This morning Fionn went to school.

Last week he didn’t go at all, and yesterday there were lots of signs that today might be the same. I started gently working on him about school after I collected him from his mum’s on Thursday, hoping to make today feel manageable rather than overwhelming.

But honestly, until he actually walked through the school gates this morning, I still didn’t know if he would go in.

All of my children have found school difficult in different ways.

Haze found it impossible.
Brooke rarely attended secondary school.
And after Haze died, Aidan stopped going to school for almost three years.

At times it felt frightening watching my children struggle so much with something society treats as “normal”.

And as a parent, I have often felt like I let them down, or that I wasn’t doing it right.

Over the years I’ve also learned that many people have strong opinions about parenting, school refusal, and what they think children “should” do. But trauma, grief, anxiety, and mental health struggles rarely fit into simple answers.

People can only understand from the limits of their own experience.

But I also think experiences like these have taught me something important: progress is rarely linear, and people are far more than the worst period of their lives.

Today Brooke is thriving in third year of her Bachelor of Music degree.
Aidan has just completed his QQI Level 3.

So this morning felt important.

Not because everything is magically fixed.
Not because one school day changes everything.

But because sometimes healing, growth, and resilience begin with very small steps that almost nobody else notices.

Sometimes a small win is simply walking through the school gates.