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?

Your username is very apt for the level of SEN knowledge you are portraying.

My husband was one. Didn't go to school for pretty much the whole of year ten. He doesn't even know now, at the age of 50, why he wouldn't go. Ironically, he became a teacher!

I don't see what it has to do with anyone except the child, their parents, and loosely the school (if they're actively doing everything they can to make the school a comfortable place for every child whose parents need to work)...

No it’s the opposite.

Schools were more laid back which gave some flexibility for the ND.

Now they are like prison camps. Thats what’s driving kids out. I was a secondary school teacher for 30 years. When l first started all the teachers were kind and easy. Now they are all like sergeant majors or Miss Trunchable. I don’t think they want to be like that, teachers on the whole are pretty humane and compassionate, but current conditions are forcing them to behave this way. This is why l left.

Schools are neither supportive or kind. They give lip service to it, but they are horrible institutions now. Harsh, demanding, petty, micromanaging. All in the name of support. They lack both kindness and time.

And they discriminate albeit unwittingly against ND kids

I have a relative, now later 20s, who was a school refuser 15 years ago.
Their parents worked really hard with the school on a number of different approaches but nothing seemed to work. They have, in recent years, been diagnosed with a number of mental health conditions, including PDA and ADHD.

I would happily give up up our child benefit, if it would make my sons mental health improve.
He was so ill 8 months ago he couldn’t leave the house. Not even for 5 minutes.
He was self harming. He could barely eat. Or sleep & needed someone with him 24hrs a day.
I still don’t know how we kept going during that time or how we managed to keep our jobs.
Many, many parents have been forced to give up working to care for their children. I still might have to. I’ve already had to step away from a promotion I spent years working towards. But yes, take income away from poorer families who can’t work due to their caring responsibilities.

disabled children & their parents aren’t the problem in the system. The system is broken from years of austerity.

taking money from the families or fining them isn’t going to make school any more accessible if the child isn’t coping there.

Yes and many parents are totally jaded and have totally disengaged with schools themselves. The amount of times I've heard 'well teachers slacked off for 2 years during covid'...sigh In children this has created a fear-avoidance cycle that becomes very difficult to break without a great deal of strong will and insight.

I was one too.
I'm sixty. I stopped going at thirteen years old. I was allowed to do my exams at a sixth form college miles away from home. Three years later when I turned sixteen! I'd not been educated for three years.

My son was also a school refuser. He was aged eleven when we moved counties. He was top year juniors but moved to the middle year of middle school. In 1993.
I forced him in every day, the school helped by meeting him at my car.

He's fine. Understands the need for school and agrees it was nipped in the bud and for the good.
Not neurodivergent.

He's forty three now wrestling with the joys of parenting himself.

That will depend on their family circumstances.
If they are from a poor background, they are most likely going to end up in dead-end low-paid jobs for life. If they are from a well-off background, the world is their oyster. Stephen Fry went to jail but "turned his life around" unlike most men who go to jail... Family background matters a lot more than school or uni.

We have one certainty.

Kids who don’t go to school are write-offs.

SR is happening in US too. Experts there confirm it’s old skool truancy increased by parental concern re MH (not presenting as neglect) and that Covid made attendance seem optional.

It’s talked about because govts are having to focus on attendance.

Neglect laws are difficult to change, although secret-permission parenting is difficult to fight.

What would you suggest? How would you force a teenager to go to school - physically drag them there?

Why don't we just manhandle our kids through the door and bring back the belt... because we never grew up with mental health issues dealing with that...

They bloody did exist all those years ago! I was one of them in 1995-99!

You don't have to explain if you don't want to.

I'm trying to understand what the block is in their head. I've never had this and neither have my DC (thankfully).

My DC had a friend who'd come in but be unable to enter the class. He was riddled with panic attacks. Thankfully he got the right medicines and then absolutely smashed GCSEs and A-levels. First at uni and now is doing a PhD in experimental physics.

At the time my DC didn't know why he was unable to enter class, but has completely changed his view now.

Yes, totally.

Unless you’ve been the parent of a school refuser you have no idea of the enormity of the situation.

