Could anyone suggest tactics for tackling bedrot? Honestly I’m so worried about getting her to do anything. She’s never been a kid who has interests or hobbies, even when she was little
I have no idea how this will translate to nowadays but I never left my room; in those days it was just reading but I did nothing else. One day my parents said they’d signed me up for tennis lessons. This was just some young bloke at local courts. They drove me there weekly and then said you’ve joined a tennis club. Not posh (South Wales) but I was good enough to knock up with others by that stage and suddenly became obsessed by that instead. And I am not sporty! Sorry I don’t know what to suggest - yoga classes?
One factor to include is the impact of fatigue. Teens have to start school far too early for their body clocks. Every half term the last 10 days is hell with my 14 yr old. I actually deliberately fibbed and let her stay off the final Wednesday last half term because she was so tired.
The ideal for her would be a later start, learning at home one day a week and her own clothes. She gets very anxious (clin psych thinks probably ASD) and the noise etc as others have said
My daughter is a school refuser, since Feb half term and it is getting progressively worse. From Missing one day of school a week, to missing one or two lessons a day. We are now at a stage of on;y attending once or twice in every fortnight. The gap of half-term or even a weekend resets the thought process.
The association of the school building with anxiety is now the biggest fear and not the lessons or the dreaded girls ( all girls school).
School have been amazing and supportive to us all, because it is sooo hard, every day. And the onus falls on me, as the parent at home.
My daughter has been through one therapist - who kindly said there was nothing else she could do for us and we have started with another one this week.
But, goodness, I know it is common but sometimes i can't believe i'm begging her to put one foot out of the bed in the morning.
Our school has referred us to a specialist unit that offers small classes and one to one therapy. this aims to reintergrate back into the school after a twelve week programme. The therapists come back to the school with the child after a four week block away from mainstream school. I'm so hopeful this will work.
The things i have learnt is you can't throw money at this problem! and it's heartbreaking that you can't fix it for them.
I don't have any miraculous advice, i'm in the midst of it, just wanted to put this out there for any other parent going through it, you're not alone.
We're not at this age or stage yet, but my goodness this just shows the value of The Spike, Esther; so much priceless advice and testimony from so many empathetic, intelligent women. Saving for when we'll no doubt need this in a few years time. Thank you x
My kid was (is) anxious and avoidant. We had a compromise that they would go to the band room or the library, but not leave. We tried having them stay home, but then the going back spiral was just too, too, much. Finding someone, anyone, on staff that they could connect with helped so much. Staying outwardly calm myself was huge as well, and enough of the time that seeped inward that I stayed hopeful things would work out.
This got much tougher their first year of college - they got very close to dropping out first and again second year. Some of this was a truly terrible primary instructor, some was unhinged anxiety, some was loneliness. Third year starts in a few months, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my mantra of, "it takes how long it takes, and they will be okay in the end" intact.
I wasn't anything like as anxious as this and HATED university - it's a place where you can just vanish and sink very easily. awful. well done to you all for getting this far
I'm sure this guy does know what he is doing but really you would want to get EMDR treatment from a clinical psychologist or psychotherapist as it is important to also think holistically about the underlying trauma. I would also always recommend someone seek out an EBHSA specialist educational psychologist or occupational therapist for school refusal. I am the director of a not for profit mental health service and although I am sure there are individual practitioners that can deliver an standard manualised intervention such as EMDR (which is essentially a 3 day training just learning sessions by rote from a script) I would always prefer people who could do a bit more..... I am qualified to do EMDR and have a number of clinicians in my service who do- it is absolutely unbelievably effective in the right circumstances, and you can literally see the person changing in front of your eyes. However, it is important to know there are many cases for which it is not indicated, and there can also be a number f ways it fails, and I would strongly recommend seeing a highly qualified accredited clinician with wider evidence based training. The field is so misleading and I can't stand how hard it is to navigate with thousands of different titles- but you can't go wrong with a clinical psychologist in a CQC registered mental health service!
Gosh this was so timely for me after receiving a phone call yesterday from the school to tell me that one of my daughter's friends had reported, anonymously, on the school platform, that she has been "self-harming" (scratching, pulling her hair out). The school said there is a lot of mirroring of this type of thing going on at the moment.
After a bit of a sleepless night, full of thoughts of "oh shit, now what?!" and catastrophising the f*** out of the situation, to the point where in my head I was visiting her on the adolescent ward, your post, the book recommendations and comments have felt really helpful. I'm about to send it to my husband too. Thankyou!
