Most parents do occassionally leave their children crying at the door of nursery or school. And then we take ourselves off to work, or back home to cry ourselves. We do it because that is what we are told to do by the educational professionals. And we are told that they know what to do to make things right for our kids. That they are fine when we've gone. Once or twice we can perhaps brush off the feeling of guilt as tough love. A necessary evil to help our children get used to a new place without the support of their parents, or to face the consequence of not completing their homework, or to sort out the spat they had with their friend in the yard yesterday. But what if it is not just once or twice? What if it is every single day?

Would the same approach be condoned at pick-up time? Would children that were crying, or kicking and screaming, and begging for the teachers to not let go of them be calmly handed over to parents day after day? No. There would be investigations by social workers and possibly the police into why the child was so terrified to go home. Steps would be taken to resolve whatever the problem was, or, in extreme cases, to remove the child from their parents to a place of safety.

Vladislav Vasilev on Unsplash

So why isn't there the same focus on investigating and solving problems and ensuring children’s wellbeing in school? Why is it acceptable, and indeed in some places legally required, to continually force obviously traumatised children back into the same damaging school environment? Why is it such an uphill battle to get any, let alone adequate, adjustments put in place so that school is no longer anxiety provoking? Why is school attendance considered more important than the mental health and wellbeing of children? For those of us who have experienced ‘school refusal' by our children over months and sometimes years, these are questions that desperately need answered, yet they never are. Instead, we are fobbed off with excuses and parenting courses.

I know all too well from experience that the main focus of the education system in these situations is on attendance. The very term, ‘school refusal’ inevitably leads to the standard response of ‘just get them in'. Yet it is plainly obvious that ‘refusal’ is entirely the wrong word. These are not children that woke up one morning and decided that they could not be bothered going to school any more. These are children with complex needs who have been struggling with inadequate support at school for some time. For whom each bad day at school has added to the load of fear and anxiety they are carrying and has made them more vulnerable and sensitive to the next. And who have finally got to breaking point and are now utterly terrified at the mere thought of school. The correct word is trauma.

We are constantly told that the solution to the problem of their brokenness is to continue forcing these children back to school. That eventually they will ‘get used to it’, give in and comply. The fact that they had been attending and were already ‘used to it’, but had, through repeated exposure, become more anxious, not less anxious, goes totally unremarked. The approach of continuing to force my son back into the same anxiety provoking environment after he finally broke did not ‘help him get over it'. It made things worse. It led to a primary school child considering suicide. Yet, I was patronised every time I explained that proper support measures needed to be in place for my son before his return to school or things would simply continue getting worse. And I was intensely disapproved of when I stated that, in the continuing absence of that support, I was done physically dragging my son to a place that filled him with so much fear and dread that the mere thought of going there resulted in uncontrollable meltdowns. I was told that I was the anxious one, not my son. That my son was 'putting it on' and that I ‘just needed to set firmer boundaries’. They told me that the problem was me, that I couldn't get my son to school because the ‘power balance’ between us was ‘wrong’. They told me that my failures were denying my son his rightful education. In other words, I was gaslit. Emotionally blackmailed. Psychologically abused. My son had been traumatised by his time at school and the powers that be in the education system tried to bully me into bullying my son back into exactly the same environment that broke him. The even sadder thing is that if I lived somewhere else in the UK I could have been heftily fined and potentially faced prosecution for taking a perfectly reasonable stand to protect the mental health of my child.

The real problem was that the powers that be insisted that my son was ‘perfectly fine’ in school. That school is where ‘all children are meant to be’. They believed that they knew best how to look after my child because they are education professionals and I am ‘just a parent’. They ignored what I told them about what he went through every day he was there because they couldn't see or experience what was wrong with the school environment for themselves. It didn't matter how many times I explained that behind his mask of indifference my son had been desperately struggling just to make it through each day in school for years. The powers that be simply refused to beleive it. Because their brains did not process the light and the noise and the social press and the sheer fullness of the classroom in the same overwhelming and painful way. They didn't feel the unbearably scratchy uniform and the stiff painful shoes. They didn't struggle with all the unspoken social rules and expectations. They didn't feel desperately lonely and confused and scared in the loud, busy school yard. They were not bullied. They didn't find it impossible to learn and retain random uninteresting information, irrelevent to the current situation. They didn't find it difficult to process information quickly and work at speed. They saw nothing wrong in being forced to do yet more schoolwork in what was supposed to be free time to recover in the sanctuary of home. They saw nothing wrong with following arbitrary rules that made no real sense and were never explained or justified. They saw nothing unsafe about unquestioningly obeying people just because they were ‘in authority’, even when those people were clearly untrustworthy. Witholding information about Covid cases in class in the middle of a global pandemic, accusing my son of lying when he spoke up about being bullied, ignoring his requests to be sent home when he felt desperately ill and just needed to lie down in a comfortable bed in a quiet, dark room. How could a broken child ever feel safe blindly obeying such people?

The powers that be refused to accept the fact that my son was struggling right up to and beyond the point where he just couldn't bring himself do it any more. And although there were a few cherished individuals, mostly in the NHS and NGO's, that did care and did listen and did try to help, ultimately their efforts failed. Because the powers that be in the education system refused to accept that the real and urgent problem was with how the school environment was impacting my son. They never had any intention of really helping - they wanted to ‘just get him in’.

Their minds are too firmly focused on attendance figures and school regimes and national curriculums and expected attainment standards. They ignore the broken child’s actual needs for consistent trusted adults, proper understanding and support of their challenges and a feeling of safety. Instead they set unrealistic targets for the child to achieve and tut at the parents over their checklists when the child predictably fails to meet them. Really helping would mean changing their precious school regimes and relaxing their standards and scrapping their targets and throwing away their checklists. It would mean dealing with a child as a human being rather than a tick on an attendance sheet. An individual with unique hopes and fears, unquenchable curiosity about how the real world works, strong opinions about right and wrong and fairness, and their very own set of skills and interests and challenges. And it would mean treating a child with the same compassion, dignity, and respect that they would be legally entitled to as an adult similarly disabled by their work environment.

And if the powers that be did all that to help one child to feel truly safe and included in school, they would surely need to do it for all the children currently struggling in the education system. And there are alot of children struggling. And they are all different with different needs. There are no square pegs or round pegs. Each child is uniquely and perfectly shaped. Some are simply better than others at squishing themselves into the standard school-shaped holes. For some, like my son, those holes seemed like they were increasingly lined with razor blades. The effort of not touching the sides all day became more and more exhausting and terrifying, and was ultimately too much to bear.

If the powers that be really wanted to 'get it right for every child', to help all children feel safe and included and happy in school, so that they can all thrive and reach their full potential, they would let their precious, ridgid, unyielding, suffocating education system crumble into dust. They would build something new where they could treat all children as the individal human beings that they are.

Instead they stubbornly cling to an outdated system that treats children like neat lines of peg robots with standardised operating systems, attempting to programme them all with the same standard attitudes and knowledge using the same standard teaching methods and tools, and expecting standardised outputs from each child. The focus is on attendance and unquestioning obedience above all else. Human frailty is stigmatised -woe betide a child that becomes ill, or suffers a bereavement for they will be shamed for their less than perfect attendance record. Any real questioning of the approved world view put forth by the teachers is discouraged. Curiosity about anything not on the approved curriculum is squeezed further by reams of homework.

And, surprise surprise, alongside parents, screens are one of the first things blamed when a child does not fit in that system. That suspicious, uncontrolled doorway to unapproved ways of learning unapproved information. The digital doorway lets children find what they are actually interested in, and to seek out what they consider useful and important. Which is pretty much guaranteed to not be the precise slice of knowledge arbitrarily approved for children by the education system. The digital world contains equal amounts of truth and fiction. Navigating it requires children to learn how to think independently, how to spot falsehoods, how to analyse multiple sources of information and decide for themselves what and who they believe. All of which I suspect is terribly inconvenient in an education system built on children taking their teacher’s word as gospel.

It doesn't seem at all suspicious that the powers that be blame 'addiction' to screens, rather than school trauma, for meltdowns and children ‘refusing’ to go to school. Or that they constantly spread fear about the impact of screens and shame parents for giving their children access to them. Much easier than actually helping all children to feel safe and supported in school and teaching them topics they are interested in. Perhaps the fact that if you remove screens and force more school on a broken child things get worse, but if you remove school and allow screens things get better is actually evidence that alot of what we have been told is bullshit.

It has now been just over a year since I removed my son from the education system. He, and I, are doing much better these days. He is much more relaxed and happy at home. He has all the time he needs to burrow deep into history and geography and science and current affairs and how society is ever-changing, literally around us. He has the freedom to use whatever tools and methods and timetable that work for him. All in an environment that fully supports his complex needs. Neither of us misses school one little bit.

Yet even this long after his struggles in crowded classrooms and busy schoolyards, my son remains anxious amongst even small groups of people. This is a barrier to us going to most places, and to him joining in with any clubs or home ed activites within the local community. A bitter legacy of school trauma in stark contrast to his previous enjoyment of football and afterschool clubs and our pre-covid Make A Wish trip to Las Vegas to meet his favourite team of YouTubers and the Avengers cosplayers in their SHIELD training facility. A legacy that I hope that he will recover from with more time, gentle encouragement, and understanding. That he would never have recovered from while being repeatedly forced back into the same school environment that broke him.

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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I am the daughter and granddaughter of ordinary farming folk on Jersey in the Channel Islands, who were subjected to occupation by the Nazi's in World War II from 1940 to 1945. My Mum was 1 years old when they arrived and 6 when they left. Although my family survived the experience, they were forever marked by it.

I later grew up in England during the Cold War, which lasted from 1947 to 1991. My formative years as a young adolescent were spent watching hard-hitting post-nuclear apocolyptic drama's like the 1984 version of Z for Zachariah based in a Welsh valley and Threads based in Sheffield, just over the hills from where I lived. And soaking up documentaries from Panorama on how we are all doomed if the bomb ever drops.

Alongside the Cold War when I was young were ‘The Troubles', from 1968 to 1998. A typically understated moniker for a ‘quiet’ war within the British Isles that went on for 30 years. With IRA bombings of civillians and random bomb threats a frequent fact of life in many parts of England as well as in Northern Ireland.

I didn't sleep much as a child.

Since then, it's hard to think of a time when there hasn't been a war ongoing somewhere in the world. ‘Highlights’ that the UK were involved in alone include the Falklands War (1982), Lebanon 1982-84), the Gulf War (1990-91), Bosnia (1992-95), Desert Fox in Iraq (1998), Kosovo (1998-99), Afghanistan (2001-21), Iraq again (2003-09), Lybia (2011), Iraq/Syria (2014 onwards). And history lessons at school were all about the wars that came before.

Throughout my life I have borne witness to a never-ending vista of pointless destruction and loss of life because someone in power in one country wants something in another country. Or dislikes how another country is run and thinks that they or their puppet could do it better. Or thinks that the people in another country are worshiping the wrong god. Or worshiping the right god in the wrong way. All excuses for destruction, murder, kidnap, rape, terrorism, torture on a mind-numbing, soul-crushing scale when we actually stop a moment to think about it. Millions of people at any one time with their homes destroyed, their lives in tatters, family members lost, roaming the world in search of a safe place to start over. Non-bombed-to-shit countries murmering sympathetic words while playing ping-pong with refugees that they fear will cost money to house and clothe and feed.

Don't get me wrong. I am 100% supportive of the incredibly brave men and women that sign up for any armed forces to defend their country. They are not the problem. In fact they, and the equally brave armed service people they face off with are often the biggest collatoral damage in this ever popular human endeavour called war. Or a special operation. Armed forces have always been seen by those in charge as tools to attack or defend with and all too often they are wielded by power-hungry, greedy, mad, or incompetent politicians or dictators. But, unlike the actors in the films, the platoons of toy soldiers on a table-top battlefield, or the NPCs (non player characters) in a videogame of strategy or marksmanship, the real armed forces are made up of human beings. Whatever side they are on. Human beings who sign up knowing that there is a very good chance that they will be killed, or suffer life-changing injuries, or PTSD. But they do it anyway because they want to protect their country. Their home. The people that they love. Their freedom. From other human beings who also signed up to protect their own home and freedom but who are, for whatever reason, sent to take or destroy that of another. Or sometimes from other human beings who signed up because they were not given a choice.

I am no doubt over simplifying. Humanity is always good at coming up with plausible-sounding excuses for waging war. But I do find the whole thing utterly depressing, particularly given that we are still at it in the 21st century. That's more than 2000 years of pretty much constant war. Somewhere. When will it ever stop?

When the latest phase of the war in Ukraine started in February 2022, my first thought, given my childhood and background, was what do we do if the bomb drops? Nuclear or other. Putin is living in his own version of reality, which makes him doubly dangerous in charge of a nuclear button, but we can at least hope he isn't quite mad enough to press it. So I made plans about the safest place in the house to huddle amidst a blast, got in a supply of gaffa tape and plastic sheeting, iodine sachets, torches, a radio, batteries, gas cannisters for the camping stove. I still have a couple of weeks of food stashed under the bed after Brexit and Covid. I made plans to try to survive any initial chaos and the potential nuclear fallout should things escalate beyond Ukraine. Though frankly if a nuclear attack ever happens I've always prefered the idea of dying in the blast than surviving to suffer the aftermath. And then, like most people in Europe, I started to count the pennies more closely as the impact of war and sanctions kicked in on the cost of living and food and fuel prices and inflation in general shot up.

I am, therefore, no stranger to the theory or occurence of war, though so far I have been lucky enough not to be directly impacted by one. But, yesterday I was floored by a completely different horror of war.

