School refusal, just had enough.

[Marzee]

DS is under CAHMs for mental health issues. Well Insay under CAHMs they did an assessment and went from saying 'we don't say this very often with 14yos but we think he may have a mood disorder such as bipolar' to 'yeah actually he's fine, on waiting list for talking therapy, see the GP if you're worried...discharged' in a few weeks.

But he is being assesed for autism too.

During this time he struggled with school a lot and he was off for like 2 weeks because of feeling suicidal.

School made little adjustments like going home early one day and allowing him to come in 40 mins late.

He has insomnia and just won't sleep all night.

But now he just won't get out of bed. Every morning is a battle.

Today he had a mock GCSE at 8.45am. I got him up at 7.30.
I kept trying to get him out of bed and he eventually left at 8.30 with his dad. They made it to school by 8.40 and if he went in he would have made the exam.

5 mins later school are calling that je isn't there.

DH usually drives him in the gates to the office but he didn't and DS just walked off away from school.

I've lost it a bit tbh and took his computer from his room. He just games all the time and if i try and take his phone he goes mental.
He says that his phone keeps him safe overnight when he feels bad and basically if he didn't have his phone to txt friends or watch videos he would feel suicidal.

I feel like this is manipulation and its not his friends responsibility to keep him safe!

Im dreading the holidays. He will be nocturnal and not want to go anywhere.

His sleep will be completely fucked up and cone September it will be a nightmare again.

I'm just so tired of it all. And school put it on me like its my fault.

What am I supposed to do? He is 15 now and taller than me. Do they want me to drag him out of bed physically? They would report me for assault!
I just don't know what to do

Gym and weights are great
Or martial arts
Maybe early driving courses as a treat or hobby
Soo hard isn't it !! I feel for you you're doing your best x

I really feel for you. We have just had 3 months of hell coming up to GCSE exams, by the start of exams he was going into school 2-3 days a week. And yes 6 ft you cannot get them out of bed.

I would agree with some of the posted here. All tech out of his room
at a set time at night. My son however likes to listen to ‘soothing’ music, so he had an Alexa as long as it wasn’t disturbing anyone else. Laptop and phone were on charge from 9.30 pm until he got up out of bed to collect them in the morning. They would be on charge in our bedroom. If he felt he couldn’t cope at night, we said he could come in and see us.
what is amazing for us is that now we are over the exam period it is like having a different child. Somehow the stress has come off and he is so much happier. We tried to get him to go to therapy - managed 3e sessions., some days he just wouldn’t leave his bed at all. We thought we were doing well off he came down and ate dinner with us- but some days we didn’t even manage this. I think we underestimate the level of stress school puts of them.
hugs to you - it is hard

For a potentially neurodiverse child who is poorly enough to have even gotten to CAMHS , who experiences suicidal ideation, the advice to remove the things that doothe them and help them regulate emotions is very dangerous advice indeed. Advice that may work for neurotypical, mentally well child maybe but not a child already in crisis.
OP your child isn’t being difficult, for some reason or a long list of reasons your child cannot cope with school. Have you met formally with school to discuss reasonable adjustments l? A child doesn’t need a diagnosis to have adjustments. My son does have diagnoses but even prior to this he had adjustments like- an exit card to use if he needed time out of a lesson, allowed movement breaks, several members of staff who he could talk to if he was feeling anxious or having problems with any teacher or student, time with one of the ELSA (emotional learning support assistant). School also accepted some days he would be late in ( some mornings were extremely difficult), if he was late as long as i rang in to give context they didn’t mark him as late.
Have you been back in touch with CAMHS to let them know how difficult your son is still finding things? Its exhausting but you really have to push.

CAMHS sound fucking hideous to me. I dodged it mostly as I was fobbed off and gaslit when I asked for an Autism assessment for my very obviously ND son.

Before I even opened your post. I immediately thought - Autistic.

It's really difficult to get an assessment on the NHS.

Privately, you will get one and a diagnosis is then a safeguard.

For example, school refusal is common with Autistic kids because they just can't cope with it. So you have something once diagnosed to come back with. You can ask the SENCO for reasonable adjustments to make it all easier to cope with.

The bipolar thing - I worry when a so called professional comes out with this sort of thing when there are signs someone is Autistic

Autistic people are often told they have all sorts of disorders, borderline personality whatever that nonsense is, is a prime example

I would personally not use punishment and I would use rewards or even bribery and support as much as possible.

School will not be interested in a discussion about Autism and will most likely fob you off. So look really hard and think yourself whether this is likely what's going on ( it certainly sounds like it).

And then you usually stand alone, firm and assertive and pursue the assessment. It's important to always say ' I strongly believe my son is Autistic ' rather than ' what do you think?'. No one will help you pursue it so you need to be assertivez if you go down that road.

Could you speak to your son about this possibility? Is there room for him to consider medication. I know it seems heavy but he's struggling in a big way.

A very low dose of something like an SSRI ( cut in half to 25 mg) for an incredibly slow adjustment to see how it works.

Can you ask him what he needs, suggest this medication idea gently ( if you want to consider that).

Think about how to reward for the most important things which are simply getting into school. Letting other demands go at home will help ( just let him game all evening if it helps regulate).

You're allowed to feel fucking furious and pissed off. Even though so much is not entirely their fault, it is incredibly difficult to deal with as a parent.

