The School Can't Experience

#29 - Symone Wheatley-Hey's Lived Experience

• School Can't Australia • Season 1 • Episode 29

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In this episode of the School Can't Experience Podcast, host Leisa Reichelt speaks with Symone Wheatley-Hey, an advocate for neurodivergent voices in education. 

Symone shares her personal journey of navigating 'School Can't' as a sole parent to two neurodivergent children. The discussion covers Symone's experiences with home education, the impact of PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) on schooling, and the transformation her family underwent to overcome educational challenges. 

Symone also discusses the positive changes in her children's school and their re-integration into the education system. 

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

00:27 Introducing Symone Wheatley-Hey

02:27 Understanding Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)

07:58 Freddie's Story: Early Signs and Struggles

11:29 The Challenges of Homeschooling

25:05 Returning to School: A New Beginning

29:24 The Four Corners Experience

33:04 Final Thoughts and Resources

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If you are a parent of carer in Australia and experiencing distress, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or contact the Parent Help Line. - https://kidshelpline.com.au/parents/issues/how-parentline-can-help-you

You can contact us to volunteer to share your School Can't story or some feedback via email on schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com

Disclaimer
The content of this podcast is based on personal lived experiences and is shared for informational and storytelling purposes only. It should not be treated as medical, psychological, or professional advice under any circumstances. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please seek guidance from a doctor, therapist, or other qualified professional.

Leisa Reichelt:

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. Our guest today is Symone Wheatley-Hey you might already know of Symone, through her advocacy work for Square Peg Round Whole, who are focusing on centring neurodivergent voices in a fight for neuro affirming education. Or perhaps you saw Symone and her two boys on the Four Corners TV episode called Kids Who Can't Go To School. Symone is joining us today to share her personal story of School Can't and some of what she's learned along the way. Now, everyone's lived experience of School Can't is different, so a reminder that Symone's pathway was just the right one for her family and the best path for your family might be quite different. The takeaway should be that there are ways through this difficult time and our lived experience stories, hopefully give you some ideas and some encouragement along the way. I hope you enjoy hearing Symone's story. Well, Symone, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. So great to have you here.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I'm really excited to be here. It's my first podcast interview for a while, and it's also my first kind of public facing thing in the School Can't space since the Four Corners episode that my family was in. So I'm hoping I can give a little bit of hope to people who reached out to me saying, we are there. We see you. I'm so grateful that you've invited me and allowed me to come along.

Leisa Reichelt:

Oh, fantastic. That's so great. We might talk a tiny bit about Four Corners in a minute as well, but before we do tell us a little bit about you and your family and, what we need to know?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

My name is Symone Wheatley-Hey. I am a sole parent. I am a neurodivergent parent and I have two neurodivergent young people. So I have Henry who is my oldest, and he is in year seven. First year of high school this year. And then I have my younger child, Freddie, who is eight, so he's year three. We have had years and years and years of School Can't. Both of my children are neurodivergent. They're both autistic, they're both ADHD. We've got some other things going on there as well. Quite relevantly for our School Can't experience, they are both PDA. So for those people listening that don't know what that is, that is Pathological Demand Avoidance, which is a nervous system condition where ordinary demands are seen as giant threats. Someone once described it to me as the toaster setting off the fire alarm, and I think that's pretty accurate.

Leisa Reichelt:

Let's talk a tiny bit about what PDA at school looks like.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