There have been allegations of Ukranian children being stolen and taken to Russia for some time. It is yet another war crime, something else to make me feel sick at the thought of what humans will do to each other in the name of their ideologies. But reading these interviews with some of the mothers and children involved really brought home what that means and had me physically in tears. It gave me something to fear more than nuclear holocaust if war ever reaches these shores again. Like it did not so long ago when my grandparents were quietly running their farm and raising my mother.

As a parent, and like my grandparents, I'm pretty confident that I could at least attempt to face quite a few horrors in the name of trying to protect and care for my son if I had to. If you've read some of my other essays on abuse and the school system, you will know that I already have, albeit home grown horrors wielding words rather than foreign ones with guns. Having a child doesn't make parents more capable, but it sure makes us a lot more determined. But what utterly floored me was the thought of how I would feel, and how my son would feel, if my son was kidnapped by ‘the enemy’. Taken to another country and led to believe that I am dead. Adopted by another family and brainwashed into thinking that these people have done him a favour. Along with the knowledge of how powerless I would be to find him and to get him back unless the very enemy that stole him chose to co-operate. That is a horror that really hit me in the gut, even just thinking about it. And that is a horror that many Ukranian families are facing, right now. And quite probably families elsewhere in the world. Putin is not the only warmongerer who likes to totally ignore the rules laid down for this most high staked of games. Somehow it just never occurred to me that an aggressor could cause so much pain and suffering to civillians without death and destruction being involved.

Hitler either gassed or starved and brutalised the family members he stole, often flogging them to build his concrete towers and bunkers and roads wherever he occupied. The relics of such brutalisation are scattered across Jersey to this day, a stark reminder of how badly humans can go wrong. I only ever managed to stomach visiting the German Underground Hospital once in my youth - the oppressive feel of all the death that went into its creation too much to encourage a repeat visit. Putin, it seems, wants to steal them young, raise and indoctrinate them, and presumably send them back to Ukraine to fight as Russians. I suppose we can't fault his logic given how many troops he's lost. But inflicting separation and the fear of not knowing where your child is or if you will ever see them again is terrorism in its own right.

Human beings rate themselves as the most intelligent species on the planet. Human is the origin for words like humane and humanity. Personally I rate us as the most stupid and least humane species on the planet, but I had hoped that we would grow up one day. My favourite ever film is the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still from 1951. That idea that if we are too pigheaded to manage growing up on our own, some benevolent stranger will see our potential and give us the kick up the arse that we need to get our act together. Perhaps it’s also why I've always loved reading exploratory science fiction about humans on strange new worlds - it inherently assumes that we don't blow ourselves to kingdom come or starve to death on a homeworld that we have utterly destroyed.

At 54 years old I am beginning to lose hope that we will grow up and start to live up to the name and the potential of our species within my lifetime. I can still hope that my son's generation will manage it. His is perhaps the first generation ever to have full access to information about all the wars that we have ever fought. Are fighting. From a young and idealistic age. We desperately need to squash those wanting to censor and white-wash our history just in case it upsets someone. We damn well should be upset. Perhaps if my son's generation get upset enough about the horrors and cruelty that humans have routinely inflicted on each other for hundreds, no, thousands of years, they will learn from our mistakes and humanity will finally live up to its name.

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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You may also be interested in this related poem

My Freedom's Wings

Drums of war

The drums of war beat out in the distance, As I lie in the dark in my bed. A cold hand of dread clutches at my heart, And I dream of comforting arms, Drawing me in to a safe embrace. Yet here I lie, Still, Shivering alone in the darkness, As the world cries out in her pain…

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3 years ago · 1 like · Beverley Williams

The drums of war beat out in the distance,

As I lie in the dark in my bed.

A cold hand of dread clutches at my heart,

And I dream of comforting arms,

Drawing me in to a safe embrace.

Yet here I lie,

Still,

Shivering alone in the darkness,

As the world cries out in her pain.

Yet again.

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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You may also like this related essay.

My Freedom's Wings

The stupidity of war

I am the daughter and granddaughter of ordinary farming folk on Jersey in the Channel Islands, who were subjected to occupation by the Nazi's in World War II from 1940 to 1945. My Mum was 1 years old when they arrived and 6 when they left. Although my family survived the experience, they were forever marked by it…

Read more

3 years ago · Beverley Williams

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Image by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

I've been trying to figure out how to approach the topic of abusive relationships for a few years now. I had a go back in 2018, but it was still too raw, too personal. A few years later and far away from where my own dubious relationship happened, I am on holiday with my growing son. While deeper wounds are still healing, I have now overcome the trials that I feared when I chose to leave, and more that I never saw coming. Maybe now is the time to try again.

I escaped the close confines of an abusive relationship. One where I recieved coldness, sarcasm and passive aggression from my partner rather than compassion. Where I felt inadequate, isolated, lonely and scared rather than loved and respected.

It was hard to say that. Our relationship wasn't always like that - we had some good years before things went sour. And now, even though I left, we are still connected through our son. I have to assume that my son will read what I write, eventually. He deserves the opportunity to forge his own relationship with his father, unfettered by the full gamut of distress and fear that I felt. There is a chance that my ex might see this and I am conscious that I don't want to puncture the uneasy truce that we have as our son's now separate parents. I know that he would vehemently deny being an abuser. I am also uncomfortable using the word because I still wonder if, somehow, I allowed it to happen. Like a frog in a kettle allows the water to heat up around it.

But, this is my story, from my perspective, on a part of my life that I need to own. And there is no doubt that I felt increasingly abused over the course of our years together, psychologically and emotionally.

Whenever you Google ‘domestic abuse’, the assumption is always physical violence, or, more recently, a predatory narcissist, actively looking for someone to destroy to make themselves feel better in some way. The relationship I left fit neither of these profiles. There was no actual violence pepetrated. Yet by the end I did feel physically threatened. I do not believe I was ‘targeted’ as a means of narcissistic ‘supply', or ‘sucked in' by someone pretending to love me but who always intended to manipulate and control me. Yet, in trying to survive in that relationship, I felt increasingly manipulated and controlled. And ultimately the relationship almost destroyed me.

The harsh reality is that anyone can behave abusively, particularly when feeling threatened or vulnerable. We instinctively choose between flight, fight or freeze, and the ‘fight’ rarely follows the Queensberry rules in the heat of the moment - offensive and insulting is often a prime aim. It is also human nature to form behavioural patterns based on our background and experience. These patterns perhaps once served some protective role, but sometimes, out of context and over time, they can become unhelpful, and potentially destructive habits. Like habitual cruelty towards a loved one.

My ex and I were two people who initially seemed to be well matched, and who I still choose to believe loved each other once. But when life got mundane and messy and stressful, and when it threw some serious challenges our way, our behavioural patterns, based on our emotional baggage, clashed. Badly.

His emotional baggage made him increasingly likely to withdraw under pressure, both affection and communication. To accuse and be-little and gaslight, perhaps in order to avoid admitting mistakes or feeling vulnerable. To view alternate opinions as a threat instead of an opportunity to gain a new perspective. To walk away from conflict rather than discuss and resolve it. And to threaten to leave for good to silence dissent, maybe to feel in control of something, someone, when everything else was spiralling out of control.

My own emotional baggage made me vulnerable to this behaviour. Under pressure I needed more connection, greater understanding. I needed acceptance, respect, compassion. I needed a partner to collaborate and problem solve with. I needed tangible love that I could feel wrapped around me to help me feel safe. All things that I thought I would always have from him, that suddenly vanished when I needed them the most. Their loss left me feeling despised and abandoned despite him never actually acting on his threats and moving out.

All relationships have rocky patches - when two imperfect human beings get that close together, there is bound to be friction. What matters is how we deal with that friction. We had been together for over 20 years by the time I left, long enough to have discussed our conflicting baggage ad nauseam. Yet, from my perspective, his behaviour kept getting worse, passing from uncaring to sarcastic and spiteful. No matter how hard I worked on trying to sort out my own baggage, I could do nothing about his, which seemed to get heavier with each passing year, each stressful life event.

Over the years he seemed to increasingly regard the impact his behaviour had on me with cold detachment and disdain, refusing to discuss how he could, perhaps, stop causing me so much distress. That choice, and that apparent detachment, in my mind made the difference between a bad patch and a trend of habitual abuse. There was no discernable hurt or anger or passion or compassion on his part. No willingness to accept that things were going wrong, let alone to communicate to try to work things out when it mattered. Just cold detachment, it seemed. This was what eventually killed any hope I had that our relationship would ever improve. It increasingly frightened me - who knew what someone so detached from another’s distress could do - yet it also gave me the freedom to finally choose to leave. Because I knew I could not survive it, and I knew I could not let my son grow up thinking that this was how a loving relationship should be.

It took everything I had to leave, emotionaly, mentally and financially. I had spent so many years swallowing my contrary opinions on the small stuff because they were not welcome. Bending to his will to keep the peace where I could. Fighting until I was exhaused to gain compromises that didn't really work and agreements that were not upheld, and that he sometimes denied even coming to, for things that mattered to me. Soaking up the little passive aggressive and sarcastic digs that eroded a little more of my self worth each time. Curling up inside more and more, trying to avoid the subtle sneers and snide comments that meant he thought I'd done or said something wrong again. I had almost lost myself. I was constantly second guessing every thought I had. I had little self esteem left. I felt every bit as worthless and useless as he made me out to be. And towards the end, I was physically scared, of what he might do to me, my son, or to himself, particularly when he found out that I was leaving him and taking our son with me. Leaving an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time of all. Whether or not I had good reason to feel so scared was not something that I felt strong enough to find out.

I felt alone, confused. Anguished at the thought of leaving. Terrified of the potential consequences of staying. I had never wanted my son to experience a broken family, yet in the end, I made the same choice that my own mother had to.

But I didn't have to do it alone. I sought, and was given, help from Scottish Women’s Aid. They gave me validation, advice, lots and lots of tissues. And when I chose to leave they got us into a refuge. My son, then seven, offered more acceptance of the situation and greater moral support than I ever expected from one so young. When I managed to find a rented flat not too long after, friends and work colleagues helped me pack and move stuff so that I wouldn't be alone at our old house. I reached out in one of the worst times of my life and found all the understanding and compassion that was so lacking in our relationship. Away from my ex I finally began to feel safe in my own skin again for the first time in a long time. And when things began to feel safer, I arranged contact between my son and his father.

Looking back, sometimes much of our relationship feels like a myth held together with whisky, blind hope and a stubborn determination not to give up. I could never regret a relationship that resulted in our son, and I am grateful that we have been able muddle along as his two parents in the aftermath, largely by leaving each other alone. Yet several years on I am still recovering. Still trying to find what I like again, after years of walking on egg shells, trying to please, trying not to rock the boat. Habits, years in the making, that I'm still struggling to shed even long enough to write and publish this, my own story.

So, what lessons can be learned from this cautionary tale?

1. If it feels like abuse and your partner keeps doing it no matter how you explain its destructive impact, it is abuse.

2. An abuser does not always start out with the intent to abuse, but they can destroy their partner just as effectively. Habitual coldness, disdain, disapproval, sarcasm, gaslighting, disrespect, passive aggression, control, threats, violence all have the same impact whether they were pre-meditated or not.

3. There is a difference between a bad patch and a trend of increasing and habitual abuse. Bad patches might be solved with communication and work. But someone who has inflicted chronic abuse, whether physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological, may lack the self awareness needed to even accept that they have made mistakes, let alone that they should learn from them and change their behaviour. Or they may simply not care.

4. Just because an abuser cannot or will not take responsibility for the emotional baggage that led to their abusive behaviour patterns does not mean we have to carry it. Or suffer it.

5. No matter how much we once loved them, how fine a person they once were or have the potential to be, how much pain they are in themselves - it is not our job to heal our abuser. It is their job.

6. People stay in abusive relationships for far longer than perhaps they should, not because they are weak or stupid, but because relationships are messy and rarely clear cut. Relationships also mean something. They hold a value that makes it hard to just give up at the first sign of trouble. Or the even the second sign.

7. Hope can hold people in abusive relationships for quite a while. Hope that it's just a bad patch, that the perpetrator will come to their senses, that the relationship can be saved and forged into something healthier. Sometimes, it is only when that hope dies that sufferers are finally free to choose to leave.

8. Even after that choice is made, in many abusive relationships there can be practical, emotional and financial constraints holding a sufferer captive, either due to circumstance, or through the abuser's design. These take time to find work-arounds for, particularly when sufferers have had their self esteem replaced by self doubt.

9. There is no rating system for abuse. All sufferers are deserving of help. If it feels like your relationship is destroying who you are, physically, mentally, or emotionally, reach outside your relationship for help.

10. If you think you might be in an abusive relationship, speak to Women's Aid or your local equivalent. You will be welcomed. Met with compassion. Listened to. Plied with tissues and cups of water. Your experiences will be validated. They will not tell you what to do, but they will give you advice and they will support you as much as they can.

11. Also reach out to friends and family. True friends will be there for you. True family will have your back. You are not alone, even if it feels that way.

12. Mediation is a useful way to avoid dragging things through the Courts and can keep a split more civil, but keep discussion firmly focused on forging agreements for the future.

13. Engage a lawyer, not to pursue everything you can get, but to ensure that the agreements reached are fair, and legally binding. A professional on your side to protect your back when you are feeling at your most vulnerable is worth the money.

14. Unless you really want to give it one last go to try to fix things, be very wary about discussing the past in mediation. Mediators are by nature neutral. But they also provide an audience that an abuser can play to. You may well find yourself in the same pointless and painful discussions where your abuser denies that anything is wrong with the relationship while simultaneously pinning all the blame on you.

15. If you have children, remember that the relationship between your ex and your children is just that - their relationship with your children. This is separate from your relationship with your ex, both past and present.

16. If it is safe to do so, encourage your children to have contact with their other parent. Don't force it if they don't want to. Just make sure that they have the opportunity to know, and to love, both of their parents. And be aware that they may change their minds about contact and that's ok.

