E Squared not autopilot
Being first.
Doing follows.
An app for families whose children can’t live by the default route. It starts with the person, not the timetable: what this Being needs, what interests them, what they’re ready for today. The doing gets built around that.
What if the problem isn’t the child?
Conventional life assumes one sequence, in one order, at one pace. School, then learning, then achievement, then independence, then adulthood.
Some children cannot live that way. Not because they won’t. The version of themselves that sequence demands isn’t sustainable. One child put it plainly: I can’t be myself.
Pushing harder to make them fit works for a while, and the cost lands on the child. This is where most families arrive here, after that cost has already been paid.
Before asking what someone should do, understand who they are.
Autonomy means having a real say in your own life. It isn’t independence, and it isn’t doing whatever you like.
Not a method. An order of operations.
Life on autopilot
- the default path
- deadlines
- expectations
- compliance
- performance
- milestones
- everyone does this
E Squared
- self · autos
- autonomy
- interest
- capacity
- flexibility
- experimentation
- what works for us?
Autonomy, from autos: self. The opposite of autopilot is not chaos. It’s steering.
Form
Eyes
Mouth
Today
Meet your Being.
Every child in E Squared has a Being: a figure they build and keep. It isn’t a mascot, and it doesn’t collect points. Its job is to take the pressure off.
When a question gets asked, the Being can answer it instead of the child. Being wrong stops being their problem, so answering stops feeling risky.
The Being doesn’t teach your child anything. Your child teaches the Being. Everything it knows came from them, which makes it a companion and a student, not another expert waiting to catch them out.
It changes constantly, some of that from your child and some of it on its own: new moods, new details, small surprises nobody asked for. For a child who needs things to keep moving, that unpredictability is what keeps it worth coming back to.
Six things, all pointed at the same question.
Each one answers the same question: what does this tell us about the person?
- 01
Moments
A line about something that actually happened. Ten seconds, no forms.Written up over months, the log stops being paperwork and becomes a portrait: what they return to, what they avoid, when they have capacity, who they are when nobody's assessing them. - 02
Reports
Review-ready documents, generated from the moments you already logged.The obligation gets met without the child performing for it. Nobody sits an assessment, nobody retrofits a year of evidence, and the record describes the life you actually live. - 03
Learning library
You choose what reaches their notebook. Nothing arrives uninvited.Demand lands differently on every child. You decide what's offered, when, and how quietly. That keeps an offer an offer, not an expectation with a deadline attached. - 04
Things to explore
Topics they can open, ignore, or abandon halfway. Including “I'm bored”.What gets opened tells you where interest currently lives. What gets ignored tells you as much. Neither is a failure state, and nothing keeps a streak. - 05
Interests
Things they want to do, make, learn or own, in their words.The most direct answer to what interests this Being is the one they wrote themselves. It's also the easiest thing in the app to act on this weekend. - 06
Chill the Being
A breathing tool for when things get too much.A guided breath to help a child settle when they're anxious, overwhelmed, or trying to get to sleep. Nothing to complete, nothing to log. Just something to follow until it passes.
Not right now is not the same as never. Not yet is still a possibility.
School isn't the only measure of learning.
It's one delivery mechanism, held up as the whole category.
Progress doesn't always look like progress.
Some of the most important months look, from outside, like nothing happening.
Capacity changes.
What was possible in March may not be possible in June, and that isn't regression.
Timing matters more than content.
The same offer, made three months later, can get a different answer entirely.
You don’t need a perfect plan.
You need a way to understand the person you’re building the plan around, and enough flexibility to change it when they change.
There is no prescribed way to live this life. No script arrives, no route is issued, and the families doing this well are not following one. They’re paying close attention to a specific person and adjusting constantly.
That’s what E Squared is for. Make it up as you go, with a record of what you noticed and what worked.
I’m not writing about this from outside it.
I’m a PDA adult, raising PDA kids.
I know what it costs to keep performing a version of yourself that isn’t sustainable, because I’ve done it. I know what changes when nobody’s asking you to.
I’m not here to fix you or your child. I’m here to suggest a different way to be in the world: yours.
Sonia Grant · founder
The first 100 families.
Create your account today and you’re a founding family.
The first 100 families lock in €9 a month, or €90 a year, held for as long as they stay. After that, E Squared is €15 a month. Founding is the lowest price it will ever be.
Every account starts with a 30-day free trial. A card is needed to start it, nothing is charged until it ends, and you can cancel any time.
You choose whether to continue at any point.
Founding families get more than a price. You’ll get updates as it’s built, a look behind the scenes, and a real say in what comes next. The features you help shape are the ones built first.
Frequently asked questions
- What is E Squared?
- E Squared is a private app for home-educating families raising a PDA (demand avoidant) child, and neurodivergent families more broadly. A learning log and reporting tool for parents, and a low-demand learning environment for children: no streaks, no scores, no demand-loaded prompts.
- Who is E Squared for?
- Home-educating parents in review-based jurisdictions: Ireland, the UK, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand. With a particular fit for families raising a PDA (pathological demand avoidance) child, and for autistic, ADHD and twice-exceptional kids too.
- Is E Squared available now?
- Yes. E Squared is live. The first 100 families lock in €9 a month, or €90 a year, held for as long as they stay. After that, E Squared is €15 a month. Every account starts with a 30-day free trial. A card is needed to start it, nothing is charged until it ends, and you can cancel any time. Create your account above.
Start with the Being.
See what follows.
Private to your family. Built by a home-educating parent of neurodivergent children, in Ireland.