DD(11) has had emetophobia for a couple of years, which came to a crisis before Christmas and she has been off school since.
We have been working together intensively on a CBT/graded exposure programme and she has worked so hard and made amazing progress, which is great, and I am hopeful she will be able to return to school soon. There will still be a lot of work to do but I think we are nearly through this crisis. Her background anxiety is still ever-present, but at a much lower level than it was.
Alongside the therapy I have also been trying to cover some schoolwork with her so she isn't too behind when she returns. This is what my question is about.
DD has always been academically capable ('top table' in primary school, given extension work in maths, science etc, v high reading age). She's not G&T or anything like that, but academic work has always come pretty easily. She was streamed into the top set for maths in September when she started Y7.
But she seems to be really struggling now. We've been working on pretty simple concepts in science and it's almost like they are sliding straight off her mind, if that makes sense? She needs coaching at every step of a maths problem - not about how to do it, but just constant nudging to move on to the next step. Her work is painfully slow and she just doesn't seem 'on it'.
To me it seems like the anxiety is still occupying a lot of the 'processing power' of her brain and she doesn't have enough left to engage with her work at the level I believe she is capable of. That's fine and it makes sense I guess. But my question is, how do I help her returning to school? The last thing I want is for schoolwork to set up another source of anxiety, but at the same time I don't want her to fall behind or fail to reach her potential.
Should I talk to school about this specifically? What would be reasonable to expect from them? Should I be asking for an ed psych assessment, or should we just keep working on the underlying cause of the anxiety and let this resolve itself over time?
Any thoughts or experiences very welcome!
Her background