17. It is up to your ex to make their relationship with each child work, but don't sabotage it.

18. Be honest with your child, in an age appropriate way, about why you left, but don't burden them with the pain and vitriol inevitable at the end of a relationship. And never ask or expect them to ‘choose sides'.

19. If you couldn't co-parent effectively when you were together, it is not going to be any easier after you split up. Trying to co-parent with someone who disagrees with your parenting expectations, or simply doesn't care enough to remember what you had agreed, is soul destroying and futile. If it is not working, give it up.

20. Parallel parenting works fine as long as you make the rules in the different households clear. And it is much less stressful for everyone.

21. Over time your rules will naturally change and perhaps lessen as your children grow. They may become closer or further away from those of your ex. That is fine. If your children are happy and safe, do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

Six years on I can look back at my own experience with compassion and forgiveness - for both of us. I feel sadness for the dark path our relationship took. I still occassionally mourn losing the man I once thought was my soul mate, yet I know that I lost him long before I left him - if he ever really existed. And I will never forget what happened.

This family is broken beyond repair and I still feel fractured and scarred. But, like my own as a child, the peices of our family actually work better apart. And like Kintsugi, the process of repairing myself with safety, freedom, and self care, leaves gold seams where the cracks in my soul once were.

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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I'm on holiday with my son down in Filey on the Yorkshire coast this week, and not feeling remotely inspired to set the world to rights. We had a decent run down in mostly sunshine. Zuma, the dog, didn't puke once, which was a bonus. We stopped off at a McDonalds half way down for a safe early tea and arrived in daylight having enjoyed sea views much of the way down and the Yorshire moors on the last stretch.

I spent today with an old friend from school who popped over the border from Lancashire to see us. My son skipped the socialising and the sunshine, preferring to stay inside at the house while we chatted and walked, along the beach with the dog, and later round Filey. The town turned out to be hosting a steam punk festival today. Very little relation to the actual ‘80's punk we knew in our youth - more goth costume drama than safety pins and spiky hair - but interesting to see and it reminded us of our first gig together, watching the Mission in Manchester.

Now that she's left, I'm sat snuggled with my son on the sofa with YouTube on the TV (someone playing Subnautica). I'm looking out at the blue sky and idly thinking about the park and ice cream literally yards over the road, the beach 10 minutes walk away with mini tanks zipping up and down, the local zoo, Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire air museum, the local shop with a giant Pikachu in the window. There's quite a bit to see.

My son, meanwhile, is focussed on Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, a holiday aquisition. He is grudgingly sharing the only foot stool with me, and asking at 10 minute intervals when it will be time for a chippy. Which I am to go and fetch and bring back to the house.

And I will do that for him. I will let him enjoy his chippy tea without cagoling him out of the house into the glorious May sunshine and sea air. Because this holiday is about being, not doing. Being comfortable. Being relaxed. Being together with no distractions for the rest of the week. Being excited about proper crispy batter instead of the soggy stuff more usual from chippies at home.

I don't know if we'll get out on any of the trips I've suggested, carefully chosen because we can take Zuma. We didn't get out when we came last September. But that's ok. Holidays don't need to be about doing stuff, or seeing stuff. Holidays should not have an agenda. There should be no pressure to ‘have fun'. No stress about ‘fitting everything in', or trying to ‘make’ everyone happy.

Holidays should be about people chilling, doing things they like somewhere a bit different, re-connecting, and enjoying each day as it comes. They should be about recuperating from the mundane stresses in life, filling the resilience tank.

I will relish a week of beach dog walks with Zuma and sofa snuggles with my son. My son is happy somewhere other than within his own four walls and is looking forward to a few chippies with extra crispy batter. Just being together, relaxed and happy, chilling out, makes it worth coming. If I manage to get him out for an ice cream in the next few days, I will count it as a bonus.

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We all have mental health issues at some point in our lives, regardless of whether or not they have been given a clinical label. Grief at the loss of a loved one, depression from long term unemployment, drinking more than is healthy on a regular basis to forget bad memories.

Mental health is a continuum. Sometimes people drop off the deep end for a while.

This can be due to stressful circumstances in life that mount up and up until they just can't be coped with any more, either because too many different types of shit hit the fan in one go, or because that fan just doesn't stop whizzing round distributing a specific chronic flavour. Or it can be down to long term trauma responses like post traumatic stress disorder or a mental illness like obsessive compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder that temporarily gets the better of someone due to a known or unknown trigger.

Just because someone has a breakdown or burnout once does not necessarily mean that it will happen again, but some people with long term mental health conditions do need to be allowed to manage those conditions in the work place in the same way as someone with diabetes or angina can. Even with a lifelong mental illness like bipolar disorder, with the proper management it could be years, or even decades, between bouts of actual illness.

The point is, we are all people, and those who happen to have been diagnosed with mental health issues are no more, and no less, of a ‘liability’ than someone who breaks their leg skiing and ends up in traction for 2 months. If someone has been diagnosed with mental health issues, it is often because they purposely sought help and are therefore responsible people, determined to manage their mental health and get on with life, including work. If they haven't sought help yet, an effective and caring manager will encourage them to reach out for that help so that they can get back to living well, and working well.

Deal with each person in your workplace with compassion and understanding, and do not let the stigma from a label stop you from utilising that person's skills where it will benefit your organisation. In cases of work related stress, take a step back and look at whether what you were asking for is actually possible. In life related stress be an empathetic listener. Be understanding if someone needs to pull in their antennae and go no contact sometimes to get back on an even keel. And if you see any staff member or team member struggling alone, encourage them to reach out for help.

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I am not a huge Royalist. I don't follow celebrities. I couldn’t give two hoots about what anyone is wearing. I am not religious. I think church hymns mostly sound like dirges. But I did watch the coronation of Charles III yesterday pretty much from start to finish.

Initially I figured I would just watch the parades before and after and skip most of the bit at the abbey, maybe just popping in for the crowning for posterity. And the parades were great. A huge testament to our armed services, and to those from around the commonwealth, still managing to hang together. They were a fantastic feat of marching discipline, horse control and musicianship, and a just reward to the thousands of people who cared enough about a new King to actually show up on the day. And doubtless there was plenty of manure for London’s roses to be picked up afterwards.

But when they got to Westminster Abbey I ended up hooked. Transfixed by the whole thing. The fine costumes. The sparkling regalia. The church organ. The full orchestra. The choir. The gospel singers I could have done without - they seemed to be trying to gospel in the style of the Abbey choir instead of really going for it. But in general the music was fantastic. A mix of old and new classical music and soaring vocal harmonies in a vast, historic, and beautiful space specifically designed for people to lift up their voices to their god.

And at the heart of if all were two people in their seventies. Charles, probably with very mixed emotions. He has spent his whole life knowing Kingship was coming, and understanding that to be King means to serve the people, not be served by them. As contradictory as that may sound for someone with a palace and a vast mass of staff to run it. Yet the only reason he was sitting there is because he lost his mother last September, a grief that no-one gets over quickly or fully. And Camilla, who replaced the country’s favourite, Diana, in Charle’s heart decades ago. Who has struggled to be accepted at all. And who, although now crowned Queen, can never replace Queen Elizabeth II. Lizzie will always be the only real Queen for most.

It was a day of contradictions. Pomp and splendour in a country so wracked by inflation that most people are struggling to pay their bills. Crowning of monarchs in a time when it is difficult to see the actual point of a Royal Family any more. Celebration of the Commonwealth in a world where many see it as a shadow of British colonialism. The coming into Kingship of a man well past retirement age. A ritual centuries old playing out in the 21st century.

And the cost? Estimated at £100 million to £250 million. Security costs were high. It sounds a lot. For one day of celebration. Many in the UK object to having the tax they pay spent in such a frivolous way. Yet, as taxpayers, we routinely pay for things that we don't know about, don't directly benefit from and don't care about. That's the way tax systems work. We all chip into the kitty in order that we can benefit from the things we do want or need. The UK taxpayer spent over £400 thousand hosting a visit from Donald Trump that none of us wanted. There were even petitions to Parliament wanting his visit cancelled. The wage bill for the MPs in the UK Parliament is over £55 million, before their extortionate expenses, and many people would quite happily sack the lot of them. The London olympics cost us £18 billion and vast swathes of us didn't watch any of it.

Yet tens of thousands of people are thought to have stood for hours lining the streets of London yesterday. Over 18 million people in the UK alone watched the coronation on TV. And we are all getting a paid day off work tomorrow. Over 30 million people are getting a days wages for sitting on their arse.

If the transfer of a single footballer can cost over £100 million, surely the crowning of a new King is worth a little more? Having a monarchy is still, for the moment, very much a part of the United Kingdom. And, as such, the day a new King is crowned should be a day of pomp and circumstance and celebration. For the price of a hundred or so ferrarris we got a day that those who care will remember for the rest of their lives. A day that even those more ambivalent to the idea of a monarchy could enjoy, and remember as a part of their country's history that they were present for. For the price of a single luxury mansion or penthouse, the whole country had the opportunity to witness a part of history significantly more fun than the bank crash, the global pandemic, the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis, the countless wars being waged.

For 5 hours I was transported out of the mundane and into a real-life fairytale. And at the end of that fairytale, the United Kingdom gained a new King that gives a shit about people and the environment and the world. Whether everybody here wants him or not. For however much longer we even remain a United Kingdom.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think it was worth it. Though my son, who was at his Dad's yesterday, apparently slept through the whole thing.

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In part 1 of this 2-part series, I outlined our personal journey to home education and some of the realisations that I came to in order to make that decision. You can find a link to part 1 at the end of this article if you have not seen it already. But that process of eye-opening about education did not stop with our decision to home educate.

All the reading, and our personal experiences with education professionals, started flipping a whole stack of switches, turning on yet more light bulbs in my mind. The light they shed laid bare an ugliness to the school system that I had never fully appreciated before. It was hidden under that bright facade of faceless children, all smart in their uniforms passing our house going to and from school, eagerly chatting with parents or peers, milling in noisy exited chaos in the school yards at lunch time. It was an ugliness that I had blocked out of my own childhood. That my son had been desperately trying to show me for some time. With meme collections of sarcasm and despair about school. Questions about why schools teach this useless thing instead of that useful thing. Frequent complaints of too much, too hard, too boring. And eventually with his total inability to attend.

It has been said on many an occasion that sometimes we need to step back from a problem in order to see a solution. I suggest that sometimes we need to step back from a problem to even see that it is a problem. Most of us have gone through the school system, some with less pain than others. We have sat on hard chairs at desks and copied words and pictures from the board - in my case a blackboard filled with coloured chalk. We have sat reading textbooks, that we may or may not have found interesting, next to other children with an entirely different set of interests and strengths, reading the exact same textbook. Probably the exact same pages. We have wrestled with grammar and algebra and chemical formulae. We have memorised times-tables and dates and places. And we have regurgitated all the information that we crammed into our heads onto exam papers, in exchange for apparently priceless certificates. These certificates, we were told, were the keys to our future. We have gone through school, and in doing so we have been conditioned to view sitting silently on a chair listening to an adult as the only valid form of learning for our children. We have been persuaded that the sheer amount of information that our children can absorb and then regurgitate in exams is what will decide the course of their entire life. But how much of the information that we learnt have we actually used since? How much can we even remember now? Did those exams that we passed or failed really dictate our entire future? Did those that failed the exams turn out to be the total failures in life that we were always taught they would be?

We are constantly told that school is essential to prepare children for ‘real life’. Perhaps that was once true, when folk from poor families had no other access to information than word of mouth from their peers. When they were expected to be God-fearing obedient workers in the industrial ventures of the rich. But is is really true today? Or is school actually taking more and more of the little time children have as children away from real life?

Modern employers value critical thinking, the ability to learn new things quickly and independently, and the ability to create new ideas. They are increasingly recognising the benefits of healthy work-life balance and good mental health, problem solving, collaborative teamwork, and employees challenging the ways things have always been done. Schools, on the other hand, still teach facts by rote learning that the children must accept as the only correct ones. They still teach children not to question the information presented, or the adults presenting it. Not to talk about anything deemed ‘off-topic' in class. To do what they are told and only what they are told. To do it when they are told. Schools still focus on attendance at all costs, competition with peers and total unquestioning obedience to authority. How does any of this help prepare children for real life in modern society?

Even in my own youth, now four decades ago, the culture shock that I felt when I moved from school education to university in the 1980's was huge. We were suddenly expected to take charge of our own education. To be self motivated. To think critically about information presented as fact. To question assumptions. To come up with new ideas. To manage our own time. After 13 years of having the exact opposite drilled into me, I was totally un-prepared. Forty years later I am still struggling to see how school really prepared me for anything I have since faced, either in the workplace or in life. My Mum encouraged my reading skills and taught me how to do mental maths in a way that made sense to me. Everything else I have needed since school I have had to learn as I went. My real learning didn't stop after I left school, it started then. So why do we persist in believing the education system when it says that school is essential to prepare children for real life? Could it be because we were conditioned as children to accept any information presented by it as the only correct fact?

While the attitudes of the education system appear firmly rooted in the past, it has grown massively in scale and scope since the concept of schooling was invented. Intead of village schools set up for a few children by local benefactors, we now have a massive education system dealing with millions of children. In the process of that change, everything has become about standardisation.

