Her first school saw it early and named it kindly - ‘stoic’ - and, with their kindness and patience we got through those mornings for years. What that doesn’t capture is the quiet exhaustion of coaxing her in every single day, then spending the rest of it wondering how she was really doing. A move at 7 didn’t change the gate, just the scenery. At 10, we tried to get ahead of high school by starting her ‘forever school’ early - drawn in by their $12 million “wellness centre”. We thought we’d found the one place that could hold and understand what she needed. Instead, we walked into an environment that was rigid where she needed flexibility, and bullying on top of anxiety that was already stretched thin. They were insistent it was defiance. Teachers who expected her to “just cope like everyone else” broke something that took a long time to put back together. We took her out. Found a school that finally understood the whole picture, not just the attendance sheet. But the dama...