It's difficult to specify specifically because it's fluctuating. So some days my children have got a much wider window of tolerance and they can cope with demands a lot more, and they can engage with the expectations and authority figures that just exist in the world and society and in school better. And then other days, the slightest demand can set off the fire alarm. What a lot of people perhaps miss about PDA is it can be absolutely debilitating for these young people. And it can be very, very distressing for them. And it's not only externally imposed demands as well. I remember vividly my eldest being given this money and he had planned out, he was gonna go buy an action figure. Super excited about it, had this plan. The plan became the demand. So when it came time to actually go and buy this figure that he'd been so excited about getting and so looking forward to, he couldn't actually do that. He couldn't do it, literally could not leave the house to go get it. He was avoiding his own demand, and the demand was something he actually wanted to do. And so that creates a shame and a self guilt and it's a really nasty experience for them. And it unfortunately then aggravates the avoidance to the demand, and it becomes a really, really tricky situation. When we look at a traditional school environment and we look at our system and we look at the way it's set up, and we look at many classrooms, they are not low demand environments. PDAers don't do great with"because I said so", or"because I'm the adult" or"because I'm the teacher" or"because I'm in charge". And those things are really innate to most school environments. And so the fire alarm goes off usually expressed as dysregulated behaviour or what is perceived as non-compliance. Consequences get imposed, which is unfair. PDAers can have a really strong sense of justice, so that then aggravates it. And yeah, it's difficult for, I would argue for all children in our school system. I think there's very few who find the traditional school model easy these days. It's particularly difficult for many neurodivergent and disabled young people because they're not accessibly designed systems. And it's particularly difficult for PDAers because not only is it inaccessible, it is also incompatible with their nervous systems. Yeah, it seems to be almost every parent of a PDA child I know of, that I've spoken to has a child who experiences School Can't.

Leisa Reichelt:

Symone, I just wanna circle back to something that you said earlier'cause it's something that I haven't considered about PDA in the past, which is that variability in the sensitivity to demands. Some days, you know, you've got the capacity for other days you don't. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like do we know what it is that makes some days less demand avoidant than others?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I suppose, and I don't know if this is something that your listeners are familiar with, but Spoon Theory is my favourite concept because I relate to it really heavily. I don't think I'm a PDAer, but I am autistic and I know that some days I have far less capacity for others. Some days I can get up and I can do the paperwork and I can wipe off my kitchen benches and pack the lunches. And then other days there's a piece of pasta in the sink and some water has gotten to it and it's all soggy and it's all over for the day and I just can't. It's fluctuating capacity and sometimes also, precedents. like how has the week been? How has the month been? There are things we can do to extend that window of tolerance. Things like providing the supports, providing the accommodations, making the environment accessible, building in downtime, and they help. But it's a dynamic disability, I suppose, or it's a profile of autism specifically. And autism is a dynamic disability, but the demand avoidance is dynamic in my home as well.

Leisa Reichelt:

So overly simplify it, it would be the PDA behaviours gonna increase when the spoons are running out.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Absolutely. It's something to be mindful of and to try and understand in terms of things like, what does my child's nervous system need? What sort of demands escalate them? What are the strategies, supports, accommodations I can provide to help extend or build or recoup that window of tolerance and those spoons? We're talking about the School Can't space, PDA is particularly sticky because PDA parenting is a whole different kettle of fish and there's a lot of judgment attached to that because it can come across as very indulgent, very weak, very passive, very,"that child gets what they want". The reality is it's actually probably the opposite. I think like many of us, we spend so much time, energy, effort parenting and doing things differently. And then when you add in the judgment that comes with School Can't, and the public shame and stigma that comes around that as well, it can be really, really difficult for parents of PDAers who also experience School Can't. Not that it's easy for any of us.

Leisa Reichelt:

Alright, let's talk a little bit about Freddie's story. Shall we? I would love for you to sort of go back, like if you look in retrospect for the signs that Freddie's experience was gonna be what it was. Can you see anything in retrospect that you didn't notice at the time?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Freddie, when he was in daycare, there were indicators. And so we had a lot of reluctance to attend, like even daycare when we're talking about early childhood and daycare. And that's a very different environment to a school. Kindy, we started seeing that I don't wanna go, the phone calls from school. The behavioural incidents that were handled as some schools handle behavioural incidents, which then make it even more difficult for our young people to go. He really struggled. So, when Freddie is experiencing dysregulated distress, he lashes out in what schools perceive as violent and aggressive behaviour. It is not necessarily directed purposefully at anyone. It tends to be either safe people. So who do I feel safe expressing these feelings to? Or people who insert themself into his kind of space when he's, when he's, having a tricky time. They're of course not seen particularly empathetically, generally. Not always, but generally they're perceived as tantrums, as aggression, I've heard them described as an assault on staff. and certainly I'm sure like an assault to the staff member, but there is certainly not that intention, that deliberate malice or anything down there. It's perceived as behaviouraly, when really I personally feel is a communication of a child's distress or that there's something happening that is not working for that child or that they're struggling with or need support with or something missing in their environment, things like that. It's behaviour is communication, Yeah. So we had kindie and then we started pre-primary. And then amongst all this of course is COVID,'cause we're talking 2021. So these poor young people, like all of our young people that was there was enough happening to throw them right off and to, to mix everything up and make everything harder for them. And then on top of that, Freddie had a very traumatised and distressed brother who was having severe mental health challenges, and expressing that trauma and distress in externalised ways. So poor Fred. It was a tricky year for him. And then he would go to school and then he behaved that, yeah, he couldn't cop a break that year, bless him. And it was a lot for him. that was really hard for all of us, but it was particularly hard for Freddie. And as a sole parent, you triage, right? When you have two children with support needs you kind of have to fight the fire that's gonna get outta control and burn the house down first. So. Poor Freddie often got next in line in terms of triaging and it was really difficult. Ironically it wasn't specifically the school or the teacher I genuinely believe they were doing the very best they could with what they had, with the knowledge, the support, the system, the policies, all the things that they were working with. I don't think it was a school teacher staff issue. I think it was Freddie was experiencing something that made the school system even more inaccessible for him. And the way things were then the school couldn't change enough to make it accessible for him. We couldn't remove those barriers. And so we went in homeschooling.

