15 yr old and school refusal

[Melonsonic]

I'm at my wits end.

Over the last couple of years, my ds has refused to go to school at least one day every fortnight.

Lately, it has got much worse and I am lucky if he attends school three days a week.

He is too big for me or dh to drag out of bed.

He has been asked many times if he is being bullied or if something else is worrying him, but we have drawn a blank.

He has been investigated in hospital for health problems and is now on medication for stomach migraine.

However, I strongly suspect that he just wants to sleep at home rather than go to school.

His attendance has dropped to 67% and he has his GCSEs next year.

I am terribly worried.

Does anyone have any experience or wisdom on this issue?

[Dandygal1976]

Hun, my eldest went through this when he was 15. It was horrid and I felt so powerless. He turned it all around himself after a yeah and came out with great grades. He always seemed just overly sleepy etc. I took him to the doctor (who is also a family friend) to see if he was depressed. The doctor refused antidepressants and his bloods were fine. I am glad he did not end on tablets now. It is just a crappy phase and as long as otherwise he has been fairly reasonable then he will likely come around.

[gracieandharrietxo]

When you can finally get him into
School, ask the school to monitor him closely and maybe stick a hidden camera or mic somewhere just to confirm he isn’t being bullied. And if it isn’t that, he could be behind on schoolwork or underachieving, if so speak to the school about intervention after school or during pastoral times, and get him a tutor sorted out. If not that either ensure he is getting enough sleep because this could be why, if not refer him to a doctor regarding a possible sleep disorder. If all else fails it’s vital that he is getting an education therefore homeschool could be an option to look into, there are some online websites you could check out, if you have a laptop or computer. Hope I helped and good luck

[Rebecca36]

I went through the same with my son. It's hard! He was determined to take from school what he wanted and do his own thing. In the end I gave up.

All I can say is it does pass - and my son is an extremely successful adult now.

[buttonz]

Another day, another no show...

Sorry to hear that you are all going through this

[Neveragain12]

My 14yr old Son (yr10) suffers with Adhd, anxiety and OCD. He has always struggled with school. He is "normal" on the surface though and is in a friendship group of about 5 boys.

Recently, every so often, his friends suddenly decide they don't like him and don't answer their phones and lie about where they are so he can't play out with them. This happened yesterday so he spent all the lovely sunny day in the hoise alone. They then text him some horrible texts which he did make worse by reacting angrily, but because of his ADHD that's how he reacts, especially when he doesn't understand what's happened.

This morning he is refusing to go to school as he's worried they've all turned against him and he'll have no-one at break time to be with.

I'm not a fan of missing school but his anxieties are very real and I don't want him being bullied or left put or worried at school.

I've explained that its better to face things rather than hide and try to make things better but it's hard for a teenager to grasp that.

He's too big to force to go..

Would you let him stay off for the day?

[UndomesticHousewife]

I had this with dd. She never really liked school but it got worse when she was in second year, third year wasn’t much better and fourth and fifth year were really bad. She had/has an anxiety disorder and was depressed for a long while. It took 2 years in camhs before she was prescribed medication after me pushing for it but the change in her after she was in it was huge.

But going to school didn’t get better, by that time she was so triggered by school that she literally didn’t go in for the last 2 years which were the gcse years.

It’s only because she had an anxiety disorder and was seen weekly at camhs that no one threatened me with court or anything like that and the school was quite helpful. We had the attendance officer round once a week though and although she was helpful and understanding it was stressful trying to get her to go in to get her attendance up.

I was worried sick she wouldn’t get any exams but she did all her coursework in the last 2 months and learnt all her subjects in that time too and got all Bs in her exams.

It was hell for a lot of years and looking back I really wish I’d been a bit more relaxed (if that’s the right word) as she was totally incapable of going to school and all the shouting in the world wasn’t going to change it it just made everyone miserable. But the constant pressure of her attendance percentage made me so stressed, and her too. In the end I think I just said to the school she can’t come in but I try my best everyday to get her there but her anxiety disorder is so bad that it’s not always possible, they sort of accepted it and actually they did help as much as they could.

Don’t assume it’s laziness especially as he’s got stomach problems which are a huge sign of some kind of anxiety.

