"School refusal" trend

How??! Every circumstance is different. You don't think lazy parenting exists?

COVID has majorly contributed to this issue. My kids barely missed a day of school before the pandemic. Then they got the message school wasn't necessary and if you feel vaguely unwell you should stay home. One of my kids had a very difficult time and had really poor attendance for about 3 months. There's no way I could physically make a nearly 6 foot child go to school. We were incredibly lucky to have fantastic support from school and this got him back to school pretty regularly. He still finds it hard to go in if he's not feeling 100%.

I grew up on a council estate. In poverty. Had a local library.

@theeyeofdoe I could totally have made school non-negotiable but I'd have a dead daughter.

But, yay discipline!

theeyeofdoe

You just pick them up out of the car and take them in.

No you don’t. You’re really going to physically drag a child into school? Sometimes them roaring crying at any age over five? I had an 11 year old and a 15 year old refuse school. I’d have social services called on me if I tried to manhandle them into school!!! I honestly (and I mean this so honestly, I’m not trying to be mean), hope you never see school refusal. It is NOT the same as ‘I don’t want to go in today.’ It is ‘I can’t, I won’t and nothing will make me’. It is hell on earth and I’m so glad my kids are out of it (changed classes again and moved tables and the teacher started giving extra help too).

@RubySloth

I can Imagine you taking my stance personally but I'm not aiming at people whose children are suicidal at 5.
Your comments are aimed at every single person who has a dc refusing school unless they detail their reasons to you though aren't they.

You look through the lens of judgement first unless you have reason to think otherwise.

It's people in society like you who make life difficult for others.

People are talking alot about autistic children.

That's very, very different to what (I think) the OP is referring to.

If there are no actual issues with school reported by the child (bullying, etc), no SEN, then why are they refusing in the first place?

If I thought that was an option back in the 80s I would have definitely been a school 'refuser'. I HATED school. I had friends and everything looked fine from the outside, but I hated every single minute of every single day that I was there. So I can 100% see why kids don't want to go.

It would be great to see some sort of alternative to the traditional school set up that suits kids who are ND or who just don't fit into the trad learning model.

The opinion isn't based on randomers online it's that thing called real life. 🙄

See in the 80s I could have brought up a wooden spoon and threatened him or something horrible but now, strangely we talk to our kids and they tell us they’re miserable, they hate it, they’re crying.

What's going to happen when they decide they don't like work?

We all have to do things we don't like in life, FFS.

Out of interest, what does she want to do when she leaves school? I'm forever trying to make my kids visualise the future. Mine had extreme anxiety over covid during the transition to high school. No matter what I done to acknowledge, it made it worse in the end I gave up and ignored the panic attacks (which no doubt people will scream abuse at- but it worked for us) as well as concentrating on the future.

Your child has made it so far, so fingers crossed they finish their exams and find their route.

What a generalisation. School attendance and getting an education are not the same thing. I have two degrees and countless professional qualifications after my own school refusal, alongside my ND and MH issues, I have a well paid career. Home education is also a thing. Funnily enough, there are many ways to make a living or live your life that don't have to fit into the standard way of doing things.

What a goady post. Shame on you OP.

It takes a special kind of stupid to read a thread like this and then to come out with a comment like yours.

I had a school refuser at Primary age. He's autistic and just couldn't cope in a mainstream environment.
He'd masked for years before this. We had years of meltdowns, violent meltdowns. My house would be trashed, things smashed, he'd bite me and himself, punch me, pin me on the floor, scream from 4pm till midnight when he'd finally crash.
School said he was fine. He started refusing, begging me to drown him in the bath, to kill him, asking why had he been born. We had to hide all the knives, lock all the doors as he'd run out the house. He'd try to throw himself in front of cars.
Anything to not go to school as he'd rather be dead. You try listening to your child in that state. I recorded it once and played it to school in a meeting causing the staff to cry. But yeah, I thought I'd let him choose and go for an easy life!

Don't judge what you don't understand.

BTW once he got to a specialist provision he was like a different child.

You are the exception, not the rule. It's clear that the vast majority of children with neurodiversity who live in poverty or broken homes will not be sitting at their desks "educating" themselves until they get straight As in all subjects. They will just idle away their time, most likely via screens which has an even more detrimental effect to their overall MH and well-being. Even if they have a wholesome childhood out in nature with parents who care about their well being, it's questionable how many employable skills they will develop when it's time to enter the workforce. And yes, gaining skills to thrive in capitalism is not the point of life, but the current COL and social-political environment in the UK makes it an almost non-negotiable starting point.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I am AuDHD myself and managed to muddle through school in the 90s. I had lots of sensory issues, near daily panic attacks but weirdly enough I learned to cope with them because I knew not going to school wasn't an option. I feel the experience of spending all those years in a forced "normal" setup with NT peers was like a baptism by fire for learning masking and coping skills myself. I went on to finish uni and was successful in my field, met DH who is also ASD but also successful in his field. We live a normal life without any financial worries but we're also aware that we need to build in buffers for our (late discovered) neurodivergence. Our current life would definitely not be possible if either of us had given up on school early on. (And a lot of that is related to friendships and social contacts that we acquired through school & uni, so it's not strictly just about grades).

