I’ve spent years explaining the nervous system to parents. Slide after slide, breaking down what’s happening in a child’s body when they refuse to walk through that gate. It never once occurred to me to ask what she’d say if she were the one explaining it. So I asked her - not for content, just as her mum, once we were well past the worst of it. What was it actually like, back then, on the mornings I couldn’t reach her? She didn’t use the words I use. She didn’t say “nervous system” or “dysregulation.” She talked about her stomach. About feeling sick before she’d even thought about school. About needing someone to believe her before she could explain herself. This carousel is close to what she told me, in her own words, not mine. I share our story because I lived every version of the wrong approach before I found the right one - and because if this is the voice in your house right now, I want you to know it’s not defiance. It’s a body trying to tell you something it doesn’t hav...