Leisa Reichelt:

That must have been a very, very difficult time for you, Symone.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

So difficult to describe looking back because to a degree, I don't actually remember so much of it. We were complete survival mode. It was at the point where keeping everybody safe was enough. On a good day, I keep everybody safe. Everything else came after that. And it was also at a stage where it was brand new. I didn't know how to handle them. We'd never seen it before and it was from zero to a hundred overnight. And it was just that we didn't know what to do. There were no services available. There was no one helping me. I was here with these two kids with their very, very extreme support needs and everything going on at the time. Just me. Obviously I was autistic too, didn't know I was autistic. That probably played into it a lot as well, my own support needs. It was really, really hard. I'm incredibly proud of my young people and my family that we got ourselves through that and that it has actually probably made us stronger as a result.

Leisa Reichelt:

What were you telling yourself about...?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

What did I do wrong? And I was so, so scared about what came next. Is he going to be okay? What's his future gonna hold? Will it be like this forever? Will we always be surviving every day? Will it always be this hard? Will it always be this sad? Will it always be such a fight, such a struggle? When will I have a day where it's not even good, but just okay? It was very, very difficult and you can't see an end in sight. You don't know when it's gonna stop. There is no, just get through this month and then it gets easier. It felt like it would be like that forever and I felt lost. And I also felt terrible that I couldn't help my child, who was going through so much pain and distress and struggling and suffering so much with everything that was happening for him. I didn't know how to help him. I didn't know how to soothe him even. Most of all, I didn't know at what point, what exactly have I done to let things get this bad? Where should I have done something differently? Where could I have stopped this happening? What if it keeps happening? What if it happens again? What if it gets worse?

Leisa Reichelt:

It's a really tough place to be, isn't it?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

A very hopeless and despairing place when you're in it. My heart just goes out to everybody who's still there because I vividly remember it. And it's a very, very dark place to be, and it's a very difficult place to be. Oh, and so lonely.

Leisa Reichelt:

Very lonely until you realize how many of us are actually going through it. Right.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

That's why I think spaces like the School Can't community are so, so, so important. Particularly carefully managed safe spaces where there isn't as much of a risk as secondary trauma or trauma dumping, but there is also access to that support and that experience and that sense of shared experience and understanding.

Leisa Reichelt:

So how long were you in that dark place and what did you do to realise that home education was the next thing for you

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I remember I was on a video call or a phone call. I can't remember Janelle Fraser of Aurora Learning, who is a neurodiversity education advocate here in WA. She supported me prior to my kids going into homeschooling. And she also supported us through our homeschool journey. And I remember at school, I can't remember the specific incident but I was on the phone to her and I was. despairing and struggling so much. Not because I was fighting with the school, but because I couldn't find the answers with the school. And it was so, so, so hard. I was battling incredibly hard and doing so much work to get my kids to school and have it last for 45 minutes, an hour, if that. Or, end in a suspension and my kid sent home. I just remember Janelle turning around and saying, you know, there are options. This is not your only choice. We went into homeschooling knowing from the start, this is not our end destination. This is not our path forever. Or that was at least my hope at the time, I had no idea whether it would be or not when we went into it. But the intention was always give ourselves a year or two of grace and then transition back into the system.

