"School refusal" trend

@Itslevioosanotleviosaa that is not the gotcha you think..

First you need to look at all the kids in special schools. Not just that, but while the law changed in 1070 about uneducable children, you can bet they didn't all actually make it into schools.

Then all the kids that were expelled and off rolled.

Then all the kids that DID skip school and truant, because they exist.

But sometimes going, facing your fear, and cracking on with the day actually helps.

I always feel anxiety returning to work after annual leave, the thought of it gets worse and worse. But actually, once I'm in, it's fine.

Pushing yourself (or a parent pushing a child) can be absolutely helpful in the long run.

Staying off school long term is absolutely not a positive way of addressing school avoidance. It doesn't help the child.

I work in healthcare services and YANBU, school avoidance is rife now. Definitely since COVID. I think it's a combination of poor adult mental health (having a knock on effect on their childrens mental health), less school resource, and more permissive/inappropriate parenting.

There are clearly posters on this thread who have never dealt with the reality of a child with EBSA.
If my work was causing my mental health to be so bad that I couldn't go to work, would you suggest my husband forces me to go? Drags me into work? Takes away my book and my favourite chair and blanket that I'm using to comfort myself because then home will be so boring I'll go to work?
Of course not, you'd suggest I get some help, and take some time to recover. Maybe change my job as that is the root of the stress.

Yet with a child who is often awake till gone midnight on a Sunday night saying they don't want to exist anymore and trying to deal with the anxiety of going to school, "just force them in"

Kids who couldn't attend school in the 70s had a better chance of not facing negative consequences for it. My dad, born in the late 50s, barely attended secondary school and nobody chased him up. My mother, from another country, legally left school at 12 and got a factory job.

There are positive consequences to raising the participation age and following up on young people who fall through the cracks, obviously. But one negative consequence is the pressure on those children very unsuited to school who in earlier decades would have been able to spend their time doing something else instead of being forced into an environment they find hostile and potentially traumatising. (My dad learned a trade and got CSEs at night school later on, in an environment that was better for him.)

But all children didn’t get to school. I can remember people on the register who didn’t.

For those who did attend, their mental health was probably wrecked, like mine.

But neurodivergence and mental health support were barely even a thing in the 70's and 80's and kids still managed to get to school.... You're not honestly trying to say that a nd child was better understood and better supported back then than they are now??

Not sure it is any great mystery; there are now waiting lists of three years plus for assessments, specialist mental health support exists in name only even for children way over clinical thresholds, SEND needs are ignored in schools due to the funding crisis, academisation has resulted in bonkers schools regimes punishing children severely for the most minor infractions (in the absence of any evidence base) which places those children who are unable to behave 'normally' or who can't cope with the stress of repeated sanctions, whether due to neurodivergence, mental health issues, adverse family circumstances, to find the environment intolerable. Thankfully workplaces are generally run on a more humane basis, no doubt due the more meaningful legal and reputational consequences of not respecting basic rights.

There's an elephant in the room here....

Diagnosis and provision of support for neurodiverse children and mental health support for children is of course nowhere near perfect but it's improved vastly over the past few decades and yet school attendance, behaviour and it seems general happiness and ability to function in society seem to have become way more of a problem.

This isn't the problem of an individual child or parent to solve really but why is it happening? What is happening in our society that's causing the next generation of young people to be so incapable of coping with the normal pressures and expectations of society? We really need to figure this out or we're all screwed tbh

Re the issue of preparing them for adulthood and work, i don’t believe that school prepares them for that. In my experience, school is nothing like work, school is THE most inflexible, overwhelming and rigid environment I’ve ever encountered. Adjustments if needed are much more accepted in work, in my experience as an autistic adult with ADHD. And as adults, we have choices about the kind of work we do and the environments we put ourselves into.

I totally get that @Catwontwork Not the same at all by after sleeping in his bed no problem for 4 years my DS for the last 2 months is insisting on being in with us every night. We've tried everything. But can't physically force him to stay in his bed. Like you can't physically force a child to go to school (once a certain age.)

BUT I do also think there are many parents who give in very easily to all things. And that doesn't help at all. My child's school has recently had to issue a notice to parents asking them to speak to teachers with respect, which I found shocking as it should be a given.

So certainly not in every case, but I do think that modern methods of parenting have gone from one extreme (a good thrashing) to the other (yes darling Jonny of course you can climb on the table and pull everything off.) Maybe the happy medium is something in the middle...

