly what schools want is a solution. Let's fix this, let's put this in place so that they'll be able to carry on. I think the first stage of recovering from burnout is just to stop for a bit and say, let's just breathe. Let's just take some time without thinking about solutions right now, and just think about reconnection. Try to build a relationship with your child that isn't to do with school, because when school is going wrong for a child, everything in that child's life can become about school and how it's not going well because parents are drawn in, aren't they? They, you know, it is the parent's job to get them to school every morning. It's the parent's job to patch them together in the evenings and to help them get their homework done. Sometimes if a child's really struggling at school, parents will invest money in tutors. I was talking to this, autistic young man who doesn't like maths. He's at college now and he really doesn't like maths. And he said his mom was trying to get him to do extra maths out of college. And he said to her, in what world is the answer to hating maths to do more maths? In the whole school world, that is pretty well the answer my son did go to preschool for a bit and he didn't like preschool. He went a couple of mornings a week and the original answer to that was more preschool. So the staff said, if he's struggling with two come five mornings a week.

Tiffany Westphal 21:36

There's another one of those narratives though, isn't it too, that when somebody finds something difficult, we say you need to learn to push through that, or you need to learn to be able to cope better or be more resilient or, and the only way to do that is to have more of that experience because you learn that it's not so bad. Then we start to use exposure plans and we're like, you know, you're going to push through the distress. You're going to realize that your brain is tricking you and it's not that bad.

Dr Naomi Fisher 22:07

And that's when you get burnout. I think when you've been told, it is a recipe for burnout. If we tell parents you've got to make home less pleasant, you must not allow them to do things that they enjoy at home. Well, that's going to go well. And you must force them to go into school by whatever means possible. I've heard parents told things like, you should take them in their pajamas, put the clothes in the car, take them in. I've had people say, the head teacher said they would come and pick them up from home so that you wouldn't have to get them in the car.

Tiffany Westphal 22:36

Or give them a special job before school, feeding the school pets.

Dr Naomi Fisher 22:39

Absolutely. Yes. Get them in. Yeah. And then if you just think about that with adults, if you thought about an adult who was saying, I'm really struggling with this job, it really isn't making me feel good. I've had jobs like that. I really don't like being there. Would we say, well, the answer is to do less nice things at home and to keep going no matter what. I had a job as an adult where, I was working in an open plan office and I just found it really difficult for many reasons, but it started to make me feel physically ill again. And I think for me, I experienced my stress very physically and I know that now. I didn't know that when I was a teenager. Now I notice when I'm starting to get these kind of prickly feelings and I'm starting to get them at night as well, I've got a little red flag going up in my brain going, okay, this is high stress for me. This isn't working well. And I was able to quit that job. I felt bad about it. I was still in my probation period, but I was like, I don't think this is going to get better for me because this is how the job is set up. I can go and find another job. We don't allow children that same basic autonomy of this isn't working for me. I need something different. And I don't really understand why we have such a different approach. You're absolutely right Tiffany. It's a recipe for burnout to make life less fun at home, and then make sure they go into the place they're not happy and you break that relationship with the parents. And that's, I think, the thing that really needs to be rebuilt in this recovery stage. The parent needs to be saying, I'm sorry that I did these things. I was told that I had to. I did it out of good intentions and now let's reconnect on the things that are important to you. So finding those things where there is still a teeny little bit of, oh yes, I might like to do that. If it's, cooking cupcakes at 11.30 at night, or if it's playing video games together, I talked to one mother who said her 14-year-old came out of school and for a while, she was just literally in her room. Didn't do anything. And then I saw her 'wants' coming back and I liked that little thing of her 'wants', you know, that she wanted to do something again. And I think that's when you start to see the tiny signs of emergence from burnout. But young people rarely get to that point until they're confident that that will not mean that they're quickly forced back into school. Because the, the dilemma that you have as a young person who's not attending school 'cause you're in burnout, is the moment you start to look at all better. People will say, great, let's get a plan back in place for you to go back to school. It's an impossible situation. And it's not consciously impossible, they're not consciously thinking, I mustn't get better. It is literally impossible to get better if you know that's just going to mean a quick return to the place that made you so unwell in the first place.