This makes such excellent sense. As a fellow anxiety experiencer I recognise a lot of this. My go to panic is the fear that I’m going to die. Just suddenly drop dead. I’m counting the heartbeats and thinking I won’t see another day. Sitting here in the calm shade now makes me realise how dramatic it sounds but Christ anxiety feels real at the time.
I worked in an additional needs unit for many years and we had a number of children on the EBSA pathway.
People mock Emotionally Based School Avoidance as School Refusal gone woke but it really is what it says on the tin. Lots of time out of class, building up a shared plan and physical therapeutic activities all really helped. The biggest challenge or indeed supportive measure, was always the attitude of staff. It was everything.
Speccy if there had been someone like you at my school when I was 8 I would have stayed in school and surely that's what matters. Your anxiety Boggart is INSTANT DEATH, which is actually quite cool
My other one is believing that my son will be kidnapped and I will have to do one of those televised appeals. At particularly challenging moments, I have actually flicked through photographs on the iPad to see which would be a good one for the police to use.
I am laughing whilst typing this as I realise it is utterly ridiculous and a huge trick that my brain is playing on me.
I find my children’s’ anxious freak outs particularly triggering for some reason, I just need it to stop! And tend to loose my temper….I made one of them plunge their face in iced water once… it did work though… suddenly I was the crazy one and it was a good distraction. (I had read it was helpful for panic attacks) I think it’s worth mentioning that the end of year 8 start of year 9 is a notoriously tricky time for girls it seems… big changes in friendship circles, lots of bitchy behaviour, lots of hormones…
Neglectful sounds wrong, but I was regularly told either to feel differently to how I was feeling or that I didn’t feel the way I had told them I was feeling…. So I’m a masking expert now and find it hard to admit to difficult emotions….. feel at all cost I must keep them to myself.
I like what you said about treating it like it’s normal. This is my instinct too and it’s served me relatively well. My (then) 9 year old told me that she was hearing voices yelling at her and telling her to hurt herself.
My internal landscape was absolute blind panic but externally I managed to calmly say, ‘oh that sounds like it must be really hard, why don’t we see if you can talk to someone about that.’
I could see her watching me for my reaction and she visibly relaxed when I appeared calm. And I’m pleased to say that after some therapy she’s now a happy 12 year old and we haven’t had voices for over a year. But if they do come back I feel like we’re both equipped to handle it.
this sounds a lot to me like she was a bit stressed, had picked up this idea from somewhere and was trying it on for size. the key thing with voices is: are they coming from inside your head or outside? the right answer is: inside my head. Outside my head is less great
Yeah the therapist said that was most likely, although she may not have been doing it consciously. More she was feeling really anxious and that’s how it manifested.
I once heard Natasha Kaplinsky talking to me out of my TV. I was 24 and VERY stressed and upset. She said "Esssssthhheeeeerrrrrrr". It was quite scary. I got over it. Poor kid, but she's lucky to have you
I tutor anxious children - ‘school refusers’ in academic jargon. What I have found works well is to not go to their homes but to persuade them to come to a library. Importantly, away from their parents. It gives them enormous confidence to leave home, be in a different academic space, and approach the lessons from another angle. I spent this morning teaching English through the prism of the Vietnam War - said autistic child’s specialist interest. I totally agree with Esther’s piece. Keep calm, keep going out/to school, anxiety is normal, learn to breathe properly and tell the anxiety to sit at the back of the bus. You are the bus driver.
Lucy this is so helpful and I would like to ask you something. If a teenager was struggling with the sensory overload of school (she finds disruptive kids and shouting teachers hard, is in a quite aggro cohort, among other things) and begging not to go to school, sobbing, might the best alternative to then be to get out of the house to go somewhere else? I think I’m answering my own question as I type this, but I fear the bedrot so much that I keep dragging her in kicking and screaming. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to take her to the library even though I sometimes work from one.
For a couple of years I was my local Starbucks best customer…at the height of my daughter’s anxiety, self harming and school refusal I started taking her there 3 or 4 times a week (it’s a nice Starbucks with an upstairs and cosy nooks). She would read, do school work (and sometimes just stare at her phone), while I could get on with my work. It was much better than home where she would lie in her bed scrolling or binge watching stuff. We also discovered that she liked the library and as she started to go back to school we had an agreement that she could leave if she wanted to but would go to the library and study which she almost always did.
We didn’t start out like that, I have many memories of trying to persuade her to go in and being ‘tough’ on her where she ended up hysterical. It wasn’t worth the distress caused to both of us to try and make her attend school.
We saw a psychiatrist for a while due to the self-harming and he thought that it was quite rational not to like school as “they’re like zoos” and it’s pretty bizarre that we expect our children to spend their days in these noisy, busy buildings dealing with all the conflict and stress that comes with being a teenager.
