Whenever I speak to families of PDAers that I work with in Australia, I am met with a whole range of different schooling options with no one option suiting everyone. (I understand that these options might not be the same for families in different countries)
There are some kids who are…
- Managing school full time.
- Who are accessing teacher aid support.
- Who are in a unit coded for autistic kids.
- Who are attending part time or short days.
- Who have regular days off to decompress.
- Who have the day off if their regular teacher is away sick.
- Who have arranged to attend only specific classes at high school.
- Who get the ultimate say over if they attend or not on any given day and can ask to come home at any point if they are overwhelmed.
- Who do a mixture of school and home-based learning.
- Who engage in Distance Education.
- And those who engage in self-directed learning or Unschooling.
There is no one right way to manage education, it comes down to the fit between the child and the learning environment they are in, the school, the teacher, the group of kids, the way learning is implemented.
However, I do strongly feel that for education to be sustainable our PDAer’s wellbeing needs to be the highest priority. It’s a matter of finding a way that they can be exposed to learning opportunities and have their wellbeing maintained.
Easier said than done, I know!
I also understand that there are lots of limiting factors that impact upon what options are available to each family.
In 2018, the PDA Society in the UK completed a survey that found 70% of children with PDA were not able to tolerate school. Our PDAer falls into that category. Mainstream learning environments were the catalyst for burnout and I wholeheartedly believe that unschooling is the best fit for him.
Many PDAers are social motivated and expert maskers. Often, they can manage to attend for a period of time, however it can come at a huge energy cost.
It may be that it leads to burnout, it may be that they explode or shutdown at home, it may be that for school to be sustainable the trade-off is that afternoons and weekends have to be solely used for recovery.
Families have to weigh up if the benefits of school outweigh any impacts to quality of life both for the PDAer and the family unit.
It’s important to remember that school is not the only way to gain an education.
You know your child best.
Trust your gut.