Leisa Reichelt 25:19

Yeah, I feel so guilty listening to this. I really do. Well, because it can just take, it's like you, we get so indoctrinated, don't we, on the way through as like what needs to happen. All the other messages really are, you just need to do everything you possibly can to keep them at school. Try this, try this, try this, try this, and you work your way through all of these different ways. And actually all you're doing is prolonging the situation. Yeah. Once you do finally see the light and you have a burnt out young person at home, how do we not let ourselves do exactly what you described. How do we stop ourselves from going, oh look, they're getting better now we can do things and not feel guilty as a parent, you're just constantly feel like you're walking the line of being negligent in one way or negligent in another way. Right? How do we make sure when we are looking after our young people in burnout that we're not actually being negligent parents by just giving them all the time and space to do whatever they want to do, even if that's absolutely nothing except sitting in front of a screen watching YouTube.

Dr Naomi Fisher 26:30

Isn't it funny how with children, we are always kind of in these dichotomies as well? 'cause I get told this all the time. You mean you just do nothing or we just do nothing? No, basically, I think it's a, it's a, needs to be a conscious shift in direction because we are all told that the way to a happy, healthy, functioning child is through school. That is the only way, and that if we can channel them through school, then all the other stuff will follow. And I've been told that actually, I've been on Twitter, I've been told that by teachers, when I say wellbeing is really important, they'll say, well, when they're doing well at school, then they'll feel good about themselves. That's the root to wellbeing and the problem is if you are a child who isn't doing well and who isn't thriving, then that route isn't working for you. That route of you must do well at school and then you will be allowed to be happy. I have to say I don't think it works for those who do do well at school as well, particularly, but that is what we're told. So I think as the parent, you need to effectively take a really conscious shift the other direction and go, we are going to focus on wellbeing first. Because actually that's the foundation of growing up to be a fully functioning adult, that right at the base we have to have wellbeing. That might mean making some controversial decisions. It might mean saying, actually yes, we might be out of school for a bit, because actually wellbeing is more important at this stage. And do you know what? Academics can come later? You don't have to do it when everybody else does it. It is possible and actually sometimes easier to come back and do those things in your late teens or even your early twenties. But the wellbeing part, once that's gone, that's really hard to get back. Particularly wellbeing in your teen years because it's a foundational stage of human development when you are forming this identity of yourself. And I think that's why I sometimes meet parents who've done things like take their kids away traveling for six months. And I think that that's partly because that's feels just a bit more socially acceptable than we're just going to take them out of school for six months. You know, it's like we're having a great family adventure and we're doing this thing. And you can kind of frame it as a educational experience, which of course it's in lots of ways, but it's also just a way to, to, it's like a circuit break, I meet families who've taken their kids traveling for a few months. And that has led to a kind of re-imagining of how is this going to work now? Because it's, let's think about it. 'cause that you've built in that space. I think when you've got a child who's struggling at school, your whole family life is taken over with that. There's no space to take stock I remember it well myself. It's like that sort of rollercoaster of Sunday evening kind of down 'cause you've got a whole week to go and then you kind of gradually building up during the week and you get to the weekend and then it's like, whoosh, down we go again. It's just relentless. There's no time to stop and think. One of the things I say to parents is. You are on this rollercoaster always hoping that things are going to get better. You are always thinking, if we just do this, maybe it will all be better and you can be on that rollercoaster for years. Eliza Fricker, who was the illustrator of the book actually her daughter had lots of trouble at school and didn't attend secondary school, but she said we did eight years of maybe this thing will get better, maybe this will work. Meetings at school, endless. Just this kind of up and down. It's an awful place to be and that actually leads to parental burnout as well as young people. 'cause you're on this sort of adrenaline rush that, you know, highs and lows all the time. So I think the first thing to do is if as a parent you can get a bit of space to reflect away from your child, just to think about what is it really like right now, and if it carries on being just like this, there's no kind of happy ever after moment when everybody becomes happy at school. Is it okay? If we just carry on like it is now, am I going to feel okay about that? If that carries on until they're 18, and if not. Well then just think about that. That is the reality. That's what's really there because often we don't, we don't compare what reality is with other options. We compare what we would like it to be like with other options. So we think, obviously I would prefer them to be happy and thriving at school. That's my number one, that's what I'd like. But what about if that actually isn't an option? What about if we take that one off the table? Because it's not happening and it hasn't happened despite all these years of trying. And actually what we've got is this current situation. Then what is, what might be the other options? Might there be something else that might be better in that case?

