What if the bravest thing you could do for your child’s education was to stop pushing and start listening to their nervous system? That’s the pivot Paige Carter makes as she chooses unschooling to help her autistic son, Oaklan, recover from severe burnout - replacing schedules and demands with safety, curiosity, and radical patience.
We dig into what autistic burnout really looks like at home: fragile tolerance, lost interests, and a body that reads every expectation as a threat. Paige traces the turning point from a small, supportive classroom to a mid-year intake that tipped the balance - more peers, more noise, more unpredictability - and why a quieter, specialist-informed environment makes all the difference. Along the way, “screen time” gets reframed as a lifeline. Minecraft, Star Wars, and deep-dives into animal facts become low-demand gateways to confidence, language, problem-solving, and calm. The difference between homeschooling and unschooling comes into focus too: one submits a curriculum; the other follows the child’s capacity, catching learning in the cracks of real life.
Paige also opens up about medication: risperidone’s early wins, hard side effects, and the search for alternatives amid epilepsy management, MRI results, and halted assessments. Through it all, her daily non-negotiables- five pages of reading, ten minutes of journaling, mantras, a healthy lunch, and brief breathwork or a walk- model how carers stay grounded when days swing from peaceful to stormy in minutes. And there’s advocacy in motion: a meeting with South Australia’s Premier to press for small classes, trained staff, stable cohorts and policies that recognise autistic burnout as a genuine health event, not a behaviour problem.
If you’ve ever wondered whether healing can come before homework - and still lead to real learning - this story offers a map and a measure of hope. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs this perspective, and leave a review to help more families find the support they deserve.
danabaltutis.com, mytherapyhouse.com.au, https://mytherapyhouse.com.au/your-childs-therapy-journey/ https://www.danabaltutis.com/services
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