A question to all those who think school refusal in schools is increasing due to lazy, enabling parents...

[Edsspecialsauce]

The question I always have is why?
Why would we choose this?
I hear all the time that it's all our fault, it's just parents letting them get away with murder. Enabling their behaviour etc
How come you get families where one sibling is fine in school and the other has to be dragged in screaming?
Why would I choose to spend my whole time in the playground begging?
Why would I choose to be on a final warning at work due to absence?
Why would I choose to be on antidepressants due being completely burnt out after five years of struggling?
I'm a single parent and my DC is disabled. I could probably get benefits and home ed, so why if I'm not bothered about her education am I dragging her through the school gates, crying (I'm often crying too)
Every day, five days a week, for years.

With regards to your first paragraph.

I found out who my friends were when my DS went through this. Even family members said I was wrong for removing him even when he was suicidal. That I wasn't making him resilient etc.

Most of them have now apologised for getting it so wrong.

@lifeturnsonadime it is extremely ableist. It’s akin to asking a room full of people to race up hill, then when the person on crutches comes last and point out they are knackered, telling them they haven’t tried hard enough and need to show more resilience to difficult situations.

@Appollo555

And others on resilience.

https://hbr.org/2016/06/resilience-is-about-how-you-recharge-not-how-you-endure

Maybe / probably.

My references to my own experience is mainly because I feel I’ve had more than the average. I’ve lived a lot of places, in a lot of communities etc and would say that feckless parents are few and far between.

However I take the point that people working in education are likely to have a broader experience.

Although they themselves likely view families through their own lens of bias. I know school for a while thought my kid was likely being abused because of his violent outbursts. They called in safeguarding etc as they were sure his violence must have been ‘learned’. Turns out he’s just autistic and when he was in the right environment the violence stopped. But when we were insisting there was no violence or volatility at home, we were not mad hippies with no boundaries, YES he had a routine and no screens and no sugar, they didn’t believe us and felt we were not co- operating. Helps we’re articulate people who could argue our corner but i can surely imagine school staff writing us off as just unwilling to help / feckless if we were not so in the exact same circumstance.

YANBU DD is 15 and has almost zero attendance since covid - we have tried everything we can think of - but as OP says, we cannot chain her to us, march her to school and chain her to a desk.

Calm down. In my original post I was clear that I was NOT referring to the minority of children with SEND or additional needs.

I'm not ableist FFS.

Teachers have experience of teaching - they’re not parenting experts or SN qualified or MH professionals. Teachers know best about what the range of parents are like and the issues they’re facing is simply untrue and I wonder how many teachers think they’re best placed to navigate all these unwell children the govt is trying to force to school?

“Resilience” makes me want to scream and smash plates! Heard this so many times, after my SEN child has come home in tears after “failing” something at school e.g kept in at break because they didn’t finish work,
cant do what was expected in PE and everyone in class laughs (everytime and doesn’t want them in their team),
nobody wanting them in their working group for a competitive learning activity,
did a test and not only couldn’t answer questions but didn’t have time to complete (children marked each others work, classmates all aware).
Basically child tries bloody hard all the time but is always way-off compared to output of peers. As a result self-esteem and confidence in learning g ability and future prospects is through the floor.
The answer from school …work on resilience. I will not teach my child to learn how to “put up” with these situations. They need to know when they can reasonably expect adjustments and how to eloquently request this in a classroom situation. A childs version of resilience is to be the class clown or find clever ways to avoid doing things that make them look less able than peers. Not providing SEN support is like taking away a wheelchair from a disabled child or glasses from a visually impaired child. State school does not work for SEN.

The thing is, it’s not a minority with SEN - research suggests a huge majority of children experiencing distress about attending school are neurodivergent in some way. I’m not convinced that many teachers appreciate the extent of this.

Your belief that children with SEN are in the minority of school refusers is wrong.

Where is your evidence of this?