The education system has developed a standardised national curriculum of information for children to learn. For any specific topic this information is only part of a much more detailed story, and in todays fast-developing world, at least some of that information may be out of date before it even hits a brain cell. While information in the curriculum is limited in depth it is ever expanding in breadth. Yet even then, it is only a pin head on the tip of the iceberg of things that could be learned about. What makes the information in the national curriculum more important than all the other information out there? Who decides what to put in it and why? This we are never told. The general approach seems to be to force-feed children ‘all the information they might one day need depending on their career choice but will probably never use’. This is done, we are told, to give all children the same chances in life. But it is overwhelming and exhausting for the very children it is meant to be helping, requiring ever increasing amounts of homework just to cram it all in. The children are not remotely interested in vast swathes of it. It is not teaching any of the skills that employers actually want. And, in my opinion, it is ultimately doomed to failure in terms of effectively preparing children for a fast-developing modern world. The content of the national curriculum will always be behind the times because it is too huge and unweildy to update quickly. And in the digital age, remembering facts that we don't need and aren't interested in is an incredibly overrated skill.

The picture gets even worse when we also look at the standardised methods of delivering the national curriculum, and at the methods of measuring and comparing performance. None of it takes any account of the differences in interests between individual children, which will significantly affect their motivation to learn certain subjects and their capacity to retain information. None of it takes any account of the differences in learning styles and preferred learning media between individual children, which will significantly affect how well they process the information in the first place and therefore how well they understand it. Even when children are recognised as needing a different kind of support in school, as with those children with additional needs, they are still expected to fit in clearly defined boxes. To somehow thrive under a different set of generic approaches.

It seems that by trying to cater for the possible routes in life of millions of children, the education system has lost sight of how to truly educate one single child. Instead of reaching for an outcome where each child reaches their individual potential, the system pursues population-wide targets of academic output in the form of attendance and exam grades. And despite claims to the contrary, exams are not measuring individual aptitude. Scoring is rigged to ensure that a standardised proportion of children obtain each of the available grades each year, from the top grades to fails. There was much uproar during the pandemic about how to further fiddle the grade boundaries so that children who may have got poorer results than expected due to time in lockdown were not disadvantaged relative to those in other years. The most that school exam grades can tell us is where a child's results fell within that particular cohort of children. And each year, after 11 or more years of telling them that their entire life depends on passing these exams, the rigged scoring ensures that the same standardised proportion of children will fail. This, we are told, is because if every child passed, the exams would be seen as too easy. But where is the fairness in a system that would pass a child with a certain result one year, and then fail them the next, just to keep to a standardised quota of grades?

Add into this mix the sensory, physical, cognitive and social challenges faced by many children with additional needs that are simply not being met, and it is easy to see how the very environment of school becomes so toxic to some children. If we really wanted to know why children’s mental health is declining, I personally think that looking at the education system would be a good place to start. But as we are mostly conditioned not to question it, it seems far easier to blame social media and video games than to face up to this ever-growing behemoth that is ruling more and more of our children’s lives, and indeed more and more of the lives of their families.

Because the influence of the education system is not just on children in the classroom any more. It reaches its tentacles much further. It controls when families can go on holiday or spend time with distant relatives. What clothes and shoes parents must spend limited funds on for their children and where they must buy them from. It often controls children’s extra-curricular activities. It eats away at the already limited time children have outside school to spend with family or on hobbies or with friends, with yet more schoolwork at home. It ties tired parents into spending their free time after work persuading tired children to undertake that schoolwork. And for many families with children with additional needs, it even attempts to control the very relationships between parents and children - how they parent their children at home. So why do we permit all this control over our lives, well beyond the school gates? Could it be because we were conditioned by school to be unquestioningly obedient?

In March of this year we had a wave of pupil protests in the UK. Children objecting to ever more control of their existence - mostly around uniforms and toilet access. Suspending girls from education over the length of their skirts, and banning pupils from leaving classrooms to go to the toilet, were the focus of many children's quite understandable ire. We would never stand for adults being banned from going to the toilet - even prisoners have a toilet in their cell. It was disappointing, but perhaps not unsurprising, that the education professionals utterly dismissed the valid objections of these children, putting the protests down to social media and yobbish behaviour. Even more interesting to me, though, was that these professionals appeared more concerned that the objections being raised by the children were too often supported by the children’s parents. This strongly suggests to me that these professionals think that neither children, nor their parents, should be allowed to question the authority of schools - despite the parents being grown adults who have long left school, and who pay for the education system with the income tax taken out of their wages. The press, of course, focused on the use of social media to co-ordinate the protests, the headlines reflecting the view of education ‘experts' that it was use of social media that stirred up the protests, not the increasingly unbearable situation in many schools. What really boggles my mind about all this, though, is that schools teach children about the UN Convention on Child Rights and then have the audacity to get upset when the children stand up for those rights. Why does no-one question this? Could it be because we were conditioned in school not to question authority?

In the same month, teacher’s unions were up in arms in the press about Ofsted inspections of schools. They were calling for the whole school inspection system to be scrapped after a single headteacher committed suicide in January, allegedly because, after the first inspection in years, her school was downgraded. We will never really know what was going on for that poor woman to take her own life, nor should we. But against that one headteacher, stack thousands of children with additional needs who can go their entire school lives without those needs being properly met, who suffer huge impacts on their mental and physical health on a daily basis, sometimes leading to suicide ideation if not worse. There seems to be no will from the education system to even acknowledge that this is happening, let alone fix it. There is currently much wailing and gnashing of teeth about ‘ghost children’ that didn't go back to school after the pandemic and what awful things might happen to them if we don't ‘get them back’. But absolutely no appreciation of why that has happened, or how the education system has crushed those children so badly that they simply cannot face it any more. School was the awful thing that happened to them. Yet, despite the constant testing and comparison of pupils and schools, there is still no clear measure of progress, or even accountability, for the education system itself. The education system, it appears, is beyond reproach, beyond question. Could it be that it is the very conditioning that we all absorbed in school that has allowed this to happen, un-noticed, beneath our very noses, in an otherwise democratic society?

Mine is not the only voice shouting out that there is something dreadfully wrong with the education system. A system that we are too often forced, by law and circumstance, to entrust our children to, whether we agree with how it is run or not. A system in which our children often spend more time awake than they do at home. But what is the alternative for the child of working parents who need to put food on the table, keep a roof over their families heads, and the heating on in the winter? We were lucky enough to be able to home educate because I can do my day job from home, mostly. Many families don't have that luxury. They need somewhere to put their children where they will be safe, and learning, while they attend their jobs. We are assured that place is school. And, unlike most other alternatives, it is generally free at the point of use.

I understand that not all children find school such an inhospitable place as my son did, and that perhaps my view of the bigger picture is tainted by our own personal experiences. School has a hugely important role in society and, where done right, it can be a positive and formative period in a child’s life. But I am no longer convinced that school, in it's current form, is either as safe, or as much a beacon of learning, as the education system makes out. And the situation that our children are trapped in somehow seems to be getting worse rather than better. So how do we make it better?

In my opinion, we urgently need to recognise that, no matter how many millions of children the education system is dealing with, there is no one size fits all for true education. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Ultimately parents, not schools, are legally responsible for their children's education. Under Section 30 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, for example, parents have a duty to provide efficient education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of their child, either by sending them to school or by other means. As home educating parents, we look at the ability and aptitude of our children both individually and holistically. What is our child interested in? What are their individual strengths that they can build on? What basic needs do they require to be met in order to learn effectively? I suggest that we need to tame the behemoth that we have created and look at how to turn the education system round to focus on educating the individual rather than the millions. If schools took the individual and holistic approach of home educating parents, there would be no unmet needs. And children would be taught according to their strengths, not shamed for their weaknesses.

There is no legal definition of efficient and suitable education for home education. However, case-law suggests that it prepares children for life in a modern civilised society and enables them to achieve their full potential. For reasons previously outlined, in my opinion, if schools were held to the same standard it is unlikely that they would currently pass muster. Again, perhaps we need to go back to first principles. The most basic thing an adult needs in order to do well in life is to obtain enough money to pay for everything that they need. When schooling was invented that meant either working for or marrying into a rich family. That hasn't been the case for a long time, and the digital age in particular has opened up a huge variety of possibilities for self employment alongside the more traditional route of ‘getting a job’. The job market itself has changed beyond all recognition thanks to the fast moving development of technology and more enlightened attitudes in modern workplaces. If we could slim down the sheer volume of facts that children are expected to absorb, generally to those that they are actually interested in and have an aptitude for, we could use the rest of children's time at school to properly discuss concepts more important to living and working in todays society. We could really talk to them about mental health, first aid, their personal rights, other people's rights, animal welfare, race, religion, gender, disability, how to negotiate, how to debate rather than argue, how democracy works, financial management, time management, how to find a job, how to set up a business, how tax works, how to look for information and how to critically analyse it, relationships. Not just spout information at them that they need to regurgitate verbatim, but actually have conversations where we listen to their questions and their developing views and offer different perspectives for them to consider for themselves. This is the stuff that our children have to figure out for themselves when it slams them in the face once they leave school. This is the stuff that would prepare them for real life. This is the stuff that parents would do themselves if they actually had enough time with their children to even think about it in between work and school and homework.

In my dream school, there would be no uniform, no rules beyond common decency. Home work would not be a thing. Family holidays would be taken when it suits the families and any work missed caught up on online if of interest or otherwise simply skipped. There would be no assessment or exams, no competion, no rewards and punishments to manipulate children. There would be free access to any and all age appropriate information, a variety of media to pick from and adults to ask question of, to bounce ideas off, to guide debate. Children could get up and move about if they needed, or leave the room and join in remotely from a quiet space elsewhere. They could join in from home if they wished. They could work alone or collaborate with other children as they chose. They could come in late or leave early if it suited. Attendance registers would be used to check who was present, but there would be no measuring, no unhealthy and unfair target of 100 percent. And they could go to the toilet whenever they damn well needed to.

I am no education professional, I don't know if or how any of this would work in practice. But I am an ex-pupil. And the parent of a child that the education system in its current form has failed. Badly. My eyes are wide open now and the lights are all on. I know that what we have is not working for many children. And I am certain that if we could give children a truly individual education with a clear and specific value to them, within a school environment that truly catered for everyone, every single child would reach their full potential. There would be no need to force any child into school, and no need to force them to stay. They would be pulled back by their curiosity

I can dream of something better.

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Further reading

A suitable education for every child

Inverse Relationship Between GPA and Innovative Orientation.

Can You Measure an Education? Can You Define Life’s Meaning?

Pupil protests across England and Wales spread by social media, experts say

Pressure mounts on Ofsted amid outcry after death of headteacher

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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My son has been living with a low-grade brain tumour since he was diagnosed at 6 years old. He was diagnosed as autistic, later, when he was 10. Throughout his time at primary school he had challenges around headaches, fatigue, noise, bright light, executive functioning, and bullying. It was hard, but somehow he muddled through five years, despite mostly being unable to attend full time due to feeling ill. His attendance was always ‘a concern’ to school, but we had support from neurology and oncology at the Sick Kids hospital for school to make allowances, to let him have breaks from the noise of the classroom, to skip PE if he was more tired than usual. There was also a classroom assistant that he made good use of. He was generally ‘keeping up' despite all the time off, and he had some friends to help cushion him from the bullying, at least some of the time.

Coping with school during a global pandemic changed all that. The school's policy of not saying who had Covid meant he could never tell whether or not he had actually been at risk and so assumed the worst - that he was always at risk. The fact that adults were hiding at home from the virus while children still had to go to school at all seemed dangerous and unfair. The ever changing routines and rules to comply with at school, and the random periods spent at home in lock-down, meant that nothing was ever certain about school. Except, that is, for the loss of the very adjustments that had for so long enabled him to cope, just about. He was no longer allowed breaks to escape the noise of the classroom. The classroom assistant no longer came to help. Lunch time and breaks had to be spent in bubbles of specific children doing specific activities in specific parts of the yard. As the months went by, increasing anxiety and lack of support exacerbated his challenges in the classroom, leading in turn to ever more headaches, greater fatigue and even more anxiety about being trapped in school feeling ill. I watched, helpless, as this feedback loop spiralled, my pleas for his support measures to be re-instated falling on the deaf ears of ‘the Council says we have to do things like this'. He finally broke in November 2020, during year 6.

By this point he could not face going in to school at all. Forcing the issue often caused light-sensitive headaches that left him pale grey and exhausted, retreating behind closed curtains and a closed door on his return home. It also increasingly led to meltdowns, where his panic at the mere thought of school, or even school work, led to him lashing out. He was withdrawn, irritable and depressed. Twice I overheard him talking to his friends about suicide. At the age of 11. After months of struggling along like this, encouraging him to school when I could, the cavalry eventually arrived the following May. Professionals from educational psychology, additional support for learning, child and adolescent mental health services, and social work were brought in on the case. I was hopeful that my son's autism diagnosis would bring additional support. After all, that was what we were assured would happen pre-diagnosis.

Instead, the focus of effort shifted markedly with the arrival of these professionals. Previously it had been on how to make reasonable adjustments for sensory and rest needs in school during a pandemic. Now the focus was on ignoring those needs and assuming that complaints of headaches and fatigue were fiction from a child with irrational anxiety simply wanting to avoid school. On assuming that it was my propensity to be hoodwinked by my child instead of setting firm boundaries that had caused our current predicament. On sending me on parenting courses instead of fixing the problem where it was - in school, where my son simply couldn’t cope any more. I was constantly pressured by the school and Council professionals to ‘just get him in’, as if it had ever been that easy, and constantly guilt-tripped about all the work he was missing, how far behind he was falling, as if this was a choice I was making. The autism expert from CAMHS made it clear, as did I, that we needed to change the environment in school, to support my son's sensory needs and to lessen his anxiety, before he could return. While the school had previously listened to advice from NHS professionals about my son’s needs around his tumour, NHS advice on autism was ignored in favour of the views of the Council's educational psychologist, additional support for learning worker and social worker.