[Yorkshiregirl88]

Hi, sadly my experience with CAMHS, hasn’t been great, unless the child is self-harming or suicidal, they don’t seem to be able to help. Lack of resources I assume.
I wish I could understand why my son doesn’t want to go to school. I think it might be a control issue, as he wants to be calling all the shots in our 1 parent family. This isn’t helped by the fact he gets angry and violent if he doesn’t get his way ...

[here4now]

@dkb15164

So pleased to hear you are heading towards the future you deserve. Thank you so much for posting that perspective. Your MrM sounds like a wonderful man. Wish there were more of him around!

[here4now]

Thank you for pointing in the direction of the FB group. I have requested to join.

You guys are giving me some hope at a very bleak time.

[MistyMeena]

I can also strongly recommend the FB group for this issue. Search for school refusal.

Sympathies to everyone going through this, very few people really understand.

[here4now]

OMG I feel like I have found HOME.

My 13 yo has been refusing to go to school - now not even leaving the house. I am a single parent. The stress and worry is killing me! And then I know it is probably making him for anxious.

GP referred for an 'urgent' CAMHS referral last week. Still heard nothing. Can anyone tell me what to expect with CAMHS please? I very much doubt he will engage with them. He refuses to see anyone at all.

I am honestly breathing a sigh of relief that there are other people out there that understand this hell. to all of you.

[buttonz]

Hi Yorkshire - it's so difficult... no way can my 6 foot 1 15 yr old ds be physically pulled out of bed...

My only advice is what was given to me by another mum - remember that you can only do so much and try and look after your own health. Accept that you are not responsible for your son's actions...

Keep in touch with the school and, if he is ill, log each day he's ill with the GP.

It's so difficult if your child won't give a clear explanation of what the underlying problem is.

Some days, I fear utter despair and fear. However, I try and remember that it won't last forever... a teacher friend says she has seen so many cases of school refusal and that they all ended up ok.

Good luck and keep posting.

[Yorkshiregirl88]

Hi
I'm having the same with my year 9 son. He's too big; 5'10" to force to do anything. I also having problems giving him consequences e.g phone /xbox withdrawal as he becomes angry and potentially aggressive if I do so. I'm a single parent so, no big dad to back me up.
School don't seem to be very helpful other than trying to send him to a PRU, where he certainly won't go ...
He has no specific reason for not going ' I don't want to' is his stock answer.
I'm so frustrated and I'm going to be starting a new job in 2 weeks, where I will actually be office based, rather than home, where I am now.
Any suggestions?
thx

[buttonz]

Shitbag - that is a wonderful and positive update!

Things not great here. Ds has barely been into school for so long now.

However, he is being referred to CAMHS, which I hope will help.

We got a threatening letter from the LA, but our GP contacted them so they have withdrawn planned action.

The FB support page is really helpful.

[lljkk]

Thanks for the update... X fingers he keeps it up.

[Shitbag1511]

Just wanted to pop back to update you.
DS 15 has had two CBT sessions... having not been to school since Xmas he completed a one to one tutoring last Friday after school. Today he's gone in for the afternoon.
With the plan initially to do a few afternoons this week and a few mornings next week. Phased return planned to get him ready for his GCSEs.
There is light at the end of the tunnel for us. It happened quite suddenly over night. I've no idea what goes on in that CBT session but I have a glimmer of my lovely boy back,
Just hoping for positive outcome.
He's at school now. I've cried. I feel like I've left my child for his first ever day at school!

[Meerkatonwheels]

Dkb, thank you so much for posting about your experiences. It's really helpful to hear about things from your own perspective and I can apppreciate why you felt this way. I'm so glad that things are working out for you now and wish you all the best for the future.

[Meerkatonwheels]

Our 16-year-old son began refusing to go to school in the first term of Year 10. Initially, it seemed to be severe anxiety, as reality dawned that he was getting closer to his GCSEs. He cried each day and couldn't get out of bed he was so exhausted. He looked awful. Before this, his teachers had told us he was academically very bright and that he would sail through GCSEs with top grades. He used to manage all his own homework without any intervention from us and basically just got on with it. The transformation from this to a boy who genuinely couldn't cope with school and didn't want to go out or be with people was fairly rapid. We had no idea how to handle it initially but throughout the last 20 months since he has been off school permanently, we have only slowly started even beginning to understand how to deal with him. He has just been diagnosed with borderline autism and we are so lucky that he has now gained a place in a special student referral unit for extra support (a half-hour car journey away). Along the way, we have discovered that he doesn't want to become an adult, hates the adult world and has suicidal ideation. Getting him to attend the new place each day involves an hour and a half of cajoling and encouragement, then getting him there and collecting him again an hour and half later as that's all he can manage. Often he just can't do it, but he is trying and has managed a few days there.