Leisa Reichelt 31:07

You're describing my life right now. Honestly, Naomi, I've just been through this exact process. I went to the school today to withdraw my son the last attempt for now at at at at schooling, because Yeah, exactly that. You know, it is been such a difficult few years and we've tried so many things and the experience for him has been just consistently awful. And it's like, how many more years are, are we going to go through this? It's just, yeah, life's, life's too precious.

Tiffany Westphal 31:40

I say to people, my daughter survived 10 years of trying to be at school. And we pulled her out at the beginning of this year. We had a lovely high school though. You know, I chose a secondary school that was trauma informed and, neurodiverse affirming and, really great school. But the trauma from primary school came with her.

Leisa Reichelt 32:00

That's exactly what I was saying to the principal today. This school is a great school. If we'd have brought my son here, two or three years ago, he probably would've had an amazing time. But I think he's just so damaged by all the things that we've tried that no school environment is going to work right now. So we have a little reset.

Tiffany Westphal 32:19

trauma is really sticky, once you get to that point where your nervous system is so impacted by your past experiences, you know, our children need safety. They don't have anything left to navigate something that feels unsafe. So, yeah, my daughter's at home recovering. Recovery will take as long as it will take. I've said that to her, she hasn't been able to leave the house since before Christmas. She managed to go have a haircut. She slept for half a day afterwards. She connects with me for co-regulation and hugs. She thinks dad's hugs are not as good as mine, so it's got to be me or the dog. And that's the way we're rocking and rolling at the moment, is food, hugs, sleeping, listening to music, watching videos.

Leisa Reichelt 33:08

Well, the good news for us, Tiffany, is that Naomi's just told us we should plan a big adventure and go traveling. No, I couldn't. My, my child wouldn't have

Tiffany Westphal 33:17

capacity for that at the moment

Dr Naomi Fisher 33:19

People get to different points, don't they? You get to the point of total breakdown and then it's like there aren't any choices anymore there because they just can't go. There is no way. when I'm talking about going away, traveling, it's like. We are heading in that direction, but I don't know quite how to stop this because perhaps school don't see a problem at all. Or perhaps, you know, we've been just bobbing along at this level for so long and there's no crisis pushing us. Then I think sometimes it's worth thinking about what I call a circuit breaker, and that's what I think going away is. It's like we can, we can do this before we get to that point of total breakdown. Because you're right, once you get to the point of total breakdown, you. No, no, no choice anymore.

Tiffany Westphal 33:59

Yeah, there's a huge difference between a child who is really early on in their, journey of distress in relation to school. If we can catch a child early, we can identify what those stressors are and do something about those stressors, that kid can go back happily to school and probably be fine. For some time. But the child who has persistently struggled again and again, who's experienced chronic stress, is the kind of kid who ends up burned out.

Leisa Reichelt 34:30

I think one of the other things, when you were talking about traveling you talked about the socially acceptable version of taking time out from school. I wonder if we can just touch briefly on the socially unacceptable way of taking time out from school, which is to sit in your darkened room with the curtains drawn in front of a screen gaming or, doing things on screens. You know there you've combined two of the most difficult social aspects of parenting, which is not being at school and letting your kids have extensive amounts of screen time. Are you able to speak to that briefly?

