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.

I think this is key.

It's not 'a little bit worried and would rather not be there'. It's more than that.

I posted a thread on here years ago (under a previous username) https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3107788-To-think-the-term-School-REFUSAL-should-be-banned

The term school refusal is unhelpful. It makes parents think that if a child just says 'they don't want to go' every now and then they are refusers.

EBSA (Emotional based school avoidance) is better, but many don't use this term.

Eventually, no, she didn't, because I learned there was no point talking about it. I dealt with everything, and the resulting mental health struggles, all by myself. Add corporal punishment to that. Thank you for not being that mother to your son. I'm glad he's found a good place to engage. I do think the system is the problem, not the child or parents.

When I started high school my mother decided, "I'm not going through this again," and let me change schools, to one I quite liked. It's not lost on me that she did it so she wouldn't have to go through it again. She'd have been quite happy to let me go through it if it didn't involve suffering on her part.

Your son is lucky to have you.

I've just seen that was written when he had just started year 7. He had another period of not coping in mainstream and then was out for the entire of high school.

I'm still traumatised by the whole thing.

I do wonder what would have happened if I had stood up against the smacks (which the teachers would have also administered). I had two panic attacks at school and had no idea what they were. I thought I was going to die.

As I said to the previous poster, it was only when I got to high school and my mother decided SHE wasn't going through my school issues again that I got moved to a better school. Thank you for not being that mother.

If my mother tried to tell me how traumatised she was by my school experience I think I'd never speak to her again. She was traumatised, what about me?

Because people think they've got it all sorted and all their parenting success is entirely due to their own efforts - until it all comes tumbling down for reasons no one can really control. I sympathise with you as the mother of a 15 year old who is EBSA (and two other teens who are able to attend with no issues).

I so sorry that so many are struggling.

We ended our school journey for similar reasons and home educated. The home ed communities in big cities are growing so fast. There is incredible provision where we live. My kids do a mix of home learning, tutor groups, social meet ups and non home ed groups.

The home ed community liaises with local theatres, universities, employers, exam centres etc. to create loads of opportunities.

It can seems like a scary leap, but it very quickly feels normal and calm.

I do wonder if this is true actually

People really think it'll never happen to them just because they haven't got those children.

People always say but if you do this or that then she'd stop doing that and other people are so confident they'd be able to sort it.

I'm not your mother.

Our entire family was traumatised.

I don't put that on my son, I am saying it on a public forum to explain something that might look inconsistent between what I have posted on here and the position back in 2017 when I posted about the fact that I think the term 'school refusal' is inappropriate.

Better term would be 'system is not right for my child' IMO.

I feel exactly the same about the term Selective Mutism. It's a communication disorder, but when most people hear the term, they think it's about 'picking and choosing' when to speak. This feeds into a lot of misunderstanding.

We use the term Situational Mutism and there's a big push to get the disorder officially renamed this.

(My daughter has ASD, ADHD, Situational Mutism and severe anxiety as well as physical health conditions. I'm a single parent and we've been struggling on for the last couple of years. Recently fought and won to have her moved to another class which seems to be working so far. If it doesn't work in the longer term, though, I'll be home schooling too)

This sounds remarkably like judgement to me. Are you sure these "tantrums" are not meltdowns due to SEN? Maybe the parents are picking their battles and trying to avoid the frustration and meltdowns and in some cases violence of someone experiencing sensory overload or extreme anxiety and you are blaming parents for "spoiling" him.

A lot of current school refusal is post covid and sometimes I think that people forget it happened pre-covid too.

A large amount of school refusal happens because children are neurodivergent and mainstream schools are terrifying places for autistic YP.

It is no coincidence that large numbers of families who home educate or have children at home due to school refusal on EOTAS arrangement have autistic children. Isn't it a shame that there are not more specialist autism schools for intelligent neurodiverse children? They barely exist. So many families have had to completely rearrange our lives to educate our children in an appropriate, non traumatising way.

Post covid it's easier to blame other things. But this was happening pre-covid too.

**Edited to say that I have singled out more schools for 'intelligent' autistic children because they don't exist in my area where schools for moderate and severe learning difficulties do. I appreciate that more specialist schools are needed for all needs (before anyone says I'm being unfair).

