I was in a café the other day, enjoying working on my laptop while sipping my coffee. It’s a local community café, and I love the bustle of it. The elderly volunteers, who otherwise spend the day on their own, come here daily to clear discarded cups and plates off the tables, chatting with families with their toddlers and dogs.
The café was crowded today, but I had found a small table in the corner when an older lady asked if she could sit at my table. ‘Of course,’ I replied and noticed the bold colours she was wearing, which contrasted perfectly with her white hair. I complimented her on her colours, and we started talking. Her name was Rose, and she asked me what I did. I explained to her that I worked with children who were disengaged from education. She listened intently and then said that her daughter, who was now in her 30s, had been a school refuser, and she struggled for years trying to find her the right help. She had tried her best to keep her in school so she wouldn’t become isolated at home, but her daughter was not able to cope. She explained that she had been an educational advisor to the council, so it wasn’t that she didn’t understand how schools worked; they just weren’t working for her daughter. As a result, her daughter had left without any qualifications or understanding of how she could live an independent life. She had spent an incredible amount of money trying to get her daughter the right help, but her daughter had gone on to suffer from an eating disorder, depression, and even suicidal thoughts.
Her story may have been about the school system 25 years ago, but there are still many parents who struggle with engaging their children in education today.
‘How is she now?’ I asked.
‘She’s better,’ she replied, smiling. ‘I know she still has her bad days, but she’s found a job that gives her the flexibility to work when she can. She has friends, and there are plenty of happy moments.’
However, their journey through this together was still not over. Her daughter had self-diagnosed as autistic and had found much relief in understanding why she struggled, but she felt a formal diagnosis would enable her to understand herself fully. Rose was still trying to work out how to obtain a diagnosis for an adult.
I am so used to dealing with young people in trauma while they are still struggling that it was interesting to hear the same story 25 years later. It was good to know that her daughter had found her place in the world and was finally learning the tools to navigate through it in a way that made her feel content. Her story, although sad, encapsulated hope and the power of not giving up when it feels like others have.
There is no doubt that Rose and her daughter are a formidable team working together to find ways through barriers, but who knows - if her daughter had received the right help when she was at school, found ways to feel a sense of accomplishment, and had tools to help her, it may have saved Rose and her child a lot of anguish, and those ‘bad days’ maybe... maybe could be fewer and further between…
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