Dr Naomi Fisher 35:01

Yes. So I mean, these are the things that activate our bad parenting kind of schema, I would say, aren't they? In one of the, the other book we've done that When The Naughty Step Makes Things Worse, which is my other book with Eliza, which is about parenting, we talk about the good parent tm, like what good parenting good parents do, and what everybody, the things that everybody accepts as a society that good parents should do. And sending your child to school is number one, I'd say, of being a good parent. And then limiting screen time is another part then there are all the things like making them share and take turns and please and thank you, and all those kind of things that are

Leisa Reichelt 35:39

lots of sport.

Dr Naomi Fisher 35:40

Oh yes. Playing sport, you've got to get your tick boxes of what the well performing child does. Because I say that they, they basically judge parents by what their child does. So the child is the outcome. If your child is performing up to these level, then you are a good parent that reflects back on you. What that means is that the parents who have the hardest time parenting feel absolutely awful about themselves the parents, you have a really straightforward time, feel great about themselves, and everybody thinks they're doing great. I remember noticing this when my children were very small and they weren't sleeping through the night at all. and the parents who had babies who slept through the night were. Intolerably smug about it because they felt it was something that they had done.

Leisa Reichelt 36:26

That was me for baby number one. then I had baby number two and I realized it was nothing to do with me.

Dr Naomi Fisher 36:32

Baby number two is really good for that. Mine were actually the other way around, I had baby number one who didn't do any of the things, and baby number two, who did? And I was like, oh, okay. The same thing happens with things like coming out of school, there's the assumption isn't there, that if you had just done things differently, you wouldn't be in this position other parents say things like, oh, we just don't give us the option, which is really helpful. Um, so I think it's a really hard place to be as a parent and really hard place to hold as a parent because there's so much societal judgment. So I think the thing to do there is to really think about what your values are and why you're making that decision for your child, even if it doesn't feel like much of a decision. And I think it's about wellbeing. It's about saying we're going to prioritize wellbeing now. But also the other thing I often say to parents is whenever there's a difficult situation regarding your child. And particularly regarding the judgment of other people. Just think about what is the most important relationship here? Who, and it's always going to be the relationship with your child because pretty well all the other relationships, they will come and go. You know, all those people at school who seem so important now. Few years time, your child will have aged out of the school system. They will be past memories. They will not be involved in your child's life. You will still be involved in your child's life. You want this relationship with your child to be the longest relationship in your life, to be the longest relationship in their life. And so if you can build that up now, you are building something for the future for both of you.

Leisa Reichelt 38:05

Two quick ones to wrap up near me and then, I'll let you get back to your day. first one is the burnout book. Yeah, the Beautiful Burnout book, written for teenagers. probably mostly read by moms. Think so, yes. Hopefully also teenagers as well.

Dr Naomi Fisher 38:23

It's one to leave lying around.

Leisa Reichelt 38:25

I will respectfully submit that. If I could get this in YouTube shorts, it would really take off. Yeah.

Tiffany Westphal 38:32

my daughter's tolerating having me read parts of it to her and she's going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 38:37

That's true. But if you, for, you know, for moms who are reading it, yeah. If you could pick out like one or two, like really key messages that you would want them to take away, what would they be?

Dr Naomi Fisher 38:51

It isn't a disaster to stop going to school. It isn't a one chance thing you've got to do in life. It is okay for school not to work for a while. There is still going to be a future. There's still going to be a hope. And for parents, holding onto that hope for the future is our job, really, because teenagers find that really difficult. They don't have the same life experience as we do. They don't have the same experience of life having ups and downs. So often when they're down, it just feels like it's always going to be like this. I'm always going to be down. And particularly when they've been told. If you don't go to school, this will happen. This will happen then. There's never good things, is it? You're never told good things about what will happen if you don't go to school. So we need to actively counteract that as parents. And if you think about all the school propaganda there is out there, all the stuff we tell our children right from when they're three or four about how great school is. There's this place of opportunity and learning. If you are a child for whom it doesn't feel like that you're like, why? Why am I not? you think, why is it not like that for me? Is it because there's something wrong with me? So I think we really have to, as parents, counteract all of that propaganda. And that's why I wrote the book actually. 'cause parents said they won't listen to me. They don't believe what I say. So I thought, I want to have a book that shows that you as parents are not the only person saying this. You aren't the only people who are trying to present something different. There are other people out there

