Home schooling for school refusers

[Baileymum45]

Ok so I have been struggling with a school refuser for 2 years now and can't do it much longer! Has anyone gone down the home schooling route with a teenager about to start GCSEs?

No not from personal experience , yet , but dragging DS to school from starting school and hoping will get better , - now yr9 - please !! What's stressing your DC .. , x bullying , stress , homework , being a teenager ? What's your gut feeling ?

Hi!
Primary school fine but when she started secondary she just didn't cope we have a diagnosis from cahms of anxiety and depression, she has been back to school since acute episode of depression but stops again then hell to get her back, it just has such an impact on the family, first day back today was a no go and even the dog is stressed I just don't think I can do it any longer we have also just started year 9

We have been there, have a look at InterHigh, (online school), it might be the right thing for you. Good luck.

The problem is that there needs to be more support for parents trying to build resilience into their teens. Without this school/further ed and work will always be difficult. Sadly in life we will always face situations that are difficult/challenging and we have to give young people the tools to do this. It is a serious problem but there seems little or no support available.

I don't think that resilience had anything to do with it. It's nothing to do with mental toughness. Sometimes there is a chemical imbalance in an extremely ill teenager's brain.

I agree that there is little support. It's hard as a parent to know quite how ruthless to be about forcing a child with anxiety to school. Last term Ds was late every day except for three days. I push Ds very hard to go in even if he is late. A friend of mine has been a lot softer with her daughter. Her daughter's anxiety had got worse.

Agree with ReallyTired about resilience v. illness. I would say that my family is pretty well supplied with resilience: from my grandfather, who worked his way up from an impoverished rural background to becoming a teacher in the early days of the 20th century, to my dd, who despite struggling for years with severe chronic pain and disability is still confident enough to be applying to drama school.

Unfortunately, another thing that also runs through our family through the generations is a tendency to anxiety and depression. Not everybody gets it: ds and I seem to have escaped. My grandfather had it, despite his undoubted resilience, my mother (another resourceful and resilient person) had it, dd has it. You can to some extent teach people to deal with (dd has found CBT helpful), but I doubt that you can teach people not to develop it in the first place. It is not necessarily triggered by adversity: many members of my family have been remarkably brave in hard times. Nor is it some kind of sign of degenerate modern age weakness: my grandfather had it and he was poor enough in his young days to go hungry and freeze in winter.

hi baileysmum45 .my ds started refusing school at 9 by 11 i deregistered him and home schooled him until he was 13.we tried school again due to anxiety he couldnt cope he was assessed by the la they said he had traits of adhd and aspergers. trying to keep short i eventually got him into a referral centre for vunerable kids in another borough from mine .he thrived there going three days aweek and did his gcses there. is there any help like this where you live!!!he was in a 1-1 or 1-2 group so his anxieties were less.not sure if this is any help but i couldnt see alight at the end of the tunnel until this referral centre took him on.the borough i sent him to had a centre for excluded kids and one for vunerable ones .

I second bigdonna. There may be some provision within your local authority for pupils who can't attend mainstream school (There's a surprising number of kids, and reasons for non attendance). That should be your first point of contact. Give them a ring, and be persistent.
I know this because I worked in a small centre doing precisely this, but the service wasn't widely known.
Home schooling for GCSE on your own would be a big challenge, but if you want to give it a go, I'd say concentrate on English Language and Maths until you can get some help.

I would second the recommendation for InterHigh.