AIBU to not understand how "school refusers" are a thing?

[Idontunderstandmodernlife]

There seems to be a lot of parents that have children that they simply can't get to go to school no matter what they do - these children are often called "school refusers". Parents say they have done absolutely everything to get their child into school but nothing works.

I hate to be that "in my day" person but I simply don't get where these "school refusers" have come from because they simply didn't exist a decade or 15 years ago. Kids just went to school. I never knew of a child that simply didn't turn up most of the time when I was in school? now there seems to be one in every class

What has changed that parents are now finding it impossible to get their child to school? Have schools got that much worse? are parents more lenient? are children more forceful? has children's mental health declined? what is it?

I was one in the early 80s

School was an ordeal for me from the day I started to the day I left.

We are not all the same.

School refusers have clearly been around for a long time.

even a Quick Look at Wikipedia gives you academic articles on it from the 1990s.

it was usually called school Phobia then.

eg
Kearney, Christopher A. (1996). "The Evolution and Reconciliation of Taxonomic Strategies for School Refusal Behavior". Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. 3(4): 339–354. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2850.1996.tb00087.x. ISSN 0969-5893.

and this one from 1969

Berg, Berg, Ian; Nichols, Keith; Pritchard, Colin (October 1969). "School Phobia?its Classification and Relationship to Dependency". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 10 (2): 123–141. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1969.tb02074.x. ISSN 0021-9630. PMID 5368365.

Yes you’re being unreasonable. Just because you don’t remember something, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen! There would’ve been little to no highlighting in the media about it, they would’ve just been pigeonholed as naughty kids.
it’s incredibly easy to have no understanding about if it’s something that’s never affected you, but I can assure you as a parent of a child with ADHD the refusal is very real, I will try everything within reason to get him in, but I’m also aware if I push too hard the day will be a write off and potentially end in huge disruption, upset and possibly suspension- I value my sons mental well being way more that the outdated education system that’s not designed for a lot of children

There are tonnes of threads about waitlists for help/assessments etc.
If you work in a school you'd know that.

My schools would have called the parents if there was even a single day of unexplained absence. My sibling decided to play truant one single day and she caught hell from my parents when she got home.

We did that to DS who's also autistic. It was incredibly damaging and I regret it hugely.

He couldn't cope with even being seen by his peers, would hide behind me, cowering in distress. Even getting him in for an hour with the ALNCo with no pressure to go to class ended up too much because other children were in the building. He had a meltdown because someone in his class sent a letter saying how much he was missed.

We got him up to around 75% attendance in a different setting, then he went up to secondary and are going through the whole thing again. We've worked hard to get him up to 12% attendance, but he's not attending lessons.

I have a child who suffers from anxiety. She is selectively mute, she hates the thought of people looking at her or talking to her as she can't talk back. She worries about walking round the big school on her own. She worries that she struggles with food and sometimes can't eat but she overheard a teacher say to another child that he has to eat everything. Guess how much help my child has had with anxiety? Absolutely none. She has EBSA. She's still got attendance of 92% but probably 90% of days are a massive struggle to get her there. We send her more often that we should and it brings her closer to burnout. I gave up my career to support her. It's awful for her and for us as her parents, not to mention her brother and sister who are also impacted.

If a child at school was crying and throwing up at the end of the day at the thought of going home, if the teachers had to drag them out and physically force them into the parent's car, if a child said they'd rather be dead than go home - what would you do?

Maybe you could support the parents by punishing and isolating the child at school so instead of it feeling like their safe place it was actually worse than whatever they were feeling at home.

I know a fair few people who are my age (late 30’s) that skipped school and didn’t even end up going GCSE’s

Yes it did. Whenever there have been children in school it happened.

BIL in the 80s used to leave home for the bus, double back and sit in the garden shed all day - school didn’t realise, he spent most school days cold in a boring shed - even that was a better option than school!

A friend used to hide in the bike sheds at school all day.

My father left school at 14 to learn a trade - nowadays you can’t do that even though it would suit some children far more than being in school.

I think people think that us parents are coddling our children and encouraging this. Anything rather than addressing what’s going wrong for so many.

When you also consider the growing number of young adults not in education, employment or training you start to realise that we have a huge problem in this country that goes way beyond parents not turning off the WiFi 🙄

I think this thread is a bit goady tbh. I think OP knew the sorts of responses they’d get. It feels like an attack on parents whose children are school avoidant/refusing, suggesting that in the good old days kids didn’t do this.

that’s just my opinion - just as others have shared their views also.

it’s in the language. Of course children refused school years ago - it was just called different things - OP you said - that’s just bunking off or playing truant, so you hit the nail in the head really.

some people on here will become defensive due to the way the OP was written/worded. Having children with difficulties is bloody hard - so of course it will rile some people.

I know that ’school refusers’ wasn’t a ‘thing’ back in the day because it wasn’t called that. It was ‘school phobia’ and I know this because I was diagnosed with it at 14.

i didn’t go to school from 14 but it was due to extreme bullying.

School refusers did exist maybe not to the same numbers, my brother in law was one, he’s 41 now and it started in primary school so that makes it a good 30 years ago. At the age of 16 his granny who just happened to be a social worker all her life managed to get him onto an apprenticeship after not attending school or getting any qualifications, he’s now a carpenter and for all purposes you’d never know he had this issue. I just don’t think you could hear these issues unless you knew someone as we didn’t have social media and crazy ramping up of stories like school refusing, media just operates differently now so it’s hard to tell how bad something is because everything is blown up in the press.

