"School refusal" trend

I have worked directly with school refusers , and some are genuinely children needing help whilst others are the product of poor parenting and neglect. Every case is different, but they are all incredibly sad. Education is a right and a privilege that people in poor countries dream of having. It’s awful when children miss out on what could be a great opportunity

Very much agree it's impossible to see this through the lens of a parent who has found themselves in the situation of having a child who can't go to school. Nobody wants a child who is utterly anxious/miserable and cannot cope with school. Who in their right mind would CHOOSE that. It is extremely stressful.

If you fancy coming to try and physically drag a child bigger than age 11 who is in meltdown... Why not give it a try? I speak from experience saying it's VERY hard/impossible. If you're successful maybe you could set up a sideline doing it and make some money. Restrain them and bundle them into a van....?

If you have any alternative suggestions... Go ahead. I'm sure all the parents of "school refuses" will be on tenterhooks...

To anyone who feels like a failure for having a kid who can't attend school, know that you're not.

Maybe don't judge unless you have experienced this. notfineinschool.co.uk/

Bit like the teaching refusal trend, where teachers keep refusing to go to school and get signed off sick and QUIT!
Thousands of them leaving the profession!!

I do wonder (theoretically) whether if school was no longer made compulsory and the whole apparatus to make it so dismantled if it would have the effect of luring many of the refusenik kids back simply due to boredom, lol.

My undiagnosed autistic daughter 'refused' school.
School 'refusal' can be a classic symptom of autism.
Are you one of those people who thinks autism is down to lax parenting @ruthxxx0 ?

It’s actually really difficult to ‘make’ a teenager go somewhere they don’t want to. I agree times have changed but it’s more that kids have woken up to the fact there isn’t a huge amount anyone can necessarily do to make them. And school is a hugely overwhelming and miserable experience for some kids. And I say all this as a teacher and a parent of a school refuser.

My child had undiagnosed Autism, which led to anxiety and depression. She had Emotionally Based School Avoidance (you can stick your “school refusal”).

She also had no CAMHS involvement to start with, as we (probably like you), just thought that she was “refusing” because she couldn’t be arsed - I wish I had known about EBSA, as a lot of damage was done to her by people saying helpful things like “just turn the WiFi off” or “take her electronics off her” and other pointless advice.

My daughter was in her bedroom for a year, it was hugely painful for all of us.

Until you have walked a mile in the shoes of a parent who’s child feels unable to go to school, keep your judgement to yourself.

Some parents are shit and lazy. That’s not new. But now children have so much tech at home they wont be bored at home all day either.

You’ve no idea what’s going on in the family or with these children. Keep your beak out.

Politely, I think you are living in a totally different paradigm to these parents, and so you are filtering their reports through your own experiences and drawing conclusions that are very unrepresentative of their lived realities.