Leisa Reichelt:

Why was that your hope?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I didn't want to homeschool my children. I struggle in terms of my own regulation. I need a lot of time and space to myself. And quiet. I wanted to get my life on track. Sole parent so I needed to work financially. Homeschooling was never a choice. It was always a least worst option at the time. And so I pulled the kids outta school for those two years and we went into homeschooling with the intention of focusing less on the schooling part and more focus on the things we need to be able to go back to school eventually. So things like helping my children heal trauma, accessing neurodiversity affirming therapies, working with speech pathologists, occupational therapists. Someone explained it to me as you don't learn to swim in a whirlpool, and it felt like we had turned off the whirlpool so we could learn how to swim for those couple of years and give ourselves space and time and reconnect as well as a family.

Leisa Reichelt:

So for context, you are in WA just because everybody's home education experience is different depending on where they're located, I think, how easy was it for you to juggle that whole demands of the state with

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

So I have a

Leisa Reichelt:

the whirlpool?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

of help from Janelle to do that. So Jill Janelle's background is in education and she's also an ex educator, and she's also very, very PDA aware and autistic herself. So she was invaluable for me because she could help me design learning experiences. But it wouldn't be sitting down doing a worksheet, like now we're gonna read this chapter and answer these comprehensive questions. It was kind of like incidental learning but structured and deliberate and targeted. And she helped me design those doing things that brought my kids joy and that they were naturally drawn to and that were within their areas of interest. So both my children have, passionate interests, like dinosaurs, paleontology, nature, science, all that sort of thing. And so using those interests to meet those targets and report against them in a way that would meet the requirements of the education department, but also not be just a classroom transferred to my home. And that was achievable for me too, as a parent, doing it all by myself with two kids, with two very different learning needs and ages. Freddie was year one. Henry at the time would've been year three, year four when we started. That's miles apart. I think one of the things that tends to happen in this space is there can be so much focus on the child's needs, on the child support needs, what does this child need? How can we make this child okay? And for me, it's not okay unless everyone in the home is okay. Everyone in the family is okay. Its not that we're all okay at the same time. And sometimes like I did, you have to put your thing back, but everybody gets what they need to be. Okay. Is sort of mantra in terms of setting things up for us.

Leisa Reichelt:

You talked about the kids and their passionate interests. At the time that you were taking them out of school and bringing them into home ed, did they still have those passionate interests or were they so.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

old he wanted to do was game. and we had a solid few months before he could engage in any meaningful way. But I did try really hard and those opportunities were there and I did the best I could with what I had. My little one was very, very little at that age, so luckily it was a little bit easier for me with him because he could do things like we could bake together or we could play board games together. And we did a lot of that. I used Twinkl a lot. They've got these interactive games on there As long as they didn't click that it was a learning game. But the focus was very much on building capacity. For my youngest Freddie, building his communication skills, building his self-advocacy skills, uh, building his access to alternative communication. So Freddie at the time was situationally non-speaking. At the time he had quite a significant stutter that meant that he was more frequently non-speaking than he was speaking, particularly when he was in distress. He really struggled to articulate or communicate in any form, what he needed, what he was feeling, what he was experiencing. So building self-advocacy skills was a big one. I wanted my children to go back into the system knowing how to ask for what they needed, how to tell me what's happened, how to identify when their needs were not being met or when something wasn't right.

Leisa Reichelt:

How did you do that, Symone? How you help build your child's self-advocacy skills?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

We did some work with the OT and it's kind of become intuitive with Fred. We talk about it through a paradigm of human rights, like fundamental human rights. What are these things that I have? you have, he has, she has, that everyone has, that everyone deserves that everyone is entitled to purely because they are human beings. They have them from the minute they're born. They can't be taken, they can't be traded in theory, like we're talking from an 8-year-old Freddie lens. We're not talking about a reality lens.'cause sadly, not everyone does have their human rights upheld. So we were reading Diary Of Wimpy Kid at the time, and it was, I feel really bad for Greg Heffley because of X, Y, Z. It doesn't feel fair that he's not getting it. Like that modeling, but it was almost conversational modeling. And I tried really hard to get better at recognising my own needs and my own rights. And modeling them, when my needs weren't being met, when my boundaries were being overstepped. And that's certainly a work in progress and it's something that I try and be really mindful of. This has been a really helpful thing in my family because not only does it help me approach things like why certain environments have rules and boundaries there has to be rules and boundaries around things like safety and respect. But also from a framework that everyone has them. There is no, you have more because you were the adult. I have less because I'm the child. It's a fundamental, innate right. And everyone gets those needs met and everyone has those rights to have those needs met.

