 When should we forget the old adage? Feel the fear and do it anyway and just say no to activities, situations and places that feel simply too hard for a child. That's the topic that we are exploring in today's episode of Pookey Ponders so let's dive right in. So sometimes we find that we are faced with situation, with places, with people, activities that feel really really hard for a child or indeed thinking about this as an autistic adult. For me, things are hard sometimes and a lot of the time in life we're thinking about how to improve access, how to support and scaffold in order to enable children or adults to access all the things. We should all be allowed to try every opportunity right? But sometimes we need to know at what point we should simply say no. And I think this is really really important for us to think about both from the point of view of the adults involved and the children so that we can try to make really really good decisions for our children. So I've been thinking quite a lot about this lately and I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you so that you can come to your own conclusions each time faced with this situation rather than feeling that you're being kind of pressured and pushed into always supporting and scaffolding every time to enable access because I'm not sure that it's always the right answer. So the context for this thought first came about when I was thinking about emotionally based school avoidance and in particular thinking about it in the context of children who are neurodivergent, particularly thinking about our autistic and ADHD populations. And thinking about school anxiety and school avoidance from their point of view, I often find myself reflecting on the fact that when we try to overcome that anxiety cycle by avoiding avoidance, feeling the fear and doing it anyway, we sometimes make things worse because actually if their needs aren't being met, if school is not a place that can feel safe or happy for them right now without some significant changes, then actually when we feel the fear and do it anyway, we kind of make things worse because we go ahead, we support, we scaffold, we try to do the scary thing. And we're faced with all the same challenges that were there before, the reason that the fear started. And so actually we feel the fear, we do it anyway, we feel the fear more next time we're even more fearful. So we feed the anxiety cycle without meaning to. So this is a bit of a different approach than if the thing that we're fearing actually isn't going to do us harm, actually isn't an issue. It's an imagined or perceived fear. And we need to experience it in a place of safety and with support so that we can realise that, oh, it's actually okay, I can do it. But when it's real, when that fear is about something real, about an unmet need, about an actual unsafety, then we need to change the thing rather than force ourselves to go there. I then kind of took this thinking and applied it a little bit more widely in like day to day school life and life outside of school. This is perfectly relevant for parents and caregivers as well. But just thinking about the things that we're faced with sometimes where a child might be fearful or worried or concerned about doing something, because it might be too overwhelming, too scary, too distressing in some way, and how often we try to create a situation where the child can access so that we've got a quality of access. And I just think we need to stop for a moment and think about when do we just say no. So when do we just say no, my kind of rule of thumb on this one, and it's evolving thoughts is we should say no now, when it might mean that we can say yes to other things later. So sometimes by forcing that access by creating an environment support scaffolding, so that a child can somehow by hook or by quick, do the thing that they're fearful of go to the place be with the people engage in the activity, whatever it is, the thing that they're concerned about that may overwhelm them. When we promote that access. Sometimes we get them there, they do the thing, we tick the box, and then they're good for nothing. They're completely burned out or overwhelmed or so distressed that they're no longer able to engage in other things. Or we see that kind of presenteeism. So they are there, physically present, but emotionally psychologically absent. So we're saying yes now, but we're kind of saying no to later. And if we flip that and reverse it and look at it more positively, sometimes we're going to be looking at situations where we go. Do you know what? Actually, I think that attending the whole school assembly is genuinely too overwhelming for this child on this day. So we're not going to do that. We're just going to say no. And by saying no to attending the whole school assembly today, that means that we're saying yes to them engaging really, really well in the maths lesson that they really enjoy later on, or allowing them to have a great time at break with their friends, or engaging with that art project that they've so been looking forward to, whatever it might be, just always be thinking the decision we make now, whether that's a no or a yes, what does that mean later in terms of noes and yeses. So take that decision out of isolation and try to place it in a bit of a timeline and consider what we're saying no to when we say yes to the hard thing right now. The next thing I'd be thinking about when considering do we say yes or just no to certain situations, places, activities, things, etc. is what does the child want? So there will be some situations where the child desperately wants to do the thing. They really, really, really want to, even if as the parent, as the carer, as the staff supporting in school, we look at this and go, this is a really bad idea for you. You have typically become very overwhelmed in these kinds of situations. We've tried before and it didn't succeed. I can see that later on, you're not going to be able to engage in other things because you'll have used all your emotional and physical energy to act, to engage in this task. But if the child really, really wants to do the thing, really wants to engage with it, we can explore with them the pros and cons and we can think about what that kind of recovery period might look like. But actually empowering them to make these kinds of decisions when they're young is really, really good practice to get into for life because actually, particularly if they have a kind of lifelong difference, so perhaps they've got