School refusal

[idontknowwhattodooo]

Anyone experienced school refusal with their children that can offer any tips or advice? My 10 year old is forever saying she can’t go to school because she feels sick. She’s too big for me to physically do anything. I’ve tried bribery and consequences. I’ve tried taking her to the GP, who of course found nothing wrong. Even if there was something wrong, she’d not take any medication they prescribed as she won’t even take calpol. She’s on the waiting list for ND assessment. If you’ve been through this, did you get any support from school? I’m at the end of my tether. If she can’t cope with primary then how the hell is she going to deal with secondary?

What support is the school providing? What have they already tried that hasn’t worked?

Is alternative provision in place?

Does DD have an EHCP? If not, has an EHCNA been requested?

Check what the absences are being recorded as.

I would go back to the GP.

Did anything happen? When did things change? Anything in particular she struggles with?

She's 10. Have a member of staff ready at school to take her in...

I don’t understand why she thinks she has a choice. Not sick? You go in. Surely you have to go to work?

Tell me you’ve no experience of dealing with an ND child without telling me you’ve no experience of dealing with an ND child.
How would you suggest I get her dressed, out of the house and into the car? She’s almost as tall as me. If I try to physically force her, I will be hit, kicked, bitten, scratched and screamed at.
Thankfully I work from home but having her here is far from ideal.

I can’t get her dressed and out of the house so that won’t help. If I can get her to the school, she will go in. It’s getting dressed and out the house that we struggle with.

It started in Y3 when she had an awful teacher who has no understanding of ND children. The ADHD traits seem to be intensifying the closer she gets to puberty.
She appears to be struggling with the Y6 teacher now. She thinks she can’t do the work, is in permanent panic mode, convinced no one likes her.

None really. They talk the talk but have yet to actually do anything. They even told me there was no point getting an EHCP as it wouldn’t get her any help. They’ve refused to put her on the school record of need too.
I believe the absences are going in as sick.

The likelihood here is that she’s finding the transitions hard, or school is overwhelming, or quite probably both. What support is she getting in school? If it’s sensory related there are some quick wins to try like visual timetables, ear defenders and fidget toys, but they don’t work for everyone and realistically support will be limited without an EHCP.
if it’s transitions I find giving time helps I.e. I’ll wake her and tell her I’ll be back in 5 minutes to help her get dressed.
I have some success with the above, and can usually get her in eventually, but even with lots of support mainstream school just isn’t suitable for a lot of ND kids. Is your DD year 6? It’s a rough year anyway as lots of dull SATs prep even in schools that don’t pile on the pressure. My DD is just about hanging on as she has good friends and a 1 to 1 but wouldn’t cope at all otherwise.

When my son, autism and ADHD diagnosed, refused, I tried to take the pressure off by saying “thats ok, let’s get dressed and see how you feel, then let’s head down to school and see how you feel, let’s walk past school and see how you feel etc. It worked more than it didnt. I know every neurodivergent child is an individual, but it might help, especially if she is demand avoidant

xx,

unfortunately I don’t have great news for you, my daughter is now in yr 9 and her school refusals have def gotten worse going into secondary school. The level of overwhelm and distress just gets off the scale as they age with more pressure, friendship dyanamics, workload and hormones thrown in.

tbh we now recognise when she is getting close to hitting the wall so have a ‘reset’ day planned which gives her a sense of control and avoids her burning out, we get by now on 2 days a month, (but I think it would be much worse if we didn’t do this) and she is functioning much better the rest of the time / making progress.

if due to mental health the absences can be authorised - look up Emotionally based school avoidance.

would also suggest you do whatever you can to speed up diagnosis so that proper support can be put in place, although in our experience that doesn’t always help unfortunately esp in teenage girls who don’t want to be seen as any different to their peers so refuse help..! But you never know there might be somethings that are useful, or to get an EHCP to get into a specialist provision with smaller class sizes etc.

Make sure she has stuff outside of school that she enjoys and builds friendships and confidence in.

good luck, it’s so difficult.

DS never actually refused to go, but it got to the point where the anxiety of being in school was making him visibly ill (ocd had washing until they bleed, to afraid to do any school work because he's terrified he might get it wrong, stopped eating, overwhelmed by everything, sitting under a blanket for hours unable to move or talk).

He's been out of school since last easter and is absolutely thriving. He only gets 9h of alternative provision, so I have had to fill a lot of his timetable myself (I teach him and we also attend some home ed groups), which isn't compatible with working, so that side of things has been tricky but the improvement in him, and seeing him re-engaged and excited to learn has been amazing.

However, I will say, just because she's not coping with (I assume mainstream) primary, doesn't mean she won't cope with any school ever. You can request an ehcp assesment yourself, and push for her to be moved to a more appropriate school, you might find she manages withbmore suport or smaller class size.

