Why is EBSA more common nowadays?

[HotLikePapaJohns]

Why is EBSA more common nowadays?

I have read on other threads that it's always been an issue but I don't remember it as a child. Yes, there was some truancy in secondary but not in primary.

Is it that kids are more able to express their feelings? Or that school has become harder? What can be done about it?

Yes this too! I was off school LOADS through ill health as a child and the school and LA did not care - no letters home, no threats of fines, just a bit of extra help to catch up from a calm and kind teacher.

I'm not saying it was good but it was different. It was more black and white and parents felt more pressure to keep their kids in school.

In my case I "succeeded" as far as the norms of my peer group went, stayed in school, sat exams and made it to university. I was still harmed by my years at secondary, working adults get signed off work for lesser maltreatment by their colleagues than what I experienced.

It wasn't until I was older that I learned how concerned my DM was about my mental health. They'd looked at the affordability of the local private girls school and I imagine nowadays they'd have looked into the possibility online homeschool. Not attending school wasn't seen as an option though.

I think those children just fell through the cracks. I had about 60% attendance in primary back in the 80s. I read through years worth of school reports and they all said, “…if only she was in school more regularly, her maths assessment scores would be higher.” For at least 2 years.

And then in Y6, I disappeared altogether. My mum stopped taking me to school. I missed an entire year. She must have had to tell them I wasn’t coming back, but no one ever came looking for me. No one seemed to care that I was no longer registered for school. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I assume it was all paper files back then and I ended up in the back of the filing cabinet and no one came to check I was alive.

I do think that EBSA says as much about parents as it does about children. People aren’t gonna like that. But my anxiety about school and my resistance to going in wasn’t a whole lot different than my children now. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I’d drag my feet. I’d suddenly pretend to have a tummy ache. I’d cry at the school gates. The difference is my mum couldn’t cope with this. It was easier to leave me at home than to fight with me to get dressed or tell me I needed to go in with a tummy ache and see how I feel in an hour (what I do with my own dc). She found this very overwhelming.

When I stopped going to school for a year, it wasn’t because my mum was trying to drag me out of the house kicking and screaming and couldn’t get me in the car. It was because she left for work and never woke me up. I lived a 20 minute drive to school. I couldn’t get myself there. I would just wake up at 10am to an empty house (at 10) and have to look after the dog and cook myself meals and generally entertain myself until she got home at 6pm. She just kinda stopped being bothered. There were definitely some poorly regulated emotions involved, but they weren’t really mine.

Thankfully, I did get back to school in secondary and we found a school that would look the other way about the fact I’d missed an entire year. I did very well there, in part because the environment was so supportive, in part because I could walk myself there, so was no longer reliant on my mum being sufficiently self-regulated each morning to get me to school. When I could take myself, I went.

I think parents are much more responsive to their children now. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. One of mine never wants to go to school but I make him. I have no idea if this is the right thing to do or not, but I don’t think he has the capacity to decide yet. I dont want his future to be restricted due to minimal qualifications.

I think its perfectly possible to thrive, get good qualifications and socialise out of a typical school environment now. And it may be in some cases that they get there a year or two later but so what? Both of my children have been harmed by the narrative that you MUST do this or that. Why? There are a lot of different routes into work if you willing and prepared to step up. Both of mine are perfectly able and happy to work hard. They are also ND and have found school v tough. Instead of beating the drum of 'well i coped' and 'sometimes you just have to do.stuff', maybe we're now realising that you don't. Im a teacher by the way, losing more and more faith in the system every year. I do not agree that you can just expect to doss about on benefits and neither or mine will be allowed to do that, but school, especially at secondary level is increasing inaccessible or inappropriate. For those whom.it suits, great, fantastic. What we need however is a far broader range of options.

Because kids are more messed up now.
Mental health issues are practically the norm in young adults.

Adhd and autism are not mental health issues. They are neurological conditions. Kids with these conditions are not messed up, they just have different needs. If mainstream environments were universally half the size, quieter and calmer, many would cope just fine.

Aren’t we always told though that quiet and calm isn’t good for those with ADHD? That they need less rules and more fidget toys and more movement breaks and more running about to let off steam etc?

Depends on the person. It's not a one size fits all. I think a big issue with the education system as it is is that schools try to make everyone fit their one size.

I absolutely agree. But I can’t see it going down well with some parents if you split classes by “quiet/well behaved/likes sitting down in silence and working” and “loud, runs about a lot, needs fidget toys, struggles to listen”.