Re the permissive parenting.
Like most on here I have tried pretty much every approach including (and starting with) the ‘you’re absolutely going, it’s non negotiable’ stance-threats, punishments etc.
the problem is if you really cannot physically make them go (and I’ve also done this up to the age of 8 or 9) then it’s pointless laying down the law like that when it’s going to be overruled. It makes any future attempts at non negotiables even less likely to work.
So sometimes it’s better to ‘relent’ initially in the hope that by taking the stress and battle away they might get in to school at some point in a reasonable frame of mind sooner than they would having totally refused and melted down.
It’s really really difficult and involves a lot of biting your tongue and timing things right.

Very few! My 9 year old DD managed to get past a 6ft male teacher so I’d not stand a chance!

Personally I think there are two very different things MAINLY at play here.

1. Overly permissive parenting with no/ poor boundaries

2. Neurodiversity.

For the latter, and having some of the heartbreaking stories on here I entirely appreciate that a traditional school environment is incredibly challenging and totally understand why this can lead to school refusing.

However for the former... I work with preschoolers and am shocked daily by what is allowed by parents under the guise of "gentle parenting." It's like we have lost the ability to be the parent and stand up to our children.
It's not a stretch to imagine when a child says "I'm not going to school" as they all do at points that the parent doesn't parent them again and make them go.
What does that then translate to in adults? In my opinion it's a shockingly poor work ethic. My husbands business has constant people taking days off constantly at the drop of a hat for everything and nothing, and bluntly most of the worst offenders are under 25 as they have no resilience.

Sure I'll get flamed but hey this is a forum and we are all entitled to our opinion.

*sorry is ND

@lavenderlou

Agreed. In my case I don't think my teen DS is DD whereas my older teen DD is most definitely and has had an awful time on it.

Unfortunately the knock on effect of this is its now getting harder to get my DS in as he really looks up to her. They are great friends and he also thinks its really unfair that she doesn't 'have' to go in (because she can't) and he has to leave the house every day. Particularly on the days when I am wfh as there is less sense of momentum in the house! It's a nightmare..

Where there are families with more than one child that struggles to attend, its not necessarily to do with the parents. Neurodiversity is genetic so quote likely more than one child in the family is ND.

Whilst extremely apathetic parents might not even be bothered to dress and take a young child to school, this is an extreme and the much wider cohort of semi-neglectful adults might prefer to drop them off so no further parental care is needed until the mid-afternoon. This is a whole landscape of its own, but doesn't overlap particularly with EBSA.

I forced my daughter in. She ended up having a massive overdose at 14 and when admitted to high dependency it was discovered she was Anorexic and had been self harming to cope.

Parents pretty much shrug their shoulder and say things like "I can't make them attend" (we're talking about primary aged children). Or "they don't like the rules/teachers/uniform/the classroom decor..".

I knew how your post would be received but the reality is that so many parents fail their children by not giving a damn, it's always someone else's problem to solve.

Have PM'd you

There are 3 sets of posters on this thread as far as I can see it.

Those who have never had any first hand experience of any sort of EBSA with their own children (and I'm not including primary school kids who cry because they don't want to go in some days. We have all had that.
I'm talking about the 'this would never happen in my house, take their phones away, just pick them up and take them in' brigade.

Then there are those who haven't got first hand experience of it but have the empathy to read about those who have and understand how hard it must be.

Then there are those (me included) who have tried every single approach , read every piece of information, spend their lives worrying about their DC and feeling isolated themselves, stay in touch with the school as much as possible to show we are trying, seek medication and counselling for our kids as they are so unhappy, in many cases can't leave the house for fear of what our kids might do to themselves.. all of this whilst being judged by the first set of people on this thread.

Of course there are children who genuinely can’t cope with school who will be being failed by the education system. I think since covid there’s been a massive increase in taking about mental health which has lead to a pathologising of totally normal childhood feelings which hasn’t actually helped children.

We’ve had a drama filled year at school and it’s all come from the parents, some of whom seem to have no problem including children in conversations that shouldn’t involve children and just ended up causing them distress.

We also had a family who have 3 children where the oldest one hasn’t been to school for 6 years. The middle child recently decided that they weren’t going to go to school either (the school had been incredibly accommodating with late arrivals, not turning up at all, putting things in place to ease transitions etc) and one of the parents posted on SM that the school was failing his DC as it wasn’t their (the parents) job to get their child to school. We had other children who would also be classed as refusers who were frankly just indulged by their parents. For some, it seems to be easier to blame the school than take responsibility for parenting your child (Disclaimer: I know that most parents do parent their child and that there are genuine reasons for school refusal, but at our school that has not been the case and yes, I do know the circumstances of the children involved)

If you've read the thread, is this honestly what you have to offer?

I should add there’s no judgement from me. My kids are at school and happy and I thank my lucky stars for that. It must be very difficult to have been in your situation.