When my children were school refusers they were NOT diagnosed with SEN. The fact that a child is unable to go to school is evidence that there is SEN, the fact that there are 3 year + waiting lists for diagnosis and CAMHS won't see a child until they are actually suicidal in many areas is no coincidence.

I'm wondering what your experience of any of this actually is?

So according to the times 11 percent of children are disabled, and that doesn’t catch a lot of people on wait lists or refused a referral.

that’s a pretty big minority the govt is trying to bully.

I think that is misleading. Not all SEN are disabilities.

From this recent article in SchoolWeek

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/there-are-no-easy-answers-to-school-refusal/

Ninety-two per cent thought that their child’s school attendance difficulties were related to undiagnosed/unsupported SEND

Actually that article was published today by complete coincidence.

No children with SEND are in the minority. I didn't say that they were a minority within the school refusal category.

But it is interesting how we can't have a grown up conversation about behaviour, attendance and parenting without it being dominated by accusations of people not understanding SEND.

If you read my original post, I was quite clear we need to reform the SEND system, it is absolutely not fit for purpose.

But that shouldn't stop us from having a conversation about non SEND children.

No children with SEND are in the minority. I didn't say that they were a minority within the school refusal category.

This whole thread is about school refusal. The fact that it is a minority of children in the school system with SEND is irrelevant to factors relating to school refusal.

What is relevant is that school refusal is addressed appropriately.

If you want to talk about non SEND non school refusing children that's great, but this isn't the thread for it.

You really need to calm down and acknowledge that this is a public forum. The OP asked for views on perception of parents of school refusers and I answered, while acknowledging the system isn't working for children with SEND and other additional needs.

With respect, you cannot dictate how people respond to a thread, especially when it wasn't even one that you started.

If you look at the child disability article in the times I linked, huge growth is in behavioural diagnoses. No, the data is a mess not all SEN are disabilities, not all disabilities are LD and/or ND diagnosis.

my only point really on the data is that it ALL points to a huge number of children in need of help.

and what have we got? A round of blame the shitty parents.

"Just an observation but as a parent do we not tend to surround ourselves with like minded people who are more likely to take the same approach as us"

No.

I've never 'surrounded myself' with people who thought like me. It's not actually possible during the decades of working and personal life. Small friendship circles, maybe, but overall life and parenting? No.

The reason that there are similarities in these circumstances, is because of the kids. When our kids struggle this much, we may start look to support groups and forums (like this one) in which we then find others with strikingly similar stories. Many of us do not seek supoort within our own existing friendship circles as they wouldn't likely understand.

It's not shit or lazy or weak parenting. Many posters have demonstrated that they have more than one child, but one is struggling and the other isn't. So parenting is not the common denominator. Children with Neurodivergence and severe anxiety is the common denominator.

So approximately 1 in 10 children who school refuse do not have SEND. I think you will find that most of us on here have said that schools ought to be able to recognise which ones have the feckless parents and systems should treat us differently. They don't.

That's how parents of autistic children, mostly mothers, have formed a large proportion of parents who have been imprisoned for non attendance.

https://covrj.uk/prosecuting-parents/

So I'll ask again, what experience do you have of school refusal?

Are you a parent or a teacher or a casual observer who thinks that resilience is the key?

And @Apollo this is one subject that I am not prepared to be calm about.

Parent blaming and failing to recognise the REASONS for school refusal has resulted in ruined lives.

I'm not accountable to you, so I don't need to disclose my profession.

You absolutely do not have to agree with my view but I am entitled to give it.

The majority of children experiencing EBSR do have SEN or disabilities of some kind, so the children where this isn’t a factor are in fact the minority (especially when you consider that those who don’t have diagnoses when they start having issues will go on to get them later).

And I will say this again, for the 4th or 5th time now, I agree the system needs to be reformed so that it better serves children with SEND and their families.

Ah adultism at its finest 😆

Shocking that children today have actual rights.

It was assumed I was a crap parent. Until the early help worker met my older child and his teachers. ("Ohmygod, they LOVE him!").
She did then kick a few backsides, not enough for camhs to actually help but she did what she could.