Instead of attracting additional support in school, in practice, my son's autism diagnosis seemed to be used as an excuse to dismiss and be-little his experiences and my knowledge of them. And to subject him to a different set of generic approaches, this time for autistic children. These approaches were based on stricter rules, more routine, firmer control. They also seemed to assume total incapacity in executive function and social awareness. Every single part of my son’s day, from brushing his teeth in the morning to putting his pyjamas on at night, was to be mapped out and ticked off with animated pictures and explained with social stories. And we were told, in no uncertain terms, that these approaches were to be used at home, in his sanctuary, in order that we be consistent with how things would be done in school, where my son’s problems originated.

I knew that my son fitted these new approaches even less than he fitted the old ones at school and I tried to explain that. He is smart, holds strong opinions, and values his autonomy above all else. Raising him is a privilege that I never tire of, and I have learnt more from him about how to parent than I have from any book or article. Or any of the four parenting courses I was sent on during those months. He has taught me how to make an environment bearable for him. How his tolerance and ability varies. How to get and keep his attention when he's hyperfocussed. How to listen to what he's not saying as well as his words. How to resolve conflict rather than escalate it. How he learns and problem solves best. When to offer help and when to leave him alone.

The generic approaches for autistic children foisted on us by the education system flew in the face of everything that I knew about my son, and everything that I had already told them about my son. None of it aimed to resolve either his sensory challenges or his anxiety while in school. It did, however, seem to be aimed at solving perceived problems at home. I hadn't asked for help at home because we didn't need help at home, yet the narrative spun by the Council’s professionals was firmly fixed from the very start around an anxious and incapable single mum. I resisted the most damaging instructions given, like ignoring my sons headaches and banning all screen time until he returned to school. We tried some of the less damaging ideas like the animated cards and social stories, which, as I knew they would, received raised eyebrows and contempt from a child who didn't need them. We tried, not because I thought their instructions might help, but because I was concerned about the potential consequences of not ‘showing willing’. Presumably it made sense to someone in Social Work to combine the role of supporting children with a disability with the role of acting against parents to protect vulnerable children. As someone who spent 18 months in care as a toddler while my own single mother, and my own wider family, were deemed incapable of caring for me and my baby sister, it terrified me. I engaged an independent child advocate from a local charity, and they, as well as CAMHS, supported my pleas for action in school. Still to no avail.

Despite, and in some cases because of, the efforts of the school and the professionals, my son's last attempt at being in school was in mid August of 2021, his second day of his last year in primary school. I officially removed him from the education system at the end of June 2022 - after he was turned down for specialist provision for High School because he is not intellectually challenged. CAMHS, and a few visits to the local High School, had made it abundantly clear that mainstream High School would be too traumatising for an already broken autistic child, so we have been home educating ever since. That was not, initially, an easy decision to make, but I know already that it was the right one. It will be a while yet until my son is fully recovered from his experiences, but since the cloud of expectations around school has been lifted, he has become relaxed and cheerful at home again. His headaches have disappeared almost completely as he can manage his own environment. I can’t remember the last time he had a meltdown. And instead of resisting anything with a hint of learning, he now inhales knowledge and skills like they were air. Yet, he has spent most of the last year watching YouTube and playing video games, both of which are deemed ‘bad' by the professionals. So how does that work? And is that really home educating?

I already knew that my son used YouTube and gaming to help regulate his emotions. They are both important for him to have access to, particularly when stressed or anxious, which is why I resisted instructions to completely ban them. After August 2022, when my son stopped attending school at all, I gave him free rein, and watched, entranced, as this traumatised child, who had shut down to learning entirely, slowly became curious and engaged in learning every day he was at home, feeling safe, and using these activities as a medium. I was convinced that he was learning more at home than he ever had at school, and to counter the constant narrative from the school about how much learning he was missing out on, I eventually decided to sit down and document exactly what he was learning. From the outside it just looked like ‘watching YouTube’ and ‘playing video games’, which did not please the professionals at all. He was having far too much fun at home. He would never want to go back to school. Now I started paying more attention to exactly what he was doing. I started listing exactly what topics he was covering and what skills he was developing. And I was pretty impressed. My son, who had repeatedly declared learning to be too hard and too boring, was voluntarily learning about science and history and geography and socio-economics. He was voluntarily developing skills in maths and reading and spelling and problem solving and planning and resource management. And he was having fun. He was determined to persevere. He was happy. Not an adjective either of us would ever use to describe him when at school. Ever.

Sometimes it is easy to see what he is learning about from YouTube if I pay attention, with videos about science or history or current affairs. Sometimes it is trickier to spot, perhaps only becoming apparent with discussion about what we watch together or something he has seen that particularly struck him. Art and literature criticism from movie and game reviews. Social commentary and current affairs from meme collections read out loud. Human rights, development of societal attitudes, and empathy for the human condition from channel owners who may be gay, trans, black, disabled, female, or just a plain white male, bucking the current stereotype by being a decent human being. Whatever he learns comes as a direct consequence of his own choices, his own interests, whether he actively follows rabbit holes down the internet, or allows the YouTube algorithm to suggest new videos, and new channels, based on his watch history. In this digital age, the entire world and all it’s knowledge can be explored at leisure from the comfort and safety of his home. And it’s fascinating watching it happen, learning new things alongside my son.

What is possibly harder to see from the outside is the educational value that he gets from video games. Yet here too, it proved worth paying more attention. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that video games can have a number of cognitive benefits. Improved spatial skills. Enhanced processing of often fast-moving visual information. Increased ability to keep track of multiple pieces of information at the same time. Improved problem-solving. Enhanced creativity. Increased hand-eye coordination. Improved executive function. The list is lengthening all the time. The content and focus of games can also educate gamers about any topic that the game developer can conceive - history, geography, mythology, physics, genetics, evolution, politics, financial management, resource management, project planning, city planning, road planning, human relationships, cooking, driving a bus. All these and more are covered within my son's existing game collection alone, and, like the YouTube videos, he can dive into different topics as the mood takes him. Sometimes I get invited along, and I have watched, over the years, as playing these games, overcoming challenge after challenge to reach his in-game goals, has helped him to build his emotional resilience and his ability to plan and execute tasks. It became apparent that where YouTube allowed an avid consumption of educational information, gaming allowed my son to both gain new information and to practice and develop key skills. These included the standard reading writing and arithmetic, but went well beyond them.

Too many adults, including the professionals we were dealing with, have a tendency to dismiss children’s chosen activities as a waste of time. It is time that we all recognise the value of what children learn at home, entirely unprompted. It is time that we stop just walking past with our adult blinkers on. Bizarrely, the school's guilt-tripping had forced me to do just that. And to take our first step towards home education.

So, I knew that my son was actively learning at home, just not what was on the national curriculum. I knew that school had never been a comfortable place for my son. I also knew that his burn-out was not going to resolve quickly, and certainly not in the same environment that caused it. In short, I knew that going back to school was not the best thing for my son - unless the professionals involved suddenly had an impressive change in attitude. But, as a single parent, I needed to work, to keep a roof over our heads. In my mind at that point, home education meant teaching my son at home. What I would teach him and how I would teach it were questions dominated by an even more important one. Where would I find the time to teach my son at home? Although leaving the school system seemed increasingly like the only way to save both of us our sanity, this felt like a massive barrier to home educating. The next step on our path was my learning about self directed education.

Slowly, over the months, in between feeling desperate, I scrolled home ed Facebook groups and searched on Google. I found articles about learning through play by Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College. I found references to earlier work by John Holt, an American author and educator, and proponent of the unschooling approach to home education back in the 1960's and 70's. I stumbled across a book by Dr Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist, called ‘Changing our Minds’ that set out in stunning detail how children can successfully direct their own education. And I found hundreds of parents facing similar challenges with burnt out children who simply could not face school any more - many of whom had invented unique versions of home education that suited their families and involved little, if any, formal learning.

I slowly realised that home education does not need to involve the national curriculum, or indeed any curriculum. That it did not need to involve formal teaching at all. That in fact, the whole idea that children are empty vessels that need to be shut in rooms and force-fed information by adults in order to learn is erroneous in the extreme. That children have always learned best through play.

I also realised that I could trust my son to decide for himself what he needs to know in order to function in the modern world. That I could trust him to seek out the information and skills that he needs to achieve his goals, when he needs them. That I could trust that his goals, while that of a child at present, are stepping stones in his development, and that they will grow and mature naturally as he does. And, I realised that I could become my son's facilitator rather than his teacher. That I did have time for both my work and my sons education. Home education suddenly became a real option. A valid escape route from the stagnant mess we were both embroiled in with the education system. So when my son was turned down for specialist provision within the school system, we took that escape route gratefully.

In the future, as he recovers further, I hope that my son's learning can be expanded again, with visits to zoos and exhibitions and museums, perhaps with shared learning opportunities in subjects that interest him within the home ed community, maybe even courses and exams at college once he has decided what he wants to be in life. But for the moment, he’s not ready. Crowds of people and many places outside the home are still anxiety provoking, to be eased back into slowly, over time, with support, and without the pressure that traumatised him in the first place. YouTube and video games are still the only media that my son can interact with comfortably, though I notice that he is now making forays into written information from Google. All of this is ok. He is still healing. And though he may now be a teenager at 13, he is still a child. Play is how he learns best. It is not ‘wasting time’. It is how he is learning how to educate himself, and how he is beginning to love learning again. Both of which are much more crucial to his future than any schoolwork could ever be. And I wager he will remember us staying up late to watch live coverage on YouTube of Space X launches far longer than he will remember anything from school. Except his distress.

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(Please note that this article was published with permission from my son. If he ever changes his mind I will take it down.)

Fun YouTube channels to dip into

Some of my son's favourites

• Bill Wurtz - quirky, creative videos on a variety of topics, including our favourite, ‘the history of the entire world I guess'.

• Brick experiment- experiments with lego technic.

• Dr Mike - Covers the importance of health literacy and battles misinformation in a practical, yet fun way.

• Gamology - Real-life experts in a variety of fields react to how their area of expertise is represented in relevant videogames.

• Kurzgesagt in a nutshell - animation videos explaining science and the world around us.

• OverSimplified - Animated and fun explanations of history.

• Real Civil Engineer - a UK civil engineer building amazing things in a variety of videogames.

• SciManDan - flat Earth de-bunker using science, reason and logic to promote the proven natural history of life, Earth and the Universe.

• TierZoo - presents information on zoology and evolution in ‘game speak’.

• Vsauce - explores a variety of topics, from philosophy and psychology to pop culture, the internet and technology.

Further recommendations from Bard, Google's AI

• Crash Course - short, informative videos on a wide range of topics, from history and science to literature and art.

• SciShow - covers all things science, from the latest discoveries to the history of science.

• MinutePhysics - uses simple animations and explanations to make complex physics concepts easy to understand.

• Khan Academy - covers a wide range of subjects, from maths and science to history and economics.

• MinuteEarth - simple animations and explanations to make complex science concepts easy to understand.

• SciShow Space - covers all things space, from the latest discoveries to the history of space exploration.

• Veritasium - uses experiments and demonstrations to explore the world of science.

• Crash Course Kids - offers short, informative videos on a variety of topics for kids.

Fun games to dive into

Some of my son's favourites

• Cities: Skylines - designing, building and running a city from scratch, including public services and civic policies.

• Trailmakers - design and build cars, planes, boats, submarines. Learn about the forces on them and how to design them to work well.

• Mars Horizon - control a space agency from the dawn of space flight through to landing astronauts on Mars. Learn how to build spacecraft and manage resources for colony base growth, solve problems at mission control.

• Bus Simulator - get behind the wheel of a bus and transport passengers safely and punctually to their destinations.

• Stellaris - govern a galactic empire and secure power through manipulating internal policies, factions and traditions; interacting with other empires; researching new technologies; managing resources; exploration and strategic campaigns.

• Kerbal Space Programme: Enhanced Edition - assemble fully functional spacecraft from an array of parts, which fly, or not, based on realistic aerodynamic and orbital physics.

• Jurassic World Evolution 2 - build, manage, and grow your own dinosaur theme park franchise; dig for fossils, extract DNA and use bio-engineering to create new exhibits; keep dinosaurs and visitors safe and your company financially viable.

• Victoria 3 - World-map-based game spanning history from 1836 to 1936. Govern the infrastructure and economy of your country; create alliances and trade deals; wage campaigns to expand your influence across the world.

Further recommendations from Bard include:

• History and geography: Civilization, Europa Universalis, and Age of Empires cover different cultures and historical periods.

• Mythology: God of War, Hades, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey introduce different myths and legends.

• Science: Kerbal Space Program, Spore, and Minecraft cover science, engineering, and maths.

• Design: The Sims, Cities: Skylines, and Animal Crossing involve design, architecture, and urban planning.

• Emotional control: Celeste, Journey, and Undertale can teach about emotional resilience, empathy, and compassion.

• Creativity: LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, and Minecraft involve creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration.

• Teamwork: Overcooked, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and A Way Out require players to work together to achieve a common goal.

• Problem-solving: Portal, The Witness, and Braid challenge players to think critically and solve puzzles.

• Creativity: LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, and Minecraft allow players to express their creativity and build their own worlds.

• Communication: Among Us, Town of Salem, and Diplomacy require players to communicate effectively with each other in order to succeed.

• Leadership: Civilization, Europa Universalis, and Stellaris allow players to take on the role of a leader and make decisions that affect the outcome of the game.

• Math: Math Blaster, Carmen Sandiego, and The Oregon Trail can help kids learn math concepts in a fun and engaging way.

• Map reading: Games like GeoGuessr, World of Goo, and The Witness help with reading maps and navigating around the world.

• Cooking: Games like Overcooked, Cooking Mama, and LittleBigPlanet can teach how to cook different foods.

Further reading.

Non-attendance of autistic pupils and trauma

Parental blame and the PDA profile of autism

The Joy and Sorrow of Rereading Holt’s "How Children Learn"

Cognitive Benefits of Playing Video Games

Why fears around children playing video games are counterproductive

Thank you to all of my readers. Your support encourages me to create these essays, poems and stories. If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or drop a little something in the tip jar to keep me in coffee. None of my work is paywalled, but I'll need a bit put by if I'm going to retire early from the day job to write more…😉

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Someone said,

nought in life

brings joy and pain,

like love.