Knowing your child would rather open the car door and jump into the traffic tends to focus the mind.

All the ignorant ‘Well I’d just drag them into the car and take them! I wouldn’t let them dictate to me’’. Good luck with that. If it was that easy it’s funny that it’s not working for everyone?

It’s a heartbreaking situation that can dominate family life. Ill informed, ill considered shallow opinions such as those held by the OP only make it worse.

If they are in the middle?

Like if you don't go to school, don't get into uni.... How will hire them?

School and the curriculum are much harder than the 90s/2000s - expectations much higher, more draconian about uniform, more punishment, less free time, much less play, art and movement, difficult and dull curriculum covering too much, with too much memorisation and little creativity.
Many more teachers who hate their jobs. Lots more unqualified staff and short term cover, high staff turnover.

Nope, did all my school work in my own free time, got good A levels, worked a bit, have travelled the world and now home ed parenting my own child through ND and school struggles, so I'm not able to work. However my love for learning has never diminished and I'm still doing courses in my free time (and learning about people's mindsets on Mumsnet or course!). But I have a nice secure home and will be able to get back to work again when they're older. School just wasn't a nice environment in the slightest, but that didn't mean I didn't want to learn. Attendance in a building ticking government boxes doesn't mean anything, a child either wants to learn or they don't.

I have a 'school refuser' which is in reality a young ND person who has been failed by education over and over again. A young person with such high level of school trauma that IF we were forcing into school would be suicidal.

We have had so many years of this. To my shame - while they were small enough I did 'force'them in - this means physically dressing them and carrying to school where the teacher would pick them up and carry them in while they screamed. We did this as the 'professionals' put us under so much pressure and promised things would improve. They didn't improve and this caused so much damage.

What was possible at 4 and 5 really isn't possible when your child is as big or bigger than you. Years ago when physical punishment was allowed. A parent may hit their child to punish the anxiety out of them. The child may attend school if the pain from not attending was severe enough. But this would have long term consequences

We know better now as parents unfortunately the parents are now punished, threatened and gas lighted

The children still don't receive the actual support they need from professionals

So you just did the school work at home? Is that what most school refusers do? You did A-levels without going to school? You must be very bright.

Shame your ND child prevents you from working. Hope things work out.

I'm not really talking about truancy

Except you are, it is just that the language has changed across the last 50 years. Truancy and school refusal was often the same thing.

School refusal was a thing in the 80's and 90's, but it was often easier to off-roll kids or exclude them without the safeguards that exist today. Specialist schools were easier to access because the demand was lower as criteria was stricter and more defined.

Autism was a thing 40 plus years ago. But it was a diagnosis reserved for the most severe of cases. My friend's sibling was non-verbal autistic in the mid 80's. He was in a specialist day centre.

The issue today is that school budgets have been reduced to the point they cannot function to support NT kids let alone the broad spectrum of ND conditions that exist today. Inwas at primary school in the 80's, we had a dedicated school nurse, we had smaller class sizes, more resources, parent helpers in class, we had no formalised assessments that out insane pressure on kids at such a ridiculously young age. The focus was on reading, writing and arithmetic.

Kids are expected to have such a huge range of knowledge of different subjects, which I don't fundamentally disagree with, but perhaps part of the problem for our ND kids is that there is too broad a range. The curriculum is too overwhelming.

Maybe instead of trying to "fix" the kids we should fix the system so it works for them so that they feel supported and nurtured to learn then maybe school refusal would reduce

When you have a child hyperventilating with anxiety, cowering in the corner and howling at the prospect of going into school, you soon realise that even thinking about 'forcing' a child into school is not an option.
It's not truancy and nor is it neglect.
And yes, there were pupils on roll at my own secondary school who were barely there.
Covid certainly hasn't helped but school refusers have always been there.

Interesting question.

State and charities don’t bother much with illiterates - especially if they’re unsocialised no-shows.

But you can always get adult literacy training free.

Jamie Oliver’s 15 has had success, with chefs who’ve recovered & become the ones you hear about.

His attendees who dropped out or cried off don’t get a mention.