It is a sad and draining experience for any parent to go through, let alone for their child, and I have huge empathy for those who have posted here about their own experiences. It's completely understandable that parents who have no experience of these issues may attribute them to mere laziness on the child's part. We had zero understanding until it happened to us, but we certainly know now that the picture is so much more complex in many cases. Being on the receiving end of such simplistic and insensitive judgementalism doesn't help, and it's easy for parents in our situation to become isolated as a result of these kind of attitudes in the wider community.

Our son's school has been incredibly supportive, but this seems to vary considerably across different schools, while LEAs are obsessed with attendance and put pressure on parents and schools when a child struggles with this aspect. The added pressure is the last thing that anyone in this situation needs. There seems to be no formal recognised 'category' for children with these kind of problems unless they qualify for SEN funding which is usually only awarded to the most extreme cases and often linked more to those with a physical disability or children with severe learning disabilities that are more easily classifiable.

To try to understand our son's situation, I'm always looking out for sources of information. I hope that these website links may help others in a similar situation:

www.autism.org.uk/about/in-education/exclusion/school-refusal-strategies.aspx

www.schoolrefuser.org.uk/index.html

senmagazine.co.uk/articles/articles/senarticles/the-roots-of-school-refusal

www.schoolrefusal.co.uk/apps/links/

senmagazine.co.uk/articles/articles/senarticles/the-roots-of-school-refusal

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11078624/My-daughter-refused-to-go-to-school-for-five-years.html

I've found that Google searches on 'school refusal and autism', etc, tend to bring up some reasonable information.

Good luck to everyone here who has shared their experiences and it's good to know that we're not alone. I'm trying to stay optimistic in the face of what seems like an impossible challenge, but I can't pretend it's easy. ;-) I can only hope that one day, children like ours will all get to where they need to be, but with the challenges they face, they need to be allowed to do it in their own time...

[Iheartdogs]

Dkb - thank you, it is so interesting to hear from a former truanter...

[Iheartdogs]

Mama - thanks so much

[dkb15164]

Hi guys,

Thought you might like the perspective of an ex-traunter. I'm 19 now and in my third year at university but when I was about 14/15 (Scottish Year 3 and 4) I attended 1 full day a month at most and had all sorts turning up at my mums door and sending threatening letters about what would happen if I didn't start attending.

I think it partially was laziness but mostly because I hated the school system and felt like it infantilised everything we did - raising hands to go to the bathroom, getting parental signatures on every piece of homework, it was very much a "act like an adult but be treated like a child" type of scenario that frustrated me. My mum and I used to have screaming matches when she'd find out I hadn't gone in for yet another day. Looking back I caused her a great deal of stress and pain which I'm sorry for now. The mere thought of going in and having to make small chat with some of the most shallow and cruel people on the face of the earth (just the way a lot of teenagers are unfortunately) would make me burst into tears however I couldn't express that to my family without them thinking I was insane. There was a huge difference from the values my mom had taught me of be kind to everyone etc to what the kids practiced at school. Even if my mum dropped me at the school gates in the morning I would leave by breaktime to go home to go back to bed.

Even though I wasn't doing much, I was exhausted all the time and just wanted to sleep/be in my safe space which was my bedroom. The GP would only look at it as PMS, it was only after a few failed suicide attempts that I got referred to CAMHS and started CBT which I hated even more as I knew what I was feeling, I was just stuck in a rut of thinking I would never get out.

