Should I have grounded DD?

[didistutter56]

First week back to school this week, and by Friday morning DD (8) is saying she feels sick. It’s a fairly common occurrence in the mornings before school, I’ve always been someone who has some slight nausea in the mornings as well so the general rule has always been that unless there’s actual signs of illness, she has to try and make it into school. DD had stayed at her dads the night before so he let me know, I spoke to DD and she went into school.

By lunchtime I get a call off school saying she’s quite upset saying she still feels unwell, stomach ache, etc. Off I go to pick her up and she’s clearly okay once I’ve got her in the car. I’ve always thought DD is a highly sensitive person (as am I) very big emotions, struggles with loud noises, big crowds and what not. So I chat to her in the car about what’s wrong and after a while she says she’s feeling nervous and worried about her new teacher and being back in school, so we chat about that and how I understand it can be a big change but the only way to work through those feelings is to stay in school and you’ll settle in quicker. She understands but starts crying.

Once home she has her lunch whilst i finish off the work I had to do, and she spends a couple hours with my gardening. After tea I’ve allowed her to play out for a couple of hours.

Her dad dropped round to drop off something he forgot to pack in her bag, saw that she was out and then went ballistic at me on the phone later. How if she was at his house and she had “lied” about being unwell she would have been grounded, that she’s “playing me”, she’ll be pulling this sort of stuff all the time now because she knows she can get away with it and I’m letting her play out because I don’t want to have to deal with her.

I said back that I can’t prove she’s lying, I have no doubt she probably was feeling unwell for the reasons she said and I have no reason to doubt her. And that if I’m grounding her for feeling unwell at school, what’s going to be the punishment when she actually does something serious?

Admittedly I probably am a bit softer with DD, but her Dad shouts at her a lot about things that aren’t that big a deal IMO, if he thinks she’s messing about or even just this week he’s shouted at her in-front of me for taking too long to get in the car and blocking the pavement when people are trying to get past, and being “fussy” about what she wants in her packed lunch.

School have spoken to me about her attendance in previous years, it’s always around 93 or 94%, which they want to be higher, but with her last report she is doing better than the average expected standard in 8/12 of her subjects, and doing as expected in the other 4 and got a glowing report from her teacher.

id love to know how you would have handled this and whether it would be something you would have grounded your child for?

If she's too unwell for school then she's too unwell to play out. I would have kept her home and being at home would have been BORING. I wouldn't have allowed computer games or TV but would have allowed reading, colouring or playing quietly alone. You shouldn't be rewarding her for pulling a sicky otherwise she'll be sick often.

Op’s DD felt a bit anxious on the first week of school so pps have labelled her as having a mental health condition. wtf? As a pp pointed out feeling a bit anxious in your first week is very different to having anxiety. She wasn’t too anxious or unwell to go out later and play was she?
How will any of these kids hold down a job?!

I think it is being handled perfectly.

Her attendance is not worryingly low imho. It can be improved, but OP is taking the right steps to ensure it will.

If you focus on her health and how to cope with her anxiety, then her attendance will improve.

Focussing on attendance at the detriment of health, by ignoring or punishing her for her anxiety, will only lead to her anxiety worsening often to the point of school refusal and zero attendance.

Downtime and recovery for an episode of anxiety includes doing what you enjoy, and are encouraged to not stay indoors the whole time. Sufferers of anxiety told to stay indoors often develop agoraphobia.

The not well enough to go to school, not well enough to play outside old wives wisdom only applies to physical illness, not anxiety.

Actually it would more likely harm her than not.

Er, that is not how you build resilience. That is how you chip away at resilience until you crash and burn. Resilience is literally learning how to pace yourself and how to stop and have a mental health day so you don’t crash and burn. Resilience isn’t pushing forwards nonstop and ignoring your needs when you feel unwell. We are human beings, not robots.

Nope, totally disagree. Of course we're not robots, but we also can certainly work through a cold or a little anxiety. Anxiety is a normal emotion that people feel often, you can't just stop life every time we feel something that's unpleasant.

Totally disagree with you, which is fine, this forum is for opinions. It's ok that ours differs.

You had a heart to heart with your daughter where she explained she wasn’t actually sick but was struggling with anxiety and settling back into school. It sounds more like mental health and I’d have dealt with it in the same way. You gave her a safe space to discuss her worries with you and agreed in future there is a better way to deal with it.

I don’t see the value in then punishing her or keeping her inside. if it continues to happen then I would obviously take a different approach but I would have done the same thing as you in this instance OP.

I never said anything about "staying indoors the whole time"

But someone who is too anxious to go to school and who felt so unwell they needed to come home early would absolutely benefit from a quiet evening at home with family, before carrying on with the weekend as normal.

I have anxiety (diagnosed) and while of course going out and doing what you enjoy is important, it's not the only solution and certainly isn't something that has to be done that day in order to feel better.

It's one evening - saying it would "harm her" to stay home with her family instead of seeing her friends is just daft, it really is.

She has you wrapped around her little finger, OP

Anxiety is an abnormal level of anxiousness that causes panic attacks and other physical symptoms like nausea, throwing up, aches and pains, incontinence, fainting, loss of sight, uncontrollable crying, hives/rashes and so on.

So that may be where we are not communicating. Yes you can push through feeling anxious, but you can’t push through anxiety. Anxiety is more than merely feeling unpleasant/anxious.

It depends on the type of anxiety, this child’s anxiety is triggered by school so is probably related to formal settings, performance, dealing with figures of authority and so on.

Yes a child with generalised social anxiety would benefit with a break from socialising to have a quiet day at home, but this child isn’t exhibiting symptoms of that type of anxiety.

I disagree. I think it is important that the child is not restricted from other activities that don’t trigger her anxiety as a punishment/consequence for just having had anxiety at school.

Not only does linking the two send the wrong message to the child, it also can make friendships harder for her. She will have to explain to her friends why she missed a meet up- forcing her to divulge sensitive information about her health and disability. This may add an awkwardness to the relationships and play dynamic, even lose her friends. It adds a wedge for anxiety to now affect her social relationships, not just school. No matter how it is explained by parents, it is going to feel like a punishment and social exclusion which will make the child feel worse and chip away at their confidence.

It is important when dealing with anxiety to not shrink the box of what the person does. They should always be encouraged to keep doing the things they CAN do as often as possible as it rebuilds any confidence lost from having an anxiety attack earlier and doesn’t make them feel ostracised or missing out on any more of normal life than they already are.

I push through anxiety on a regular basis. It's possible and normal.

Many maladaptations that ultimately do more harm than good are possible. My “can’t” really should read “shouldn’t”, but then the context I was writing in was as someone looking at long term health instead of short term gains.