Does a child's mental health really improve if you take them out of school?

[MoominPyjamas]

I have absolutely no agenda in this post. My DC struggles going into school. She's refused a few times. She is always happy when I pick her up.
Someone on a SEN chat group said that I was 'abusing' her for sending her to school, knowing that she is unhappy to go in. There's a lot on these chats about school being hell and torture for ND kids, but I don't think this is the case for all.
My question is, are the related MH conditions more prevalent in ND kids less likely to occur if your child isn't in the school system? So if they're home schooled, do they become happier teens, less likely to self harm or lock themselves in their rooms? Is there research on this? I'd be fascinated to see if it was the case and whether EBSA was at all related to a tendency to struggle with your mental health in general. For example my DC has very high and low moods, so if she wasn't in school would this improve or would she always be prone to periods of low mood and then periods of elation?

We will have to agree to disagree. SENDIST is designed so parents can appeal themselves without a solicitor.

If parents can’t afford independent assessments and aren’t eligible for legal aid there are charities e.g. Parents in Need who can help fund assessments partially or fully.

How old is she OP? This doesn't sound like she's desperately unhappy with being at school, it sounds like she's struggling mostly with the transition from home to school. What is school doing to help this? Is she able to go into school 5 minutes earlier than everyone else? Does she have a special job to do when she arrives to distract her? Does she have a plan of the day ahead so she knows what's going to happen and what to expect? I'm assuming she's primary age, obviously if she's 15 this isn't applicable!

At this point I wouldn't be taking her out of school, I'd be working on making it easier for her to go.

@takemeawayagain yep all of that. At the moment I go in with her and we read a chapter of her book until she acclimatises. However there is a lot of 'school is not fit for neurodiverse kids' rhetoric around and so the first sign of hesitation about school and some parents are going straight to deregistering them. It doesn't help in the long term as there is no real plan B if their children are unhappy at home too. Plus if they're overwhelmed at primary; how are you expecting them to go into secondary? So most are then left homeschooling teens, which is not ideal for MH in my opinion. But obviously this isn't the case for all kids.

Well I personally think that primary can work for ND kids. But secondary is much more of a challenge. Dd3 was fine at the right primary school. She told me she has a lot of happy memories of that school. I had to take her out in year 8. The school was just too big and noisy. However, some secondary schools do have an autism base and things like that.

I work evenings and weekends.

My daughter and Grandaughter have both experienced acute anxiety when transitioning to high school. Both could no longer cope and neither could we. It was heart breaking. They both relaxed when taken out of the system and eventually responded well to very small classes. There is not enough room for this approach in our current system but I think it is vital that it is recognised that some children just cannot cope or thrive in large class environments.

Both myself and my two siblings are all ND, as is DH. I had major mental health issues and school was my saving grace. One sibling was at totally the wrong school and started refusing to go - my parents moved them to a different school and they thrived and have a PhD and professional career. Other sibling was fine, DH flew through school.

There is no one-rule-fits all when it comes to ND kids. Every kid is different, and every kid needs a different approach.

I don't necessarily think every child with sen would be better off being homeschooled as a blanket statement, but a bad experience of school can definitely influence a child's mental health.

It's harsh to accuse you of abuse though as not every parent would be able to drop everything and homeschool.

Would depend on the individual. We removed DD from school in year 8 (not in the UK). At school she felt stupid and her behaviour was going down hill - she would misbehave in some subjects as she felt then no one would expect her to know the answers, as she hadn't been paying attention. We'd had school refusal from year 5 and although that improved with age, she was literally on her knees at the thought of going in for any tests or exams. She was self harming and we just felt she needed to be out of the system.

Homeschooling showed her that she was capable and she could learn. Not feeling stupid made a huge difference to her mental health. She did feel different for being homeschooled and that was another hurdle to overcome but the self harming stopped and I guess it worked in our favour that covid hit and now everyone was homeschooled! She's 20 now, qualified in her area of interest, and is doing further study this year. We have no regrets in removing her from school.

I can only answer anecdotally, but yes, my child has thrived since being home educated. Years of being unhappy and attempting to make her go to school caused so much stress, it messed up any chance of learning happening. That was the least of the issues though. Far worse was having a child whose mental health was destroyed.
I think, as parents we minimised issues for years, as did the school, until they could no longer be ignored. I don’t see that as abuse though! You do what you think is best at the time.
Now she is home educated, happy and learning. Home ed groups are full of the same story. These kids are often neurodivergent and school is too much.

OP, I am really sorry that your child is experiencing MH difficulties, and I know how this can affect the family.

I can only post from experience, and, like another poster said, there are a lot of other variables to consider with respect to whether home schooling would be better for a neurodiverse child with MH issues.

In my case, both my sons stopped attending school due to MH issues. One was in Y8 and one in Y10. By the time they stopped attending school, their mental health was so poor, that they could not access 'education', and had to be supported to attend therapies. They rarely could leave the house and my eldest became an inpatient in a CAMHS unit.

When they were both at home, home was a really unsafe environment for them. They both needed constant support and supervision and each boy was keenly aware of the other's anxiety. Add psychosis into the mix and serious self harming and you can imagine that there was little chance of educational activities.

