There was a year my daughter missed over 100 days of school. Not 100 days of “she didn’t feel like it.” 100 days of a nervous system so overwhelmed it couldn’t get her through the front door - even on the mornings she wanted to go. And the hardest part wasn’t the missed days themselves. It was the pattern I couldn’t make sense of at the time: a good morning, a calm stretch, even a whole good day - and then by evening, she’d fall apart. Worse than before. I used to think that meant we were losing ground. It took me a long time - and a lot of learning, both professionally and as her mum - to understand what was actually happening. Calm wasn’t the goal her nervous system trusted yet. It was still safer, to her body, to expect the alarm. So it kept pulling her back to what it knew. That’s not failure. That’s a nervous system that hasn’t learned yet that calm is somewhere safe to stay. It learns slowly. Through repetition, not intensity. Hundreds of small, quiet moments - no...