'The day I decided to stop sending my 14-year-old to school started like any other morning.'

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The morning I decided not to send my daughter back to school, she was 14 years old and vomiting from anxiety.

Again.

It wasn't a dramatic moment. There was no big speech. I just looked at her, pale and shaking on the bathroom floor after another round of girl-group bullying during the holidays, and thought: we're done with this.

So I didn't send her back.

My daughter has dyslexia, dyscalculia, and inattentive ADHD. On paper, she wasn't "failing." She was getting by. The cost of getting by was brutal. Daily nausea. Crying every morning. Crippling fatigue. Anxiety that had her frozen in her seat, running on adrenaline just to survive each day, then collapsing at home where it was safe to fall apart.

Her nervous system was in complete burnout, and we hadn't even hit Year 9.

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Here's the thing nobody tells you — the school system didn't identify any of this.

Not one teacher flagged it. Not one report card mentioned concern. I had to follow my gut, take her to specialists, chase diagnoses, and fight for answers while she smiled and masked her way through every school day.

The dyslexia came first. Eight or ten treatment sessions and it was gone. Then dysgraphia, which is harder to crack — her numbers still don't stack up. Then came the ADHD diagnosis through a paediatrician, armed with letters from her teacher and psychologist. She was diagnosed in the first session, and was prescribed Concerta (which was life-changing). Then anxiety medication, because by that point, her body was keeping the score of years spent trying to fit into a system that wasn't built for her brain.

But the biggest shift didn't come from medication. It came when I pulled her out of school.

When I shared this decision on Instagram, my DMs exploded with messages from hundreds of mothers quietly navigating the same thing.

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Mothers who are watching their capable, intelligent daughters crumble. Mothers who are wondering if they're the only ones considering alternatives and feeling like failures for even thinking about stepping outside the system.

You're not failing. The system is.

So here's what we did instead.

This term, Maya has been "unschooling" in the truest sense. She completed a first aid and ambulance certificate. Trained as a barista. Learned special effects makeup. Got a part-time job at a café. Traveled to China to understand global sourcing. Came with me to New York for real-world business learning. She's been living, not just sitting.

Everything shifted once we made the decision. Image: Supplied.

The shift in her energy has been extraordinary. The constant stomach aches? Gone. The morning tears? Gone. The girl who couldn't get out of bed is now asking what's next.

Next year, she starts virtual school. Two and a half hours of live, curriculum-based learning each day in uniform with qualified teachers. Then her afternoons are free for life skills, travel, hobbies, rest and the kind of learning that doesn't happen in a crowded classroom whenyour brain works differently.

It's not homeschooling. I'm not suddenly a teacher. It's a modern education pathway that prioritises her nervous system safety as much as her curriculum. And it's fully accredited, which matters when people ask, (and they do ask), "but what about her future?"

I researched everything.

Multiple virtual pathways and alternative schools. I'm even watching a friend in Bali trial The Alpha School, a Texas-based AI-led model that's two hours a day.

Not all distance education is created equal, and finding the right fit took time.

People have asked me if I'm worried about socialisation. Here's my answer: my daughter was surrounded by 1,200 students every day and felt completely alone. She was bullied, overlooked, and exhausted. That's not socialisation. That's survival.

Now she's meeting people through work, through travel, through actually having the energy to show up as herself. She's learning to trust her body again. To recognise when she's overwhelmed. To say no. To rest without guilt.

These are life skills that no NAPLAN test will ever measure.

I'm not saying mainstream schooling is broken for everyone. For some kids, it works beautifully. But for neurodivergent kids, especially girls who mask so well that no one sees them drowning, it can be devastating.

Maya is not lazy. She's not broken. She's a divergent thinker in a rigid model. And when the model doesn't fit, you don't break the child. You build something different.

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This path isn't easy. It's not always clear. Some days I second-guess everything. But every time I see her laugh without that underlying tension, every time she tells me about something she learned because she wanted to, not because she had to, I know we made the right call.

For the mothers out there watching their children suffer in silence, running on empty, masking their way through each day just to keep up appearances: trust your gut.

You know your child better than any curriculum does. You see what no teacher sees. You hold them when they fall apart.

The system might not be the problem for every child, but the system might just not be built for yours. And if that's true, you're allowed to build something better.

We did. And she's finally breathing again.

Feature Image: Supplied.