This year I had twelve female therapy clients in Junior Cert Year who wanted to sit their exams.

In 2024, 10 of these teenagers had missed in excess of 120 days of school, most of them had attended for less than two weeks of their second school year.

When they came into therapy, all of them were in neurodiverse burnout and were experiencing severe mental health challenges such as self-harm, suicidal ideation, eating disorders and had received late diagnosis’s of autism and/or ADHD as well as co-occurrences. Nine out of the twelve also have a PDA profile.

All of them desperately wanted to be able to attend school. All of them wanted to sit their Junior Cert (I have many clients who don’t want to take their Junior Cert, and I fully support them in their informed decision also).

Their focus was not on their studying beforehand, their focus is not on their results, their focus was being supported enough to be able to sit their exams, confident that they could achieve a pass, something many of them had been told by teachers/school staff that they would never achieve.

Individualised support plans that accurately support each students needs can achieve what these clients have achieved today.

Many of these twelve clients may never attend a full day of school or move away from a reduced timetable, they have proved it doesn’t matter.

Eleven of these clients don’t do homework, again they have proved it doesn’t matter. Twelve of these clients didn’t start their studying for these exams until they had finished school four weeks ago, again they have proved it doesn’t matter.

All twelve have different areas of support needs yet the schools had given them a generalised return to school program that wasn’t neuroaffirming or meeting their individual needs, setting them up for failure. All twelve voiced their needs, the areas they felt they needed support in and we worked to individualise their return to school plan and time and time again we altered it when needed until it was spot on and they were thriving.

All twelve experienced some levels of burnout around Christmas time, before the February mocks and in their final weeks of school before the exams – however this time it was different, they understood themselves more, they put in place supports to get them through and limit the burnout, they understood taking a short break from school wasn’t failing – it was supporting themselves to enable them to go back a few days later. They knew their eating habits were reducing and changing because they were experiencing high stress, but they also knew their reliable comfort foods to get them through. They knew when to reduce social demands and when to increase their downtime.

None of them reverted to self-harm, none of them experienced the crippling intrusive thoughts or suicidal experience they had in the previous school year.

All twelve clients were determined to sit their junior cert exams….and today they all achieved it!!!

There have been tears of relief and joy, powerful exhales, high fives, dances, celebratory air punches and the biggest proudest smiles in my therapy room this week and it has been incredible to be standing with these girls on their journey. Proud doesn’t even cut it, in awe is more accurate.

Don’t ever write off a child’s ability to achieve or tell them that they won’t achieve what they want to. None of these children should ever have heard those words from their educators.

They will prove you wrong when they get there anyway, in their own time and in their own way.