I remember sitting in that car park thinking I was the problem. I’d done everything right. I had the appointment cards to prove it. I had followed every instruction from every professional we’d seen. And my daughter was still on the bathroom floor every morning. It took me a long time to understand that I wasn’t failing the advice. The advice was failing her. Because nobody had told me there’s a point in school refusal where the nervous system stops being anxious - and starts being in shutdown. And those two things look similar from the outside but they need completely different responses. Pushing through works for anxiety. It makes shutdown worse. As Dr Rangan Chatterjee says - the nervous system acts as a lens through which we experience reality. When it’s dysregulated, it perceives threats where none exist. My daughter wasn’t choosing to be difficult. She was surviving what her body believed was danger. The day I understood that - everything changed. She got into her fi...