Most adults would say the same thing when I said I hated school "that's life, you've got to get on with it." Turning point was being assigned a disciplinary/guidance mentor in the form of the city's very gentle ex police chief who worked as a mentor after retirement bored him. He never once shouted at me or lost his patience with me if I didn't show up to school; if I didn't show up for a week because of my mental health, he wouldn't ask me where I'd been, he would just start with "this is what you missed, would you like me to arrange some after school support for you?" He knew forcing me to come in would make me feel a lot worse rather than waiting till I had built up the strength to face them. A lot of the time, I would skip the whole day of school and then come in for whatever subjects after school support because I didn't have to be around the same horrible kids who assumed things like my short hair meant I was a lesbian etc. He didn't say "get on with it", he instead said "is there anything else you can do at home?" and found ways to work around my depression. He would drop off my school assignments at the end of the day and I would have them emailed back to the different teachers by 9pm every night. If he caught me on a cigarette break, instead of getting me in trouble for smoking, he would just ask what class I had next and had I done my homework: he didn't focus on arbitrary discipline measures but instead on my education. In his words "we're not here to parent you, we're here to teach you". Things like school uniform didn't bother him, if I had forgot my tie, so what? I had showed up with homework completed. He helped me look at university brochures and told me I could go a year earlier as well which was the real changing point of "instead of 2 years with these people you hate, you could push forward and get it down in 1. You just need to start coming to school more" I even spoke to his wife who was an retired engineering professor from the local university who told me about how much more independent the studying was in higher education and how students had a lot more freedom in what they studied rather than just straight out of the class textbook; there was no stopping class all the time for disciplinary problems either as everybody wanted to be there and the lectures had zero tolerance for nonsense as the people who paid tuition didn't pay for it. He sat on his lunch break and helped me book the megabus tickets to go to university open days with my birthday money. He'd write me notes to go sit in the library and work on my coursework during gym as he knew the alternative was me just leaving for the day and not coming back. If he caught me leaving school grounds because I felt I couldn't cope he wouldn't berate me or try to make me stay, he would just text my mum "Sam's on her way home, she seems okay, just tired, I'm not worried." A 62 year old man who had spent his life working with criminals understood the boundaries and limitations of mental illness better than any of the young psychologists they sent to see me. I remember the day my mum found all the university guides in my room and her saying "it's a bit early to start looking" at which I point I told her that Mr Murdoch had already helped me fill in my UCAS application form and I had applied to the college as a back up. My mum invited him over for dinner to say thank you and she attended the open days with me happily. Think even now she is shocked that I went from the kid who was 3-4 hours late every day to attending the best business university in the UK, despite having to move 2-3 hours away from my safe space.
A lot of kids are like me where pushing just doesn't work: my mum tried to teach me to ride my bike till I was about 8 years old at which point she gave up: when I was 9, I taught myself without any push, motivation or supervision from anyone. School really isn't for everyone and that doesn't mean they are being bullied, it just means they don't suit the system. Most teachers are glad to have kids who actually want to do the work but can't rather than kids who can do the work but just decide not to, it doesn't bother them if your kids work from home and just come in for the tests. I was the youngest in my first year class at university at age 16 however I immediately adapted to the university learning style while most of my peers who had stayed for all 6 years of high school struggled to do things independently having relied on school homework planners and their mums reminding them to do things for so long. I never did Prom or the 6th year field trip, I never was prefect or house captain and honestly I'm glad. When I hear people talk about high school being the best years of their life, I struggle to understand because my life's only gotten better and better now I've left. Have faith in your kids and don't just assume they're being lazy. Mental illness is like having this block on your brain where you know how you should be behaving but there's a magnetic force saying "you can't".

Push through it. I have a much closer relationship with my mum now than when I was truanting. She always stuck up for me in front of others despite our fights behind close doors.

[mamato3lads]

Iheartdogs - so sorry you were so scared today. I know how you feel, when the kids push dh to scary levels of frustration I just don't know what to do with myself. It WILL pass, it's not forever, take it one small step at a time, you're certainly not alone which should reassure you that it's not your fault. You'll cope....we all have days when we feel like our heads in a vice....i understand....but you'll cope and you'll move forward. Sending the hugs you need luv xxx

[Iheartdogs]

Hi all - have read all your posts and send my best wishes to all of you.

My dh lost control today - it's been weeks since our 15 year old attended school for more than one full day a week.

Dh slammed the door to ds's bedroom and screamed his head off. He then thumped the walls and injured his hand.

I was terrified. I have never seen dh like that.

Ds eventually went into school for the afternoon.

Anyway, hope you are all ok.

I'm not coping.

[Iheartdogs]

Managed to get ds in yesterday... the rest of the week was not so good...

[Alpha10]

Scared to jinx things, but DD has been at school 4 out of 5 days this week. But she has been in an absolutely foul mood when she gets home from school. Do your kids take out their bad moods on you? Is it the result of releasing her pent up anxiety on me ?