Really helpful

I would also say you can try the camhs route however it is hit and miss, Really your child has to do something very dramatic to get anywhere the top o the queue.. this last time we didnt get through first line as self harming wasn’t severe enough. Only time we got a review with them was when he was pulling knives out of the drawers and holding it in front of his neck drawing blood. But then we ended up with a private therapist as the waiting list for actual help as opposed to tell us your story again Ana again was so long….

Oh come on.

Why do you think EBSA was basically unheard of 20/30 years ago? They’re not ‘regulating’ with screens, they’re addicted - of course they seem calm when on them, in the way a smoker calms down when they light up. They seem happy because they’re getting their fix.

We have 3 EBSA cases in our family. So I’m close enough to see them ‘up close’ but not so close I’ve totally lost sight of the issue like their parents.

Nobody really seems to know the difference between ND, addiction related behaviours and mental illness anymore. They’ve formed a blurry blob where one is almost a guaranteed diagnosis of another.

There’s a reason we have so many mentally unwell, terminally gaming anxious children now and it isn’t ’because they were all around us and we didn’t know about it 20 years ago’. It’s because screens have warped their brains and destroyed their attention spans, to the point real life is unappealing and staying home all day every day is nowhere near as dull and quiet as it once was.

CAMHS is massively swamped with these sorts of cases, it’s basically a health epidemic. So yes, OP can get the ball rolling, but she needs to act quickly and not rely on it.

You are totally and utterley wrong.

Removing the social network for a child with mental health issues and trauma exacerbates the problem.

I know because I parented a, now 20 year old, boy who was similar to OPs son.

I started out with the 'common sense' approach and that led to 2 serious suicide attempts, because he had undiagnosed autism and had not learnt strategies to help him.

Eventually I stopped listening to 'common sense' and started listening to autism experts. I didn't have a neurotypical child addicted to gaming but an autistic child who couldn't cope in the school environment.

I made the decision to be child focused. I removed him from school and educated him at home because he had school based trauma, from 'common sense' teachers who manhandlled him and labelled his needs as naughty.

Roll on 10 years and he is in his second year at UCL and living an amazing life.

Yes that’s a very familiar story.

Ultimately the parents are so terrified of the suicide aspect that they’re too scared to grasp the addiction.

So instead they stick to the ‘regulation’ line because it feels comfortable and enables them to think they’re approaching the problem correctly, whilst simultaneously enabling the addiction to avoid the meltdowns. I’m not surprised the EBSA in your case kicked in at 10, that’s very young to be so dependent on tech and a time when the brain is fast developing.

Studying is one thing. Living independently and working and having a normal life is something else entirely. I see very few EBSA cases make it to that part. The parents say they’ll ’always need a lot of support and likely won’t cope with work’.

I’m sorry but most of what you have written here is absolute crap.
EBSA or ‘school refusal’ has always been around, I am in my 50’s and my best friend gradually drifted away from school with various vague physical issues, nowadays it would be seen for what it was.
In my secondary school we would have students disappearing sometimes they came back, sometimes not. They were always the ones who didn’t fit in ir were seen as oddballs.
Some parents are disinterested in their kids and yes they don’t parent, but to say every child who ‘avoids’ school is just addicted to their screens is insulting and totally ill informed. And I say this as a mental health professional who is a parent to a neurodiverse child who has struggled hugely with school for many reasons- just like I did but it was different times where you learnt to shut down/ dissociate / mask to survive.

I stand by the fact it was not as prevalent years ago. I didn’t say it never happened. But how many ‘school refusal’ threads can you find on here from 10 years ago even? We get a few a week now.

How ridiculous.

My son lives entirely independently. Holds down his university education , a part time job , amazing friends and a social life.

I think you'd love to believe what you are saying is true.

Yes I was terrified when my 10 year old tried to throw himself under a gritter truck because school was such an awful place for him, but I listened to him, didn't punish him and got him therapy.

He's now the most considerate and high achieving child I could wish for.

Look me up from 10 years ago. I am not lying.

So much of this is caused by poor parenting. Imagine allowing a 14 year old to have a computer and phone in his room over night too! It’s so pathetic. All these excuses about regulating themselves. No. Then your DH just drops him off, knowing his track record, instead of escorting him into school? On a mock exam day?

For goodness sake.

I agree with you op. Ignore others. Remove all tech. It isnt good for him. Do not give in. If he badgers for hours, he never gets them back. Cancel contracts. Whatever you permit you promote.

School made little adjustments like going home early one day and allowing him to come in 40 mins late.
They are not little adjustments, they are significant.

School refusal was absolutely a thing 20/30/40 years ago. My 50 year old cousin stopped going at 13 (possibly neurodivergent but a contented and successful farmer on the family farm). I know a handful of kids from my own school who stopped going. School attendance wasn’t monitored as seriously as it is today so there wasn’t as much of a fuss about it.

I do think screens, smartphones and the hangover from lockdown have exacerbated the problem. Plus schools are pretty unhappy places for many kids.

I didn’t say you were?

I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that gaming and smartphones are like heroin - once hooked it’s very very very difficult to remove them; by the time the parent realises the addiction they’ve reshaped the kids brains and so the chicken and egg conversation about ‘neurodiversity’ starts.

I read threads like this and feel enormous relief that my kids don’t have smartphones or tablets, as well as feeling very sorry for people like OP who probably had no idea what would happen when they bought them.