AIBU for being frustrated with these parents

As a school attendance person in a previous life I can see both sides. There are children who have serious anxiety surrounding school attendance. However, in my experience many of these ‘issues’ are not helped by their parents. So often I have seen parents’ anxiety projected onto their children. This has resulted in ongoing problems and increasing issues surrounding attendance, friendships and long term difficulties. It is really frustrating as sometimes (though of course not always) these problems can be overcome by the parent stepping up and actually parenting their children. I remember as a child (and as a parent of a child with serious medical issues) that the easy way out is not to attend school. However that rarely solves the problem. In fact I have seen that it often/nearly always exacerbates it.
Having said all that, it is not your business. Concentrate on your own child and encourage good attendance. It can be a struggle at times I know but it’s worth it. My dc thank me for it now.

If I was Ella’s parent I would definitely want to know that she’s lying to me to get out of school and bragging about it to her friends. I’d say to the mum ‘I’m just telling you this because I’d want to know if it was my child telling people this etc etc’.

Yes it is.

Yes we've been through similar, I totally feel your pain Stressedoutmum79 If a child decides to refuse to go to school you can't actually make them, and if they are not willing to engage with help, there's not much you can do except keep trying to help them feel better. With some ND kids, consequences and being strict and getting cross do nothing, or make it worse.

And one of the hardest parts of it all is people assuming you are a permissive/wishy-washy/useless parent or lazy and don't give a shit. And you have to suck that up. Of course, there are parents who really are like that too - but you don't know.

Honestly? I can understand being a bit taken aback BUT I think you can only get cross if it affects your own child. Should Ella suggest that your daughter also stays off to do XYZ or tell her that it is very important that she takes her calls late in the evening. If this doesn’t happen then I’d leave it to the school and parents to deal with.

Re the video calls at 8pm and voice notes at 2am - I’d have a time when your daughter’s phone gets taken off her for the evening. It isn’t outrageous to tell the parents that you’d rather Ella didn’t call or message after 7:30pm (say) because you don’t want your daughter to start going through messages first thing in the morning before school.

It is problematic, yes. This was me as a child. It was because my mum couldn’t cope with parenting. She eventually just stopped taking me to school because she found it too overwhelming to get me up and dressed and fed and drive me there. She’d just get up and go to work and I’d wake up to an empty house. I was 10/11 at the time.

Private school, late 80s, no one ever came asking what happened to me. She must have told them we moved or something and no one followed it up. I missed a year of school. Really she needed support, but no one wanted to ask the hard questions and I don’t think she wanted to deal with anything. She is still running from her issues and she’s in her mid 70s now.

Yes, the family needs support and intervention. Yes, the school is almost certainly aware of it. It’s probably much more complex than it looks from the outside. My mum claimed I was ‘faking illness’ too, but there was a lot more going on. Best your dd can do is to be a good supportive friend to her and hopefully encourage her. Once I actually got back into school (a new school), I did really well and found a lot of support. Hopefully that will be the case for Ella too.

Oh FFS

I only got irritated with parents in similar situations when they were on the group WhatsApp chats slating the school as shit for trying to set work and then slating because their child fell behind. Parents make choices for lots of reasons but also need to be aware that there might be varying consequences.

The real question is… why do both of these children have access to their phones at 8pm on a school night??

Never ever comment on the way parents bring up their children.

Keep quiet.

They are ones that will be lumbered with an unemployable teenager.🙄

This is absolutely fuck all to do with you.

Can you give advice on how parents should get a teenager they cannot physically carry to go to school?

There's been times I've had to carry my autistic son to school, but he's at primary school and isn't taller than me yet. If he's in the wrong mood, no amount of persuasion works.

Ella may have health problems that are un-diagnosed or misdiagnosed and her and her family may be going through hell trying to figure out what is wrong and how to manage things. She may not want to disclose this to her friends, or their parents. Smugly reporting the family to the school over a 2am message may have caused them more unnecessary stress and hassle and could have caused the poor child to spend even less time in school.

I have physical health issues that really impacted my attendance when I was in school, and the torment the school put my family through made everything so much worse. It is common for me to be up ridiculously late, I'll go to be at 10pm and still be up at 3am. It's because the pain is so bad I cannot fall asleep despite being absolutely exhausted. It has nothing to do with screens.

Also being able to video call a friend for an hour in the evening is a very different thing to being able to get up, washed, dressed, walk (even a short distance) to school, spend 8 hours in school, walk home, etc. If a child is too ill to go to school it dose not mean they are bedridden and cannot lift a phone to their face.

As an 11 year old I think it's highly unlikely Ella will be able to give the full version of events. She likely won't be mature enough, able to fully articulate it and will be worried about social repercussions.

What 11 year old will be able to say to her friend, just as an example, 'I have terrible anxiety and can't face going to school, my parents are stressed and unhappy but I am making myself ill worrying about this, especially the change to secondary school.' She's much more likely to say she fakes illness. I mean, your daughter is probably lovely but there are a proportion of children who would tell others that info and tease another child about it.

Definitely, definitely do not stick your nose in. She's enrolled in a school so clearly someone will be monitoring the situation.

You have no idea what is going on! My child looked perfectly fine but had IBS so had a lot of time off school until we got it under control and worked out the triggers.
He would never tell his friends that's why he wasn't in and would make up all sorts of reasons, he even told them one day that I didn't know he'd missed school (I did)

you probably don't know the whole story behind the absence. As for the video call, maybe they are trying to maintain some social contact for her if she's often absent from school.

My kids have a pair of siblings who they're friends with who are like this child... school attendance erratic and falling fast (again much worse post-Covid) and will be on phone and games very late at night.

I'm still friends with their parents, the kids are still friends (but the friendship's naturally dying back a bit since they moved away and as the kids get older). Am I pissed off privately at some of it - especially since I am very fond of the kids in question? Yep. However the friendship continues because both sides of us are able to accept that we parent differently - I've got quite strong boundaries about tech use on a night - phones must be downstairs after 8pm etc - and a large part of that is to mitigate the fact that these kids will be on theirs late and will try to ring mine up and get them to join in... and actually, although she complains bitterly - DD1 does really actually appreciate the "my mum's a pain in the arse about this" excuse to get out of late night phone nonsense.

In one child I know there are reasons for the school attendance, the other I'm less certain of - I just tell my kids, "I'm not Jen and Bob (hypothetical parents' names) and we do things differently here, my rule is X"

Yes, FEEL frustrated by all means, but keep that in your head and in your own world - no way would I have a go at my friend for how their kids are parented - because I know parts of the story but there's no way I know the full lot, no way I've got a right to know the full lot, and even if I did I'd have no right to judge anyway.

Literally - myob
this is not your kid, not your decision and certainly not your business!
You clearly mention no concern of abuse so you thinking you can’t hold your opinion back when seeing mum sounds beyond entitled.

This!

It’s none of your business. Leave them to it.

It's not your business.

You have no idea what's going on, so do keep out, it will not be appreciated.I am a parent with a daughter just like Ella, believe me we try every day to get her into school, autistic, ADHD, burn out, anxiety, mh problems, ebsa, pmdd, my daughter can happily chat to friends then can't go into school, I'm going through the most stressful time ever, it literally makes you ill!

Quote of the day that 🤣🤣🤣

None of your business.