The Toilet Cubicle Calls

The first September of secondary school nearly took me under.

Covid wiped out her first few weeks. Then one by one her friends got sick and were off school, until she was one of the last girls standing. No friends beside her.

She'd call me from the toilets at break. At lunch. Trying so hard to be brave. That was the bit that got me, not the tears, the effort not to cry. Hearing her try to sound okay, be stoic, cut through me far more than if she'd just sobbed down the phone.

I had years of coaching and trauma training behind me going into that transition. It still took my feet from under me initially.

Every part of me wanted to keep her home. Not make her face it alone.

I didn't. Not because I was brave. Because every single day I had a choice and I had to keep making it. Step away from she's never going to settle. Reframe the situation before it takes over my whole day. Work on my own stress response so that when she came home and fell apart, I could actually be there for it, not fix it, not distract her out of it, not make it smaller. Just sit in it with her.

I used every coaching tool I had to help her find her own way through. And I fought my own default the whole time, the urge to fix and  rescue her.

Because this is the hardest part of raising a sensitive child when you're a sensitive mother yourself. Not the school refusal, not the meltdowns, not the phone calls from the toilets. It's the emotional co-dependency underneath all of it, the moment her pain becomes yours before you've even clocked it.

You'll have heard the line, you're only as happy as your unhappiest child. Said with love. Meant as devotion.

It's not a way to live.

Because when we absorb it, we stop having an emotional identity separate from theirs. And a child doesn't get calmer from a parent who's drowning alongside her, she gets more dysregulated, because there's nothing steady left for her to bolt on to. A child's stress response calibrates against the adult. If mine was spiking every time hers did, she wasn't borrowing regulation off me. She was borrowing chaos, just dressed up as love.

Her pain is not mine. It feels like mine. It isn't the same thing.

That distinction changed everything. It wasn't detachment, it let me stay closer to her, not further away, because I could hold her hardest emotions without needing them to be smaller or faster so that I felt okay again.

She's sixteen now. Sixth form starts in a couple of weeks. New building, new group, many of the old faces and dear friends off at different schools.

It'll be bumpy again. I know that. I still don't find it easy. We have a pattern and a history of challenging school starts. However I know we have both got this.

So if you're heading into this September with dread in your tummy, join us for two hours next week.

Bring a real situation from your own life, the school run that's already looming, the child who's already dreading it, whatever it is. We'll work with it live and map it. You'll leave knowing your own default response in that moment and how in impacts your child.

We can't promise seamless drop offs. We can promise you won't be doing this September the way you did the last one.