Leisa Reichelt:

The thing that I am wrestling with a little bit is just, I think as, a parent, as a mother in this situation with your two kiddos and their PDA and all of the needs that they have. It feels to me very optimistic to think that you're gonna get your needs met all the time.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

That is absolutely it. There are times when we triage, and I'm gonna be really honest here. My baseline of expectations for myself is pretty damn low. So I'm not gonna turn my camera around, but my kitchen is trash. I don't do laundry very often. There's a giant pile of washing in my lounge room. Dinner is more often than not snack plates, which is just like picky dinner. Is everyone getting their basic needs? Is everyone okay? And then that's it. I don't really clean. I go for good enough and a lot of people, like, I can't remember the last time I sat down and made a proper dinner meal with, a traditional family meal. I don't do those things. I just don't. Because they're the things that are less important to me than the other things. And sometimes I don't get my needs met. It's things like, I don't do really well with loud noise, so I need quiet time. I struggle with crowds, so I avoid crowds generally. Those kind of needs, not the fancy ones

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. Well, Symone, I feel as though there's probably a lot of people who are nodding their heads like mad at the life that you've just described. A load of people are in very, very similar situations, but I think also a lot of us being pretty harsh judges on ourselves for all of those things as well, so.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I'm really, really passionate about treading gently with ourselves. I always think, and I have to tell this to myself as well, because as mothers, as any parents, I think we are really harsh judges on ourselves. And the world loves to tell us all the things we're doing wrong. And if your child isn't doing all the things that society says they should, like go to school every day and listen to the teacher and follow the rules and raise their hand and blah, blah, blah. It can be really, really easy to blame yourself. And if you don't blame yourself, they'll do it for you. Certainly. I try very hard to think when I get stuck in that pattern. If I was my best friend talking about themself like this, how would I speak to them and trying to give myself that too.

Leisa Reichelt:

Alright, so two years of home education, and then what?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

So in those two years, particularly the second year I started doing consulting work. Within certain areas of the department and specifically the School of Special Educational Needs Disability, which is the specialised consultants that go out to schools. And I also advocate through Square Peg Round Whole. So we sit on committees and I was privileged enough to see that there was movement happening. Last year there was a real sense of things are happening, things are different. It's a different system now. I'm a different parent advocating differently now. I know now more than I knew then, and I would've done things differently then. And my kids had come so far. We'd healed. Everyone was doing better. The capacity was there. My children were starting to express an interest in going back to school. Like we wanted to go back to school'cause that was really important to me. I wasn't gonna drag them there. And so we have gone back to the school system this year. It has gone a million times better than I expected it to. Freddie, he's thriving. And it's the same school. Okay? So this is what tends to get people. Fred has gone back to the same school. Now he has gone back to a specialised program within that school. He's not gone into a mainstream classroom. But, it's the same school. I think his experience in that school now with the journey that they've been on and the changes that they've made. There's been a real lens shift in leadership and that's been transformative for the school. I tried always to recognise this is a school that is doing the best they can in a very stressed system that is not designed for my kids versus this is the school's fault.

Leisa Reichelt:

So you said the school has also been on a really transformational journey. Can you talk a little bit about what's different at that school now compared to what it was like before?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