Indeed!

Because years ago, kids got no say in the matter. They were sent to school whether they liked it or not.

I’m not personally affected by it but I do have 2 DCs at secondary and think there is a certain grind to school life that can really weigh kids down - lessons are over loaded with content and the expectations on kids to be writing at GCSE level when they’re in year 8/9 puts so much pressure on them. They are tested, tested, tested and there is little time spent on soft skills or enjoyable activities/ tasks. And unfortunately many teachers, and I appreciate this may be just my DCs school, don’t appear to like teens all that much. There is little time or inclination to build rapport with them.

Schools have essentially become exam factories and for some children the pressure and expectations are too much. Combine that with some really poor behaviour in classrooms and I think many adults would struggle with wanting to be in that environment 5 days a week …oh yeah.. there’s also a teacher retention crisis!

It's funny because I'd be able to do far less parenting if DS would just go to school.

I could just do the school run (or he could walk, I could wave him out the door) and maybe remind him about homework now and then.

Instead of the 120 pages of emails I've had to send chasing the school and the LA, the medical appointments I've had to take him to with GP, mental health services, sleep specialists, speech and language therapy. The timetable I had to make for him and the resources I had to find so he had access to work he could do at home since he is happy to work, just can't cope with being in the school building and school only provide a couple of apps. Not to mention the meetings with various professionals.

As an excuse not to parent it's going terribly for me.

This thread has reminded me just how lucky people are today.
It WAS boring back in the day.
There wasn’t anything worth watching at all during school hours. The only programmes for children started around 4pm ish and ended around 5.30pm and even then, they were pretty poor.
No videos, no laptops, no computer, no tablets, no internet, no mobile phones. I was banned from using the house phone until after 6pm and by god I stuck to this rule.
I suppose we just called for friends rather than texted etc.
I’m sure schools were far more scary places then too. We had corporal punishment and the teachers did use it. There didn’t seem the fascination with uniform though. I went to quite an ‘arty’ school, not posh by any means but several pupils ended up having successful careers in the arts.
The art subjects were pushed as much as the STEM subjects.

My daughter missed a lot of secondary school but struggled through primary.
All the fun has been taken out of primary education in particular. I can remember doing mad projects over weeks, building things, researching things you were interested in. Now it’s so rigid. Zero creative work, so much maths and English and little time else.
i started working in schools in my 40s I was shocked by the overall noise and behaviour. I’ve seen actual violence between students, nothing like that happened when I was in school, iust a few scraps.
DD always struggled with the noise and the uniform. She’s very happy in 6th form.

Wasnt if Labour that introduced attendance targets, loads of people used to skip school and no one cared when I was there.

How do you explain my situation. Dd1 autism diagnosis and EBSA. Dd2 perfect GCSES, 4 A* A level predictions, national essay prize winner, young journalist of the year for national newspaper and place at Oxford. DS predicted all 7s and 8s at GCSE and excellent attendance. Which child reflects my parenting?

Dd 1 would actually threaten to harm herself and she would run away/do dangerous things if ‘forced’ to go to school.

Ok. DS never liked going to school. It was always difficult to get him there, we were often late because it was get him there miserable but walking and be late or carry him there crying and screaming and being on time. It was tough.

Post lockdowns this deteriorated rapidly. The switch from infants to juniors probably didn't help, with the change to much more formal sitting at desks education, but DS was increasingly struggling with the social side. His meltdowns increased in frequency and violence, until he was having multiple violent meltdowns a day, I was covered in bruises, neighbours had called the police out.

He started refusing to go. We physically forced him out of the house and dragged him in. I regret this hugely now. His time in school was cut down, and honestly it was heartbreaking seeing him cower and hide behind me if we saw any children from his school, his time going in had to be arranged so he wouldn't have to see anyone. He could barely leave the house at all

Ended up moving schools to one with a unit for children with additional needs, where we worked very hard to get him up to full time, which he successfully achieved. Also got a diagnosis of ASD.

Then secondary school. First year went ok, then he crashed and burned, would go in initially but stopped going to lessons and just talked to a favourite member of staff about wanting to harm himself all day. GP/CAMHS were bloody useless, so paying privately for counselling. He now attends school for an hour a day, no lessons yet.

I honestly don't know what what we could have done - his teachers themselves have commented on how much effort we've put in, how engaged we are. But I won't make home an unsafe place for him, especially as I don't think it would make him magically able to attend school, reward/punishment like that has never worked for DS around school, it just causes more distress and makes him less able to attend.

