Daughter resists going into school each morning. AIBU to make her go in?

[Newbie887]

Daughter is 7, in Y2 of a very small infant school. Class size of 12, from what I can tell the school is very supportive, encouraging and like a big family.

She started off in Reception being one of the most confident children in her class. She is a Sept baby, so maybe it was just that…but she loved all the little performances / songs / read outs her class did in assemblies (parents go in to watch assemblies every few weeks) and her reception parents eves always talked about how she had strong friendships and was confident in class.

Since Y1, things have taken a turn. She started saying she didn’t want to go into school, she has been getting less and less confident about doing the performances. Today, she could barely say one line out loud in the assembly when in reception she was the one leading all the other children in the songs etc. Now she says she’s being left out by the other girls and doesn’t know who to play with. I am so sad looking at how her confidence has dipped. She is now saying every day that she doesn’t want to go to school, she wants to be at home with me and be homeschooled.

Have others found this with their girls? I can’t work out a reason for it and am wondering if it is normal as they age? I didn’t like school myself from around this age. In hindsight, my issue was that I am neurodiverse, however I can’t see that in her. I’m trying not to project and to stay positive about school, while still listening to her concerns. But I don’t know if it is reasonable for me to make her go to school every day when she is not happy.

I wish I’d had your fortitude. I now have one child off long-term sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, and the other one so stressed he can barely function - with or without school. I went along with the school, not wanting to be “that” parent, and not wanting to end up in with a “school refuser” (or anxiety based school avoidance, as it is rightly termed now).

So, I just wanted to highlight your post, and applaud you for standing your ground. You are absolutely correct - despite my pushing for help for my kids for years, the school did nothing until they were both unable to go in, and their attendance plummeted. And people who call it a choice should see my son having a panic attack in reception every day, or my daughter pushing herself so hard that her body just gave up.

All my children are summer born except one who is born in September. My Sept born DD went through this and it was difficult to get to the bottom of it with the school as she seemed happy in school but never wanted to go. After endless chats with her ( she was 8) she said they were babies in the class and acted like it at times. Turned out the other girls in her class ( all summer born ) were playing things and talking about things she had outgrown. I really had no idea and it was a huge shock that it was down to the level of maturity! It seemed to go off the older they all got and no longer an issue but it was one of those things i certainly hadn’t thought of.

I hope you get some joys with the teachers as I understand how hard it is in a small school when they don’t want to go in

Thank you for your reply. I agree about the fluctuations, and also about that social skills are still developing. That was why I made this thread originally really, to see if lots of people had had this experience with their child with the child then going on to outgrow it / work past it and enjoy school. I find it interesting that there haven’t been any replies saying this…the couple of replies who said they’d experienced similar and that it passed had still end up with their children diagnosed as ND later on. So maybe it isn’t as normal as I thought.

Re: the friends, you must not have read my replies in the thread. These girls are her best friends, we live in a small community and she sees them all the time outside of school. She also does sports outside of school but they haven’t led to any friendships really: kids tend to turn up, do sport, go home. I’m going to try and work out logistics of how she can go to Brownies as I think this would be a more sociable thing to do outside of school

Thanks for your reply, I read with interest. I see DD playing with her friends outside of school and she does seem more emotionally mature than her friends. She co-plays better: rather than dictating what they are going to do she compromises and wants everyone to be happy. She gives encouragement to her friends. I think her friends do take advantage of this somewhat at the moment. Interestingly she is very happy and confident playing with her older cousins, who are 8 and 9. They don’t baby her, they play like equals together, and there is more tolerance between everyone. I wonder if this is the problem. As I said in previous posts, her school friends are close to her and don’t seem to be intentionally mean to her. They just seem more - for want of a better word - bossy. Like they are still learning how to play nicely.

Pull her out. She’ll start coming down with stress illness next and takes years to undo the psychological damage

As an undiagnosed autistic child, who really struggled with school, I found I much preferred contact with older children.

I was extremely musical and academically very bright, although there were some subjects which were a closed book to me.

To this day I don't understand why planes stay up in the air, although I have two degrees and have a great facility for foreign languages.

OP your daughter mustn't be forced into school. It's terribly damaging.

And do please pursue a diagnosis of neurodiversity, which I'm sure you will. I appreciate there are difficulties and restraints in getting diagnoses, though.

I'm thinking back to my childhood in the 1960s now.

Because of school refusal and anxiety, I was sent to a child psychiatrist at the age of eight.

She prescribed diazepam for me (!) which actually led to a long period in adulthood of addiction to benzos.

I am staggered, now, remembering being given diazepam as an eight year old child.

In those days, nobody recognised autism, especially in girls. SMH.

Don't be me. In year 1, in an infants school, DD2 started to show signs of not coping. I chivvied her in. But she got to the point that she'd be unwell. It all deteriorated and we moved her to school 2.

School 2 was a primary school. She did ok for the rest of year 1, but the change from year 1 to year 2 threw her. We limped through until Easter, but the nurture measures they put in were withdrawn once they were seen to be working. We got to complete refusal, so we took her out for a term.

Years 3--6 were spent in a tiny school and they really supported DD2. By then, her ASD was clearer. They did lots to support her.