sensory differences and that's not going to go away. Making decisions now about do I want to go and do the thing which is going to really overwhelm my senses because I really want that experience and what's that going to cost me later and am I prepared for that cost? Making those decisions now is something they're going to then take throughout their life. I was really proud of my daughters recently, so Lyra and Ellie, they're 13 and they're both autistic and they were having a discussion about Taylor Swift. So Taylor Swift in our house is a goddess as far as my husband is concerned. He's a massive, massive fan and the girls really enjoy her music too. It's hard to be around a parent who's so enthusiastic about something without catching it a little bit. Now Taylor Swift has recently announced a European tour and for those of you who aren't engaged with Taylor Swift, getting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert is like winning the lottery or getting tickets to Glastonbury. It's that sort of thing where one must block out the diary for the moment the tickets are going to go on sale. She literally broke Ticketmaster last time her tour tickets went on sale. Ticketmaster like biggest ticket seller in the world. I think she just bought all the websites down. Amazing. So anyway this has been a discussion in our house because the tour dates have been announced and the point at which the tickets will go on sale has been announced and so there's discussion about well who would want to go if we could get these golden tickets very very unlikely but who would want to go and my daughters each had a completely different approach to this. Ellie is like well I love Taylor, really love her but no that would be completely overwhelming for me and I'd rather just listen to it at home to be honest or watch it on the TV or something. Lyra on the other hand is like hell yeah I really really want to do that and when I was listening to the two of them exploring this and discussing it together A I was really proud of how they respected each other's different points of view but B the thinking that went into it. Ellie's questioning Lyra going but why would you do that there's going to be tens of thousands of people there it's going to be so noisy it's going to be so overwhelming all the sites and the sounds and the people and even just the travel to get there this is going to be massive and so scary and so hard and so overwhelming and Lyra saying yep it's going to be all of those things and probably if I do something that massive it's going to take me days weeks maybe to completely get over it but it would be totally worth it because I would have seen Taylor and that's a once in a lifetime opportunity I might get so I'd really really really want to do it and really love it in that moment and then deal with the burnout afterwards and it's just interesting seeing how they took those different approaches and I realised that I can't make assumptions for my children about what they should and shouldn't do without involving them without engaging them without asking them what does this experience mean to them how much are they prepared to pay for it in terms of the kind of potential fallout burnout repercussions what are they prepared to say no to later in order to be able to say yes now so exploring what the child actually wants how much does this matter to them the child who struggles with assembly we were thinking about before we might generally be saying no but maybe there's one day when all their friends are doing a presentation in assembly and they actually really really want to be there they want to see that so we might think about on that day changing our answer and saying yes this is the day when we feel that fear and we do it anyway the next thing we might think about is actually whether it has to be yes or no or whether there might be some kind of possible compromise so sometimes when we're thinking about what to say yes to and what to say no to we're thinking about activities which there might be a middle ground for where perhaps the child could access if we think about that support and scaffolding really carefully and maybe think a little bit outside the box with this so maybe you have a child who really wants to go on a particular trip for example and maybe that feels like actually a bit too much to do alongside all the other children in the busyness of that day of that activity but perhaps that child could access and see and have the ability to engage with similar things at that place doing that thing but at a slightly different time maybe they can go right at the beginning or right at the end maybe we're able to allow them to have additional support with them or maybe we're able to take that activity out of the situation that it's in and allow the child to engage with that activity in a place or with faces that feel really familiar to them that might make a difference for that child so whereas everyone else might go to a place do the thing with new people in a new place all of that newness and that breaking routine might be too much for this particular child but maybe taking a little bit of that newness the activity itself and transplanting it into a whole bunch of familiarity might make this feel possible for that child and they still get some of that experience finally we might think about the timing of this so it might be that we are going to say yes to the activity but we might choose to do it at a time or on a day that works particularly well for that child so we might know that for example this is a child who tends to manage really much better in the morning and throughout the day they tend to be getting a little bit more and more overwhelmed with life in general and things get trickier for them so if they're going to access it they can access it in the same way as everyone else all alongside them in the place with the people at the same time and that's all good but we've got to make sure that that access happens in the morning for example so we might look a little bit at our scheduling so for example you might be doing something really brilliant like having I don't know an author come in and do biting workshops with your children and maybe you've got a child who really wants to engage with that and you might be thinking this child's going to really struggle if their workshop falls at two o'clock in the afternoon so actually we're going to make sure that their class gets the 9am slot when this child is most able to manage with those situations so is there a compromise