October 10, 2025
The email was sent. Ash was free. And then, the silence set in. We looked at each other and thought: Okay, so... do we buy textbooks now? Do we set up a classroom in the dining room?
The Universal Advice: Stop.
We did what any modern parent does - we hit the internet. We scoured Facebook groups, blogs, and reached out to friends of friends who were already on this journey. We were looking for curriculum recommendations, but instead, we got a unanimous warning:
"De-school. Now."
The advice was to do absolutely nothing related to education. No maths, no English, no "learning moments." The goal was to detox Ash's system from the years of anxiety, to stop the cycle of going to bed with dread and waking up with a stomach ache.
Living in the "Void"
So, we did nothing. Since we work from home, we were able to just... be there. We let Ash sleep. We let her read whatever she wanted. We let her exist without the pressure of a bell ringing every hour.
It sounds idyllic, doesn't it? But internally, I was struggling.
The Secret Panic
While Ash was finally exhaling, I was quietly holding my breath. The "Type A" part of my brain was screaming:
- What about her future? How will she get qualifications?
- Is this enough? Surely watching Horrible Histories and browsing BBC Bitesize isn't a "real" education.
- The Craving for Structure: My instinct was to revert back to structured learning. I wanted a plan. I wanted to ensure she didn't just survive, but thrived academically.
I kept these fears hidden. I knew that if I introduced a rigid schedule now, I’d just be bringing school back into the home - the very thing that broke her in the first place. So, I smiled, I made coffee, and I waited. We were finding a new normal, even if it felt terrifyingly formless to me.