Warm closeness,

shared secrets,

fun and laughter.

Giving, recieving.

Young or old.

Family, friends, lovers.

True happiness comes

with love.

But the price is high,

and paid in pain.

From mistakes.

From loss.

Pain so consuming,

We would rip

our heart

out.

We all scream not fair,

when life’s ticket man comes,

forgetting we pay,

for less valued rewards.

Heartfelt agony,

for heartfelt joy.

What fairer exchange

Could there be?

Someone said,

love thy neighbour,

place a time bomb

in your heart.

Love is life,

Life is love.

All else,

Empty limbo.

Healing, reaching,

we love again,

to live again.

To the ticking in our heart.

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My son officially became a teenager recently. He is growing up and trying to figure out what it means to be a man in today's society. The main thing that he's learning at the moment is that it means to be discriminated against. To be labelled the bad guy before he's even fully grown, let alone decided what actions he wants to take in life. This both saddens and angers me.

I will fully admit that I am not particularly well educated around the history and detailed tenets of feminism. However, the dictionary definition of a feminist is an advocate of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. As such, I have always considered myself a feminist as these are principles I heartily agree with and will stand up for where necessary. I watched and applauded as women around the world who were victims of atrocious actions by particular men sought and obtained justice. The Me Too movement that exploded in 2017 in response to the exposure of sexual abuse by the American film producer, Harvey Weinstein, raised awareness around the ongoing sexual harassment and abuse of women in some workplaces. It sparked a cathartic throwing off of the blanket of silence that had lain over the suffering of many women at the hands of some men. It also lifted the lid on how sexism is still alive and kicking in modern society, despite the huge progress we have made since the early 1900’s, when suffragettes fought to get at least some women over the age of 30 the right to vote in the UK.

But, since then I have watched, appalled, as the momentum gathered by the Me Too movement has been squandered on simply tarring all men with the same brush. As modern ‘feminists' replaced the word sexism (discrimination on grounds of sex) with misogyny (discrimination against women) and seemed to forget about the quest for equality in the process. As they took on the role of angry victims railing at being offended by the opinions of some backwards-thinking men, instead of being empowered and determined change-makers fighting for real progress. As they loudly spew toxic rhetoric aimed at persuading people that every single man is a misogynist and a potential rapist by dint of their genetics, and that any woman that disagrees with that opinion is suffering from internalised mysogyny. As they ridicule and dismiss any man brave enough to speak out about the damaging impact these attitudes are having on men's mental health.

The constant narrative we hear now, that everything wrong with the lives of women is the fault of men, is incredibly toxic and damaging. There is no doubt that sexism was built into many societies right from the start. There is also no doubt that it is hard and slow work to remove that sexism and that this work is by no means finished. But, if women had been in charge at the founding of our societies, can we honestly say with certainty that they would not have shaped those societies to suit women better than men? Blaming people alive today for the mistakes and attitudes of their forbears is unfair and not constructive. And it utterly discounts the very real progress that has already been made in shifting the attitudes of men towards women. During my Mum’s lifetime and my own, it has become legal and widely accepted for women to wear trousers, to have a bank account in their own name, to obtain a mortgage, to enter into a pub without an accompanying man, to be paid at the same hourly rate as a man for the same job - things that modern women can quite rightly take for granted. Yet, instead of building on that progress through rational debate, the rhetoric from these new ‘feminists’ sounds to me, and to my growing son, like sour grapes and a determination to make the perceived oppressor the oppressed. This vindictive approach to modern ‘feminism’ is in danger of making further progress grind to a halt while everyone considers themselves a victim and lashes out at each other.

My son and I have fairly frequent debates about these issues. He inhales videos by angry women declaring themselves as feminists and by equally angry men defending their gender against their attacks, trying to work out who is telling ‘the truth'. I try to explain that feminism is not about hating men, it is about equality, and that we still need feminists as there are injustices remaining that need to be resolved. Like the fact that looking after children and running a household are only considered valid jobs worth paying for if you are looking after someone else’s children, or someone else’s house. And that it is still mainly women doing these unpaid jobs for their own families. Which means that although women now get paid the same rate as men in a paid job, they may still never earn as much as a man, or indeed progress as far in their chosen career as a man - unless they pay someone else to look after their children and run their household. And how this disparity then impacts on the size of women’s pensions and their quality of life in retirement. Or, like the fact that, somehow, the US Government was allowed to remove a woman’s longstanding right to have an abortion before a specified point in her pregnancy. Despite it being the 21st century, with women voters, and reams of scientific evidence on why, medically, this was a really bad idea.

Resolving issues like these is where we really need to be focusing feminist efforts in western societies. Simply getting women’s rights in other parts of the world up to the standards we in the west are lucky to live with is a huge and ongoing task. Yet these vocal modern ‘feminists', according to the video evidence my son and I have seen, appear more concerned with making sweeping generalisations about the character and intent of men, with levelling constant accusations that men inflict widespread violence and microaggressions against women, and with being generally offended by anything manly. There is no indication that these women even understand the progress that has been made already in women’s rights, let alone how they intend to build on that progress.

The term feminazi was suggested in one video that my son and I watched together, by a reasonable man who considered himself a feminist. I thought that this was very apt. In my mind, where feminists advocate for increasing women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, feminazis advocate for the destruction of mens rights, including the right for all individual men to be considered on their own merit as a human being, and the right for some of them to express offensive opinions if they so wish. I choose to believe that ‘true’ feminists still exist. Unfortunately our more sane and reasonable voices seem to be being successfully shouted over, if not entirely muted by the ‘internalised mysogyny’ card constantly played by the feminazis.

Alongside and intertwining with this increasingly sour battle of the sexes are disturbing developments where free speech is being conflated with hate speech. Modern ‘feminists’ and some other movements, particularly around racism and gender, appear to be ignoring the fact that changing a whole society's attitudes needs time and open debate as well as action. There is an increasingly loud clamouring of demands for ‘moderation’ (censoring) of the expression of ‘wrong’ opinions and ‘cancelling' (boycotting) of anyone holding a ‘wrong’ opinion that appals and frankly terrifies me.

Free speech is about having the right to express an opinion, whatever it might be. We have the right to say what we think, to share information, and to demand (what we think is) a better world. We also have the right to agree or disagree with those in power, and to express these opinions in peaceful protests. Exercising these rights – without fear or unlawful interference – is central to living in an open and fair society; one in which people can access justice and enjoy their human rights (Amnesty International).

Hate speech advocates, incites, promotes or justifies hatred, violence and discrimination against a person or group of persons for a variety of reasons (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance). It is speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative (expressing contempt or disapproval) or discriminatory language about a person or a group on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity (UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech).

Exactly where we draw the line between free speech and hate speech has not yet been defined. It may never be legally defined in whole. But slowly, as we put in place laws criminalising specific acts of discrimination against specific categories of people, parts of that line are made clearer. Individual men expressing their own opinion that women can't drive, or should always be the one to stay at home to raise the kids (obviously ‘wrong’ in my opinion) break no laws and, in my opinion, are not undertaking hate speech. Neither, in my opinion, are people expressing their views that trans women are not ‘real’ women, or that someone with autism needs to be cured, or that black people are more likely to be criminals, or that Muslims are more likely to be terrorists. These are simply people expressing opinions in accordance with our human right to free expression, as enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that I, and many others, consider these opinions ‘wrong’ does not mean that we have the right to prevent them from being expressed.

Expression, in whatever format, indicates thought. Removing people's ability to express what they think does not stop them thinking it. It does, however, remove any chance of changing their minds through rational debate.

Editing previous works of expression, be they books, statues or films, to white-wash history by tippexing out attitudes that have been outgrown does not change the fact that we once held those attitudes. It does not undo the mistakes we made in the past or the damage inflicted by them. Making past attitudes and mistakes invisible does, however, make them easy to forget. It removes our ability to learn from our mistakes. It edits out the very thought processes and experiences that our society went through in order to come to our more enlightened position. And when fight for real change seems at it’s hardest, it removes our ability to look back and be encouraged by how far we have come.

Allowing free speech inherently means that we allow people to express opinions that many of us fundamentally disagree with. Our goal, at least in a modern, open minded and forward thinking democracy, should be to change outdated opinions through education, evidence and debate. Not to silence them. Silencing opinions simply pushes them underground, where they ferment and grow in strange and potentially dangerous directions without any outside influence. I suspect that it is no coincidence that the growth of the incel movement has occurred alongside the growth of a modern ‘feminist’ movement that paints all men as irredeemable misogynists and attempts to silence any opinions to the contrary. We need to pursue long lasting change through understanding, compassion, patience and debate. Not through simply becoming a different version of what we dislike.

How, as a society, we address the balance of allowing free speech while guarding against hate speech is hugely important. More so even than resolving any issues we have around sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, or any other -ism or -phobia that we may develop in the future. Those calling for ever increasing censorship simply because they find the opinions of some people offensive are actually calling for us to voluntarily erode the very base on which a democratic society sits. Censorship replaces reality with a false narrative that is decided on by the people in charge of the censorship. It fundamentally affects the information available to us on which we form our opinions, and on which we base our debates. And it therefore fundamentally impacts on how we move forward as a society. This is precisely why those in charge of non-democratic regimes strictly control the flow of information to their populations, and what opinions it is permitted to express. If we give in to these calls for censorship, who gets to decide what the false narrative should be? And how much of reality and of our past should they be allowed to whitewash in order to manipulate the future direction of our society? This way madness lies…

Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech. It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence, which is prohibited under international law.”

— United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, May 2019

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The first version of this article was a plea to the autistic and neurodiverse community from my Facebook page last September. You’ll see from the references to migraine that I was having a pretty rubbish day when I wrote it. Just over a month before, we had removed ourselves from the school system in order to home educate, but both of us were still burned out beyond recognition. It was the only substantial thing I wrote for a couple of years, and it came from a place of anger at the injustice that we had faced during our two year struggle with the education system, one that we had finally had to retreat from.

Now, I’m looking back at this post from a position quite dramatically changed for the better. Though there are still challenges, we are both much more relaxed and happy. My now almost 13 yr old son is content at home, learning about anything he wants to, any way he wants to, including history, geography, science, current affairs, social issues and everyday maths. I’m back at work, from my delightfully re-decorated home office. And I am writing again for the first time in a long time.

Yet I think that the message in that post, and its feeling of desperation for somewhere to turn, is too important to lose in the morass of my Facebook posts, which are mostly a curated collection of other people’s words. (You can read them here). And looking at it from a calmer perspective, I also feel that perhaps I could have expressed some things better.

So, I have re-written my original post. And I am placing it here; somewhere it is less likely to be overlooked, I hope.

………… I'm lying here in a semi-darkened room on day 5 of the second migraine in just over a week with tinnitus ringing/rushing in my ears and my eyeballs gently pulsating. September sunshine sneaks through the curtains making it feel vaguely like someone is trying to scoop my left eyeball out with a teaspoon while holding my head still with a spike to the back of my skull. I'm feeling it from far away as I'm lying still. I am hoping the sun goes away later so I can attempt to get the poor dog out for a walk, despite the vertigo. Lying down, symptoms are manageable enough to feel bored, and guilty about missing work, again.

With the brightness on my phone turned to it's lowest I've been browsing some new Facebook pages over in the US. I've shared a couple of posts to my page. Things seem even worse than in the UK. I'm too exhausted to feel rage about what autistic kids, now adults, have been through, though I know I should. I just want to cry.

I look at my son lying sleeping next to me and wish the world was different.

My son is 12 and autistic. I'm fairly sure he's Pathologically Demand Avoidant (PDA), but I can't afford a private diagnosis. He's been living with a low grade brain tumour since he was 6. I recently had to pull him out of the UK school system after 5 years of low grade torture and 2 years of pure hell, and we're now home educating despite me being a single working mum. He's been co-sleeping with me throughout the 2 year hell due to anxiety and has recently decided my brushed cotton sheets are not good enough and he can only sleep on his fluffy dressing gown. He gets irritated if it isn't just so and keeps waking me up to rearrange it (not helping the migraine). He hasn't had a shower in about 3 weeks (I think that's a record). He will rarely leave the house unless it's to go to McDonald's, Tesco, Scotmid, Cex, or his Dad's, or it's ‘worth his while’. He finds people and outside scary.

He is also generous. He recently saved me the last Ferrero Roche I bought him as a surprise treat. (A £4 box in the weekly shop rather than the £8 box he picked up hopefully in Scotmid only to be told no.) He has a cracking sarcastic sense of humour and makes me laugh often, when I’m able to laugh. He knows more geography and history than I ever will. He loves Pokemon and dinosaurs and has a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of both. He is working towards world and galactic domination in various video games that involve managing insanely huge amounts of fictional money and resources. He has strong morals and is not afraid to express them. He shows me all sorts of interesting and funny YouTube videos. And he gives the best hugs.

My son is my favourite person in the whole world and I remind him of it often. He might irritate me intensely sometimes, but I would never want to change him.

I am, however, sad about how much fear, pain, and distress he's been through. I am angry about how much of that was unnecessarily inflicted on him by the education system. I do occasionally grieve for the easier life that he might have had, and yes, that I might have had, had he been tumour-less, without sensory issues, without processing challenges. Yet all these challenges and experiences are part of him, part of what has made him the amazing person he is. The diagnosis of autism at age 10 was an 'oh...so that's why...' moment. It was not some new crisis to cope with or condition to manage. He is still exactly the same person as he was before the diagnosis. My son. He is who he was meant to be. It is the world that needs to change to minimise his distress, not him.