Yes I have, with 2 of mine, both AuDHD. You can't physically force them by that age, you need to get school to add more support, which is easier with an EHCP but there's stuff they can do without it. Has she stopped going entirely or is she just having days off?

This^. I had to carry my son protesting all the way ( school was only 5 mins away to be fair ) the head met me and took him into school. I don't think school refusal existed 20 years ago! He was fine after 10 minutes and did stop eventually. Of course children will refuse if they can get away with it .

My dd refused school around age 7-8 but has terrible FOMO so would go in at 10am because she wanted to see what was for lunch. ASD, ADHD and a EHCP. School tried but I knew what she needed ( to go in early or slightly late not with the rest of her class via reception not her class door). School was reluctant to try this so gave her a job to do early before her peers went in. That didn't work for long as the other parents then told their kids to go into class early so they could get off to work.

Eventually she grew out of it by her own methods.

My eldest was a school refuser at secondary. By that age you have very few options to recover and it was pure hell on earth im sorry to say. All blame was on me for being a shit mother. I was always in fear that he ever missed a whole week, he'd never go in again. Horrible time. He passed all his gcses with 60 attendance and get Australian at A level. Purely by luck of being born very clever. It followed him to college then uni.

Ignore the school, request an EHCNA now. It is not pointless. It will help. On their website, IPSEA has a model letter you can use.

Request a meeting with the SENCO again. They should be providing support. They must make their best endeavours to meet DD’s SEN and they must make reasonable adjustments.

Physically forcing a child to attend a school when their needs aren’t being met there risks causing further long term damage. The pp who said EBSA didn’t exist 20 years ago is wrong. It did. Physically carrying a 10y/o who is nearly the same size as you and distressed is physically impossible for lots of parent.s

@Sprogonthetyne if you want more AP hours, chase the LA. 9hrs is not a suitable full-time education and the La knows that. They are trying it on. If chasing doesn’t work, you could look at a pre-action letter. If you have an ongoing appeal to SENDIST and haven’t already, you can request an expedited hearing.

Your lazy reply speaks volumes.

I do have a ND child, doesn’t mean they can’t have boundaries in place or hear the word no.

The very first time my child said they didn’t want to go to school I said tough luck buddy. Guess what, I don’t want to go to work either but life sucks and off we go. Didn’t entertain it for a second. My ND kid hears to word no a lot and they also don’t like it. Funnily enough holding firm and being consistent worked quite well for them.

You can have boundaries and tell DC ‘no’ without physically forcing them into school where their needs aren’t being met which can cause further harm long term

Good for you that you didn't have an emotionally based school refuser then I guess.

I had similar but live on an estate with the school around the corner. Our school have an incredible nurture team who work with my dd10. She finds her classroom overwhelming in the morning so reads in a nurture room for registration instead of being in the ckassroom. Two teachers actually came to the house to take her in one morning. Once she is there she carries on as if nothing has happened so I totally get the frustration. As soon as they arrived she started to comply and get ready.
Also waiting for an assessment here, suspect PDA.
I think we are just really fortunate that the school have been so incredibly supportive. Good luck x

Wow. Ok, thanks for the judgemental response.

I frequently tell my child no. It’s probably one of the words I use most. She has plenty of boundaries in place. But getting to school is just something she is not able to cope with.

The very first time my child said no, we did the whole ‘tough luck’ routine. I don’t want to go to work blah blah. Did it work? No. It ended up with me being slapped full force round the face .

I’m really happy that your ND child is clearly more capable of dealing with school than mine is.

In some areas the right to choose for assessment is fairly quick. It took about 3 months from the GP doing the referral to use getting the assessment report over the summer. So that might be worth exploring.
You can request an occupational therapy referral from the GP waiting list is about 4 months for that. They can help with things to make school more manageable

Does she have any good friends in class? An adult she trusts/feels safe with?

Things the school could try (not sure if it would help) are arriving/leaving at a different door either at the same time as the other children , or a few minutes earlier/later, a slow transition in the morning where she can read for 10/15 minutes , prompts/scaffolding for the work, if possible a pass for her to go to a quiet space when overwhelmed . Do any of these sound like something she might benefit from?

We looked at the right to choose option but GPs in our area are currently refusing shared care agreement. So any diagnosis via right to choose would not be recognised by them.

It's in progress, but bloody slow. He's still on role at his own school (which is an ARP), so the majority of his funding is going to fund a place that he's not using and which we all agree would be harmful for him to use

I've called an early annual review, which is in a few weeks and will hopefully result in EOATS been written into his EHCP, then we should be able to get more hours.