We’re over the worst of it now, she’s in her last year of school and goes in most of the time although she says she’ll never enjoy it, she just tolerates it. Not very helpful when you’re in the thick of it but there’s a lot to be said for the passing of time and their brains maturing to a point where they can cope. My daughter wants to go to university and can rationalise dealing with the discomfort of school to get what she needs for uni.
I would definitely recommend the library. I am an academic at the university of Liverpool and came to tutoring as part of the response to heightened anxiety post Covid. I was horrified by the noise in schools, the shouting (pupils and teachers), the constant crackling of the two way radios, endless interruptions (again pupils and teachers) as an outsider that they were a cumulative contribution to an already over-stimulated child. I’m 58 and found it very hard to concentrate in that environment so have every sympathy with a sobbing child. I sit with them in a quiet, but public part of the library, and if the pupil is really anxious, tend to read aloud to them from short stories (Neil gaiman, Hemingway). This seems to be soothing and then we have a seminar type chat about the narrative. No pressure of assessment objective b**l**ks!! Or they choose their own book from the library and they write reviews etc. it’s all English at the end of the day and so much more fun than another session on An Inspector Calls.
Going through this at the moment with our 12 year old in year 7. He was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and ADHD just before starting secondary school and has found it all very overwhelming. The school have been great and he also sees a therapist outside of school to help him build some tools to help with his anxiety. He’s currently doing 3 full days & 2 half days at school and it’s made a big difference.
This is really helpful, thank you. My daughter was very anxious about school; we've now moved to an online school. It's early days, but she seems to be thriving. (I only mention it because I stumbled across online schooling -- I had no idea such schools existed until a few months ago.)
This is a minor addition to the wider theme but my son was given hypnosis (by an acquaintance who was studying child hypno-therapy) to stop him sucking his thumb before he started at senior school, which he was desperate to do anticipating being teased. It took only one session before he told me that ‘it didn’t taste right anymore’. He completely stopped after one session. That’s how plangent the tweenage/teenage brain is.
Could anyone suggest tactics for tackling bedrot? Honestly I’m so worried about getting her to do anything. She’s never been a kid who has interests or hobbies, even when she was little
I have no idea how this will translate to nowadays but I never left my room; in those days it was just reading but I did nothing else. One day my parents said they’d signed me up for tennis lessons. This was just some young bloke at local courts. They drove me there weekly and then said you’ve joined a tennis club. Not posh (South Wales) but I was good enough to knock up with others by that stage and suddenly became obsessed by that instead. And I am not sporty! Sorry I don’t know what to suggest - yoga classes?
One factor to include is the impact of fatigue. Teens have to start school far too early for their body clocks. Every half term the last 10 days is hell with my 14 yr old. I actually deliberately fibbed and let her stay off the final Wednesday last half term because she was so tired.
The ideal for her would be a later start, learning at home one day a week and her own clothes. She gets very anxious (clin psych thinks probably ASD) and the noise etc as others have said
Hey Esther, How timely this is...
My daughter is a school refuser, since Feb half term and it is getting progressively worse. From Missing one day of school a week, to missing one or two lessons a day. We are now at a stage of on;y attending once or twice in every fortnight. The gap of half-term or even a weekend resets the thought process.
The association of the school building with anxiety is now the biggest fear and not the lessons or the dreaded girls ( all girls school).
School have been amazing and supportive to us all, because it is sooo hard, every day. And the onus falls on me, as the parent at home.
My daughter has been through one therapist - who kindly said there was nothing else she could do for us and we have started with another one this week.
But, goodness, I know it is common but sometimes i can't believe i'm begging her to put one foot out of the bed in the morning.
Our school has referred us to a specialist unit that offers small classes and one to one therapy. this aims to reintergrate back into the school after a twelve week programme. The therapists come back to the school with the child after a four week block away from mainstream school. I'm so hopeful this will work.
The things i have learnt is you can't throw money at this problem! and it's heartbreaking that you can't fix it for them.
I don't have any miraculous advice, i'm in the midst of it, just wanted to put this out there for any other parent going through it, you're not alone.
We're not at this age or stage yet, but my goodness this just shows the value of The Spike, Esther; so much priceless advice and testimony from so many empathetic, intelligent women. Saving for when we'll no doubt need this in a few years time. Thank you x
My kid was (is) anxious and avoidant. We had a compromise that they would go to the band room or the library, but not leave. We tried having them stay home, but then the going back spiral was just too, too, much. Finding someone, anyone, on staff that they could connect with helped so much. Staying outwardly calm myself was huge as well, and enough of the time that seeped inward that I stayed hopeful things would work out.
