Medicating Kids to go to School?

If you’d told me years ago that I’d be sitting in a doctor’s office, debating whether to medicate my child just to attend kindergarten, I would have laughed. Not because I was against medication—I absolutely wasn’t—but because the idea that a five year old would need prescription drugs just to survive kindergarten felt… impossible.

You don’t medicate autism. That’s not how it works. But medication can help with the anxiety, sensory overload, and distress that make environments like school unbearable. And when nothing else was working, when the meltdowns, shutdowns, and desperate attempts to escape kept happening, this was the only option being put on the table.

And so, there we were.

Trying Everything Before Medication

At first, we said no. Of course we did. But how many times can you say no when your phone keeps ringing, your job is on the line, and the message is clear:

Do something, or this won’t work.

The school framed it as behaviour management. Sitting still, staying in class, following the rules. Cheese wasn’t being “naughty,” but the distress was overwhelming, leading to escape attempts, meltdowns, and complete shutdowns.

We tried everything before medication. There were accommodations. Seating arrangements, social stories, scaffolding, a designated chill-out area. Sometimes, these worked. A lot of the time, success came down to who was in the room.

A teacher or aide who worked from the child’s perspective up? Mostly.

Someone focused on teacher-down directives and compliance? No chance.

But there was no consistency. Casual teachers, different aides, support staff rotating in and out, it was impossible for Cheese to build strong, safe relationships with any one person. So the strategies would work one day, then completely fall apart the next. And through it all, the phone calls kept coming.

"Struggling today."

"Not coping."

"You need to come pick Cheese up now!"

Eventually, I had no choice but to leave work.

My full-time job became waiting for the phone to ring.

What else could we do?

The Long, Slow Road of Trialling Medications

We started small. Blood pressure medication, prescribed off-label to help with stress responses. Nothing that altered the mind, just something to soften the body’s reaction to anxiety. That felt manageable. But it didn’t work.

Then came SSRIs. Anti-anxiety medication designed to change brain chemistry. We hesitated. We debated. We second-guessed ourselves. But what choice was left? The school wasn’t changing. The system wasn’t changing. The only way to survive in that environment was to make the brain more tolerable to the system.

Trying new medications isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s slow. Exhaustingly slow. Most SSRIs take 6-8 weeks before the full impact can be seen. That’s two months of waiting, of watching, of questioning:

Is this working?

Are things getting better?

Or is it worse?

Do we keep going?

Or do we stop, and try something else?

So much time. So much self-doubt. So much trauma.

Every time a medication didn’t work, we had to start the cycle over again. We even saw a paediatric psychiatrist, someone who was supposed to have real answers. His first recommendation? CBD oil. At that point, we had tried everything else suggested, so we gave it a shot. And then Cheese went insanely itchy, all over. Not just a little discomfort, full-body allergic reaction, scratching skin raw, completely overwhelmed by the feeling of it.

That was it. We were done.

No more trialling, no more tweaking doses, no more “let’s just see what happens.”

This was not working.

No Winners

No one walked away from this unscathed. Not Cheese, caught in a daily storm of fear, anxiety, and complete overwhelm. Not the teacher, struggling to support a child in crisis while also managing a full classroom. Not the classmates, frightened and confused, watching learning stop because a crisis took over.

Parents of other children were angry. Their kids were coming home talking about the chaos, about the moments when lessons were abandoned to focus on de-escalation.

And us? We were devastated. No one wanted this. No one knew how to fix it.

There was no space for blame, only heartbreak.

There will be people who rage at me for putting a child through this.

And honestly? No one will ever blame or hate me more than I do.

That is how entrenched school is in our psyche.

From the moment our kids are born, the path is already laid out:

You go to school.

You do your best.

You make it through.

Because if you don’t? You’ll never make it in life.

That’s the story we’ve all been told. That’s the fear that keeps us locked in. School is seen as the path, the only way. Homeschool was never even mentioned to us. Not one expert—not one—ever said, "Maybe school isn’t the right fit." It just wasn’t a thought.

In fact, many professionals actively warn against homeschooling.

"It will be too isolating."

"Social development will suffer."

"You’re not a teacher. How will you provide what school can?"

The message was clear: School is the only way.

Even when it was clearly, catastrophically, traumatically not working.

The Isolation of Being “That Family”

And while school was failing, there was something else weighing heavily. We had very few friends. Cheese wasn’t the kind of kid who got invited to playdates or birthday parties. There were no casual texts from other parents, no "Hey, want to meet at the park?" We were alone.

It wasn’t that people were cruel, more that they didn’t understand. When your child is the one melting down, the one struggling, the one who needs extra attention, it’s easier for other families to not include you.

It wasn’t personal. But it hurt so much. It was so isolating.

No More Meds. No More "Fixing the Child."

After the allergic reaction, we sat in silence. No more meds. No more fixing the child. That was it. The problem was not Cheese. The problem was school. We had done everything asked of us. Tried every strategy, implemented every intervention, followed every piece of advice. And yet, here we were. It was time to stop tweaking meds. It was time to change everything else.

Looking back, everything about this process was backwards. The entire approach was based on making a child fit the system, instead of questioning whether the system was right for the child. And here’s the kicker, no one even mentioned homeschooling. Not once.

We had to find that answer ourselves.

If you’re sitting here, feeling like there are no options left, just know this: There are.

It just takes stepping outside the system long enough to see them.