Years 7-10 were pretty awful. Some respite for year 7-8 because of COVID lockdown, then limped through the rest of year 8. Big cracks showed in year 9 and by year 10 she was completely unable to attend.

DD2 was then put in specialist schools but now, in year 13, she continues to have significant autistic burnouts and then the memory of her struggles in earlier years stop her from taking the risk. Now, success will be getting her functional skills 2 in English and Maths, despite being intelligent.

I can't help thinking that if I had fought for a more appropriate provision when she was younger, she'd be doing better in her education.

This post is long enough, without my telling you DD3's story.

It may be that your daughter is nervous of the changes in school ahead. It's not an unusual occurrence. I work in a First school (Foundation - Year 4) and by April every year, we see the Year 4's start to become over emotional, anxious or they start getting too big for their boots! The First school is small, 1 class per year group, so only 5 classes. It's daunting for the children going from a small school to a much bigger one. New teachers, students, routines etc, all play on their mind. I would have a face-to-face meeting with your daughter's teacher, and see if they've noticed any changes in her behaviour. Ask them to monitor break time and lunchtime, to see if your daughter is being excluded. It's common for children to say 'I have no one to play with', when actually that's not the case, in a lot of cases the child doesn't want to play the game the group they want to play with, is playing. It can equally be a case of the child wanting to play their own game, and refuses to accept that the rest of the group don't want too. Therefore you need to ask staff to fact find for you, so you know what is actually going on. Ask your daughter if she has told her teacher if she is being excluded or a lunchtime staff member. If the teacher/lunchtime staff aren't aware, they can't do anything about it.

You have absolutely no idea of how difficult it can be. We did make DS go to school, dragged him there screaming and crying to sit in a room on his own with the ALNCo because he could not cope with even seeing or being seen by any of his peers. One of the girls in his class put a lovely note through our letterbox saying how much she missed him and it caused a meltdown. He refused to leave the house at all for a while.

He essentially didn't go to school for a year, got moved to a small unit for children with additional needs in a different school, we - and they - put so much effort into getting him there, making it a place he was happy to go to. He's now in secondary school, in a specialist autism unit, and he's like a different child. Not saying it's easy, but he willingly goes to school most days, and goes with encouragement and support on most of the rest.

I know it's tough, but she doesn't get to negotiate whether she goes or not, so tell her that children have to go to school and that's that.

Most kids would rather be at home, but that is not an option.

Oh Lord, have you read the thread?

Wrong.
In the UK school is optional. You opt-in.
You apply for a place but legally you do not have to at all. And you are perfectly within your rights to take your child out too.
Your choice.

That's all very well, but how many parents are capable of home schooling?

School is school, and the overwhelming majority of kids just need to do as they are told and go to school.

Our DC was the brightest of sparks in nursery but struggled at school. Year 1 was a crisis point. The school went full on push for ASD diagnosis. An anayalsis thrown out by the medical profession as DC basically is an academic child and gregarious. Just not enough kids to bounce off in a class of 15. It was a private school with over emphasis on sports. We moved school to state setting with 26 kids in class, never looked back. Geek accepted

Do you not think it's a bit of an issue that a child was able to run rings around several adults and miss out on a year of education because he didn't want people looking at him?

What's he going to do when he grows up and enters the real world? Not get a job in case people look at him and need people to provide his own special workplace?

School is school, and the overwhelming majority of kids just need to do as they are told and go to school.

Some parents just will not be told this. Hence the coining of the phrase "school refuser".

Try taking them to countries where kids sew clothes on the side of the roads for 10p an hour, with no chance of education and no chance to work their way out of generational poverty due to lack of education. Then ask them if they'd rather do that than go to mean old school where people look at them.

I mean, it could be worse. He could grow up into the sort of insensitive asshole who reads that a child is being educated in a specialist autism unit and sneers that he won't be able to manage in the workplace. Fuck me sideways.

I'm just being real. What is he going to do as an adult when people stop bending over backwards to appease him and expect him to make his own way?

Is all this pandering really doing kids any good?

I haven’t RTFT so sorry if someone has already asked this, but how does she even know homeschooling is a thing or an option? Who has planted that seed?

Neurodivergence and small school classes isn’t always a good fit. There isn’t the pool of different friendship possibilities. If there’s one group of girls who don’t like your child, there’s very little you can do apart from change schools.

You're not being real, you're being a twat. This child has a disability, the "real world" will hopefully continue to make reasonable adjustments for him in the same way that it would for a child with a physical disability.

It may be easier for him to cope in the adult world where he will have a degree of autonomy over what sort of work he does and can focus on what he is interested in.

Are we calling multiple people putting in a lot of time and effort to get him his own special unit because he doesn't like people looking at him a "reasonable adjustment"?

A wheelchair ramp is a reasonable adjustment.

I'd suggest you consider she maybe ND. It may show up in a different way from yours. It's not uncommon for things not to become clear till later in childhood. And every ND child is an individual. As the other girls develop social skills, they may become aware that some of the other girls are not quite the same - not in a mean or even conscious way. She maybe just doesn't respond in a way they find engaging.