Some progress I think ? If I change the line in my /etc/rc.conf to the following then the network survives on running doas service netif restart but on reboot the wlan0 gets stuck on the DHCP stuff and I have to ctrl + c to let the boot continue.

#ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
#FreeBSD