We could play out though - I spent so much of my time outside with friends playing with a variety of toys (balls, skipping ropes, bikes, dolls in toy prams even digging in mud). Great for exercise and socialisation. Where I live DC just can’t do that because we don’t live in LTNs (which most post-war estates are) and there is too much traffic & too many drivers speed / use their mobiles etc.

We didn’t have SATS at 6/7 or 10/11, nor Years 2 & 6 focused on revision. My DS really stopped enjoying school in those years - and he wasn’t one of the kids called in for holiday revision sessions.

I actually don’t remember primary school being that boring. Yes there were some boring lessons, but we also had lots of drama, art, singing, country dancing, science projects and practical work. Sewing & knitting was far better taught than today as we had the time to properly learn the skills.

There was a really interesting report recently about an exam centre for home ed students trial that Exeter Uni is running. The researchers are very clear that unmet SEN is a key reason for the local rates of home education (as compared to people who choose it because they want that style of education). The researchers were also clear that the project aims to provide a route back into education for people - this seems really sensible to me as especially since the pandemic it has been really easy for some students to fall behind due to ill-health or anxiety but we are not providing ways for students to catch up with what they have missed & this is really needed.

I think more parents are generally advocating for their children better nowadays and care more about their emotional welfare.
Those kids would have probably just been forced to go to school even if it was detrimental to their mental health and caused them great anxiety.
They may have not felt like any of the adults would listen to them at home/school if they expressed how they truly felt so bottled up their struggles more.

Yes, we are similar. I have one thriving at a top uni on a highly regarded stem degree, one chasing down four A-Level A*s, and then my youngest, who is shutting down at school and being withered by the demands he cannot meet and the shame that follows.

It is not easier to have a child who struggles to attend school. Even putting aside the heartbreak and the emotional stress it puts on to the family - just the logistics to manage this can be intense. There are constant emails and meetings with the pastoral care/ learning managers/ SEN lead and phonecalls to and from subject teachers who are worried I might not be aware of how bad things are and do I know something that might help? I was 'invited' onto this dreadful course that is 40 hours of listening to the bleeding obvious but it's important to show willing, so that's what I'm doing.

I suppose it might be very satisfactory for someone to assume that they are endowed with some parenting skill that am devoid of just by dint of the fact that their own kid is just fine at school. Knock yourself out if that serves your ego but I don't think it would stand up to scrutiny.

There's been a massive decline in people teaching obedience from a young age

Parents well say "how could I get them in, they are too big to drag kicking and screaming"

If that it how it is playing out the problem is you didn't teach them to mind you when they were 2. A friend asked me how I got my kids to practise piano... I tell them to and they do as they are told. No, ive never hit them etc but I shout sometimes.

If you look at Asian kids they are still very much taught to obey parents. Its something that has to start when they are very young, and is reinforced with years of consistent discipline. Its not a given that all children will recognise parental authority automatically (although some more calm/docile kids tend to) - you have to teach them who is in charge.

I’ll share my experience but I don’t know if it’s useful and I’m definitely not saying it’s the case for all children with EBSA.
My Dd struggled going into every setting, since birth, regularly hour long or two hour long meltdowns at drop off etc. Previously I had a job which was flexible (single parent) and my rule was always I would sit with her in school until she came down to baseline and would go in. This took until lunchtime some days. I was on the verge of losing my job. It was hard.
One September when my DD was 8 I started my ‘dream job’ an hours commute away and I became much more organised, with a set wake up, breakfast time, routine but also my DD had a new teacher and the EBSA pretty much stopped overnight.
I think sometimes we as parents communicate to our children that they can have all the choice. I remember trying to make things so nice for my Dd, to get her to go to school, it was probably confusing and anxiety provoking (why has mum let me lie in this morning, but not this morning, why does she do all these lovely things and then shouts at me when I don’t want to leave her). The routine, just every morning being the same and predictable, plus the reduction in my own anxiety, seemed to help her go in.
I was criticised a lot by the EBSA community for forcing my daughter in. Sometimes physically getting her into school. But I can’t help but see that those parents who let their children stay home whenever they refused are largely still out of school now, whilst my Dd is thriving, especially now she has an EHCP and actually understands what’s going on.
I would also say tech is a massive issue. Kids are addicted. We’re all addicted.