I do, however, want my son to grow as a person and to be able to overcome those challenges that hold him back from where he wants to be. Sometimes that means my son gaining knowledge and skills, or shifting perspective. That needs to come from him, but I can facilitate. Sometimes it means changing things in his environment, where, at the moment, as an adult I have more influence. That needs me to learn as much as I can about how he experiences his environment so that I exert the right influence. Sometimes it means changing the world. For that I need help.

One, I thought obvious, source of help is the huge community of autistic adults on the internet. These people have lived experience of many of the challenges my son faces - and they have ideas about how the world needs to change. Unfortunately, if you look online or spend any time in autistic social media communities, it will become apparent that many autistic adults are often quite dismissive, or even hostile, towards neurotypical parents of autistic kids. I usually ended up using my Facebook page, originally set up to promote a blog, to pursue my education in autism. Using my personal Facebook profile was too… personal. Too often in my forays to learn more about how to best help my son I came across comments, and occasionally entire posts, making sweeping assumptions and generalisations about neurotypical people - especially those that are parents of autistic kids. We are accused of incompetence, lack of knowledge or understanding, nefarious agendas. And we are blamed for the traumatised state our children are in. These apparently widely-held stereotypes are far too hurtful and triggering to cope with unless mentally prepared. They were not something I wanted to come across while scrolling for inspiration and hope.

From what I've seen over the last couple of years, parents of neurodiverse kids are often isolated and on their knees. Consumed by fighting for change for their own children single handed. Swamped in blame from the education system and the 'support' system who just want to keep the status quo because there's no funding to do anything else. I’ve seen many parents, like me, reach out to the autistic community for help and advice regarding their anxious and traumatised children. The canaries in the system who are collatoral damage in the drive for standardisation and attendance and assessment over wellbeing in school. While some parts of the autistic social media community will tolerate neurotypical parents as long as they don't make any honest mistakes with language, other parts are openly hostile unless the parents identify as neurodivergent themselves. Very few places in the autistic or neurodiverse community have I really felt welcomed as an neurotypical parent of an autistic child.

Now, there is no doubt that there are some terrible neurotypical parents of autistic kids. There are probably many more terrible neurotypical parents of neurotypical kids, simply down to numbers. However, most neurotypical parents, just like most neurodiverse parents, are ok, whatever the neurotype of their child. Not perfect, but good enough to raise well adjusted human beings without traumatising them, and to love them fiercely. The fact that someone cannot identify as neurodivergent does not make their experiences of parenting an autistic child any less valid. Different to that of a neurodiverse parent most definitely. Probably a lot more observation, guesswork and questioning needed to 'get' something a neurodiverse parent might just ‘know’ from similar experiences. Where a neurodiverse parent can perhaps be magically intuitive from the start, a neurotypical parent may have to build that intuition up over years of patient detective work, often with an undiagnosed child, and sometimes with health factors conflating the issue.

We put my son’s sensory issues down to his tumour for 4 years before he was diagnosed as autistic. I'm still playing detective but I've learnt a lot from him. In fact the PDA Society now recommends strategies remarkably similar to those I developed simply by being in a parent-child relationship with my son, well before I knew he was autistic or had even heard of PDA. Every parent-child relationship experience is unique and valid, regardless of the neurotype combination. Every parent has the potential to be good enough.

I believe that both communities want autistic kids today to avoid the abuse and the trauma that many autistic adults were subjected to. Both communities want better systems, support that is actually accessible and actually helps rather than harms. Both want the communication of autistic kids to be heard and acted on, irrespective of whether it is verbal. Both communities want a world built so that it caters for all neurotypes and so that no child is made to feel so 'other'ed because of the way their brain happens to work ever again.

This knee-jerk, automatic alienation between these communities has to end. Neurotypical parents are not the enemy of autistic people. We should, in fact, be allies.

At the moment parents of autistic kids who don't believe they need 'fixed' don't seem to have many places to turn to. We often feel isolated and our families vulnerable. This is is starting to change for parents of neurodiverse kids in the UK, with Facebook pages like Missing the Mark, and Not Fine in School, and Define Fine that literally kept me sane for 2 years. Just knowing that it's not just us having these problems with school, Additional Support for Learning, educational psychologists, Social Work, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, education panels etc. etc. etc. gave me that extra strength I needed to keep the constant blame barrage out of my pounding head. I'm not useless. It's not all my fault. My son has real needs that these people are either refusing to acknowledge or are incapable of meeting. Sometimes both. However, a lot of these growing social media communities are concerned with how to cope with the system we've got. They feel like survival packs, field dressings, sticking plasters. What we really need to truly help our kids is to change the damn system, and we need help to do that.

I understand that there are a lot of angry autistic adults. And I am aware of at least some of the reasons for that anger. In the past many autistic voices have been drowned by ‘professionals’, and perhaps their parents, intent on ‘fixing’ what wasn't broken. The autistic person. These misguided efforts served only to traumatise the very person they intended to ‘fix’. In some places these activities are still on-going. Even where the more blatant attempts to ‘cure’ autism are absent, there often remain more subtle attempts to moderate behaviour in place of improving the environment that caused it, or indeed of just accepting it. Autistic adults have every right to be angry. So do autistic kids today. But it is important to point that anger in the correct direction.

There's a saying that if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. Well, if you have met one neurotypical person, you have met one neurotypical person. I am so tired of the abuse I see aimed either sweepingly at neurotypical parents, like we're some homogeneous blob or a hive mind, or, too often, squarely at individual parents just struggling to understand something, or daring to express the fact that they are finding things hard. Sometimes it feels like all neurotypical parents are fair game for some autistic adults to work out their issues and anger on. My son lashes out at me when he is hurting. It hurts me, but as the adult I put up with it, I don't take it personally, and we have 'the conversation' later, when the meltdown is over, so that we can address what really caused it. Some of the more aggressive autistic adults I have come across on-line seem to want to use all neurotypical parents as an emotional punchbag in a similar way. But we are not your parents.

I'll say that again. We are not your parents. We were not involved in your traumatic childhood. We do not deserve your anger and contempt.

We are also not all ‘autism moms', a slur frequently used within the autistic adult community - shorthand for a mother who considers herself a superhero for raising an autistic child, who victimises herself, and expresses negativity or grief about her child’s condition. and who probably supports Autism Speaks and the puzzle piece, both of which many autistic adults find offensive. It is a hurtful, and in the majority of cases, unwarranted stereotype.

I will openly admit that we may complain bitterly about how hard it is fighting the education system. Getting constantly blamed by the 'professionals' meant to be helping to resolve the crippling anxiety, absence from school, frequent meltdowns and any other challenges our children are facing daily. Knowing damn well that these ‘challenging behaviours’ are desperate cries for help from kids that have been masking their distress at school and need to let it all out in their safe space at home. And that increasingly they can't face going back. But, most of us also make it very clear that it is the system that is the problem and the cause of our feelings of utter helplessness, not the autism. Not our child. And it is. Very. Hard.

Not all neurotypical parents follow Autism Speaks and their quest for ‘interventions’. I had never even heard of them until I started entering autistic social media communities and hearing some of the horror stories about experiences with Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). We don't all want to change our kids. We are mostly just parents who want a better world for them - one where they can be less anxious and more themselves, where they are listened to and not trapped in sensory hells.

We are not a homogeneous blob and we do not deserve to be used as an emotional punch bag. Neurotypical parents are individual human beings with hopes and fears and feelings who are winging it at being a parent, the same as every parent in the history of the human race, and a lot of us are having a really hard time. When I first turned to the autistic community, my son was so depressed about school that he was talking to his friends about suicide. At 11 years old. It was heartbreaking. Not long after, I ended up suffering from extreme stress and depression due to the brick wall I was throwing myself at every day, trying to get my son proper support that would actually help rather than make things worse. I didn't need yet more blame and censure, I needed support from people who, I knew, understood just how hellish the school environment can be for an anxious autistic child.

Those neurotypical parents that reach out to the autistic community for help, are exactly the ones, I would suggest, that are trying their hardest to learn more in order to mess up less. We simply want information and advice to better help our neurodivergent children. How does hostility or condescension help meet that need? Where else can we go for accurate information on the kaleidoscope of what it is like to be autistic, what helps, what makes things worse? I do wonder how many parents that end up following Autism Speaks were rejected by the autistic adult community first…

My plea then, to autistic adults. If you can, please welcome like minded parents in to your social media communities whatever their neurotype. Validate our parental instincts to listen to our children (which we have been told constantly are wrong). Guide us where we've got hold of the wrong end of the stick (instead of jumping down our throats). Listen to our challenges with school and 'professionals' and give us tips and evidence to go back with (instead of making useless and condescending remarks about it not being a competition about who's got it worse, the parents or the kids). Have calm conversations with us about the things that we might say that upset you (instead of getting in a huff when we disagree with your views on what we meant by what we said).

If, as an individual or a community, you cannot bring yourself to support neurotypical parents, please at least refrain from adding any further vitriol to the large pool of blaming and shaming that we may already be drowning in. If we go under, so do our neurodivergent kids, the very people you surely want to support. You may not think you need or want us, but our kids most definitely do. Some parents may be so low in the water that the additional blame in some posts and comments from within autistic communities leaves us sobbing. Wondering if everyone is right and they really are just incompetent parents. Struggling to see the point of fighting the system any more. Perhaps thinking that maybe the kids would be better off without them. We cannot afford to feel this weak when we are fighting for our children’s lives, sometimes literally. If you want a space to be autistic or neurodiverse only, make that clear, nicely. And please think about the human beings on the other end of your posts.

I also have a challenge for autistic adults. At the moment, many parents of neurodivergent kids, especially those that are experts at masking like my son, seem to have 2 choices: spend our child's entire school life fighting the education system for dubious scraps at the expense of actually being there as a parent; or take them out of school. My son and I 'chose' the latter because neither of us could face carrying on fighting to stay in a system that is just not fit for purpose. It seems to me there should be more choices than this.

If we really want things to change for the neurodiverse community we need to make it change, and I would argue that it needs to start with the kids. Educate the parents and change the education system; the changes made there will flow out into the rest of society. And school is currently where even the verbal are voiceless, the sensory torture is mandatory, the social rules unintelligible and often pointless, and the processing differences routinely ignored. That is what eventually squashed my son so far back into his shell that all I could see of him were his fists. If you want to avoid another generation of traumatised autistic adults, there is a valid target for your anger, and for your pursuit of change.

Singular voices are just not powerful enough. It's like pissing in the wind. Parents spend a lot of time on their knees watching helplessly as their children continue to suffer. We need more of a collective impact. We need someone to have our backs while we get up off our knees and line up in vaguely the same direction. We need adult voices to back us up that cannot simply be dismissed as Anxious Mums or Lying Children. And we need ideas and knowledge about how things could be done better.

Autistic adults have a whole army of parents out there, already desperately trying to make their bit of the world change because they understand that it should not be their neurodiverse kids that need to change. Stop shunning them and help them. Provide a chance for pockets of very pissed off Mums to start to form and grow and merge around like minded angry autistic adults. With you as allies rather than yet another source of blame, who knows what we could topple with our combined rage? And with some like minded teachers and psychologists added into the mix, who knows what we could build?

My son has now woken up. Really Really wants a burger. The rolls are in the shop. Sigh. Migraines suck…

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Image by MChe Lee at Unsplash

Exams, 

The breath quickens, 

The heart beats faster. 

Exams, 

The time of year when windows shut, 

Fast against the noise and bustle of the real world. 

Outside, the sun shines warmly, 

Inside, 

A scholar. 

I sit, 

Watching, 

The words whirl crazily, 

Before Drooping eyes. 

I wonder, 

Which, 

If any of these words, 

Will I remember? 

Exams, 

Fingers tighten nervously, circling luck-filled charms. 

Exams, 

I sit, 

Staring blankly at a page filled with words, 

Questions. 

Which shall I answer? 

I stare, 

A wall, 

A ceiling, 

Blank, 

Like my tired mind. 

I hope for inspiration. 

Seconds, 

Minutes, 

Time passes. 

I watch a buzzing bee, 

Attempting escape from this room, 

Humming angrily at wasted time. 

I drift, 

Eyes closed, 

Waiting. 

Deep blue, 

My mind's eye pictures the sky, 

Empty, 

Like bare pages beneath my elbows. 

A balloon blown slowly, 

Trailing a fine thread, 

Tickling a sleepy consciousness. 

I reach out, 

Pulling the bulging vessel towards me, 

Before piercing it with my pen. 

Words spill freely, 

Whiteness turning blue with running ink, 

My pen soars, 

Filling empty skies, 

With meaning, 

For tired eyes, 

And weary body. 

Questions answered, 

I leave hopeful, 

Yet doubting,

And sleep. 

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I was on the way back from the dump today, after taking two old office chairs and an old desk that we have recently replaced. We've had quite a cathartic mini redecoration recently. Rearrangement of my son's bedroom really, I would say, because we didn't decorate, but we did move every single piece of furniture in the entire room apart from his bunk bed, and he got a new desk. And then I got inspired to do something for me as well.

We moved in here about five years ago and I always meant to decorate the the spare room. I put a folding bed in it and I think we've had people come to stay once or twice, maybe more, but the room felt like it was an afterthought. Yet I spend most of my time in here because I work from home and it is also my office. As part of my recovery from the crap of the last few years, I decided, right, now is the time to decorate it. So, I got the paint out, put the folding bed in the attic, got myself a new (gaming) chair (they are just so much more inviting to sit in than office chairs), and I'm much more comfortable now. It actually feels like my office.

