Teachers, what are your burnout stories that made you quit teaching?

I'll have a bash at answering this, though I do ultimately think it's a huge question which needs a lot of different perspectives. And it's incredibly dependent on each individual child's circumstances. SEND has been underdiagnosed and undersupported since forever. You can see this in how badly the world treats disabled adults too: inaccessible buildings, equipment being lost and broken in transit, lack of understanding. So the fact people are more ready to consider it as a factor is great! We have a loooong way to go in supporting disabled people, especially children (who are obviously more vulnerable and less able to self-advocate). As a teacher, I LOVED seeing those children thrive with the right accommodations in place! With that said. The SEND question cannot and does not absolve parents. Children can have SEND and also be parented badly - it's not one or the other. And here's the really controversial bit: some SEND is **caused by** bad parenting. Here, I'm specifically talking about children who cannot regulate their emotions because they have been exposed to trauma, instability and dysregulated adults. They have a genuine need for accommodations - they are not just 'being naughty' by choice. They need a LOT of love and help and support. But while we support that genuine need, we also have to explore whether their environment is supporting them. There is now a thriving 'SEND parent' community online. This has upsides and downsides. At its best, it is a supportive community, a lifeline for parents who face huge challenges (as if parenting wasn't already hard enough). At its worst, it is the source of teacher-bashing, places parental Googling above the knowledge of trained experts, churns out lengthy AI complaints, centres the parents over the vulnerable children they claim to support, exposes said children's moments of dysregulation for monetised content, and is incredibly toxic. In short, it's a bit of both. But approaches to dysregulated behaviour should always be trauma-informed, teachers' SEND knowledge should be valued and drawn on, and we should always centre SEND children - even if that means we have to challenge parents sometimes.