Is making anxious DD go into school the right thing to do?

[sol7]

DD, 13, Year 8. Has disliked school since starting secondary but seemed to settle towards the end of Year 7. However in the first term of Year 8 she started to become very anxious and tearful as well as physical symptoms such as stomach ache. She can't articulate what exactly the problem is.

I contacted the school and the pastoral team was involved minimally but weren't very helpful. She also started suffering from selective mutism (which she suffered from as a young child too but seemed to grow out of) so the SENCO became involved and put some measures in which seemed to help. I have also been paying for private counselling which has seemed to help too.

However, recently her anxiety has been building again and she has expressed several times that she doesn't want to go to school. This morning was especially bad - crying and begging not to go in. I have been making her go in, partly because I am worried that letting her stay home will create a slippery slope. She has pretty bad attendance this year anyway as she has had a lot of illness. I do worry that forcing her to go in will make her anxiety worse though 😔. She has messaged me twice already this morning begging me to pick her up. I've contacted the school to ask someone to see her but am wondering about just letting her stay home if she is still bad tomorrow.

DH and I both WOTH full time so she has so stay by herself if not in school.

Just don't know what to do for the best.

We were in almost this exact situation 2 years ago.

We took her to school every day.
Would collect if school called us.
Had an agreement regarding a safe place in school if going to lessons was too difficult.
School provided a card to show if needed to leave class.
School also supported a decision to focus on getting her to class for key subjects we knew would be doing in Yr 10/11.
Asking teachers to leave her sitting next to someone she felt comfortable with when they changed the seating plan (which they did frequently)
We told all her teachers that she may not speak in class.

It was very challenging, and deeply distressing for all of us at times. However we are now out the other side. She now attends every class every day, we don't get called to collect her and she even speaks up in her favourite lessons.

I genuinely believe if we had let her stay home every time she asked, she may have dropped out of school all together.

It’s definitely failing. Look at all the teachers striking. They know that it’s fundamentally broken.
I feel so sad for all these kids basically being told ‘you’re the problem’ 😞

My contribution to the discussion is that OP needs to be open-minded. She doesn't have clarity on what is going on here.

Thank you all. There haa been lots of helpful information. We've been paying for private counselling for a few months now. I have seen some improvements but unfortunately the counsellor has had to move to a further away location so the sessions are now less frequent. She was offered some counselling at school recently but because she sees a private counsellor she wasn't able to see the school one too.

I can't afford a private asd assessment on top of counselling, especially as I have a second child on the waiting list. I did look into finding a child psychiatrist for an assessment which seems cheaper but couldn't find one in my area - there was one but he has closed his waiting list.

I do think some of the steps others of you have listed would be helpful. She is already allowed to sit with a friend and teachers have been told not to make her answer questions. The school does have a pastoral area which certain students can access when they need time out of class so I'm going to ask if she could be given the opportunity to use that. Unfortunately it requires telling a teacher you want to go and then waiting for a senior teacher to come and escort you there. As she doesn't like to draw attention to herself I'm not sure she would ever use that option but perhaps knowing it was there would help her.

We told her today that if she had today off to calm down then we needed to look at steps to help her getting in every day and she did seem to accept that this can't be a regular occurrence. I just don't want school to be such a stressful experience for her.

Am definitely trying to be open minded. It might be there is nothing "diagnosable" other than anxiety. My focus needs to be on working with DD and the school to hopefully find a way to help her. I am also sure that there are hormones at play too.

My daughter has Selective Mutism and was later diagnosed with ASD.
She limped through school though it was traumatic for her. In retrospect, I think if she had begged not to go in day after day, I’d have found her an alternative.
College was due to be the fresh start she hoped for but she had to drop out. As she’s old enough to be alone at home we’ve allowed her to be out of education for most of this academic year. It’s really helped her to have some rest from the stress of an educational setting. She’s slept a lot, hung out with her boyfriend, made a cv and got a job. She’s going to try college again next year.
It depends on the child but for some, school is genuinely just too much for them: sensory overload, social anxiety, self organisation etc.
A friend’s daughter left school during year 7. She’s in year 9 now and can go to college for a part time timetable and is home alone the rest of the time. She has some other extra curricular activities that seem to really ground her. So I wouldn’t think the fact you work means she has to go full time to school. Find out from your local authority about any alternatives to mainstream school that they offer. Join “Not Fine in School” on Facebook for advice and help from people in the same boat.