There has been a shift in terms of policy and procedure and things like that, we're in a different landscape now. And this school has particularly embraced it. So the program that Freddie is in only opened this year. And they only found out that they were getting one of these programs last year. And when the principal agreed to take on the program, she was all in. She was right. The whole school is gonna go on this journey. This isn't going to be a separate classroom. We are going to make this a school that accommodates, accepts, includes these kids and this program. And so all the staff did training, not just the classroom teachers of that program. It was a school-wide thing. They looked at what they could do at a school-wide level to make these activities more neurodiversity accessible. For example, assemblies. I get the heebie-jeebies thinking about assemblies as an adult because it's crowded, it's busy. I can't hear. There's static from the microphone and it's too long and uncomfortable. And there's too many people. They're not an accessible thing. The school has taken away the whole school assemblies and turned them into, I think it's two classrooms and they rotate. And it's like a, kind of like a community meeting assembly. Much smaller, much more accessible, much less sensory, much less scary, much less of a big dramatic thing. I think its the understanding, because they've done the training and the commitment is there. The leadership has committed to it. We are going to be inclusive, we are gonna be accessible, let's make it happen. And it's either get on the train or go away and find another station.

Leisa Reichelt:

Feels like a massive culture shift just across the entire school.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I'm a huge believer that the culture of the leadership is what sets the culture of the school, which is what sets the culture of the classroom, which is what sets the teaching culture. it's kinda like a fish, like it either rots from the head or it swims from the head. And a principal and school leadership that is really on that train a really powerful thing and it's also a really big barrier to progress, change, access, if that isn't the case.

Leisa Reichelt:

So we talked before, when Fred was in kindy or very early in school, that he would get dysregulated, have dysregulated behaviours, and then that would be treated, as aggressive or as an assault on staff. How is that handled now in the school?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I overheard a conversation between my two kids the other day they were talking about what happens when someone is, and I'm using quotation marks here, naughty at school, and Henry goes to Fred. They just get helped. So when kids are naughty at his school, his perception is those kids just get helped. And that's certainly been my experience in terms of Fred. Certainly there are boundaries. Everyone gets to be safe. I'm sure there are children who are still experiencing the, the school discipline, the department discipline policy. But in terms of Fred's experience now, his dysregulation is handled as dysregulated distress as opposed to misbehaviour. And it's also very proactively addressed. So in terms of things like, okay, so what's happening for Fred here? How can we prevent this? How can we set him up to succeed in terms of meeting all his needs? And because Fred has an environment and a school experience where he's felt safety and his relationships with the adults around him are rock solid priorities, everything else is easier.

Leisa Reichelt:

Okay. I would love to hear a little bit about Four Corners. Tell us a little bit about that experience.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Something I've only seen it once. Um, I watched it to make sure there was nothing in there that I needed to worry about in terms of how my kids were represented. I got someone else who I trusted to watch it first and make sure I was gonna be okay to watch it. It was a really confronting and challenging experience, but it was also an enormous privilege. Before we did it, I sat down with my kids and said to them, look, we've been approached, we've been asked to do this. This is what it's gonna involve. This is what the outcomes might be in terms of this is worst case scenario. And this is what I hope will be the best case scenario, which is raising awareness, understanding, building that compassion, making other families like ours feel seen and understood, and maybe even creating a wider narrative as we raise awareness of School Can't. And so when my kids agreed to it, I agreed. And so we had a producer fly over from, I think she was Sydney, and spend three days, three full days with us, which was hectic. I'm I'm little bit of a hermit and I'm a, I'm a solo person. I need a lot of time and space. And having someone in your personal space, good and bad for every single minute of that was a lot. But I'm really glad we did it and I'm really proud that we were able to take part in something so meaningful. I've spoken to a few of the other families that were in it, and I'm proud to be associated with them and with their voices and their experiences. And I had so many people reach out to me afterwards, some people saying really unkind things, but the vast, vast majority saying I saw myself in your family or this made me feel this, or this impacted me this way. But what really surprised me was the huge number of teachers and educators and school staff reaching out saying, you are doing an amazing job. There's a scene in it where I'm, like, what if I'm effing this up? I'm scared. I'm effing this up. And the number of people who reached out to me with that hat on saying, we worry about that too, it will be okay. It was really, yeah. I'm getting a little bit teary thinking about it actually, because it was one of those. The good bits of humanity moments. yeah.

Leisa Reichelt:

Yeah. Well I know there will be a lot of people who are listening to this who have seen that Four Corners episode, and we will pop a link to it in the, show notes for folks who haven't seen it yet. Thank you for doing that I know a lot of people would want me to say thank you for doing it because a lot of us did see ourselves in that experience. And to have that validated and, normalised a little bit, I think is just so important for folks who have felt very alone in this and very judged for such a long time. So thank you for your bravery in doing it.

