I want to be honest about something I’ve never said clearly enough. For years I followed every piece of professional advice I was given. Boundaries. Routines. Consequences. I was consistent. I was firm. I did everything right. And she kept getting worse. What nobody told me - not the counsellor, not the school, not the professionals I trusted - was that the approach they were recommending wasn’t designed for a nervous system in crisis. It was designed for a child who was making a choice. My daughter wasn’t making a choice. She was surviving. I have a background in mental health. I understood the theory. But even I was being pointed in the wrong direction - because the system defaulted to behaviour management when what her body needed was nervous system regulation. The day I stopped following the rules was the day things started to shift. Slowly. With setbacks. But they shifted. She graduated. She got into her first choice university. If you’ve been doing eve...