School refusing 6 year old, what to do?

[Twoweeksinaugust]

6 y/o ds has always been happy enough to go to school, he's never loved it but he goes without complaint.

For the last 3 Mondays he's refused to go, 1st time I handled it terribly and shouted as I needed to get to work and was stressed. Last week I was absolutely calm and let him stay home. Gave him a pep talk last night, he was in floods of tears and has refused to go today.

He just keeps saying he'll miss us too much. School office say nothing unusual happens on a Monday except whole school assembly, he tells me this isn't the problem.

Teacher has been absolutely useless and not returned my call to discuss / make a plan.

I'm at my wits end. He's home now, been told if he stays home he's to play in his room all day as we're WFH, there'll be no playing in the garden, trip to the park etc....I'm hoping he'll get so bored he goes to school.

He eats well, sleeps well, gets loads of exercise and fresh air.

Any advice? Please don't say physically force him, I won't, he's strong and determined and one of us will get injured, plus he's too heavy to carry 2 miles to school!

Behaviour was absolutely not better in the past. The adults at the time didn’t think so and the media conversations and literature around childhood at any time in the past does not suggest well behaved young people (or perceived as so),
Based on what are you claiming refusing to go to school was incredibly rare, and which generation specifically are you referring to?

The school should really be supporting you with this. Why not go into the school and speak to them directly? Tell them the troubles that you are facing and perhaps have his teacher/support staff pay close attention to him to see if they can identify a problem at any given part of the day? I have not read the whole thread so apologies if this has been discussed already.

If there really is no underlying problem, then the only way around it without the school's help (which you need), is to just be persistent. My sister was highly avoidant of school, though due to bullying, and when my mum sent her to school she would just go out elsewhere. My mum ended up in court over it and got a big fine. Social services were involved to support her in going back to school and making sure my mum wasn't forcing her to stay at home. It was a years-long big ordeal that was unpleasant for everybody.

You don't want it to get to that point, but you have to teach them so young. Habits are formed so early on. If he gets into the habit of thinking 'if I cry enough, I can stay home' then that is what he will do and it will be a nightmare for you from this point on. Can your DH not do the school run? Perhaps he has more strength to be able to carry him, etc?

You mentioned in your OP that your DS is sad that he will miss you too much when he goes. If this is the reason, could you perhaps ask the school to do half days for a while? Have a talk with him to reassure him it won't be for long and everyone has to do it, etc? Do you spend a lot of quality time with him at home otherwise? Whatever it is OP, I would be keen to get on at the school about what they can do to support you here. I know its not easy.

I would also avoid getting into back and forths about it with him. Rather than 'im not going to school', 'yes you are', 'no I'm not'; I would present choices surrounding the subject.

"Do you want me or daddy to take you to school today?"
"Do you want this or that in your lunchbox today?"
"Do you want to go to the park or go swimming after school today?"

Another poster made a great comment about ESBA strategies and I would also highly recommend it.

Yes, a solution like go to school and stop mucking about in the mornings.
He isn't frightened, he isn't ill, it's a case of 'I don't wanna'.

@Twoweeksinaugust I think it’s definitely harder for parents that WFH because children don’t really understand what that means, especially primary school children. They just see the option to be at home because someone is there to look after them. Infuriating!

We didn’t have this, as we were ALL out the door at 8am together (kids knew we needed to be at work) but our neighbours had your problems as mum was a SAHM mum and had difficulty getting the kids to school but this was from secondary.

Usually school refusal happens later, not at 6. I would be concerned they are struggling but they don’t know how to communicate what they are struggling with. Start asking the school for tests. Visual stress, dyslexia etc…

He’s missed 3 Mondays - that’s not school refusal, that’s not feeling like school after a weekend (who does?!), throwing a tantrum and knowing he won’t have to go in if he does, You’ve got posters on this thread who have school refusers due to diagnosed conditions. There are plenty more kids who will avoid just because they’d rather do something else ie stay home because again, who wouldn’t. But you don’t want this long term - it’s not good for him or his future and whilst there are a number of kids who simply cannot go in and never will, don’t start out thinking this might be the outcome - just no nonsense at home, staff member to meet him, if they can give him a job even better (mine sorted lost property and this nipped it in the bud relatively quickly).I think people are far to quick to label something school refusal these days. I have manhandled another of mine in I’m afraid aged around 7 and again this did nip it in the bud pretty quickly (embarrassing I imagine for him!) and he went onto absolutely fly and love school so I couldn’t give a toot whether people think this is OK to do or not because I’d have been absolutely derelict in my parenting to not get them in when they were perfectly fine once in school (which I assume your son is as he managed Tues to Fri). At this age and without any diagnosis and with only 3 Mondays missed I’d just power on through it and get him in,

I'm sorry but if you have a six year old who won't get out of a car when told to you have bigger problems than school. He's six for goodness sake you need to sort this out now or you will stand no chance in another six years.

