The morning I decided not to send my 14-year-old daughter back to school, she was vomiting from anxiety. Again.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment. There was no big speech. I just looked at her, pale and shaking on the bathroom floor after another round of girl-group bullying during the holidays, and thought: We’re done with this.

My daughter has dyslexia, dyscalculia and inattentive ADHD. Still, on paper, she wasn’t “failing.” She was getting by. But the cost of getting by had become brutal. Daily nausea. Crying every morning. Crippling fatigue. Anxiety that had her frozen in her seat, running on adrenaline just to survive each day, then collapsing at home where it felt safe to fall apart.

Her nervous system was in complete burnout. And she hadn’t even hit 9th grade.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: The school system didn’t identify any of this. Not one teacher flagged it. Not one report card expressed concern. I had to follow my gut, take her to specialists, chase diagnoses, and fight for answers while she smiled and masked her way through every school day.

The dyslexia diagnosis came first. Through the Allison Lawson Centre for Dyslexia in Australia, we worked to retrain her eye-to-brain messaging ― addressing how one dominant eye and one weaker eye process visual information differently. By strengthening the weaker eye’s ability to relay information to the brain, Maya’s dyslexia symptoms dissolved after nine or 10 treatment sessions.

Then she was diagnosed with dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects the understanding of numbers and mathematical concepts. This one is harder to crack ― her numbers still don’t stack up.

Then came the ADHD diagnosis through a pediatrician, armed with letters from my daughter’s teacher and her psychologist. She was prescribed Concerta, which turned out to be life-changing. She was also prescribed anxiety medication, because her body was keeping the score of years spent trying to fit into a system that wasn’t built for her brain.

But the biggest improvement didn’t come from the medication. It came when I made the decision to pull her out of school.

When I shared the reasoning behind this decision on Instagram, my DMs exploded with messages from thousands of parents quietly navigating the same issues. Watching their capable, intelligent children crumble and wondering if they’re the only ones considering alternatives. Many of them told me they feel like failures for even thinking about stepping outside the system.

But we’re not failing ― the system is.

This term, Maya has been “unschooling” in the truest sense. She completed a first aid and paramedic certification, trained as a barista and learned special effects makeup. She got a part-time job at a café, traveled to China to understand global sourcing and came with me to New York for real-world business learning. She’s been living, not just sitting at a desk.

The shift in her energy has been extraordinary. The constant stomach aches? Gone. The morning tears? Gone. The girl who couldn’t get out of bed is now asking what’s next.

Next year, she will start virtual school, which is 2 1/2 hours of live, curriculum-based learning with qualified teachers each day. Her afternoons are free for life skills, travel, hobbies, rest, and the kind of learning that wasn’t happening for her in a crowded classroom.

This is not homeschooling. It’s a modern educational pathway that prioritizes her nervous system safety as much as her curriculum. And it’s fully accredited, which matters when people ask (and they do ask): “But what about her future?”

The other main criticism I have received since sharing this decision on social media is that not every family can afford to make the same one.

The virtual school Maya will be starting costs around $7,000 AUD annually, which is actually half the cost of Maya’s previous private school. With qualified teachers delivering curriculum in live virtual classrooms each morning, plus afternoon tutoring support available online, I also no longer need the private tutors we used to pay for separately. So for our family, the cost savings are significant.

But kids and families also need access to alternative educational models that are free or low cost. As a single mother who works full-time, I also needed a solution that didn’t require me to suddenly become a teacher. The free distance education programs that exist in most Australian states typically require more parental involvement. Things like the flexibility to work from home, and to take Maya with me when I travel for work are also immense privileges that are disproportionately available to those with higher-income work.

And even when accessible alternatives to the mainstream educational model exist, parents with fewer resources are also the ones who are less likely to have the free time to spend finding and researching them.

Not all distance education is created equal, and finding the right fit took time. I found our solution by researching everything, including multiple virtual pathways and alternative schools. I even observed a friend in Bali’s trial at The Alpha School, a Texas-based AI-led model offering two-hour daily programs. I ultimately chose a program based where we currently live so Maya could attend in-person meetups if she wanted to connect with classmates.

People have asked me if I’m worried about socialization. Here’s my answer: My daughter was surrounded by 1,200 students every day and felt completely alone. She was bullied, overlooked and exhausted. That’s not socialization; that’s survival.

Now she’s meeting people through work and travel, and actually having the energy to show up as herself. She’s learning to trust her body again. To recognize when she’s overwhelmed, and to learn when to say no. These are life skills that no test will ever measure.

This path isn’t easy. It’s not always clear. Some days I second-guess everything. But every time I see her laugh without that underlying tension, every time she tells me about something she learned because she wanted to, not because she had to, I know we made the right call.

Maya is not lazy. She’s not broken. She’s a divergent thinker in a rigid model. And when the model doesn’t fit, you don’t break the child. You build something different.

For the mothers out there who are watching their children suffer in silence, running on empty, masking their way through each day just to keep up appearances: Trust your gut. You know your child better than any curriculum does. You see what no teacher sees. The system might not be the problem for every child, but the system might just not be built for yours.

And if that’s true, you’re allowed to build something better.

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