He’s quite a closed person and even his brother (my husband who also doesn’t like talking about emotions much), has no clue what it was all about other than some form of anxiety!

I was at school in the 80s/early 90s. My primary school had 80-90 kids per school year. I dont recall at any time that any of them became a school refuser. Not once/ever. Yes Ive no doubt it was a thing in the 80s/90s but nowhere near as common as it is now.

In case it is helpful, the reason I got mixed up with the other posts is that this tends to be a polarised issue and the OP does read more leaning towards the POV of "this is all made up isn't it? What's wrong with kids/parents these days"

Plus every time I read any posts and went to reply there were at least 5-10 new posts being written every time so it is difficult to read every post in detail AND keep track of the current place in the discussion. It's skim read or be behind, basically.

If your intention is genuine curiosity then you might want to think about how the post is worded - I've been utterly roasted myself for a curious post which I worded very badly on MN before, so I'm happy to give people the benefit of the doubt - but whether or not it was your intention, "AIBU to not understand XYZ" implies judgement, "seems to" implies that it's not really happening and lots of "simply" comes across as minimising or simplifying the issue.

Plus because of it being a polarised issue you've had the usual suspects jumping on to add their actual judgement, minimisation and denial, which is not really a surprise if you read even one thread on the subject before.

There was a bunch of girls who’d hit me and threaten me if I told so I started refusing school as a thirteen year old but wouldn’t say why. This was the millennium. I remember my mother dragging me to the car.

No it wasn’t.

I was teaching from 1995 to 2021. No one chased them in the 90’s. If anything parents were more inclined to let them stay off because less pressure from school and less obsession with academic performance.

Its the current school atmospheres with stupid rules and target grades that’s driving it especially amongst the ND.When l first started teaching there were hardly any uniforms in secondary. Now they all have pointless uniforms in scratchy fabrics causing pointless rules.

Massive classes, draconian Victorian discipline, MATS, obsession with scores.

And would they have physically assaulted you?
I mean a panicking, thrashing child would have been too big for your mother at about the age of 6 right? And for you father maybe by 12 unless he used a fair bit of violence?

Luckily, there is more understanding and knowledge as well as help for kids who can't cope. Although, waitlists are long so problems often become entrenched.

OP, I am going to actually answer your question.

There were school refusers years ago, before the term "school refuser" became widely used. They weren't talked about as much, and they didn't have a label other than something like "naughty" or "brat".

Because they weren't really talked about or discussed, and it was just left up to families and truancy officers to figure out with no social media to discuss it on, you didn't notice, or it didn't stay in your childhood memory.

Now they are more recognised, they have a "label" they are discussed in discussion widely available to everyone, and not just limited to the people you chat to regularly.

The side effect or recognising and trying to help these genuinely struggling children and families is that two other groups have also emerged alongside the genuine cases:

1. Parents that are stressed or burned out, bearing in mind that more mothers work than did in the past, there are a lot of these. Having a term that can be used to justify their child refusing to go to school means these parents often just give into exhaustion and frustration and are not doing all they can because they have something to fall back on.
2. Parents that simply do not give one shiny shit about their kids education and use the school refuser term as an excuse to fall back on.

The rest are genuine cases where the parents are doing all they can. However, because the two above groups have taken advantage of the problem being recognised, it appears there are way more cases than there actually are, and thus makes us think it's a new phenomenon.

I would have expected the standard corporal punishment of the day from them, yes. Maybe even from the school. Early 80s.

I was a school refuser I suppose, but I was too scared of my parents to stay at home so I used to stay for the register and then bunk off for large parts of the day. Nobody bothered my parents about it. I've got a PhD and a proper job now, oh and ADHD😂

Oh yes years of waiting lists. If you worked in a school you would see the number of pupils arriving at school mid morning because their parents don’t get up to wake them up, don’t get their kids breakfast, forget to put money on their lunch card, don’t engage or encourage after school clubs or homework, book holidays mid term, don’t turn up to parents evening, and then tell the school that they don’t know what’s going on and they can’t get their kids into school. Then read the databases of what pupils tell us is going on at home. No wonder a lot can’t cope with the structure of a school day.

Yes, there has always been children who refuse to go to school. I remember the agony aunt Denise, from This Morning, say that she had a fear of school from a very young age and refused to go. That would have been the 1950s !

Likewise, when I was at High School, there were a few kids who just disappeared after S1/2. But mostly these were kids with a complicated family life and were involved with SS. That was the 90s.

However, it is clear that school refusal now, extends to all years, ages, gender and family background. We are also not talking about a few pupils here and there. There’s a huge jump in the numbers.

It’s is difficult. Because I know how difficult it is with kids who have SEN issues but also see the other side where there’s far too much permissive parenting about days off here and there. Especially to ‘make memories’. I know a family that took three days off a couple of weeks ago because they wanted travel and enjoy the snowy weather we had. I know parents that will keep kids off because they have a slight sniffle. This is what can cause a slippery slope for the tween years, when kids feel self conscious, boy/girl dating drama, pressure of studies starts to kick in. This is the point you can see kids (non SEN) starting to refuse school.

There’s only so much blaming on Covid we can do, surely?

Schools reopened 5 years ago and haven’t been closed down since.

If any of these refusers are in primary school, chances are they’re too young to have even been impacted by the closure of schools.