This got much tougher their first year of college - they got very close to dropping out first and again second year. Some of this was a truly terrible primary instructor, some was unhinged anxiety, some was loneliness. Third year starts in a few months, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my mantra of, "it takes how long it takes, and they will be okay in the end" intact.
I wasn't anything like as anxious as this and HATED university - it's a place where you can just vanish and sink very easily. awful. well done to you all for getting this far
I'm sure this guy does know what he is doing but really you would want to get EMDR treatment from a clinical psychologist or psychotherapist as it is important to also think holistically about the underlying trauma. I would also always recommend someone seek out an EBHSA specialist educational psychologist or occupational therapist for school refusal. I am the director of a not for profit mental health service and although I am sure there are individual practitioners that can deliver an standard manualised intervention such as EMDR (which is essentially a 3 day training just learning sessions by rote from a script) I would always prefer people who could do a bit more..... I am qualified to do EMDR and have a number of clinicians in my service who do- it is absolutely unbelievably effective in the right circumstances, and you can literally see the person changing in front of your eyes. However, it is important to know there are many cases for which it is not indicated, and there can also be a number f ways it fails, and I would strongly recommend seeing a highly qualified accredited clinician with wider evidence based training. The field is so misleading and I can't stand how hard it is to navigate with thousands of different titles- but you can't go wrong with a clinical psychologist in a CQC registered mental health service!
Sorry for the lecture it's a bit personal for me!
thanks for this additional information
Gosh this was so timely for me after receiving a phone call yesterday from the school to tell me that one of my daughter's friends had reported, anonymously, on the school platform, that she has been "self-harming" (scratching, pulling her hair out). The school said there is a lot of mirroring of this type of thing going on at the moment.
After a bit of a sleepless night, full of thoughts of "oh shit, now what?!" and catastrophising the f*** out of the situation, to the point where in my head I was visiting her on the adolescent ward, your post, the book recommendations and comments have felt really helpful. I'm about to send it to my husband too. Thankyou!
This makes such excellent sense. As a fellow anxiety experiencer I recognise a lot of this. My go to panic is the fear that I’m going to die. Just suddenly drop dead. I’m counting the heartbeats and thinking I won’t see another day. Sitting here in the calm shade now makes me realise how dramatic it sounds but Christ anxiety feels real at the time.
I worked in an additional needs unit for many years and we had a number of children on the EBSA pathway.
People mock Emotionally Based School Avoidance as School Refusal gone woke but it really is what it says on the tin. Lots of time out of class, building up a shared plan and physical therapeutic activities all really helped. The biggest challenge or indeed supportive measure, was always the attitude of staff. It was everything.
Speccy if there had been someone like you at my school when I was 8 I would have stayed in school and surely that's what matters. Your anxiety Boggart is INSTANT DEATH, which is actually quite cool
My other one is believing that my son will be kidnapped and I will have to do one of those televised appeals. At particularly challenging moments, I have actually flicked through photographs on the iPad to see which would be a good one for the police to use.
I am laughing whilst typing this as I realise it is utterly ridiculous and a huge trick that my brain is playing on me.
it's giving us all a good laugh though
Good 😊
I find my children’s’ anxious freak outs particularly triggering for some reason, I just need it to stop! And tend to loose my temper….I made one of them plunge their face in iced water once… it did work though… suddenly I was the crazy one and it was a good distraction. (I had read it was helpful for panic attacks) I think it’s worth mentioning that the end of year 8 start of year 9 is a notoriously tricky time for girls it seems… big changes in friendship circles, lots of bitchy behaviour, lots of hormones…
Neglectful sounds wrong, but I was regularly told either to feel differently to how I was feeling or that I didn’t feel the way I had told them I was feeling…. So I’m a masking expert now and find it hard to admit to difficult emotions….. feel at all cost I must keep them to myself.
Okay this is interesting that it is triggering. Did you have hardcore semi-benignly neglectful parents by any chance?
I like what you said about treating it like it’s normal. This is my instinct too and it’s served me relatively well. My (then) 9 year old told me that she was hearing voices yelling at her and telling her to hurt herself.
My internal landscape was absolute blind panic but externally I managed to calmly say, ‘oh that sounds like it must be really hard, why don’t we see if you can talk to someone about that.’
