"School refusal" trend

Well I don’t know about that because it did with me and I was only talking about my own experience.

I wish I'd had parents who loved me enough to realise how very much I was suffering in school and didn't insist I keep going despite me sometimes throwing up from stress beforehand. It was cruel and damaged me deeply.

I left school with PTSD, in the end I couldn't bear it anymore and ended up bunking in libraries to get off of school.

Each generation is less conformist to authority. If today's children have the courage to insist on their own self-preservation and some parents are wise and intuitive enough to sense their distress, Good on them. Brilliant. Thinks need to change, too many children have been put through psychological and emotional anguish, which has been dismissed because they are children and therefore have no right to a sense of self, unlike adults in the workplace who magically do.

Also what a crying shame you’re in whatever line of work it is that you come across these families.

What hope is there when even the professionals have these shitty opinions themselves. 😩

They can indeed utterly get fucked. A discussion with parents supporting each other with children that are distressed in school setting sure. The op's intention was not to support but condem.

Even the title of your thread is goady,

Why would a parent ‘make’ their child go somewhere that makes them deeply unhappy? You’re also obviously unfamiliar with the recommended approach for children with EBSA, which is a zero pressure approach. Pressure increases anxiety which makes the situation worse.

Personally, I value my child’s mental health and wellbeing (and my own) above school attendance. And see no benefit in forcing a child into school, when the environment traumatises them.

Those children will have hopefully recovered enough to be aware of their needs and or end up in assisted living.

Who is going to fund assisted living for 20% of the population? Even if the government gave their full support and even if high earners agreed to a 50% tax rate like the many European countries, it's simply not feasible on any level.

Of course, there are going to be exception cases of very bright but anxious kids going on to excel after being taken out the school, but the vast majority of refusers just seem to be idling away their time online. Based on the bell curve, not every school refuser can statistically be outstanding. The majority will be average and compounded with a lack of education, find it even harder to get meaningful work.

It sounds like a ticking time bomb. Even if bunking off was a thing in the 70s-80s, the job market and COL were entirely different. You can do manual work and still support a family. Or buy a house. Businesses were local and people were able to make a living by offering a small service for your community. Now everything has become harder and faster and more competitive at breakneck speed. If you start a shop you can easily be put out of business by cheap shopping apps.

The other extremely worrying factor is that an astronomical number of jobs will be replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years. These are excellent, white collar jobs that require full schooling and university degrees like copywriting, art, design, translation, etc. So even for people who pursued education, there's no guarantee their services will be needed by society.

My friends son does exactly this! He stopped going to school when he was 10 because he didn't want to go? They say they can't make him, he has been to school maybe a week in total in the last 3 years and everyone seems to be ok with that?

And when this doesn’t work?

So much more to it. What a way to make parents who are struggling feel even shitter.

Goady AF. You have zero idea of the turmoil these families are in.

A mixture of dragging, bribery, threats and a big dose of the tough tits I mentioned earlier. Still I somehow managed to survive!
There just was no choice. Staying at home in favour of going to school just wasn’t an option.

All entirely possible, hence my 🤷🏾‍♀️.

I'm sure the issue is manifold, so your concerns will be as valid as the OP's.

My daughter came out of COVID and anxious wreck not wanting to go to school, bolting out of class in tears, refusing to engage with counselling etc, so I appreciate the pressure.

I spent many days feeling like an evil witch, worrying about her, waiting for school to call me, ready to spend the evening hugging and reassuring etc... but...

Keeping her home with me ( I work full-time from home) because she may be exhausted or otherwise was a slippery slope (in my opinion), so I didn't encourage it. Instead we spent Saturday and Sunday recharging. Thankfully, while we still have blips 3 years later, the worst is behind us.

Years ago when I had anorexia my parent's friend told them to just make me eat and everything would be okay. I suspect, just make the child go to school would be the same - nigh on impossible to achieve, and if it were possible, have catastrophic emotional effects.

I do wonder If there is any correlation between Gove's curriculum reforms (Make Education Joyless Again),and the increase in school refusal.

How did your parents get you to school then?

My sister was a school refuser in the 90s. She wasn’t the only one. It’s very common among autistic people who are undiagnosed and unsupported. Im a lot older, and also was a would be school refuser who wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do so, so I sat in a corner catatonic most days. I know which of us is the least messed up as an adult.
nothing is wrong with parents, they just don’t force their distressed and terrified kids into school like previous generations did. And rightly so.

also. We just had a global pandemic which massively disrupted education. You think that isn’t going to have an impact?

My DC isn't allowed internet access or TV (unless a school based reading or maths app) on the days they cannot go to school. I still have to work (from home). It's boring for them, and frustrating for us both. No fun at all. They still beg to stay at home almost every day.