We told our DD that all children in London go to school by order of the king, if they don’t go the king’s guards come and take the child to school and throw the parents into jail. Yes manipulative, but it worked for us for long enough for the school rhythm to kick in. Recently I was told ‘I know the King doesn’t care if children go to school’ I feigned mock shock.

I’m afraid you have pandered here and made your life a lot harder. I’ve had a lot of this from my 7 year old. Sometimes lots of sobbing at the gate etc. she’s generally fine within 5 minutes once she’s in. I’ve seen lots of other kids have the odd moment like that at the fare as well. They all do go in. By letting him stay off you’ve rewarded the behaviour and it’ll be harder now for you to stay firm. He is small enough that he can be carried in.

I had something similar with my 5 year old, he would not get dressed for school. So I picked him up and carried him in the car in his pj's. He got dressed in the car outside the school gates.

Next day refused to get dressed but was now naked. I picked him up and took him to school with no clothes on, again he got dressed in the car outside the school gates.

Both days he was late.

The next day he got dressed and went into school. At no point was staying home an option.

OP. Try to get to the bottom of it; there is probably something going on he can’t communicate. It is not always that simple to force them/drag them. You need to build that@ trust now do he can speak to you when he is a teen.

I had to do this with ds5 in his pj's. He was horrified that his class mates might see him, got dressed in the car while shouting angrily at me and never did it again.

I spoke to his teachers and they all said he was perfectly happy at school. He was just testing boundaries - and found that one was made of granite. 🙂

The first time you handled it fine.
the second time was the time you really didn’t!
he goes to school however he feels about it- it’s non negotiable.
You have given him a choice! That’s a very stupid thing to have done imo. He’s not a school refuser at six; he’s just trying his luck.
Honestly you tell him him you aren’t allowed to have him at home on school days and he goes to school whatever it takes.

Really? I’m mid 50s can can think of 2 children from my primary school class and many more in secondary school who “bunked off”, “dropped out”, etc. Called differently , but they didn’t go to school, refused to go to school, ran away from school etc.
Its always been there, just not acknowledged

Based on experience, behaviour was better just 5-10 years ago and worsens every year.

You physicallly pick him up and put him in the school? He is 6!

My DS is autistic and we had some school refusal around the same age. Because of his needs I did push for more support and got the local autism team to come and observe him and make recommendations to school, which did help. However I also directly linked the time missed to school to the time he gets to play on computer games at the weekend. Three hours of school missed? Three hours of games time missed. It was pretty effective!!! There was an element of genuinely needing more support, but there was definitely also an underlying part of him that just preferred being at home.

OP, is this behaviour out of character? If my child who otherwise likes schools and doesn't go into tantrums was so vehemently protesting smth i would have not looked at it as "he must go..end of". Is there bullying or smth?

Crikey I'm overwhelmed by the many lovely posts and DM's, thank you.

I did get him to school, I put my uniform on and said I was going to work so he had to go and he went, he was much calmer by about 10.

I had a long chat with the DH, she said they'll build something in on a Monday morning as a treat for him but only if he's in on time to do it, they are also going to put him down for some emotional support sessions. She was absolutely adamant that I shouldn't have dragged him in kicking and screaming and they would have refused to take him anyway. She says this is a way to rear children who understand that their emotional safety doesn't matter to anyone around them.

The logistics of the school mean that children go on a bus, and the nearest parking is approx 500 years away. The bus wouldn't have accepted him in the state he was in anyway.

For the parents suggesting manhandling a screaming, upset child in to school I am beyond horrified. For those who have an obedient child who wilts under a hard stare, good on you, I have one of those too, she's a dream to parent. DS is a different child and would hit, scream, cling on to doors, both he and I would have been hurt, he'd have likely been bruised, and then I'd have rightly had a social services referral. I am far from a permissive parent, but working in MH and seeing the impact of ACES on adults there will never be a day I'll physically hurt my child unless it's to save them from imminent danger.

He's up and dressed this morning, raring to go.

What experience specifically?

Well done OP! I And yeah a lot of some people on here constitutes effective parenting is actually concerning. Glad the teacher reiterated the importance of emotional safety.

Reading posts on MN for a start … explains a lot!

I think lots of these are good.
Even the "talking about feelings". Sometimes in life we have to do some shit that we don't want to and just cracking on, and then realising we can manage is good
My mum was born in the middle of a war, she is (late diagnosed) autistic. Her Mum and Dad worked in a myriad of crazy jobs to survive and forced her to walk to "school" with her little sister across a bombed out (and still occassionally under attack) city. She found it terrifying but can remember he parents being very matter of fact that she had to go. She realsied her sisteas also scared and eventually she decided to make it into a game and they stopped being as scared. She told us this when we were little to remind us we could get through hard times.
I always think about my lovely grandad, as gentle a man you would ever meet having to tell his girls they had to do this. The other option of staying at home would have removed any sort of education or normality from their lives for the next 4 years.

Okay, and someone else can read this forum, or a different forum, and say otherwise.

That’s great to hear, OP. You must be so relieved.