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Thank you to everybody in the community, not only the School Can't community, but in the other peer space communities. Because if I hadn't felt like there were all those other people who had my back and who were lifting me up and who were kind of handing me the microphone and saying, it's okay, it's not scary. You can do this. Would never have been able to do it. So I think I often say that I found my home in this space in terms of the neurodivergent community and the advocacy community, and particularly the parent peer community. And it's something that I'm eternally grateful for. So thank you to you all as well.

Leisa Reichelt:

Oh, that's lovely. Let's move on to our closing questions, shall we? If you could go back in time, Symone, with all of the knowledge that you have now, and you could go back earlier in your parenting journey and tell yourself something. Where would you go to, do you think, and what would you say?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

I could tell me back then to trust myself more, because I think that was one of the biggest things coming to trust my own instincts and my own sort of feelings and yeah, as a parent, I feel like our gut knows the right thing to do so often at the time in this space. And I feel like when you can let go of the"I should be", or"this is what parents do" and you just go with what you feel your child needs and what's right for your family. I would also tell myself that I couldn't tell you how, I couldn't tell you when, but it will be okay. Nothing will last forever. And your okay might look different to my okay. And your end of the journey might be different to mine. And some families never return to the school system. Others return and it doesn't work out and others return. It's amazing. And that's fine. We all have our own paths and it will not always be this hard. There will come a point where it is easier and life is ordinary. Your ordinary, It will not always be a crisis.

Leisa Reichelt:

And in terms of resources, if there's a resource that you think everybody who's listening might find valuable on their School Can't journey, what would you like people to know about?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Thinking about this'cause there's all the ones, and I'm not gonna list them all off, but we've got Mona Delahooke and Ross Greene they're on various School Can't resource lists. And of course Lou, who started Square Pegs work. I also think that when I was that parent at rock bottom, what I needed most wasn't a resource telling me all the things I was doing wrong and all the things that I should do that I wasn't doing. I needed things that gave me a moment that just gave me a tiny glimmer or gave me that second where it was easier to breathe. There were two poems that got me through when I was at that they've got nothing to do with School Can't, but they were just, life is good and eventually it will be good again. I think most people have heard of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. I printed it off. There's also the other one, Love After Love by Derek Walcott. And so my advice, my resource would be whatever gives you that moment of"my heart just feels better for a second". And it's only a second and you've gotta take it where you can get it. But whatever brings you, that is the resource that I recommend. Whatever just lifts your heart is what I recommend for parents. And if there's educators listening to this, there is, Dr. Natalie Thompson at CSU is the person who I'm directing everybody towards her training at, at the moment. She has an online micro-credential called Disability Affirming Classrooms. It's short, super affordable, and it's really, really affirming and that's my number one recommendation at the moment in terms of professionals.

Leisa Reichelt:

Fantastic. That is wonderful. Well, we'll put links to all of that in the notes so that people can get to them. Any other things that you wanted to say, Symone, before we wrap?

Symone Wheatley-Hey:

Thank you very much for having me and thank you very much to everybody who's listening but especially to the forward facing leadership of School Can't Australia, but I also imagine that there's lots of people who never get named or seen to every single person who is lifting up and holding up other parents who are struggling in it. I'm enormously grateful to you and you are doing something really, really important and you should be really, really proud of it. I'm grateful for you. So thank you.

Leisa Reichelt:

Well, yeah, I echo those sentiments wholeheartedly as well. Thank you so much, Symone Wheatley-Hey for joining us. An absolute pleasure to chat to you today. Well, Symone has sent me through a whole raft of her recommended resources for parents and educators. So I really encourage you to check those out in the episode notes. And if you've not already watched the kids Who Can't Go To School For Corners episode, that's also linked in the notes and you should check that out. If you found this podcast helpful, please do take a moment to subscribe or give us a rating or review. This really does help us get the podcast in front of more people who have School Can't kids, and who haven't found our community and the information that we share. If you have some feedback for us or a suggestion for a future guest, or if you've been inspired to share your own lived experience, please drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. If you're a parent or carer in Australia and you're feeling distressed, remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state. A link with the number to call is in the episode notes. Thank you again for listening, and we'll talk again soon. Take care.