My mum (who was diagnosed with autism very late in life after being misdiagnosed with BPD all her life), basically stopped going to school at the age of 14 and left with no qualifications at all. She ended up taking her exams at night school as an adult.
I am also autistic, and spend a huge amount of time either in the toilets having panic attacks or setting off for school but not going in. I still managed to get straight A's and be educated to postgrad level.
The point I am making is that this isn't new, its just that absence figures were not recorded then, so schools didn't push it so relentlessly.

I don't know, I think it's worth discussing our personal experiences on a public forum so that people understand how hard it can be, when your child tries to get ready for school but ends up banging her head against her door instead as she gets so overwhelmed.

I mean, at what point in a morning like that should I just 'make her' go or physically get her in the car? People who judge without learning can absolutely and utterly get fucked.

My eldest was school refuser but year 8-11. School ruined his MH.

If I had a gun at the time I might have tried holding it to his head as I was desperate.

I would never have refused school as a kid. My mum would have beaten the living shit out of me. I think that's frowned on now.

My ds got 3 A at A level. And has been in his bedroom ever since medically unfit to work in the two years since. I have had a decade of being petrified of his suicide. He is off to uni in September. I'd love to have a stable child. You don't get to choose unfortunately.

I would rather have him here uneducated than jump on a train track as so many local kids do.

In the end he still got into a top uni with top grades dispite bearly any education for six years.

I don't know why modern schooling does this to so many kids. Also there's no family or community support behind us. Even my closest family agrees with you OP that they could do better. They just sat there and judged me. In fact that solidified my urge to hide most of my struggles from them. All of my kids have SEN. Why is there more SEN? I don't know but ours is a genetic duplication so as much as I'd love it to be me or in my mind it's a real tangible thing. My family even think the geneticist is wrong. So easy to dismiss everything even Drs and science and point the finger at me. It's easy and lazy thinking. I'm past caring.

School 'others' people like us and so does society. We are freaks who people don't understand. I'd love to buck my ideas up and be normal but what can you do?

@Catbustotoro 🙄 yes I know. I have an autistic teenager myself. plus I have a daughter who has issues with going to school.

i don’t think it’s unreasonable to say if you stay home but you can’t have your phone. Part of the problem is addictions to phones and I think breaks from them are good. If they were at school they wouldn’t be allowed to have their phone all day anyway.

I also work in a profession with such families- yes it is seeming more common but personally though, i agree that you can't force an older child to be somewhere they don't want to be....all you can do is try and encourage them to stick with it to get the grades they need to go on to do something more exciting (not that everyone is successful through that route) Ultimately, all kids are different....some who love academic learning will fly, others just aren't academic and school is not set up enough for practical hands on learning (especially high school)
I was a teenager at school in the early 2000's....I was generally a passive and compliant kid on the surface, scared of authority, from well educated privelidged background, but by year 10 I realised school was not teaching me anything I could use in the sort of career I wanted, got bored and bunked off lessons often until I was able to be shot of the place a year later.I think probably now kids are less scared of their parents and teachers (thank goodness) so the ones who would have turned up at school but then played up in class/bunked off/sat there miserably hating every day know that they don't have to put themselves in that environment in the first place.
That said,there are some kids who sadly would like to do well and be in school more, but family problems and traumas prevent it being possible.

When I work with families, if school is affecting their mental health significantly and they are genuinely unhappy there, and nothing can be done to change that, I will always advocate them being moved to another school or taken out, even for a short time, of the school environment, to recover and re-group before then ideally moving to a different school.I know I would do the same for my daughter's when they are older.

That's not to say they should be sitting at home gaming or whatever all day- they shouldn't- they need stimulation, learning, socialising boundsries and structure still, but school is often a 'one size fits all' box, and when you add in things such as bullying aswell, why should a distressed kid have to put up with it all.If someone hates a job they get to leave, so why should children and young people be imprisoned in a place they are unhappy...

My youngest son has severe OCD. I coaxed him out to school every day, thinking it was better for him to be there. And in some ways it was, certainly from a social point of view. But he struggled so much and it broke my heart to see how much it took out of him, just to get through a normal school day. Eventually it all got too much for him and he refused to go. He didn't scream or kick or shout. I just had to look at the raw pain on his face to understand that school was absolute torture for him. So yes, he's a school refuser. With a mum who is an absolute rule follower in every way. And yet, still withal, I allow him to stay at home. And I imagine that the vast majority of parents have their own private and complex reasons for keeping their children at home.

Op has thrown a grenade and walked away.

For those that understand, do not engage it's wasted energy

You really really think these parents haven’t asked for help?

This!! This is exactly it. When we pictured our family life we didn't expect it to include our child suffering from school related trauma, we didn't expect to have battles with the system, we didn't expect out 5 year old to try to take his own life because of how much he hated school. We didn't think one of us would lose their job because of how much time they needed to take off to be at home for our child. We didnr expect we would end up home educating. We thought we would have a child who would enjoy and flourish at school like we did, we thought both us parents would have careers.