My child and my client teamed up against me (and they were right)

This year my middle child and one of my clients teamed up to teach me a lesson I badly needed, and neither of them knew they were doing it.

One is finding high school unbearable. The other, a neurodivergent woman, was running her business by someone else’s rules and heading for burnout. Neither of them was failing, but both were trying to fit into a system that was never designed for them.

The awkward part is that none of this was new to me. I’m a late diagnosed ADHD woman who has spent a lifetime squeezing into places that weren’t built for my brain, so I should have spotted it sooner. I’d been telling my client this for a long time, and it still took watching my own child struggle, and a miserable year, to make me act on it myself.

My year of mistakes

Two of my three children are neurodivergent, with autism and ADHD, and both struggle with anxiety as well. One of them is finding high school really, really hard, and I don’t mean a Sunday-night moan about Monday morning ... the thought of school results in either a complete autistic shutdown or hysteria. It’s what the professionals call emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA), and it’s flipping heartbreaking.

We spent the whole of last year trying to fit in with what the school needed us to do to have her in classes. There was plenty of support and adjustments were made, but being allowed to leave lessons five minutes early to avoid the noisy corridors couldn't touch what she was actually experiencing. The building, the timetable, the corridors, the noise, switching from a 'safe' small primary school to a 1,500-strong student population ... none of this was designed for an 11-year old neurodivergent kid ... and the changes we tried were barely tweaking the edges of it.

I also talked to some brilliant, expert psychologists (who very nearly bankrupted me for a handful of sessions) about how the brain works. They know their stuff, and I’m not dismissing it. Their view was that if we “allowed” her to avoid school, we’d be teaching the wrong lesson, and that what we needed to do was teach her brain that she is courageous and resilient.

That advice made sense on paper. But I’m the expert on my child, and her autistic, ADHD brain needed something different. It's not that she was trying to 'avoid' school ... more that she had a deep (and understandable) need to not be somewhere that didn’t feel safe, and that’s a very different thing to ask someone to be brave about.

Struggling to fit into someone else’s design doesn’t mean we lack courage or resilience.

Buuuuttt ... the people-pleasing 'good girl' inside of me took control

... I followed the rules for that first year, and took forced a very unwilling, very upset child to school each day, questioning the whole time whether I was doing the right thing but not knowing what else to do.

Something had to change

I hoped the long summer break would reset things. It didn’t. Her anxiety started a few days before term, so we kicked off the school year with some productive conversations with the SEND team - and thought we'd found a better approach. But it still followed the normal school routine and asked her to fit in with neurotypical expectations, and it only took two days of term for me to realise it still didn't work, it probably never would and I’d spent a whole year making a mistake.

We didn’t need to tweak the 'normal' approach. School and I needed to work together to create something completely new.

Fitting in is a skill I know well

When I look back over my life I can see how much I forced myself to fit in with people, places and expectations, none of which understood neurodivergence. They weren’t designed against me personally but they were designed for neurotypical brains, and I spent years miserably squeezing myself into them without even knowing that’s what I was doing. I can see now how much it took out of me.

I was also raised to be compliant and obedient, and even now, at 50, the thought of breaking a rule makes me squirm a bit. So I’m not someone who rips up rule books for fun.

But I think something shifts when you take on responsibility for someone else. It might be a child, but it could just as easily be a parent, a partner, a friend or anyone you care for. It's a role which can be joyous and simultaneously be really hard, and either way you step into a different version of yourself, maybe a stronger one, maybe someone who’s willing to question authority in a way you never would have done for yourself. It stays uncomfortable, but when the person you care for needs you to break the rules, you do it.

Becoming a rule breaker (for all the right reasons)

I called another meeting with school. They’re under huge pressure too, from the local authority and their own leadership, to manage attendance and learning, and I wanted to be fair to that. Luckily I’d spent the previous year building a good relationship with them by communicating often and sharing praise.

So I said, with all due respect, that I’d love my child to fit in with those expectations too, but that I felt I’d done her a massive disservice last year. I’d believed I was doing the right thing, but it hadn’t worked, and more of the same would cause more harm than good. So we’re finding a different way.

I’ve more or less thrown out the rule book, for myself and for school, and we’re designing something that starts with my child instead of with the school day. She shouldn’t have to fit in with a routine if it makes her feel unsafe.

The expectation that someone can build courage by doing things that leave them intensely unhappy, scared and anxious (which many neurotypical people hold and so do late diagnosed people like me who learnt to "just get on with it"), is one I no longer believe. So now I’m a rule breaker.

The same story in a neurodivergent woman’s business

My other story is about a client I’ve worked with for a long time, who is also a late diagnosed neurodivergent woman with big caring responsibilities.

When we started, she’d been following a business design that belonged to someone else: someone else’s blueprint, someone else’s strategy, someone else’s structure, someone else’s way of using social media, being visible, making connections and selling.

She was trying desperately to do the right thing and follow 'the rules', and none of it worked for her. Everything was heading in the wrong direction and she was living on the brink of burnout. She needed the business to work, but she needed it to work within her own capacity, without forcing herself into spaces that weren’t safe for her, just like my child at school.

My child wasn’t a problem to be fitted into a school, and my client wasn’t a problem to be fitted into a business model.

Much of our work together has been me telling her she doesn’t have to fit in with everyone else’s way of doing things, and supporting her to give herself permission to say that doesn’t work for me and design her own way.

There wasn’t a lightbulb moment. It’s been slow, with a lot of her learning to trust herself, and she’s doing so well now. The awkward part: I’d been saying all of this to her for ages, and it still took me a year to say it to myself about my own child.

So, do we just break all the rules then?

I don’t want this to turn into “ignore everyone and do what you like.” Cos - reality check - there are many things that don’t bend.

Schools have legal duties and real pressures. Businesses need money coming in. Some rules are there for good reasons, and I’m not about to start a revolution over tax returns (even if I want to!). Mind you, there’s one business “rule” I’d happily rebel against, and I’ve written about why “consistency” is bad advice.

I keep coming back to the same question in both stories: who designed this, and was it ever designed with us in mind?

Neurodivergent people shouldn’t have to fit in

None of this is easy. It’s hard to question a school, or a business model everyone swears by, and I don’t think I’ve got it all worked out. But I’m glad these conversations are happening. I’m getting more and more involved in communities that ask why neurodivergent people should fit into other people’s routines, expectations and places, and that push back on answers like “because that’s how things are done” or “because neurotypical brains can learn to be resilient and courageous”. Those answers sound perfectly reasonable until you’re the one living with them.

We can’t opt out of everything, but I’d like to see more of us ask who designed this and who it was designed for, and then, when the honest answer is “not us”, start building something that is.