Calm Didn’t Come from a Book. It Came from Breaking the Rules.

The other day, someone watched me navigate one of Chalk's epic meltdowns and asked for my "secret." They wanted to know how I stayed so calm while my kid was in full code-red mode, completely losing it over what he perceived as a deeply unfair situation.

I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because if they'd seen me a few years ago, they would have witnessed a very different scene. Back then, I was the parent frantically trying to bribe, threaten, or physically remove my melting-down child. I was the one having my own meltdown in the car afterwards, feeling like a complete failure.

Neurodivergent meltdowns aren't tantrums. They're a full nervous system in complete distress, and when you're in the thick of it, trying to force compliance or "fix" the situation only makes everything worse.

How I handle these moments now didn't happen overnight—it came from one pivotal morning that changed everything about how I saw parenting.

The Awakening

The turning point came on one of those awful school mornings. Cheese had made it out of the house (a victory in itself), but when we arrived at school, he refused to get out of the car. Just sat there, frozen, while I felt the familiar panic rising. Because kids just have to go to school, right?

Then it hit me like lightning:

I can not do this.

I cannot make him go to school.

I cannot make him do anything he truly doesn't want to do.

At first, it felt like giving up. But then something bigger dawned on me. What I could do was accept the situation for what it was. I could sit with him in that moment. I could be present with his distress instead of fighting against it. That realisation in the car became the key to everything that followed. Suddenly I wasn't just dealing with one frozen child—I was questioning every single parenting rule I'd been desperately trying to follow, every expectation I'd been killing myself to meet.

For who? And more importantly, who decided these rules made sense in the first place?

Meeting Them Where They Are

Empaths who are naturally attuned to their kids and everyone around them?

Yeah, that’s not me.

This realisation didn’t come from insight or instinct. It came from complete exhaustion.

But once I stopped trying to force everything into what it was “supposed” to look like, I started seeing it for what it actually was.

And it wasn’t just that school morning. It was everything.

Chalk learns through movement and conversation, not sitting still with worksheets. Cheese absorbs information like a sponge when he's interested, and retains nothing when he's not. What calmed one kid down made another more anxious.

The breakthrough came once I stopped looking for the perfect system and started paying attention to what worked for each individual kid.

Revolutionary concept: different people need different things.

I was slow on the uptake with this.

For years I thought fairness meant sameness. Turns out, it doesn’t. And learning that meant unlearning just about everything else too.

Once we stopped forcing "appropriate" clothes, insisting on family dinners, and trying to recreate classroom learning at home everything softened. The battles stopped. We could leave the house. The learning started.

Keeping Up Appearances

Of course, none of this happened in a vacuum. As soon as we changed what happened inside our home, the pressure from outside got louder.

All of this flew in the face of what mainstream parenting and education told us was “good.” I was killing myself trying to look like a “normal” family for people whose opinions didn’t even matter. Meanwhile, my kids’ nervous systems were constantly fried from being pushed into situations that never worked for them.

The pressure came from everywhere—school, friends, family, health professionals. All these voices telling me what "normal" families do, what "good" parents insist on, what our children "should" be capable of.

And the guilt was crushing. I felt like we were failing by not doing things the "right" way. I was paying what I call the "guilt tax" on top of everything else.

Keeping up appearances is expensive, exhausting, and ultimately pointless. The people whose opinions matter will understand. The people who don't understand? Their opinions don't matter.

Breaking the Rules

We've all been following a rulebook that nobody actually wrote. Someone, somewhere, decided that "good families" eat dinner together at a table. That kids should wear weather-appropriate clothing. That you take all three children to every social event, no matter how miserable it makes everyone.

But why? Who benefits from these rules?

Once I gave up on homemade nutritious meals for one child and accepted that white processed food was what they could manage, mealtimes stopped being a war zone. Once I let go of the idea that everyone needed to socialise the same way or at the same time, we had far fewer meltdowns. Once I stopped trying to recreate classroom learning and let them learn through their interests and natural rhythms, education started happening.

Each decision felt radical at first. Now they just feel obvious. We weren’t giving up—we were giving up the performance. There’s a difference.

The Real Secret

So what's my "secret" to staying calm during meltdowns? Let me be clear—I don't always keep my cool. I still lose it sometimes. I still have moments where I'm snappy, overwhelmed, or just completely done with everything. However this place is no longer my default starting point.

What’s changed comes back to that morning in the car and the lesson it taught me: I stopped caring about things that don't actually matter.

I can't make my child's nervous system calm down faster. I can't force them to see reason in the middle of a meltdown. I can't make them fit into systems that weren't designed for them.

But I can be present (most of the time). I can hold space for their big feelings without trying to fix them. I can ask: what do they need right now, and how can I support them?

Most importantly, I can stop wasting energy on arbitrary social rules that serve no one.

The day I stopped trying to make our kids fit the world and started making our world fit them was when everything started to change for the better. The most radical thing you can do as a parent is to stop following rules that don't serve your family.

It turns out, most of them don't actually serve anyone.