My Way Education

22/09/2025

This type of discussion at Annual Review meetings is necessary to ensure that a child or young person is receiving the appropriate level and type of support as stated in the EHCP. However, when it leads professionals to put the onus for sensory breaks on children and young people, this worries me. Neurodivergent children and young people are not always aware or able to vocalise what they need, especially when experiencing overwhelm and overstimulation within the classroom. This can make it really difficult, at times impossible, for them to share with professionals that they require a break from the classroom or that they have unmet sensory needs. Interoception also plays a significant role in children and young people not recognising when they are reaching a state of chronic overwhelm and needing adults around them to intervene and guide them towards what they need.

If you are a professional out there, please do not shirk the responsibility and place the onus on the child or young person to tell you when they need a break. If they can, then that's wonderful and to be encouraged, yes - but never assumed! It is our responsibility as adults to ensure that children and young people are safe and happy and that they are directed toward activities that enable them to regulate. Our children and young people need us to advocate for them!!

22/09/2025

28/06/2025

Every time we praise children who are experiencing school refusal or avoidance for making it into school, we are reinforcing the shame and guilt they feel for not attending. What we are actually doing is creating children and young people who feel that they must mask to get through the day. We are effectively pushing them towards burnout, shutdown and fatigue. What we want is children and young people who enjoy school and who want to go because they enjoy it. But when children tell us that they don't enjoy it, we begin to question the child or the young person and what it is about them that makes them not enjoy school and not enjoy the whole teaching and learning experience. We never question the school environment, and that it may simply just not be right for that child or young person.

At meetings and reviews, we ask questions such as ' how can we get this child or young person to attend?'. Never are questions raised such as ' how can we change the environment so that a child or young person feels more comfortable?'. We offer praise and reward for their attendance, and this is interpreted by the child or young person that we are happy that they attended - no matter how painful this may have been for them. And so what happens next? Children and young people bury their feelings and start to respond to an ideal that we created for them, and they attend whether it hurts or not.

This is not resilience - this is trauma. And trauma leads to shutdown, burnout, withdrawal and fatigue.

28/06/2025

Here at SEND Support Services we get it as we have been there. We have lived experience, and we continue to experience the SEND system with our own children and young people. This enables us to support parents in a highly effective way, resulting in positive outcomes for children, young people and their families. Please book a New Client Consultation on our online booking system or send us a FB message.