“But When Will They Go Back to School?”

When I first began sharing about our low demand parenting journey — the season of our family’s collapse, the unraveling of everything we thought we were supposed to be — I wanted people to understand the gravity of what we had lived through. I spoke about my children’s suffering, the endless crises, the loneliness, the grief. And I shared how, little by little, low demand parenting helped us create safety and stability. How we were beginning, finally, to heal.

After one of these conversations, a grandparent raised their hand and asked, kindly but pointedly:

“So… when did your kids start going back to school?”

I had to pause. I had to ground myself. Because even though the question sounded simple, it struck a painful chord — one I know echoes in so many of our lives.

It’s a question I’ve heard over and over again. It’s a question many of us have faced, often from people who love us — and yet it cuts deep. Because underneath it is another, harder question:

“When will things go back to normal?”

At its core, this question isn’t really about school, classrooms, accommodations, test scores, or schedules. It’s about a longing — often an aching, desperate longing — for a recognizable sign that a child is healed, that a parent is doing enough, that life is back on track.

I understand that longing. I do.

But I also know: “getting back to school” is not the right measure of healing.

The Deeper Layer: What We Assume About Safety, Success, and Worth

Many of us grew up steeped in the belief that a “good” childhood follows a specific path: school, activities, grades, diplomas, a steady march toward independence. We were taught — sometimes directly, often subtly — that fitting into this path meant safety. Meant being a “good kid.” Meant being “okay.”

And when a child steps off that path, it can trigger deep fear.

If they’re not in school, will they fall behind?

Will they ever catch up?

Will they ever be okay?

These fears aren’t individual failings.

They are echoes of ableism — the widespread belief that a person’s value is tied to their ability to function, perform, and meet normative expectations.

When we assume that healing means a return to school, or that success looks like fitting into a traditional classroom, we unintentionally uphold a system that treats nonconforming children and teens as broken, wrong, or failed. And we reinforce a system that blames and shames parents for their failure to raise “well-behaved” kids.

But none of us are broken. We are not wrong. We have not failed.

Our kids and teens are whole humans living in bodies and nervous systems that ask us to listen, to be creative, to adapt, and to imagine new paths.

A Story of Letting Go

I know a mother who fought for years to keep her child in school.

Every morning was a battlefield. Getting dressed led to screaming. Packing a backpack ended in sobbing. The drive to school was a white-knuckled spiral of threats and bargaining.

Eventually, the child stopped eating.

Stopped sleeping.

Stopped being able to leave their room at all.

And the mother descended into depression and burnout, struggling to cope with the incessant demands, gaslighting, blame, and shame that became her every-day reality.

Still, well-meaning family members urged: “Keep going. Stick with it. They need to be in school.”

But it was only when the mother — heartbroken, exhausted, terrified — released the expectation of school entirely, that healing truly began.

When she stopped forcing the child to survive in a setting that was harming them, the child started to emerge again. Slowly, in tiny glimpses. A smile here. A laugh there. An offer to play a game.

School had been the symbol of “normalcy” and “success.”

But letting go of school was the gateway to true thriving.

When You Only Measure One Thing, You Miss Everything Else

When we pin all our hopes on a kid going back to school, we miss so much.

We miss the towering Minecraft worlds they build, brick by digital brick.

We miss the way they collect Pokémon cards with reverence and expertise.

We miss the quiet victories — changing clothes without a meltdown, stepping outside for the first time in weeks, daring to trust a sibling with a shared secret.

We miss their artistry, their tenacity, their humor, their capacity for kindness.

We miss witnessing the real growth — the slow, sacred unfolding of a human finding their way back to themselves.

When you ask a family who has fought to survive if their kid or teen is back in school yet, it lands like a gut punch.

It can erase all the tiny daily miracles that have brought them to this day.

These miracles deserve to be seen.

These successes deserve to be celebrated.

These families deserve trust.

Learning Beyond the Classroom

Maybe this is a good time to mention the unschooling movement — a philosophy that recognizes children (and all humans) as natural learners, who thrive when supported to follow their own curiosity, at their own pace, in their own way. It’s not new, and it’s not radical when you realize that most of what we learn that truly matters — how to love, how to solve problems, how to trust ourselves — isn’t taught in classrooms at all.

Children learn through life.

Through projects, passions, friendships, experiments.

Through gaming and gardening and tinkering and questioning.

Through simply being alive in the world.

A Word for the Wider Circle

To those family members, friends, and community members who have stopped asking about school — who simply ask, “How are things today?” — we see you. We celebrate you. Your support makes a profound difference.

To those who find it hard to let go — we invite you to trust. To set down the question for a while. To get curious about why it matters so much to you. There is space for your fear and grief, too. But it doesn’t have to be placed on the child’s shoulders.

This is the journey we walk together.

One of letting go of the maps we were handed, and learning to build new paths — ones where every human’s sacred humanity is honored, wherever they are, however they learn, however they heal.

We need you.

We need your open hands and open heart.

And we believe you are capable of this work.