Hope for children who avoid school

It can be easy to take for granted when a child gets up and gets ready for school with no complaints.  Off they go waving goodbye as they smile and go off with their friends.  However, for some children this easy task is extremely distressing and complicated.  School avoidance often starts with a sense of hesitation or nervousness about attending school but can end up with days of missing school or leaving school early.  Resistance to attend school can show up in a variety of ways such as:

1. Refusing to get ready in the morning.  
2. Refusing to get out of the car or enter the school building.
3. Visits to the school nurse, or texting the parent from the bathroom to get picked up from school. 

Your child may experience one of these behaviors or all of them.  School avoidance from a parents perspective is exhausting.  Parents are often struggling with bargaining, yelling, demanding or allowing 1 more day home with a promise of getting up tomorrow.  All of this while trying to get to work on time, it can feel so hard to manage. There are many variables that contribute to school avoidance these include:

1. Illness / death of a family member
2. Recent child illness or trauma
3. Riding the school bus
4. Physical symptoms related to anticipation of attending school (rapid breathing, heart racing, etc.)
5. Transition back to school after a break
6. Academic stress-learning challenges or perfectionism
7. Social difficulties - being bullied or teased
8. Sensory sensitivities-fire drills, noisy lunchroom

When children struggle on a daily basis to get to school it’s super important that you work on trying to figure out what the problem is and implement a strategy immediately.  The more school avoidance goes on the higher risk of impact on social isolation, lack of academic progress, and mental health issues.

Here are idea’s to help get to bottom of what is the source of the problem.

1. Emoji’s of the day- Get some Sticker emoji’s or print out feeling faces from Pinterest.  🙂🤨🤯🥺😡😮😬  Then list the school day tasks.  Starting with getting up in the morning and all the tasks in the order that they occur until the child gets to come home.  Then have the child use the sticker emoji’s to show how they feel about each part of the day.  This will start to give you a clue as to what areas are the problem.
2. Genie in a Lamp Question:  If you had a magic lamp with a wish giving genie (show a clip of Aladdin for the younger ones) that could fix all your problems when you woke up in the morning what would your day will be like? Have the child tell you or draw a picture. What would you have the Genie change about home and school?  

These informal assessments give you a chance to help your child figure out what the problem is and then together decide what strategies to implement.  Avoiding school will not help them with their problem solving skills, it only reinforces the power of fear.  

Partnering with the school is also another important aspect of prevention and intervention for parents.  

1. Ask for a meeting with your child’s teacher, guidance counselor or student assistance counselor.
2. Discuss concerns and come up with a plan.  Exposure to those things the child fears is an critical part of the plan.  I will explain this more in my next article.
3. It’s important that the teacher and counselor help the child take a look at the worry situation. When worry shows up in school some questions they can ask are “what is worry telling you?” and “what can you say back to worry?”.  We don’t want anyone giving support to worry such as asking the child if they want to call their parent, telling them everything is fine, or giving them a bucket because they were worried about throwing up.  We want to focus on helping the child build their skills.
4. The family and school need to work out an attendance plan.
5. Read more tips in my article  about conquering worry here:  https://www.roselapiere.com/blog/conquering-worry

It is important for parents to emphasize to the child that you will help them work through the problem and that they have to go to school.  Daytime is school time and so whether the child is missing one day of school or 1 week the following apply:

1. Younger children can view school as a choice based on the parents language.  So it's very important to emphasize that going to school is important and you will help them work through the problem.
2. There is no sleeping in on a school day, even if they don’t go to school.  
3. Structure the day.  Wake up get dressed, eat breakfast.  Fill it up with tasks such as helping out around the house, exercise and school work.  This is especially helpful for adolescents.
4. Get work from teachers at school or find school work on the internet.  Some teachers list websites for review work.
5. This is not a punishment but if you stay home there are no electronic devices,  and no television.  It is important to limit the fun of staying home.
6. Socializing with friends happens after school hours and when tasks for the day are completed.  Being with friends is encouraged because this helps to get children back into school.

This is not an easy task. School avoidance is one of the most difficult issues that I help parents with.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed as a parent reach out to a therapist that has experience with helping children with school avoidance. New Jersey Counseling Association will be having their annual 2019 spring conference and on April 14th, 2019 I will be addressing this topic for professionals who work with students who struggle to attend school.  If you are a professional and want more information on my workshop check out this link https://www.njcounseling.org.  

​Stayed tuned for my next article on how to implement exposure based cognitive behavioral therapy for kids who have difficulty attending school.