The School Can't Experience

Get in touch? Email us at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com with your feedback, suggestions or to volunteer to share your School Can't experience.

This episode takes a different shape from our usual format. Rather than a single guest, it draws together voices from more than a dozen past guests and lived experience parents to build a fuller picture of burnout.

At its centre is a reframe: burnout isn't a medical disorder or a character flaw,...

Permaculture designer Cecilia Macaulay joins host Leisa Reichelt for a surprising but genuinely practical conversation about how the design of our home environments can either add to or reduce the nervous system burden on School Can't families.

Drawing on 34 years of permaculture design, and on Japanese cultural practices she's studied over decades, Cecilia introduces the idea that home can be designed to work for us rather than aga...

Tiffany Westphal, director of School Can't Australia, joins host Leisa Reichelt to discuss a common stressful experience facing School Can't families: the school attendance plan.

Drawing on recent survey research conducted with the School Can't Australia community, Tiffany reveals some genuinely shocking findings, including that 46% of families were presented with an attendance plan with no prior consultation, 29% were never consult...

Rachel, a parent from southern Tasmania, joins host Leisa Reichelt to share her lived experience supporting her son, now in Year 11 and engaged with school, through what has been anything but a straightforward journey.

Rachel's son is autistic with PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance, or Pervasive Demand for Autonomy), ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia and a high IQ. That combination created enormous challenges in settings that weren't desi...

Consulting nurse Laura Hellfeld joins host Leisa Reichelt to explore one of the least-talked-about challenges facing School Can't families - hygiene and self-care.

When young people are in burnout, the capacity for everyday self-care tasks like showering, brushing teeth and eating can quietly disappear, often leaving parents feeling confused, worried, and like they're somehow failing.

Laura explains why this happens,...

Corinne Smith describes herself as a "reluctant homeschooler". Someone who never planned to be home educating, but who found herself there after her child experienced School Can't from preschool onwards, through multiple school settings, including Montessori.

Rather than retreat, Corinne founded KinHub,  a registered charity in Sydney's Inner West. Kinhub is a a community built specifically for kids who don't fit into m...

Judith came across School Can't Australia on the internet and suddenly, something that had puzzled her for over sixty years finally had a name.

Now 66, Judith grew up missing roughly half her schooling. Nobody called it School Can't. Nobody really knew what to do. And for most of her adult life, she'd assumed her experience was unique until she stumbled across the School Can't community and realised how familiar her story would soun...

We've just passed 50 episodes of The School Can't Experience — and many of those have been lived experience episodes: families coming on to tell us what School Can't has actually been like for them in real life.

In going back through all of those episodes to prepare this one, something became very clear. Different families, different states, different children, different journeys — but so many of the same themes appearin...

Play and filial therapist Dr. Kate Renshaw joins host Leisa Reichelt to explore how play therapy can support children and families experiencing School Can’t, especially when kids struggle with traditional talk-based therapies. 

Kate describes why play therapy is developmentally sensitive and how the family-based approach, filial therapy can be powerful for both parent and child. She discusses creating consistent, relation...

In this week’s episode, Sydney mum, Jodie, shares her lived experience of School Can’t with host Leisa Reichelt.  Jodie’s teenage daughter experienced a sudden mental health and School Can’t crisis after a house move in February 2025, following earlier anxiety, social struggles and bullying.

As her daughter became severely dysregulated, ran away, and experienced suicidal ideation, Jodie describes...

Dr Billy Garvey joins us on the School Can’t Experience Podcast to discuss why it shouldn’t be considered normal for children to struggle at school, and how the education system often fails to meet kids’ emotional and developmental needs. 

Together with host Leisa Reichelt, they explore early intervention and trusting parental instincts, the harms of dismissing distress as “just a phase,” and why t...

Lucette, a mum of two neurodivergent girls, education advocate and author, speaks with our host, Leisa Reichelt about a School Can’t journey that began as “Daycare Can’t” and “Kinder Can’t.” Lucette describes years of difficult drop-offs, restraint collapse, and escalating distress—including absconding and family crisis—before her eldest child, ‘Big A’, was identifie...

This week we welcome Laura, a nurse and mum of three in Victoria, to share her family’s experience supporting her 15-year-old daughter, Mimi, through ongoing School Can’t. 

Laura describes Mimi’s early anxiety, neurodivergence, and how returning to school after COVID intensified distress, leading to escalating attendance struggles in high school, especially without close friendships and with limited school wel...

This week we welcomed Jessica, an OT and mother of two neurodivergent children, to share her lived experience of School Can’t. Jess’s eldest child experienced early anxiety and separation difficulties through escalating distress in primary school. 

Jess describes navigating borderline ADHD diagnosis, later recognising broader neurodivergence, trialling and stopping stimulants due to aggression on comedown, and findi...

Professor Linda Graham (Queensland University of Technology), Director of the QUT Centre for Inclusive Education, joins host, Leisa Reichelt to discuss research showing that universally accessible teaching and assessment improves outcomes for neurodivergent students and benefits all learners. 

Professor Graham shares her own experience of being pushed out of school, her pathway to university, and her commitment to changing educ...

Host Leisa Reichelt is joined by  18-year-old Althea and her mum, Claire to talk about about Althea’s School Can’t experience through high school in Melbourne. 

After early positive years at school COVID stuck, meaning much of Years 7–8 were done on Zoom, disrupting connection and engagement with school. By Years 9–10 sensory overwhelm was escalating but getting accommodations involved battles, mean...

Rachel, a School Can’t mum and occupational therapist, joins host Leisa Reichelt to talk about her family’s experience supporting her child through severe school distress and School Can’t. 

Rachel describes years of intense support, including leaving work for three years and spending hours daily on school grounds, difficulties with school responses, and the impact on the whole family during COVID, before trans...

Leisa Reichelt speaks with autism researcher and clinical psychologist Dawn Adams (OTARC, La Trobe University) about what the latest School Can’t research is showing. 

Dawn shares international insights on how neuro-normative school policy and assessment can drive school distress, and why lived experience and co-designed research matter. She outlines OTARC findings that child anxiety can predict later school non-attendanc...

Psychologist Emma-Rose Parsons joins host, Leisa Reichelt to discuss how Individual Learning Plans (ILPs/IEPs) can become practical, neurodiversity-affirming tools rather than “tick-the-box” paperwork. 

Emma-Rose explains ILPs should document reasonable adjustments, support equal access to curriculum and school life, and help schools meet obligations under relevant disability and equal opportunity legislation—...