Yet, comments from my eldest child's TA, in his message book, showed me that the school was dealing with my son's mental health crisis as well, and little education was taking place because he could not access the classroom, he was self harming at school and he had to be constantly supervised to prevent him from running into the road. I am keenly aware that schools often have to cope with serious MH issues in pupils. My youngest coasted in the bottom sets and finally broke at the age of 13.

In retrospect, I think both boys would have benefited from a well planned alternative or specialised provision when they were well. By the time their MH had reached the point that they could not attend school and/or were not safe in school, there was little chance that they could actually access any meaningful education.

We had to try to educate the boys at home (apart from the CAMHS admissions). It might have worked if the boys were mentally stable and perhaps a little younger. In the circumstances, we just took two dangerously unwell boys from one setting and tried to manage their behaviours at home. This was not the right decision, but it was the only choice we had.

Obviously, I am writing from my own experience, and many people have home -educated their children with really positive results. However, in our case, our sons needed much more help and support than either school or we could give them.

@afternoonified that sounds really tough, but you've written a very, honest account. My children have bipolar in their genes as well as my weird stuff so I'm very aware of what could be an issue in the future.

My experience is in adult mental health but we do see a lot of ND young adults who were taken out of school and are now adults with no qualifications and no plans and no longer entitled to much support at all who are very stuck.

I have no doubt it works well for some to be home educated but if it's mainly just running away from the school system with no plan B then what will happen in the long term? If they have no qualifications and can't face the workplace any more than they could school then what do they do next?

Parents continue to support them but eventually they come to the end of their resources and there is very little help available via social care or adult mental health. It can lead to a very unhealthy enmeshed dynamic where the young person remains dependent on their parents long term. Parents then want adult mental health services to take over the support they are providing but that is not our remit.

Our mental health service is not commissioned or resourced for neurodevelopmental disorders only for comorbid mental health illness like depression or OCD and we only offer short term support targeted quite narrowly at treating mental illness. A lot of people think we could or should offer broader open ended long term support for people with loosely defined 'mental health problems' and I'm sure that would be very helpful but it isn't what we can do with current resources. The core of our service is for people with psychotic mental illness and not even all of them are getting a long term CPN or support worker these days.

It might be a controversial view and I am sure I just see the times it didn't work but I think that sometimes protecting ND young people from the real world by taking them out of school isn't doing them any favours in the long run. If you do go down that road I would caution that you need to have a view to the long term and still encourage some independence otherwise you are signing up to them staying at home and being supported by you for the long term because there are, in many cases, no services that will take that over post 18.

You literally have no idea.

I didn’t take mine out. She self harmed when pushed to go in.

Theres plenty that the young adults could do when you see them. An Access course is open to anyone over the age of 19 to enter university.

We’ve got an EHCP which will pay for any A level tuition up to 25.

They weren’t taken out or dropped from going by uncaring parents. The current school system breaks ND people.

It is not running away from school with no plan B. It’s being unable to
go to school but wanting to and there is no other austem
in place. Blame the current education system rather than the ND young people you see.

I'm sure that some kids might be happier if you took them out of school. Just as some kids would be happier if you sent them to a different school. And some home educated kids might be happier in school as well. Children are all different, and schools are different too.

I think some parents are ideologically opposed to the idea of school, perhaps because they were unhappy at school themselves, and they like to promote the idea that school is fundamentally damaging. I don't think that's true in the vast majority of cases. A lot of children who are unhappy in school will sadly be just as unhappy at home.

This is such a sad read to hear of the lack of services for ND adults

I think a few things stand out to me. If the pupil was in school and then was distressed enough the parent pulled them out - the homeschool was the plan B. The plan A was school.

The second is the idea that if the person stayed in school, they'd get qualification. Lots of people leave mainstream school with not a lot to show for it either.

From OPs posts, she sounds in a position to make school ok and i feel sorry for her that shes been accused of abuse for trying to make it work. My first instinct was to make things work too. And actually the special school my son is at now does work but it was a shit journey.

From OPs posts, she sounds in a position to make school ok and i feel sorry for her that shes been accused of abuse for trying to make it work. My first instinct was to make things work too. And actually the special school my son is at now does work but it was a shit journey

Yes the terrible terrible traumatising journey to get what your child is entitled to. I hate our local council.But Dd has a lovely ND 6th form which is just amazing.

Hi,

I'm in this dilemma right now. I had to remove DS from school because it was very very clear that the anxiety triggers were things that were happening in school. Things like gritty material in lessons that were beyond his coping, nasty/traumatic videos. Also incredibly high academic pressure underpinned by inadequate teaching and a constant revolving door of teaching staff. No access to food in the canteen at lunch and sitting in silence with friends as no safe space for socialising.

I had to remove DS as he was going crackers. He is happier at home and learning well, but now we need to be much more focussed about finding social outlets. School friends still come round periodically and we have scouts, which is great.

I think it depends whether the problems are in the school though, and how severe they are.

If your child is okay at school, then that's a good place for them to be.

I think it depends on what the school is like.

If it is toxic and dysfunctional, which some of them are.

What is the home life like? is it dysfunctional? Do one or both of the parents have mental illnesses or substance abuse issues?

ND wasn't really diagnosed that much for girls at the time I was in school. Sometimes, I struggled, but overall, it was a pretty good experience.

I know that if I have been taken out of school, I probably would have ended up running away or unalivng myself. My home life was quite dysfunctional with a narcissistic hoarding mother. Of course, we looked like a perfect middle-class family from the outside.