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 really don't see your distinction between truancy and school refusal. Are you saying that parents years ago didn't know their kids didn't go to school? Because that's not true. It seems to be done sort of artificial distinction in your head that doesn't really exist.

ROFL - I was a school refuser 30 years ago!

My father left at 6 in the morning and didn't get back until evening. My mother had to look after my younger siblings and get them to school so what was she supposed to do if I went missing somewhere between leaving the house and arriving at school the other side of the nearest town (a 20 minute train ride away)

At one point I barricaded myself in my bedroom to prevent her getting me out of the room and even trying to get me to school.

I was very stubborn.

They did exist 'in your day', people just called the truent, bunking off or drop outs, and pretty much wrote them off.

What has changed is the parents looking for ways to help them back into school, and the fact that they can be suported to attend some of the time. You didn't see them in your day because they were attending non of the time.

I also wonder if it's due to the closure of many special education units. Now kids who, in the old days, would have been in a special unit being educated other than in school are being forced into mainstream education which is not set up for them.

Like how they say there 'never used to be autistic kids'. There did, but those whose autism was sufficiently severe weren't in mainstream schools so you never saw them.

But the kids you’re talking about today largely would have been the kids playing truant then. Different times look different.

Plus Covid, changing times, etc etc.

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/cant-not-wont-rethinking-school-avoidance

I think the root is many children do not feel (physically or emotionally) safe in school. Schools are not kind inclusive places any more, either in the curriculum or the management. Especially secondary.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I did not say you should drag your child anywhere

If you want people to understand, maybe just answer the questions instead of getting so defensive and assume people are judging you.

Twenty years ago one of DC’s primary school classmates refused to go in after being told off by a male teacher. I don’t think he’d ever been told off, particularly not by a man (wet parents). Irony was this child was quite the bully.

In the 70s / 80s there were kids in my class that just stopped turning up for secondary.

I just would not allow it - kids have to learn that they are not the be all and end all - they bloody well do as they are told - and that includes going to school unless they are unwell. Some parents let them get away with so much - it is not right.

It existed 30 years ago as my friend was one. It existed 20 years ago as my cousin was a refuserr. It also existed 10 years ago for a different cousin, and now for my own son. 3 out of those 4 examples all have diagnosis of autism and needs not being met. My son autism and severe anxiety and no mental health support available without spending 100s which many people dont have spare.

Well yes, I won’t pretend that the price of centring children is that many self-centered children are produced!

While I'm not denying that covid has had an effect, school refuser units existed before 2019. I think tue push to have SEND children in mainstream schools which are unable to meet their needs has played a massive part.

Then as the label 'school refuser' became more widely known some parents use it to excuse bad parenting.

Of course they existed. They were the "naughty" kids, the ones who got quietly forgotten from school.

What didn't exist was social media for people to discuss it on.

My DD hasn’t been in school today. Or yesterday. I can’t tell if she had an epileptic seizure overnight or if we’ve returned to her being zonked out by medication. Or if she is swinging the lead. But i could not get her to wake up. I’d love you to tell me what to do so she is not classed as a school refuser if it was so easy to avoid back in the day.

A good belt is all they need, right?

In the 80s my sister was a school refuser

It was the most obvious signal of the emotional toll of an acrimonious divorce.She coped for as long as she could. And then she couldn’t anymore.

We did try everything. I once lugged her as far as the end of the drive. But she was like a very tearful, fearful mule. Almost like her body & mind went into freeze mode. There was no way I could have lugged her any further. Let alone stuffed her onto a bus.

She ended up with a PhD in hard science and a successful career. Was hard to get her back into education though. Mum was broken by the divorce and had very little stuffing left in her. Dad was…gone.

Perhaps the number of kids with SR could have risen in part due to an increasing number of kids with similar levels of emotional distress in the family ?

A good friend used to be a school refuser (now 47). He didn’t bunk off but felt lonely, awkward and stayed in his bedroom for large amounts of his high school time.
He got himself to college eventually and life improved.
School refusers definitely existed back in the eighties/nineties

A few things going on.

In our day (80s/90s in my case), schools weren’t locked down. Those who were school refusers would just register then pop into town for the day or whatever. Nobody really knew where you were. If your parents worked, you could ‘pop home’ and they wouldn’t be notified.

Since Covid, many parents have WFH and children don’t see them heading out to work. Those with separation anxiety just want to stay at home.

Kids used to go to school to see their friends. Now all the ‘fun’ is in WhatsApp groups and social media, so there’s no longer a ‘pull’ into school.

Autistic children are far more likely to school refuse. I don’t know why this has worsened since Covid, probably a bit of all of the above.

How would you force a child to leave the house if words don’t work?

Yes i remember kids who rarely went in the 80’s/90’s. It was before schools became businesses so there was less focus on attendance like there is now
truancy, bunking off, school refusal they are all different versions of the same thing.
It’s harder now because parents/ school
staff can’t beat kids into submission so it’s more challenging to get them to comply.

Okay, I’ll bite.
I believe, with only second hand experience of it, that there is a mixture of:
-students who are utterly overwhelmed and burned out by the modern school system of testing, rigid rules, constant changes in pedagogy, expectations which cannot have any flexibility to account for different abilities, preferences and levels of motivation;
-students who have horrendous behavioural issues for a wide variety of reasons, whose parents lack the skills, knowledge, time or motivation to address these and who allow students to skip school when the consequences ramp up (facing permanent exclusion);
-students who game the system and have seen peers have part time timetables, sport/forest school alternatives, picking where they sit, time out cards, etc. Honestly, I don’t entirely blame them;
-parents who cannot BEAR to see their child even slightly miffed and who interpret a normal teen strop over getting dressed as sufficient reason to keep them home. This is more often in cases where school refusal seems to be in fits and starts, not consistent. ‘I CAN’T get him/her to leave the house’ is often cited in my experience with students who actually CAN be persuaded to do things if they know you mean business, and sense you won’t cave;
-failure of the school environment to adapt to children who have neurological differences. I don’t just mean allowing ear defenders for noise, I mean understanding that for a student with autism who presents with a rigidity of understanding, seeing the randomness with which some sanctions are applied is deeply upsetting, or seeing that ‘you can’t exit lessons to sit on the bog and text’ is easily turned into ‘you may visit the toilet at will because your mummy says you are anxious about taking a poo’. Again, fairly understandable.

Not one reason, but a swathe.

It’s just been rebranded. Used to be called playing truant.

They've always been around. It's just that decades ago the child protection processes were crap and kids just dropped by the wayside.
In my day we had more freedom and school didn't chase parents up much.

I think I'd have been a school refuser if I thought it was within the realm of possibly. I think people like me had far nastier parents than today's parents and so you couldn't share your feelings at all, unless you wanted excessive backlash.

Was I happy? No, school really negatively affected me.