Six year old completely burnt out from school.

[primaryproblems]

Dd6 is fine during the holidays and weekends but can't cope with the long school days, she comes home emotional and breaks down into tears saying it's all too much, she can't handle being in school all day and all week only having 2 days off and spends most evenings crying over anything and everything one thing after another.
She begs me not to send her to school because she's too tired and I feel completely helpless because I have to force her to go.
I completely understand how she feels but there's nothing I can do.
She asked if she can have one day off in the middle of the week to rest which sounds quite reasonable given how burn out she is but I'm not in a position to authorise that.
If an adult was completely overwhelmed and burn out like this they'd be signed off sick but talking to the school doesn't help, they just say she's fine once she's here, she'll get through it but they don't see her when she comes home and then there's homework and reading to get on with when she's passed out on the sofa too tired to even eat.
She's always in bed by 7 and sound asleep by 10 past that's if she hasn't fallen asleep before hand and been carried up and she is soo tired int the morning.
I feel so bad it seems like child cruelty to me but no matter how much she talks to me my hands are tied because the law says she should be in school because all the other children can cope.

Probably a fair chance it is some form of neurodivergence (although I agree I would get the GP to run a full set of blood tests to rule out something out). I don't know if this would help her - but when I was a child, I used to often come home from school and crawl into my mother's bed and then sleep for forty minutes to an hour or so, sometimes more I think if I was really exhausted. Then I would get up, have dinner and then was in a state to tackle my homework. My mother's bed was probably because my parents' room was downstairs just down the corridor from the kitchen, so an obvious place to flop, while my own was upstairs (but it was probably better, so my bed stayed as the one for sleeping overnight, and my mother's bed was where I napped). Never formally diagnosed with neurodivergence, but with kids who are, pretty sure I am.

I also have a DD who has tended to get overexhausted from school, although not as bad as yours - or rather, it builds, so by the end of the autumn term one year we had a situation where she was too exhausted to lift up the breakfast spoon in the morning. And rushing her off to the doctor for blood tests didn't show anything significantly worrying. In my DDs case, mostly when she had been seriously flagging I have deemed it a sufficient "sickness" to keep her off school for a day or so to get her strength back - the one time we didn't when she was in her GCSE year, which is when we got to the - can't lift the spoon for breakfast stage, which then meant she needed a week off school to recover, which meant she missed more school than if I had taken preventive action earlier so I am pretty sure my instincts to keep her off for a day or so every so often were sound - but she was just so worried about the GCSEs that she wasn't prepared to let me keep her off until she had pushed herself to the point of no choice.
But my DD seems to be milder than your DD. It is one thing to build up over a term and have a day or two off, but another to need a day off every week.
I see some people have suggested home schooling, but that is a bit daunting and may well not be practical. However (if you can afford it), there are online schooling options like Kings Interhigh, which I think also runs at more primary school age (although not sure if for as young as your DD). That allows for schooling without the commute and the playground and the noise etc, and it might be something that is easier (my DD flourished educationally during lockdown - online classes worked brilliantly for her - no problems with being exhausted during that whole period despite her school running a full timetable).

Oh and my DD was (eventually) diagnosed with inattentive ADHD (she too was regarded as good as gold at school, except when she got lost of didn't have the right equipment, but being considered good was, I think, mostly because she simply wasn't there in spirit a lot of the time, she was off in her own little world and therefore caused no trouble in a class with a lot of trouble).

It's not a legal requirement to send her to school full time, it's a legal requirement to ensure she gets a full time education.
There are alternatives to full time school:

1. Flexi school - with the Headteacher's agreement she could, for example, have some afternoons or a Wednesday at home and be educated there.
2. Home education

I read it that she goes to bed at 7 and is asleep at 10 past 7. So within 10 minutes.

But yes- first port of call must always be to rule out something physical.

My daughter (also 6) was exactly like this in school, she really struggled and would mask all day and then it out at home. School kinda refused to see it as a problem as it wasn’t affecting them.

It could be something medical but also could be a school thing or ND masking. Teachers often seem to really struggle to see it in girls, we had just the same problem . But now she is on the waiting list for ADHD as GP agreed.

We now home educate as my daughter found school way too much. Though realise it’s not for everyone. Have you looked at flexi schooling. We did this for reception. The school doesn’t have to agree but you can present your case based on how much it’s affecting your daughter and ask for a day or two where she stays at home. There are some great flexi and home schooling Facebook groups with tons of advice. Also a great book called changing our minds by Dr Naomi Fisher really helped me understand how school can be too much for some kids. I hope things get better for you and your daughter it’s very hard !

Aww bless her, so many kids have such a tough time at school. I'd take her out and home educate her.

Why does there always have to be something “wrong “ with the child . Can’t parents simply just listen to a child’s needs .

The child says it’s too much it’s too much .

Ah, that makes more sense! Thank you.

She's in bed by 7 but not asleep until 10?

Ten past seven I think

Oh come on! How many of us wake up wishing intensely that we didn't have to get out of bed? How many of us would do that if there were no forseen consequences?

We should listen to our kids and respect them but we absolutely cannot raise a generation of kids who are so introspective that they crumble at the slightest pressure.

She doesn't want to go to school. You don't jusy bend over and accept that. You find out if there's a medical reason, you find out if there's an educational reason and then you make her get up and make the most of the education that lots of kids in less advantaged countries would kill for because that's what's in her best interest

If she wears ear defenders she has sensory needs and you've also described her having meltdowns and crying and seeming to mask at school. I do think it is worth looking into ASD.

possible reasons

undiagnosed medical condition
undiagnosed ASN
visual impairment
bullying at school

see the GP

tell the school thats she is under medical investigation and ask if she can she be excused from homework for the next few week.

try to avoid over stimulation at home and see if that helps.

keep a log of what she eats, when she sleeps, what she does , how she feels each day and see if you can spot a pattern.