to be had is the key question here and we don't always have to just do things exactly as set we might find a different way to make it possible for this child if they really want to engage the next thing I've been thinking about here is is it possible for the child to have a go and then walk away so some things that we might want to do and we might be not sure or maybe staff or parents or carers think it's really important that the child is able to try and we maybe don't know how the situation is going to go then in those situations actually being able to be present and see how it goes and then knowing that without judgment we will be able just to turn around and walk away if we want to makes a really big difference now this is something that as a parent and carer I've had to work really hard on because for example if we buy tickets to go to a place I don't know the kids want to go to the zoo say and they really really want to do that and we appreciate it might be quite a challenging day it's different it's a break from routine it's noisy there are different smells all the different things that might make this hard for not just them but me as well but we buy the tickets and you know these things are generally quite expensive and we turn up and then actually one of us and it could be any of the three of us isn't managing what do we do then well we've paid for the tickets so we're going to stay that's a fairly typical kind of parent carer type approach we've paid for the tickets we've come all the way out here we're going to stay I have not found great success actually with this strategy and instead being prepared to give it a go and then turn and walk away has been really important and also accepting that sometimes you know we'll do our best but we might be accessing something for like an hour rather than a whole day and that's hard because particularly in these days of cost of living crisis and so on we can feel like we're not getting our value for money but when we think about it from the point of view of the child who might be struggling maybe the best value for money is taking the hour that you might be able to manage and doing all the bits like eating your pudding first doing all the bits that we really really want to be able to do and then walking away whilst things still feel really really good so if we're going to encourage enable access for a child to do a thing that may become overwhelming or unmanageable for them just thinking about is it possible for them to start and then actually turn and walk away from the activity if it's too much within a school setting we need to think about well what does that look like where will they go how do we know that they're safe who's going to be with them what's the alternative for them to the thing that they were attempting to access knowing that we can leave often enables us to try so this is for the same reason that the kind of get out of jail free cards or you might refer to them as time out cards or emergency exit cards can work really really well for our students in class for those students who struggle in class knowing that they've got full permission and they'll not be judged if they ask to leave the classroom using their time out card this often once it's been tested and the child knows it will actually work will enable the child to stay more in class we see that happen quite a lot and so this is similar but bigger so you're going on a school trip the child is going to come and access what if they're not managing what is the get out plan discuss it with the child let them know what the alternatives are and most importantly they need to know that that's okay no one is judging them and then the final kind of caveat to this really is tricking anchor joaling not good so if we have made an agreement with a child that we are going to not do something then that's fine and we stick with that if we say that they can give something you go and without judgment they can leave if they want to we need to make sure that we respect that we allow them to leave we don't cajole them to try and stay we don't overly encourage them or push them or put them in a situation where they feel that in order to please as they've got to keep trying to do this thing that feels too hard for them right now and we absolutely must not trick them into doing the thing so one of the common things that we might do here would be where we're struggling a bit with saying goodbye to a parent or carer and where a parent or carer might kind of do that handover and then just disappear when we trick when we cajole when we encourage a child to do something against what feels right for them and make them essentially feel unsafe in some way this is not beneficial it's generally not going to mean that they're going to access the activity thing or place well because they're unlikely to feel completely regulated and accessing their thinking speaking problem-solving brain that will enable them to cope with this potentially tricky situation but far more importantly than that it's also really damaging to the relationships with the adults involved in the situation the person doing the tricking the cajoling the walking away is someone who the child will now have a little bit less trust with and that takes that relationship that's so important and it just puts a bit of stress on it that didn't really need to be there whereas on the other hand if we stay on team child and we say right we'll try this for 10 minutes and then we'll talk about it and then it's totally up to you whether you think you want to continue and if you do we'll think about how I can support you or if you want to walk away and when we do that and we do what we say we'll do and we respect it then that strengthens that relationship that means next time when the child is thinking about doing a hard thing they know completely that they can trust us to work with them to support and scaffold them to access that or not in a way that feels possible for them and over time this will enable them just to push those boundaries of what feels possible but in summary essentially sometimes you know it's okay just to say no and remember every time we say no now actually we're opening up yeses for later on I hope that this gave you a little bit of food for thought if you liked this or any of the other content that I'm creating then please support my work by sharing it you can like and subscribe and tell other people about what I'm doing sharing is caring you can take a 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