Caroline Foran

And a lot of kids can start too early and then really struggle emotionally.

So give it the extra year if you can.

And I, of course, I felt like, oh, my God, my kid's not in school yet.

Everyone else is.

And the comparison is just brutal.

And you think you're letting them down.

People might think you're letting them down.

They need to be in school, be the best thing for them.

It's not the case now for an autistic PDA kid that just throwing them into a mainstream situation is the best thing for them.

A huge, I don't know the stats on it, but like an overwhelming majority of PDA kids end up being homeschooled because of the compliance-based nature of a lot of mainstream environments.

They can maybe mask to a certain point, but they will reach probably a burnout where...

that's just how school is.

Like it's just how it's, it's no one means it, but it's just, that's how you have to get things done.

It's a constant progression and a PDA kid will learn when they are ready to learn.

Nothing can happen if they feel this, if this nervous system activation happens.

So that terrifies me because I'm like, how do we move through the world?

So what I think would be better for him and what I'm hoping we'll be able to do is more of a

inquiry based child led learning environment where I mean it completely goes against everything I did and I knew and what we kind of wanted for him but right now it has to be like what environment is he going to be in where he won't be crushed we went through really hard times with

preschool where we tried and tried and tried two years the first year I just thought okay maybe he's just too young I could not peel him off me and there was no everyone said he needs to just get over it basically and we see this all the time this is we're 20 years in this you know kids just and then after a few days he did he'll just come in just wasn't happening for him and I was having to battle all of this um

And probably judgment around, you can leave him with us, like as if I didn't want to.