Leisa Reichelt 40:21

as I'm going to venture that they won't find this book in the local school library, though it probably won't be top of the pops for teachers, I don't think. Um, but that yeah, that resonates with me so much because when I finally decided that we were done with school for the moment. It took me weeks to get my son to even contemplate it because I'd been part of the propaganda machine for years, telling him how important school was

Tiffany Westphal 40:48

my daughter experienced intense grief for about four or five weeks after we made the decision. She's the third of my children and the other two finished school. She's sure she's never going to finish high school the way that her siblings did, and she may not. But her journey is unique and, it'll be what it'll be. And I'll always be here as her parent to provide that safe landing space and support. I'm not worried by it, but she is, holding space for grief and, helping her see the light and the future. That there will be a road to recovery. it's a slow one though.

Dr Naomi Fisher 41:24

It is. I think it because it can feel like you've canceled the future when you stop going to school. school has such a predictable thing, doesn't it? You keep going. You'll be in year nine. You'll be in year 10. You'll be in year 11. All you need to do is keep showing up and you'll keep moving up those layers. And then it feels like I've stepped off that and now what's happening? Are they all going off without me? Where am I going? Where's my progress? And it's, harder. It's always hard

Tiffany Westphal 41:46

to go the road less traveled.

Dr Naomi Fisher 41:49

Absolutely.

Leisa Reichelt 41:50

Finally, Naomi, if people want to find out more of all the great resources that you put out in the world, where is the best place for people to connect with you and learn more?

Dr Naomi Fisher 42:02

So my website is naomifisher.co.uk and you'll find links to all of my work there and you can join my mailing list. I also have a substack, which is called Think Again: Making Childhood Fit for Children. If you're not a social media person. Or if you don't want to sign up for mail list and things, then that's a newsletter that just comes once a week into your email. That's a good place if you want to share my posts, because I put lots of stuff out there on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, but it kind of disappears after a while. You know, it is hard to search it, but on the Substack you can go back and there's an archive of a couple of years of short things that I've written. those are the places to start.

Leisa Reichelt 42:39

Amazing. And I would thoroughly recommend the webinars that are on there. there's a whole selection and I personally have found them extremely helpful on difficult topics. we will put links to all of that in the notes so that people can go in and take a look for themselves. Well, thank you Naomi. It's been just such privilege hearing you talk and, and learning from you. And I really appreciate you taking the time.

Dr Naomi Fisher 43:04

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Leisa Reichelt 43:06

Okay. Well, how wonderful to have spent some time with Dr. Naomi Fisher today. Honestly, I could have spoken to her for hours and hours. She has so much wisdom and insight that's relevant to people who are trying to support kids struggling in mainstream school. I really do recommend taking a look at Naomi's website. She has an abundance of resources that tackles some of the stickiest topics that you're likely to come up against. I put a link in the episode notes for you to take a look. I also put a link to the School Can't Australia website, which has more resources and the opportunity to donate to School Can't Australia. Your tax deductible donations help us to raise community awareness, partner with researchers, produce resources like webinars and this podcast. All of these things assist people who are supporting children and young people experiencing School Can't. If you have an expert that you would like us to talk to on the podcast, please email us and let us know and we will do our best to get them on. You can email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. If you are a parent or a carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, remember you can always call the parent helpline in your state. A link with the number to call is also in the episode notes. Thank you again for listening. I hope you enjoyed meeting Naomi, and we will talk again soon. Take care.