But I digress. We had these two chairs and a desk left over and they've just been sitting around in the house cluttering up the place while I failed miserably to inspire interest in anyone to take them on via the local Facebook page. So, today I finally gave up on finding them a new home, and on the way back from the dump a double decker bus was going the other way. It had one of those big adverts they have on the side, and it was for a new series on Amazon Prime with Kiefer Sutherland. I wondered briefly if streaming services have their favourite actors, and then, for some reason, I wondered where Netflix was first launched, because I always got the impression that Amazon Prime was the American streaming service and Netflix was the British version - possibly because it always had BBC programs listed. I don't know, but anyway, the point is, that train of thought was then stopped in its tracks as I didn't have the information I needed to continue it. I was driving and I obviously couldn't just pick up my phone and start Googling about where Netflix was first started, which I found mildly irritating. So I started a new train of thought as I continued on my way home, about how wonderful it would be if I could just think a question and have it answered…

I am an avid reader of science fiction, when not too traumatised by life to bother reading at all. My Grandad loved it. My Mum loves it. I grew up reading it. Total flights of fancy about what places and people and technology might be there waiting for us in the future. How they might be used, what sort of issues and challenges that they might bring with them, and what opportunities. These days we are living in the science fiction I devoured when I was growing up. I still find the idea of carrying around a computer in your pocket mind boggling. Kids like my son that have grown up with this have never known any different - they take it for granted. Many adults, unfortunately, are left confused and fearful.

Every generation seems to fear the technology of their children's age. We seem to focus on the problems that new technologies and new ways of living can bring with them. When my Mum was a kid she used to have to hide underneath the bedcovers with a torch to read a book. Her parents thought that reading was a waste of time and would rot her brain. When I was growing up the same was said about TV. We only had about an hour and a half of kids TV programmes on BBC after school. The rest of the time it was adult programmes broadcast and we were expected to play. Or read a book.

With my son's generation, digital technolgy has exploded. To adults now, it feels like this is the first generation that has had such massive technical revolution, though we just have to look back at my Mum and her torch to know that isn't really true. Kids today have got video games, they've got social media, they've got YouTube, they've got access to pretty much all the information in the entire wide world via Google. The level, the scale, the speed of change is unprecedented, and confusing and terrifying to many older adults. I suspect that this is where all the fearmongering about video games and screen time and social media really comes from.

But, if we take a moment to stop being fearful, this new technology offers so many benefits. I mean when have we ever been, as a society or as individuals, so in control of the information and the knowledge that we consume? Or how and when that information is presented? No-one can afford to buy a book every time they want to find something out, though they still have their merit. Libraries only ever stock what they want to stock, and no physical library could hold every single book in the entire world. TV when I was growing up was was state funded. So you would have state funded educational programs about things that they thought you should learn about, and state funded entertainment that you were expected to be entertained by, and that was it. There was no choice, no room for curiosity or interests or humour beyond society’s current norms - you just got what you were given.

Now, we have almost limitless choice. So much opportunity to follow our own interests down rabbit holes, chasing after tenuous trains of thoughts to actually find out the information to keep those trains of thought going. I personally think that is amazing. It gives us so much more freedom to really think. And the fact that I am sitting here gazing up at the new painted walls in my office from my new comfy seat musing outloud to a tiny pocket sized computer about all this, and that this little gizmo is faithfully, if not entirely accurately, writing it all down for me - that is just mind boggling to me. The opportunities from tecnology are endless.

We need to get over this fear and suspicion that modern technology and change instills in many of us. Yes, it comes with risks. But everything in life comes with risks. There is no such thing as safe. There are no guarantees about anything. You could spend your entire life not drinking, not smoking, not doing any drugs, exercising religiously and you could still die of cancer, or from a drunk driver. You could avoid social media all your life and still get bullied relentlessly. You could avoid violence in online gaming and still be blown up by a terrorist. You could limit screen time to 30 minute a day for a lifetime and still not be able to get to sleep at night.

This constant narrative that we should try to persuade our children to focus on and be fearful of the many risks that adults can conjure in relation to digital technology is doing them a disservice. We need to be encouraging them to fully explore all the opportunities that this new technology brings - this is their world and they should feel comfortable and empowered in it. And, yes, I am speaking as a gen Xer who grew up reading about our next big change - AI (think Hal). There is no doubt that there are risks and pitfalls with digital technology, and we need to teach our kids how to navigate them in the same way we teach them about ovens being hot and traffic being dangerous. But then we need to let them be. To stop trying to censor their experience, their information, their modes of learning, their creativity, their ability to really think for themselves. So much change has already happened within my life time, yet I find myself excited to see how far we can get through the stories I read before I die. Will we colonize Mars before I pop? Solve the climate crisis and create utopia? Find life elsewhere than Earth? Our kids are the ones that will take us there, using skills they learnt on the very technology we spent their childhoods telling them were pointless and a waste of time. Whether we approve of it or not.

I can hear my dog, Zuma, snoring from the new bed that I added to my new office. I've quite enjoyed my first foray into waffling to my mini computer (phone) rather than sitting here not typing anything until I've somehow found the right words. Perhaps this approach will be less onerous and more flexible than it is to find the time to write, sit down, and expect inspiration to hit. Editing takes a different energy than creating something in the first place. One more easily slipped into. The wonders of technology.

Watch this space for more musings. And subscribe if you like them.

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Meanwhile, I'm off to take the dog for a walk. Though it seems almost a shame to wake her….

I started this collection in 2019 after a traumatic period in life, only to be overtaken by another from 2020. For 3 years I wrote little and published nothing, too busy surviving, recovering, rebuilding a life for my son and I. It’s time I moved past that hiatus and I would love some company on the next phase of my writing journey.

All my articles can be found at https://myfreedomswings.substack.com/

I've collected them into themes with links below. If you take the time to sample a few of them, I thank you.

If you enjoy these articles, please subscribe - it will encourage me to continue writing.

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Life and purpose

What it means to be free, the importance of understanding our values, and the challenge of determining what our purpose in life is.

What is Freedom

Past and present

A sense of direction

Figuring out your purpose

The river

Revealing your values

Darkness and Light

Growth is a painful process

Purpose needs hope to succeed

Depression is…

Clarity

Freedom to…

Do more of what is good for us and the people around us and less of what crosses our boundaries and clashes with our values..

Making a difference – freedom to contribute to change

Time to breathe – freedom to take time out

The importance of being kind – freedom to brighten someone’s day

Remember you are awesome – freedom to brag

A sunny winters day – freedom to choose why

Fresh starts – freedom to trust

Coming to terms with our past – freedom to learn from our baggage

The importance of being grateful – freedom to appreciate

The colour pink – freedom to buck the trend

Resentment – freedom to let go of old pain

Seven common barriers to asking for help - freedom to ask

Choose what you mirror - freedom to choose how you react

The wonders of technology - and the freedom to be excited about it

Why we need autistic adults to work with neurotypical parents - freedom to collaborate

The problem with the world today is… - freedom from discrimination and the importance of free expression.

Poetry

Snowflakes

The five day self help routine

Wounded eyes

One step at a time

The scholar

Time bomb

Short Stories

I hope to feel free enough to undertake more creative flights of fancy as the inspiration starts to flow once more…. Keep an eye on my other publication, My Dragon's wings, at

My Dragon's Wings

Stories about possible futures and strange happenings.

By Beverley Williams

If they cannot see far enough down stream, some people panic, frozen in indecision until they crash on the island in the middle. Others follow the boat in front, assuming they know where they are going, which may or may not be the case. Others get their map out. I have always been hugely impressed by these people.

If you have a destination in mind, whether that is a brilliant career in medicine, retiring at 35 as a millionaire, or simply getting to a beach you've never been to before for a stroll along the sand, maps are great at clarifying how to get from A to B. However, they do need a person to spend time and thought creating them, and they need constant updating to reflect the world as it is rather than as it was when the journey started. They also require a person to know exactly where their point A is, which requires a certain level of self analysis, honesty, and often self compassion.

True clarity is a rare thing in my experience. Much of the time my own approach has seemed like paddling along life gawping at the scenery, randomly bumping into things along the way, many of them of them welcome, others not so much, and sometimes getting bruised in the process. When I was younger I felt like I was the only person without a clear destination in life and a perfect map to get me there. These days I realise that everyone feels like this sometimes.

The difference between one person and another is perhaps frequency. How often the light suddenly shines on the next part of the journey with a glorious 'Ah ha!' moment. How often we are brave enough to ask the hard questions to shed that light. How often we slow down and quieten enough to notice those smaller moments of clarity that could add together to give a beautifully clear map of at least part of the journey.

Some people are better at using maps than others when navigating life. And sometimes we all have to accept that we are in totally uncharted waters. These are the times that we need to trust that the right way to go will become clearer as we get closer to the fork. Go with your gut. Go with the flow. Keep moving along on your journey. Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination. And you can bump into some great things paddling about gawping at the scenery.

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The way is misty,

I cannot see,

Clouded by doubt,

And uncertainty.

My heart knows the path,

I yearn to take,

To reach the future,

For which I ache.

One step at a time,

Blindly I grope,

One step at a time,

Earnestly I hope.

Filled with fears,

Not all my own making,

I put on the brave face,

All the while shaking.

Rare glimpses of clarity,

As the mist briefly clears,

And I see the path,

Devoid of my fears.

And I take,

One step,

At a time.

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Some people have a single, over-riding purpose in life that they are passionate about. Like spreading the word of their chosen religion. Or helping women escape abuse. Or waking politicians of the world up to the realities of climate change. Or indeed retiring early and moving somewhere hot and sunny. For most of us, I suspect that we have a number of less dramatic purposes, but they are no less important for that. Becoming debt free and financially secure. Losing weight and getting fit. Preparing for a healthy and fulfilling retirement. Bringing our children up to be caring human beings. Completing a project at work successfully.

Whatever our purpose, or purposes in life, as we stand at the start of the journey our desired destination can look very far away. Perhaps so far away that we feel hopeless of ever getting there. Recognising that it is generally impossible to jump from here to there in one go is essential. Breaking the journey into manageable chunks, or stepped goals is important, not just in terms of planning how to get from here to there, but also to give us hope that we can acheive each step. It doesn't matter how big or small those steps are, if we realistically have no hope of taking the next step, we remain stuck, staring wistfully at our dreamed-of destination.

For example, when trying to lose weight and get fit, exercise is important, but we need to set goals that we have some hope of acheiving. It is pointless, and counter productive, to set a goal of going to the gym 5 times a week if work or home life is going to be too compromised for it to be sustainable. Inevitably we will end up berating ourselves when we can't make, and will often eventually give the whole thing up as hopeless. If we have more hope of making it 4 times, or even only once a week, that is the goal we need to set. In doing so we set ourselves up for success, which gives us the confidence to take the next step. And the next.

Every step taken towards fulfilling your purpose, whatever it is, is a step in the right direction. But in order to muster the courage to take the next step, we need to have some hope that it can be acheived. Not blind hope for something unrealistic. Real hope, because we know that the next step is achievable with a bit of effort and determination.

Without hope, our purpose may never be acheived. With real hope and realistic goals, we can be unstoppable.

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Bullies are often the victims of other, meaner, bullies. Abusers have often been abused themselves. Shouting, exhausted parents have screaming toddlers.

Obviously there are other factors at play in these scenarios, but often, if we stop and reflect, we find we are mirroring the behaviour of someone else. Sometimes, this can lead to escalation, as I rapidly learnt dealing with my son as a tantruming toddler. Sometimes, sadly, it can lead to generations of dysfunction and abuse in a family.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Positive behaviours spread, and cycle, and feed back on themselves in just the same way. This is what keeps traffic moving, as each person let out at a junction pays the favour forward, if not in that journey, in the next one. Kindness received encourages kindness in the recipient. Receiving praise makes us more likely to offer it.

When faced with the behaviours of others, whether positive or negative, we each have a choice. Do we mirror it and keep the cycle going? Or break the cycle?

This is particularly important when dealing with negative behaviours such as neglect, stubbornness, destructive critiscm, violence, shouting. It is difficult, and unhealthy, to not feel hurt or angry or scared in the face of such behaviours. Our emotions are hugely important signposts to where our own needs are not being met, where important boundaries are being crossed, and we should never ignore them. But if we take the time to think, we can choose how we react.

Look carefully at any areas of conflict in your life and check for cycles where negative behaviours are being mirrored. It doesn't matter who started them. We all need to stop the blame game, whether we are kids in the school yard, struggling partners, or world leaders with armed forces at our back and big red buttons. Someone needs to break the cycle. Someone needs to choose to stop mirroring the negative behaviour and start a new, more positive cycle. Shouting at my son never stopped a tantrum. Only calmness (with gritted teeth) prevailed. I had to choose to break the cycle.

If you can, face negative behaviours with positive ones. Meet anger with calmness. Hate with tolerance. Selfishness with kindness. Stubbornness with really listening to the other's point of view. If that is too much to ask, or if the other person cannot or will not shift to a more constructive cycle, walk away. For ten minutes. A few hours. A few weeks. As long as it takes to at least avoid feeding the destructive cycle of negative behaviours while the dust, and emotions, settle. Often all it takes is one of us to recognise what is happening and to choose to not mirror the negative behaviour for things to shift.

Occassionally we hit a brick wall. Perhaps a partner or family member, or a co-worker. Someone who is unwilling or incapable of shifting their behaviour to engage in a positive, constructive cycle. It doesn't matter whether it is verbal, physical, mental or emotional, a cycle of abuse can develop that is highly destructive and wrong. Somehow these people seem hell bent on keeping the negative cycle going, and they are often the ones that know exactly what buttons to push to get us back into their toxic game.

If a negative cycle can't be broken, sometimes all we can do is walk away for good.

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Depression awareness week is over, but that does not mean that we can sit back, content that society has done it's bit on this particular challenge. The chances are, we all know someone who is depressed, who needs a helping hand to reach the help they need. But spotting them will remain difficult unless we learn to talk freely about mental health, and mental ill health.

Lets all work on talking about the hidden. And on listening without judgement or the need to fix things.

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