I’ve two children who both went through a year each of school refusal, one changed clssses and had no friends and HATED school and started to fail all his subjects, he was miserable all the time and just lay in bed.

See in the 80s I could have brought up a wooden spoon and threatened him or something horrible but now, strangely we talk to our kids and they tell us they’re miserable, they hate it, they’re crying. Sometimes they’ll make it to the car but won’t get out at the school. What do I do then op? What do I do when I’ve had a conversation, spoken gently, bartered, begged, threatened with removal of this or that or you can’t go swimming or to the cinema?

What line of work do you work in where you’re so dismissive of parents and how they’re parenting op? I have NEVER been as irritated by a post as I am right now.

You just pick them up out of the car and take them in.

The majority of parents have had to do that at some point in their lives. You make school non negotiable.

My DD would make herself physically sick at age 5 to get out of school.

She is about 4 feet now and when she gets a meltdown before school, I can just about physically drag her to school. Sometimes she hits or kicks me or says stuff like: I will never love you again mummy.

The worst thing is that she doesn't want this either. After she comes to her senses she is very ashamed of her behaviour. It's like a short circuit in her brain.

Oh and we are a family that takes education very seriously, and so does DD. She loves learning, just not at school.

Certainly looks that way in a lot of cases.

Ok then, so why don't you give concrete examples of how that would look like. After a certain age, even frogmarching/manhandling them into school doesn't work. So bar beating it out of them, how exactly do you force a kid to get into school?

Well there is going to be a spectrum isn't there, from lazy neglectful parents who can't be arsed, to parents who are at their wits end trying every possible avenue to get their child back into school. But its definitely on the increase, yes. Lockdown certainly contributed to the problem, my youngest is socially awkward and loved being at home. She has sn and anxiety about school, she doesn't make friends easily, is crap at sport, art etc, and is equally crap at schoolwork as she has a learning difficulty. It's a struggle every single day, she regularly feigns illness, even when I get her in if she tells the school she is sick they have to act on it. So far she has never point blank refused to go but its only a matter of time. There is literally nothing in school that she likes/wants to do. Next year is an exam year so she will likely have a lot of headaches and stomach aches, all i can do is my best.

I don't live in a box most opinions are made by real life experiences not by randomers online. Some children can't genuinely go to school, others parents hate the routine and effort, some want dla ... the last two are ones I see alot.

OP - You have no idea whatsoever about how much education has changed. I did well in school - it was the making of me. But I would not send my child to our local school for all the tea in china. It is a hell hole.

My DS was like a brand new person after lockdown schooling. Just completely transformed. Then he went back to school and I had to watch him spiralling towards a nervous breakdown. It was just awful to watch.

He is now out of school and gradually recovering. I will not be sending him back.

Stop judging people when you have no idea what life is really like for kids these days.

The most tragic impact of everything is that there will be a generation of adults in 15-20 years with no education, no employable skills and a myriad of MH problems (essentially what contributed to the school refusal in first place). The NHS is already on its knees and the COL shooting up. The disparity between rich and poor will keep widening and possibly create a dystopian society where a small percentage live in luxury enjoying private healthcare and private schools, and the rest in squalor & debt with virtually no chances of a normal life.

Whereas school refusal on an individual level is easily justified and understandable, the macro effect is going to be horrendous. People currently talk about gender privilege, race privilege but in a few decades it will be intellectual privilege. Kids who never went to school will never manage to catch up on literacy levels and social skills compared to ones that did, and be denied really basic opportunities. Once their parents are no longer in the picture, they will have to rely on themselves to sort out social care, UC/PIP and deal with an already broken health system. The politicians and law maker will be part of the educated elite and obviously rig the system against the poorest who lack resources on (financial, intellectual, emotional) every level to fight back.

The UK is literally reverting into a third world country where a substantial proportion of the population are illiterate or lack basic skills that make them employable. Lawlessness and crime will keep on rising as that's the only option for people to keep themselves alive. Educated people with resources to do so will emigrate to countries with better quality of life for themselves and their children.

MN is quite gender critical and there's a current thread on how people would react if their child came out as trans. The answers were all very much against the idea of supporting it and making it clear where the boundary is. This is an unpopular opinion but school refusal should be given similar boundaries. Unless it's an extreme or arguably life or death situation, getting an education needs to be non-negotiable.

The strange thing is that people are perfectly willing to drop their 2 year olds off at nursery despite hysterical crying and crystal clear signs they don't want to be there. Some children take weeks or months to settle but the general sentiment is that they will adapt. However it becomes much easier for kids to skip school when they're older, despite the long term effects being catastrophic.