How to Deal With Refusal To Go To School

School refusal - this can be so hard and distressing, for everyone!!

Logically, we know that school might be ok, but the big emotions, and behaviour we see on those school mornings (and quite often the night before), are hard to understand, and we can feel lost on what to do.

With school refusal, first, we need to gain an understanding of what is going on for the child or young person.

Anxiety is always about safety.

They might worry about all the things that could wrong at school (failing a test, being asked to talk in front of the class, friends being unkind are all unsafe), but also the worry can be about something that might happen to their ‘safe person’, the most important person in their life, their primary caregiver.

And in fact, if something happens to them, they might not come back!

So there’s lots of worry about safety, and we ARE in an unsettling time in the world, where everyone we turn, there are ‘not safe’ ‘not safe!’ messages being sent.

Our children and young people are receiving these messages daily.

Additionally, school refusal can form a very strong pattern of behaviour and response.

Our brains LOVE patterns of behaviour, as it likes to go down the neural pathways we use the most, they are easiest to go down. This is why patterns of behaviour can be so hard to change.

With school refusal, a strong pattern of Avoidance can be the way the mind deals with the overwhelming big feelings that come with going to school.

Avoidance might bring relief and make those feelings go away, but in the long term, it doesn’t build any coping skills for managing those big feelings.

So let’s look at the pattern that can form, and what could potentially be going on…

Firstly we have the Trigger.

In this case it’s about school. The Trigger may occur the morning of school, and the night before.

Next, we have Thoughts and Feelings, and they can be interchangeable in the Pattern.

The thoughts might be – “I don’t like school”, “School is too much”, “No-one will be my friend” all sorts of pathways, of ALL the scenarios that can go wrong or is about what is worrying about school.

Then the Feelings..

This can be big!

When anxiety kicks in, it activates physical responses in the body – breathing changes to short and shallow breaths, the heart rate quickens, perspiration increases, tummy might feel sore, or nausea occurs, legs and arms can feel ‘wobbly’ and they might feel dizzy.

This is their sympathetic nervous system activating to the feeling of ‘Threat’ (not safe).

So with these awful bodily sensations, we also have the thoughts, and the big feelings that can take over (the Thinking/Rational part of the brain goes ‘off-line’).

This can result in emotional overwhelm – sad/mad, very distressed, angry, and frustrated.

This then culminates in the Action.

This is the behaviour we see – refusing to get dressed, very upset and/or angry, yelling or withdrawing, it becomes a very real battle to get them to school. And everyone feels awful…

When we understand what is happening, we can help support the child/young person and hopefully make some changes in the Pattern.

Firstly we can start with a simple coping strategy, and yes it’s super simple, but needs practice –

Deep, belly breathing.

By taking deep, belly breaths it can activate the parasympathetic nervous system which can send signals to the brain to calm everything down (all those big feelings!)

However, as we know, telling someone to calm down, or just breathe, never goes well.

We have to do the practice before those Triggers. I like to link it with a routine task, such as before you brush your teeth, to make it easy to remember and do.

Change the ‘story’

Our Hippocampus in our brain looks after memories and experiences. It can also create ‘stories’ from events not even experienced, such as seeing scary news on the TV.

We want to change to story that

1. School or hard things are ok, and

2. The belief that they can do this.

We can do it in a variety of ways, and I always like creative ways such as drawing, writing or even role-playing.

If the child is young, Social Stories are great, and pictures are powerful (rather than us talk, talk, talking).

If it is a young person, getting them to write about when things go right, when they attempted a difficult situation and some of the things they like about school.

These all re-write the story to the Hippocampus. ‘I’m ok, I’ve got this”

When things go right, focus on those, as we are building those Brave feelings and the story about school.

Exposure and the effort are more important than the Outcome!

If a whole day at school is too much, we want to avoid complete Avoidance.

This may mean they go to school for half a day, or ¾ of the day, as long as they are attempting to go, and in most cases getting there is the most important thing.

Then we build up to longer and longer amounts of time being at school and being ok.

It will still be hard, but we short-circuiting that pattern of huge relief when they don’t have to go to school.

Avoidance and relief confirm to the brain, this pattern works, so we’ll keep doing that. I know it’s so horrible the big feelings and behaviour that come with school refusal, this is why we don’t throw them in, but we want to build their self-belief and coping skills, bit by little bit.

Build feelings of Connection and Belonging

We are wired to feel safe when we have feelings of connectedness and belonging, our brains love this. However, you can build upon this, friends, groups, common interests.

I haven’t covered nearly enough, but will post some more strategies (think Part 2!), but this might be a good start x