I could see her watching me for my reaction and she visibly relaxed when I appeared calm. And I’m pleased to say that after some therapy she’s now a happy 12 year old and we haven’t had voices for over a year. But if they do come back I feel like we’re both equipped to handle it.
this sounds a lot to me like she was a bit stressed, had picked up this idea from somewhere and was trying it on for size. the key thing with voices is: are they coming from inside your head or outside? the right answer is: inside my head. Outside my head is less great
Yeah the therapist said that was most likely, although she may not have been doing it consciously. More she was feeling really anxious and that’s how it manifested.
I once heard Natasha Kaplinsky talking to me out of my TV. I was 24 and VERY stressed and upset. She said "Esssssthhheeeeerrrrrrr". It was quite scary. I got over it. Poor kid, but she's lucky to have you
That is pretty amazing.
I tutor anxious children - ‘school refusers’ in academic jargon. What I have found works well is to not go to their homes but to persuade them to come to a library. Importantly, away from their parents. It gives them enormous confidence to leave home, be in a different academic space, and approach the lessons from another angle. I spent this morning teaching English through the prism of the Vietnam War - said autistic child’s specialist interest. I totally agree with Esther’s piece. Keep calm, keep going out/to school, anxiety is normal, learn to breathe properly and tell the anxiety to sit at the back of the bus. You are the bus driver.
Lucy this is so helpful and I would like to ask you something. If a teenager was struggling with the sensory overload of school (she finds disruptive kids and shouting teachers hard, is in a quite aggro cohort, among other things) and begging not to go to school, sobbing, might the best alternative to then be to get out of the house to go somewhere else? I think I’m answering my own question as I type this, but I fear the bedrot so much that I keep dragging her in kicking and screaming. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to take her to the library even though I sometimes work from one.
For a couple of years I was my local Starbucks best customer…at the height of my daughter’s anxiety, self harming and school refusal I started taking her there 3 or 4 times a week (it’s a nice Starbucks with an upstairs and cosy nooks). She would read, do school work (and sometimes just stare at her phone), while I could get on with my work. It was much better than home where she would lie in her bed scrolling or binge watching stuff. We also discovered that she liked the library and as she started to go back to school we had an agreement that she could leave if she wanted to but would go to the library and study which she almost always did.
We didn’t start out like that, I have many memories of trying to persuade her to go in and being ‘tough’ on her where she ended up hysterical. It wasn’t worth the distress caused to both of us to try and make her attend school.
We saw a psychiatrist for a while due to the self-harming and he thought that it was quite rational not to like school as “they’re like zoos” and it’s pretty bizarre that we expect our children to spend their days in these noisy, busy buildings dealing with all the conflict and stress that comes with being a teenager.
We’re over the worst of it now, she’s in her last year of school and goes in most of the time although she says she’ll never enjoy it, she just tolerates it. Not very helpful when you’re in the thick of it but there’s a lot to be said for the passing of time and their brains maturing to a point where they can cope. My daughter wants to go to university and can rationalise dealing with the discomfort of school to get what she needs for uni.
Kitty finds the rowdiness and endless noise of school nightmarish
I would definitely recommend the library. I am an academic at the university of Liverpool and came to tutoring as part of the response to heightened anxiety post Covid. I was horrified by the noise in schools, the shouting (pupils and teachers), the constant crackling of the two way radios, endless interruptions (again pupils and teachers) as an outsider that they were a cumulative contribution to an already over-stimulated child. I’m 58 and found it very hard to concentrate in that environment so have every sympathy with a sobbing child. I sit with them in a quiet, but public part of the library, and if the pupil is really anxious, tend to read aloud to them from short stories (Neil gaiman, Hemingway). This seems to be soothing and then we have a seminar type chat about the narrative. No pressure of assessment objective b**l**ks!! Or they choose their own book from the library and they write reviews etc. it’s all English at the end of the day and so much more fun than another session on An Inspector Calls.
Excellent piece
Going through this at the moment with our 12 year old in year 7. He was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and ADHD just before starting secondary school and has found it all very overwhelming. The school have been great and he also sees a therapist outside of school to help him build some tools to help with his anxiety. He’s currently doing 3 full days & 2 half days at school and it’s made a big difference.
This is really helpful, thank you. My daughter was very anxious about school; we've now moved to an online school. It's early days, but she seems to be thriving. (I only mention it because I stumbled across online schooling -- I had no idea such schools existed until a few months ago.)
Diffi I'm very glad this worked out for you
This is a minor addition to the wider theme but my son was given hypnosis (by an acquaintance who was studying child hypno-therapy) to stop him sucking his thumb before he started at senior school, which he was desperate to do anticipating being teased. It took only one session before he told me that ‘it didn’t taste right anymore’. He completely stopped after one session. That’s how plangent the tweenage/teenage brain is.
This is so lovely… and helpful. Thank you x