I don’t have any personal experience but I do work in a school. When your DD is at home, does she do any work? If she could prove to you that she could self study then maybe she could be home-schooled. I know you both work but when you’re home you could go through her work and the next day’s work. While ever she’s missing so much school, when she’s there it’ll be so hard as she won’t be up to date. Where I live there’s small groups that are run at the local library for children who are home schooled where they can go for an hour a day and be tutored but also mix with other children. You could work up to this sort of thing and reconsider schooling in the long run. You need to get past the point on not being physically able to go to school. If she spends every minute there wanting to leave, she’s not learning and having a negative effect on her mental health long-term.

One of the points Dr Tara porter makes
quite strongly is that we have a diagnosis heavy kids health service whereas, figuring out what the main problems are can be more effective than simply getting a diagnosis of autism.

I agree with her - both of my kids are diagnosed,
and it doesn’t magically unlock anything. The big challenge is getting the school/learning environment right and you don’t need to wait for a diagnosis to do that.

@sol7 One of the ‘triggers’ for my DDs anxiety was noise. The constant classroom noise (which was worse in some lessons even though behaviour is generally good) made her stressed and anxious. It took us a while to work this out, but giving her some ear buds (like the ones musicians wear) really helped her feel calmer in school as it dulled the noise. She also found working through The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills really helped her.

"Downward spiral"!! Not sure what you mean by that.
This us a child who is struggling ... May be a caring approach might be better.

I used to work for CAMHS and my rule in these situation was ... do not pathologise the child, look at the environment first. School is an artificial construct that is imposed on children and there is no reason why all children should be able to adapt to it.

This is not simply a child who is a bit reluctant to go there; she is pleading not to go.

Talk with the school again ... keep her home till they take it seriously. They won't want their attendance figures to be impacted. Ask for work she can do at home till they start taking a proper look at what is going on.

It amazes me how gung-ho some parents can be. This is a child in distress.

“I used to work for CAMHS and my rule in these situation was ... do not pathologise the child, look at the environment first. School is an artificial construct that is imposed on children and there is no reason why all children should be able to adapt to it.”

Wow @Mischance
You’ve really hit the nail on the head. I see so much of this lately. So many children not coping with our crazy unnatural education system and yet its the child who is deemed to have something wrong with them.

Yeah - we have so many choices as adults but kids still have very few. Don’t like competitive games? Tough, it’s character building. Don’t want to do ‘fun’ end of term activities - tough, it’s fuuuun. Don’t want to go out at break time? Tough, it’s good for you…

we expect much more extroversion than we did in the 80s, more group work, more presenting, cut backs meaning even less choice at PE and break, all kids herded out at playtime so staff can get their breaks.

i bet if most adults did a week at school they could pinpoint quite well any so many kids don’t want to be there and can’t cope.

My ASD DD was told by the clinical psychologist that like would get much easier for her once she left school because once you are an adult you have much more control over what you choose to do in life. They were right - her anxiety has dropped hugely at university, despite having to take care of herself. If she doesn't want to do something, she mostly doesn't. There are a few things that she has to do, but because she isn't forced into challenging situations on a daily basis, she is much more able to cope with the few things she needs to do.

No I wouldn't send her to school if she's that anxious about it and the anxiety is causing physical symptoms.

I would go about it slightly differently and have done when faced with this. You know she isn’t been bullied or mistreated so can be sure she is okay - and it’s anxiety. Not the school.

Does she have friends?