If she is drinking a lot of fluids and losing weight , then phone your Gp now and ask to be seen urgently. By that I mean today. I don’t mean “ I’ll think about it and see how it goes over the next week “.

I too am thinking some form of SEN.

I kept thinking my DD would get into the swing of things but she never did and was always very low energy after school.
Turns out slow processing, dyslexia, dyspraxia meant she used so much energy up in the school day trying her best she had nothing left by 3pm.

I was flagging up with school from about y1 but was continually fobbed off. Teachers aren't SN experts.

Bedtime obvs needs to be earlier as she has no clubs etc to interfere with them. Try 5pm & see if that improves things. All kids are different

I can do it at weekends but to be honest during the week she just refuses to carry on when she's had enough.
She glazes over and won't even look at the book so I just put it away.

But she doesn't do this at school. I wonder is it because you let her stop. At school sjes expected to get on with it. It at home crying will get you to stop asking her .

What you can actually do, as has been suggested many times here,
-take her for blood test
-Speak to someone about possible asd

• send her to bed an hour earlier than usual.

I have always found life exhausting.

Through out my childhood I was told I was "burning the candle at both ends". It's taken years of introspection and for me to realise that my introvertedness behind a lot of this fatigue. I can not manage being in a room with people making small talk for multiple days in a row without needing a break. I need time on my own to recalibrate. When I was a kid I would hide at the bottom of my wardrobe and once I learnt to turn the light off when hearing my parents I would read late to shake off the day.

I now work 4 days a week after a mental health crisis when I had my daughter and take Wednesdays off to have a break and I have found a peace with the world that I have never had before. I am not neurodivergent but I'm bipolar and can relate to a lot about how neurodivergence and how ND people can find life challenging. I can trace back early signs to my mental health back to be 8 for certain and probably 5 or 6. One thing I struggle with is low mood and/or energy in winter months and this plays out with strong fatigue and for me starts at the end of August when there is a 2h drop in the number of daylight hours and starts to improve end Feb beginning of March when we go back to close to 12h daylight. I am more susceptible to depression during these months but the fatigue is there with and without depression and so so much worse when i have been near other people and I have the fatigue from social interactions too.

@StrawberryShortbread2001 I echo your post.

I would definitely push for assessment OP. The earlier you put in place support and strategies, the better the outcome. There is a huge waiting list for assessments (even with the best private teams) and you don't want to be waiting two years for an appointment when your child has a full on burnout and can't attend school at all (which has happened to a number of families I know).

It took until Y5 for my dd's primary school to take my concerns re autism seriously. Masking in girls is very common & the child they saw and the child i had at home were often two different people.

One of the things that people are trying very hard to make people see, is that being ND is not something "wrong" it is something "different".

If a child says it is too much, it may well be too much, but if that child is saying this in circumstances when the vast majority of children are able to cope, that means this child is different in some way. It means this child needs things that most children do not need. This is true on a medical level - some children need insulin, most children do not, but if a child is presenting with symptoms that might mean they need insulin, they need to have that checked out. It is also true on other levels. Exhaustion is a symptom. Everybody gets exhausted in certain circumstances, that is normal. But if someone is getting exhausted, and that particularly includes a child, in circumstances that most children do not, then there is something different about the child. We categorise types of difference in order to help us better help them. And then we give names to some of these types of difference, ADHD, ASD whatever, and that is a shorthand which hopefully helps everybody find better ways to enable those with difference to flourish.

I would never have considered SEN either when my daughter was younger. However having been in a similar situation several years ago my now 16 year old daughter was diagnosed with autism and ADD, has suffered autistic burnout and is now being home schooled due to chronic fatigue no doubt brought on by trauma and stress of school.

Her teachers never even considered or discussed autism or attention deficit because she was so well behaved in school, so I wouldn't take the word of a teacher! Their training on SEN is almost non existent. My daughter thought it was normal to be tired and overwhelmed so never told us how difficult school was for her and went completely under the radar until the pandemic pushed her too far. She internalised everything until then.

Get her thyroid levels checked - I know she's very young, but it can affect kids and the excessive sleeping suggests hypothyroidism is a possibility.

Check for diabetes, low iron and B12 deficiency.

Check for ADHD and ASD.

I would imagine it's one of these things tbh. If not then keep on looking into it. It must be horrible for her to feel this way and be told to overexert herself five days a week.

On another tack, can you invent a couple / series of Wednesday afternoon appointments, where she stays for afternoon registration but then you pick her up straight after?
School probably won't mind too much if it doesn't impact her official attendance stats.

@primaryproblems Are you in a position to be able to home educate?

Hi OP, I haven’t RTFT, just your responses, but I just wanted to say that where I live it’s possible to flexi school (ie not go to school one day/two half days a week) - as in it’s council policy that all children should be allowed this. I am guessing you’re in England so keeping her off school a day a week wouldn’t be permitted but I just wanted to reassure you that none of the kids I know who flexi (and I can think of at least a dozen at a range of different schools) have fallen behind academically or socially in any way. It just doesn’t matter missing a day of school weekly from that perspective.
So anyway. If you could somehow make that work - I would absolutely allow it for her.

Could she be 'masking' at school and then letting it all out at home?