Our daughter (am fed up with using the cryptic child) stopped attending full time education at the end of 2023. Having a child at home means you need to be at home too.
Thankfully my partner and I work mostly remotely anyway.
I am self-employed with a lot of flexibility on how and when I work. For the past few years, I have been working 8-10 days a month for one main client
This has suited me. I enjoyed the work, earned enough money to cover bills and save, and I could spend the rest of the time writing my book.
Once the book came out (October 2023), the plan was very much to ramp things up and get a couple more clients. Having only one client felt — and still feels — risky.
But the end of 2023 coincided with my daughter crashing out of school and being at home. So that stopped my new client plan pretty much in its tracks.
From the end of 2023 to June 2024, we were very much in survival mode. I worked the minimum to keep the lights on and spent a lot of time at home, supporting my daughter.
Now things are calmer and we have, dare I say, established what I like to call an imperfect routine.
I still only work 2-3 days a week, two of which (Mondays and Thursdays) are in my local coworking space. I went through our monthly financial outgoings with a fine tooth-comb when we realised our daughter was no longer able to attend to school.
I had to work less and wanted to make sure we still had enough to cover our bills. But I made a decision to keep my coworking membership going as long as possible. It gives me a space away from home to work, think and write. And those things are important to me.
I typically dedicate those working days to my main client. Now things are calmer at home, I have also had time to pick up the promotion of my book again, as well as working on securing new clients. I also spend a lot of mental energy and time advocating for my daughter (this includes emails, form-filling and research). I do this in and around everything else.
My partner works from home all week. He’s also self-employed and has been at the same company for years. Thankfully, his work doesn’t involve attending countless meetings and he can be more flexible than me within a working day. He works 5 days a week and supports our daughter in the home on the days I am not there. And even on the days I am there, he is always present and ready to help if my daughter specifically needs him.
So Monday to Thursday, my daughter attends a virtual school for neurodivergent learners called Gaia Learning. She has three 30-minute sessions daily with topics ranging from Maths, English, STEAM and Art.
We are paying for this because our local authority (Haringey) has yet to provide us with any suitable, alternative educational provision. Despite a generous grant from Gaia, it still costs us £210 per week.
The classes are small (typically 1-3 pupils) run by experienced educators, many of whom are neurodivergent themselves.
She started in February with one or two sessions a week and has gradually built up to their full-time primary timetable. I always say Gaia was a lifeline for our family.
The first lesson starts at 9.30am, followed by a session at 10.30am and another at 12.00pm.
Even though she is attending her virtual school most mornings, she still needs support. I struggle to work on anything requiring more than 30 minute focus if I am in the house, so I avoid working on anything client-related at home whenever possible.
The support she typically needs throughout the morning includes:
Waking her up. She is no longer an early riser and still doesn’t find sleep until past 11pm. She has an alarm set for 8.10am but often sleeps through it and we’ll send the dog in to wake her as that seems to make her happier seeing his face than mine first thing🫣.
Making breakfast. At the moment two pieces of toast and some berries.
Getting laptop ready and ensuring she’s at her desk for 9.30am. Dropping gentle hints about the time and using declarative language so as not to put her under any unnecessary pressure. ‘I’ll just get the laptop ready’ and ‘We have 10 minutes before our first lesson’ instead of ‘You need to get to your desk now’ and ‘Hurry up you only have 10 minutes left’. This approach takes practice, a huge amount of patience and a level-head.
Checking in with her in between each 30-minute session to make sure she is feeling safe and happy. Picking up on things as soon as possible is key with my daughter. Is there anything the educator said that upset her invertedly? How were the other kids on the call? Is anything worrying her?
Make mid-morning snack - usually salt and vinegar crisps, breadsticks, and berries.
Make lunch. Normally pasta and olives or fish fingers and rice.
After her lessons finish around 1pm, she’s allowed to go on her favourite apps (currently Talkie, Youtube and Roblox) for the rest of the afternoon while my partner catches up on work and, if I am home, I get a few uninterrupted hours to catch up on house and life admin before my son comes back. I will also always have a nap if I am on a home day.
When her friends come back from school, she switches to chatting and playing games with them online.
On a Monday, she also does a MindJam mentoring session from 3-4pm. And for the past few weeks, she has been spending some time in school on Fridays. The plan is to move to a few afternoons a week if she feels safe to do so.
She has dinner in her room between 5.30 and 6pm (I’ll do another post about food soon). We’ll eat around 7-7.30pm and my teenage son will sometimes join us, sometimes not, depending on hunger levels, homework and how chatty we all feel.
She says goodbye to her friends around 8-8.30pm and screen is off at 9pm. From 9-10pm, we chat in her room. This is where I’ll make sure nothing is bothering her, plant seeds of things we need to do this week (wash hair; attend an appointment; prepare her for the days I’ll be at my coworking space; any days we are going into school; resolve any tense moments of the day) and listen to whatever it is she wants to talk about.
At around 10pm she settles in bed. She’ll typically spend 30 minutes drawing on her design app, Ibis Paint, to wind down, then watches a familiar show on Netflix or listens to music and eventually falls asleep.
After 10pm, I will try to relax, either watch a show with a green tea or spend some more time at my desk. We head up to bed around 11.30pm and then read and lights are out most nights around midnight.
It’s not perfect but it’s currently working for us. We have learnt not to rush things. A new change (let’s say bringing screen off time forward by an hour in the evenings) can take several weeks of planning and several weeks to implement. Here are a few things we are currently working towards:
Screen off at 8-8.30pm on ‘school’ nights.
Trial out audiobooks and or music to fall asleep as an appealing alternative to visual shows. She used to always eventually (it’s never been easy) fall asleep with books and music.
Increase physical activity again throughout the week - we have a trampoline, a sensory swing and swing bars but her appetite for this has decreased a little since the change of the season🍁.
We are looking for a club outside the home. We are thinking some kind of martial art. But finding a supportive and safe environment is key and takes time. Taking her to the wrong setting could mean the end of that idea for good.
I am calling it an imperfect routine because that’s what it is. And not in the negative sense. In a intentionally, realistic sense. Perfect (however much my brain craves the idea of it) doesn’t exist. Things are always changing. People are complex. There are many things we cannot control.
My daughter is so much happier now. And while our situation is far from what I imagined it to be, I am happier too.
But I’ll continue to play the detective, as I always seem to do, judging when to push and when to back off, whilst always respecting her right to decide and choose.
This is the chapter we are currently in. This is what my week currently looks like.
Thanks so much for reading 🙂. Want to share a bit more about your imperfect routine?
This routine (currently) looks fab. Your daughter has such a well structured routine. Your timescales since your daughter has been out are remarkably similar to ours. We have had ours at home on and off since November 23. But she still passionately resists a routine, but will drift towards different activities. I leave things to do scattered around and let her find them. She’ll do some but not others. She can’t learn at home at all, not formally, she needs a classroom, she says. Really wish she could have engaged with mind jam. Looks great. Thanks for sharing this! X
This is so useful and interesting, and I’m really grateful that you have shared this. I’ve been planning a similar piece around what our week looks like, as a few people have asked on Instagram. It really does help to hear how others are making it work. Xx