There were certainly plenty of people who "bunked off" from my school in the 90's. It used to be easier to dodge out of insecure sites through the day; plenty of holes in the perimeter fence.
Many of them CBAed, but it may have been enough of a pressure release to keep some of them in school some of the time and not outright refuse to go to school. People did fizzle out of the system or end up on part time timetables and fewer questions were asked.

Critically SEN provisions have reduced or failed to keep up with demand. Children struggling with mainstream education are expected to plough on, and target culture is more pressured right from a young age. There are fewer options to study, both range of courses and range of subjects.

Pressure was brewing anyway, but the Covid years backed up a system that was floundering, and the months out of school/ disruption exposed many more children struggling to cope. At the younger end, early interventions were missed.

My autistic child copes at present, and fortunately by luck (he hadn't failed enough to get an EHCP) he has got into a very supportive school with strong pastoral system. If he ever goes into refusal mode it will be a nightmare as at y8, he's already the same size as me. I'm pretty strong, but he'll go full welly at me, and I would not use my full potential on him because I wouldn't want to hurt him so I'm already at the physical disadvantage. The Covid years taught me that home educating is not a happy option. There is no plan B. There is no formal education option for bright, high achieving, sensory autistic children. I don't think we'd have made it this far if I hadn't blundered into being a SAHM in the infant school years.

@ScierraDoll if I forced my child to stay at school he would have died several times over at his own hand. He's 6. Perhaps I and his teachers should just not take no for an answer, let him crack on and call an ambulance every time? Hope they make it in time? And if he dies well tough, right?
Thank God 'your' generation aren't in charge anymore.

How do we solve this?

Totally agree.

And for what it’s worth I don’t think it’s upfs or air pollution I think it’s school. It’s the totally dysfunctional environment we are forced to put our children in.

Yes my daughter, also autistic, has situations in which she is not able to speak.

This is not choice.

I hope your daughter thrives in her new class but if it doesn't work push for SEN school or EOTAS rather than home ed as otherwise you will be responsible for funding the education. Both of my children ended up on EOTAS after school trauma/ school refusal.

It is no coincidence that large numbers of families who home educate or have children at home due to school refusal on EOTAS arrangement have autistic children. Isn't it a shame that there are not more specialist autism schools for intelligent neurodiverse children?

People fought for the right to send their children to main stream.

What we have now is a non suitable school environment for many children who then play up and reek havoc in so many ways - before they had specialist teachers - now they have teachers focused on exam results and little else.

The people wanted it and got it.

I totllay belive soecialiat schools for children who need a quieter environment or slower pace or more practical lessons where the focus is on personal achievement is the centre.

Because people think they've got it all sorted and all their parenting success is entirely due to their own efforts - until it all comes tumbling down for reasons no one can really control.

This all day long.

More specialist schools.

Less parent blame.

Better education system all round.

Schools must know which parents are trying their best but those parents are treated the same as parents who don't try to get their children to school. This is due to attendance measures. True school refusal (emotional based school avoidance) should result in supported parents not an adversarial system where parents are sent letters/ EWO, fined and (at worse imprisoned).

Coventry University did a study and the proportion of mothers of autistic children who were criminally convicted for failing to get their disabled children to attend school compared to neurotypical children, was mind blowing.

My DS wasn't a school refuser, but I took the decision to stop sending him because it was literally killing him. The school system is terribly messed up these days. It's just a crime that state it's been allowed to get into.

The number of ASD kids who also have medical trauma is also really concerning. Once they are afraid of doctors and teachers there's not a lot left really.

It was a cost cutting exercise. Sold in the name of inclusion.

It doesn't work.

Did you fight for it? I didn't. It started in the 1990s and doesn't work.

Apologies @Scarletttulips I didn't properly read your post (time for bed). I can see you agree that inclusion isn't a good thing.

There has always been ‘school refusal’- my brother is in his mid 50’s and refused to go to school once he was too big for my (5ft nothing) mum to drag him there.

When he did go he always missed morning lessons because he had to touch certain bricks in certain walls in the correct order, and dribble stones to certain places and if anything interrupted any of this he had to repeat the journey (although I expect OCD ‘didn’t exist back then’ either).