You can:
Have her paired up with a kind older student/buddy
Appoint a kind teacher she can find when she needs support and reassurance
Once or twice a week invite friends over from school - one as a treat for her, two to watch interaction between them. Observe for yourself how she is doing.
We did sleepover Fridays - if dd has been to school all week we celebrate with a sleepover and really put effort into it. So it feels exciting
On the days she goes in without complaint we stop for ice cream, her favourite supper - a necklace
Introduce lots and lots of down time at home. If she is doing too much after school scale it back
Organise tea parties often so she has something to look forward to
Build resilience with positive exposure

Support her to support herself

This is so true and just not talked about. We hold our children to much higher standards than we hold ourselves in general.
Imagine this was the OP’s husband or friend who was super anxious going into work. We wouldn’t say, we’ll look for ways to get you in every day. We’d look at WHY they were anxious, why the environment was causing it and most likely advise them to leave and/or try to find a different environment.
Also a lot of parents today don’t understand just how pressured and toxic school is these days. How the very environment is so difficult for kids especially teens.

I have not read the whole thread since I could see you had already got some good advice.
Apart from the mutism, our daughter was the same in year eight. She managed half a term of year nine then never went to school again. Then followed four years of an horrific mental breakdown. It took 3 years to get an ASD diagnosis. I no longer work.
My advice knowing what I know now is to insist school start to make adjustments - they will need evidence of what has been tried if your daughter later needs to go for an EHCP. Try to get an assessment for ASD through CAMHS or privately if you can though I suspect things have to get a great deal worse to get to that point.
In an ideal world school would have the resources to bend over backwards to support your DD now while she is still well enough for that to make a difference. CAMHS would assess for ASD before her mental health implodes not after and again would have the resources to support.
You have a fight on your hands and you need to start now and keep pushing. Let them tell you no and keep pushing anyway.
Loads of teenage girls with ASD get through it without the trauma we have had. I really really hope yours does too.

Well that’s absolutely right - adults self cert for 7 days, get signed off for a while, have a meeting to discuss return to work in a phased way often on a more part time basis.

Parenting Mental Health is an excellent Facebook group full of similar experiences and advice.
I let my girls have time off when they've needed it. To not do would inflict further damage in our case.
I also moved my teenagers school and she's so much happier now.
Good luck, you sound like a lovely caring parent

Thanks again for all the replies. I am a member of the Parenting Mental Health and Not Fine in School groups already. There is a lot of helpful information there too.

DD hasn't been as bad this week, I think because there have been a couple of trips arranged for this week. She still doesn't want to go but hasn't been distressed like last week. Her form tutor and the pastoral lead replied to me last week to say they would speak with her but they haven't yet so I have followed that up this evening.

Unfortunately today my younger DC had a panic attack at school (primary). When she was describing it, elder DD said "I have those all the time at school but mine are silent" 😔. I have asked the pastoral team to arrange somewhere she can go for some space if she is feeling especially anxious. Unfortunately the school has a rule that even if you have to leave the room for emotional reasons, you have to ask the teacher to call for a senior staff member to escort you a d there's no way DD will want to draw that amount of attention to herself.

Thanks again for all the supportive ideas. I have read all the documents suggested.

This is all so true.

It is ridiculous that you have to wait for a staff member to escort you out - my dd would loathe that too. This is the way schools pretend to make adjustments but don’t make adjustments that bell and will be taken up.

I suspect the rule is in place due to potential for absconding or self harm.

If a child is overwhelmed or panicking they could go somewhere and harm themselves. or they could leave the site altogether. It's a safeguarding thing.

It’s not consistent though is it, so I don’t accept that, some schools do let them leave the class on their own.

maybe we need schools that allow for more autonomy within a framework - because the fight or flight response is best dealt with my calming down doing something that calms you mostly on your own for many kids. Accessing a calm space by heightening your high stress levels is bonkers psychologically.

safeguarding is clearly not safeguarding mh here.

I agree it's not consistent across schools as different schools make different risk assessments.

I don't know what the answer is. I suspect getting a fellow pupil to 'escort' them to the pastoral room, but that them impacts on the fellow pupil's learning.

DD has a red card that lets her leave lessons in college but last year one of her coursemates needed an ambulance calling because they self harmed in a lunch break.

I can imagine schools imagining headlines 'Coroner hears School allowed overwhelmed pupil to leave lesson unattended - 30mins later found collapsed in toilets'.