keeping dd off school. advice plz

[Pootrouble]

Hi im at work so cant reply straight away. Dd is 5 in year 1. She has a private diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder with Aspergers tendencies. School have the report. School have provided a visual timetable but no other support. Dd has huge levels of anxiety and is (still) school refusing.

However I dont like sending her to school when she adamantly doesnt want to go and is so anxious. If I kept her off for a day or so would I be fined?? Would this make school wake up a bit and realise this is an a actual problem??!! Aasrgghh tearing my hair out

if you keep her off make sure you take her to the GP and get a sick note.
hope your dd is coping better soon, its awful when they are so anxious

I don't think you will be fined but I am not sure it will accomplish what you are hoping for in terms of increased support or at least it did not in our experience.

It can also backfire - in that if your daughter get's to realise school is optional her reluctance to go in may increase.

Unless you have exhausted this avenue I would suggest setting up a meeting with the class teacher and SENCO where you can discuss what strategies could be put in place to reduce the anxiety.

Thanks for replying. I will give it some thought. Thanks for the pointer about drs note

GP worth a try but when we tried he refused to do so as he thought we would be better off staying within the system. It is so difficult though to send an anxious child into school. Do they see any of the anxiety at school or does she mask?

She masks very very well! She has a totally false smile that she walks round school with and its very sad to see :( she does question the teachers a lot amd follow the teachers round a bit but thats all they see

What happens when you try to take her in? Can you film it to show them?

For years we were encouraged to carry or drag Dd3 to school no matter what!!
We were basically made to feel that it was the worst kind of parenting fail to "allow" her to school refuse !

By the time she was 8 she was bordering on depression and we moved her to another school.

She was diagnosed with Asd and things improved for a short while until last yr when due to a really vile teacher she fell apart again.

This time we kept her at home when she couldnt get in to school due to high anxiety, we have been both critised and suported by different staff in her school but nothing was really done to help her to access support.

The masking is the biggest problem, I am really sad that Dd3 learnt how to become invisible at school! She certainly wasnt invisible at Pre-school so it was very much learnt in reception.

Now in Secondary the SEN team, me and Dd3 are all working hard to undo yrs of hiding and we are trying to find the real Dd3 that we see at home.
Fingers crossed she will begin to lose a little of her mask and maybe even begin to ask for help when she needs it!

You need to do what your guts tell you to do! Dont listen to people at school who put you down as "That Parent"!
Your Dd needs you to advocate for her and be her voice.

Good luck and keep coming on here for advice and support, this board has literally kept me sane(ish) over the last 4 yrs

The masking is the biggest problem, I am really sad that Dd3 learnt how to become invisible at school!

Ineedmorepatience could you explain more about this and how it happened so that we can try to avoid this happening to our DC ( I also have a now highly anxious 4.6 yo attending reception)

She will cry and get very upset repeatedly saying she doesnt like school and doesnt want to go. Often she wakes in the night worrying and has to sleep in our room. We are considering moving her and have her on a waiting list for elsewhere.she used to scream and be inconsolable when I left her in nursery and reception but now shes somehow stopped this and just goes incredibly quiet.

Ineed thanks for the reply its really helpful. I too feel like they dont see the real dd2 at school - she seems like a totally different person there! She does get anxious about many other things so its hard all round really. I hate seeing my 5year old in a panicky state :(

Hi early and sorry for the hijack poo

Dd3 learned to mask her difficulties because no body listened to her when she was desperately trying to tell us that school wasnt working for her!!

She screamed, kicked, clung on and even vomitted to try to avoid the place that she couldnt cope with but we keot taking her back.

The message that we gave her was that it didnt matter how bad she felt we were still going to take her. Behind the scenes the HT was terrifying her and saying she just had to get used to it.

The HT had decided there was nothing wrong with her other than over fussy parents!

We moved her in yr 3 having tried really hard to get help for her and within a term she had a diagnosis of Asd, she now has a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder too.

I regret every time I left her screaming and will never do it again!

All it taught her was how to hide her feelings and become invisible at school, she has just been getting through the day for yrs and exploding at home.

So far secondary has been a positive experiece, the SEN team have put lots of support in place for her and she is even going to be getting councilling to hopefully help her to show more of her true self at school.

Sometimes even her close friends dont recognise her as the same child outside school and they have often commented to their parents how different she is.

As I say, if she tells me she cant cope now I listen, she stays at home and has a quiet day and the next day we try again. I will not compromise her mental health for the sake of school attendance sheets!!

Good luck

Thanks so much ineed thats what I needed to hear. Dd is very very different outside school. She used to scream cry cling onto me and hide behind me :( I feel bad for making her go now

I too am sorry for the hijack poo. It 's so hard to know what to do day to day for the best, the last thing we want is to make our children suffer

ineed thanks for going into it, it must be hard raking up such memories. Glad to hear though that your dd seems now to be getting the help that she needs.

I have no specific advice and it sounds as if others have more experience of your situation. What I was interested in was that you have a private diagnosis. How did you go about getting that? We have been on waiting list for a year after an initial consultation for DS whom we suspect has autism. Pathway is getting longer due to cuts and presumably more children waiting. I didn't know going private was an option?
Sorry for the hijack

We saw a private child psychiatrist from The Priory. Look at their website and see if theres one local to you

Ive got to say I wouldn't just keep her off. You need a plan. You need to work out how keeping her off is going to get her an education.

If you are keeping her off to get the right support you need an idea of time frames etc before you do it.

If you are keeping her off to home ed you need to be looking that you have the right resources etc in place. Even if you have to do that retrospectively!

Just keeping her off without any idea of how your going to educate your DD is way more distruptive to her education, than her being unhappy at school.

I have been in the position of having a son in school who was very unhappy and masking his physical difficulties because nobody dealt with them properly and therefore majorly underachieving. I did end up just not sending him to school one day but only when I had enough independent expert evidence of the problems at school, had sorted out to home ed him and had a long term goal. It took nearly two years to get him out an in a better placement with better support and I pulled him out a year and half into that time. Yes pulling him out was the best decision I made, but doing it with a plan can cause both your DD massive educational disruption

Ok we kept her off on fri. She was far too tired anxious and stressed to go. I wrote a short but to the point note to school to say it wouldnt be beneficial to force her into school that day due to high anxiety levels. I was expecting a phone call or at least a letter. I got nothing!! Waiting to see what they say on monday!!