Lesson 1 Homework, Tips and Case Studies

Once we figure out why your child is refusing school, it will be easier to work on a strategy for treatment. Let’s see if we can identify the reasons for school refusal in the following case studies.

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Strategies to help you understand why your child is school refusing

If your child won’t or can’t tell you why they’re refusing school, here are some strategies to help you figure it out:

STEP 1: Break a typical school day down into chunks and have your child grade the level of distress they have out of 10 for each part (0/10 least fear – 10/10 most fear).

OR: If your child is very young, you can draw three faces like this:  🙂    😐    🙁   and have your child point to a face for each section of their day.

Write it all down so your list might look like this:

1. Putting uniform on

2. Getting on the bus (or however your child gets to school);

3. Walking into school grounds

4. Home class

5. Science class

6. Recess

7. Art class

8. English class

9. Lunch

10. Math class

11. Sport class

12. Trip home

With your child, run through each of the sections of their day and have them grade each out of 10 – the ones with the highest numbers are likely triggers for the school refusal. HINT:  Keep this list for some work we’ll do on developing an Exposure Plan in Lesson 3.

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If your child does not cooperate, do this instead

The following forms have been designed for School Refusal – there is one for the child to complete and one for the parent to complete.  You’ll notice when you look at the questions that each refers to the four reasons for school refusal (Avoiding, Escape, Attention Seeking, Tangible Rewards).   Add up your scores – basically the highest scores are the reason for the school refusal.

HINT:  Your child may not want to do this exercise, that’s okay, you can do the adult based form to get some idea of what’s going on for your child.

Now you have a better idea of why your child is refusing school, let’s move onto some helpful parenting tips which will help your home become more harmonious.  Try these out this week and let us know how you go in the School Refusal Recovery Facebook group.

School Refusal Assessment Forms to Download

It is likely that for some of you, your child does not want to talk about school or why they do not want to attend. Luckily, these forms have been developed to help you out, there’s one for you and one for your child. If your child is young, you might have to ask them the questions and complete the form. If your child does not want to participate, that’s fine, you can fill out the form for parents. Add up all the columns and those with the higher numbers relate to each driver of the school refusal: Avoidance, Escape, Attention, or Rewards.

For Parents

For the Child

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Week 1: Parenting tips

Enforce home rules for school refusers (Negative Punishment)

I cannot stress how important this tip is – it is paramount to the success of getting your child back to the classroom.

Basically, only allow your child to do something that they would be allowed to do at school (eg. no use of phones, music, tv,  etc).

• Set an alarm the same time as if the child was going to school
• Remove the child’s devices
• Do not allow tangible rewards such as going out for lunch or allowing gaming
• Do not make a fuss of the child – go about your day
• Enforce learning plans – your child needs to keep up with their school work
• At the end of the ‘school day’ allow your child normal privileges (these rules are enforced during normal school hours – including the time it takes to go to and from school)
• Turn off the modem and remove devices at the same time every night to ensure they get enough sleep.
• Do not allow any gaming at night.  Ever.

Irrespective of the trigger, maintain a calm and logical demeanor.   If there’s a conflict, it’s best to remove the emotion and use the “grey rock” approach (below) where their behavior is not triggering you and thus transitioning the argument.  Stick to the point.

Be the ‘grey rock’

Parenting is hard and can be overly emotional. When your child is defiant, they may be angry, and this may make you angry.  Emotional gut reactions generally don’t help to calm conflict, so it’s best to recognize what’s occurring and remove the instinct to be angry, but instead handle the situation in a calm voice.  Often children provoke fights to deflect from the situation at hand – basically to change the discussion (another avoidance technique). Repeat in your head ‘be the grey rock’, to calm yourself and remove all emotion, and maintain a more logical approach.  Make sure your breathing is calm – the goal is to not get emotional.

Link privileges to good behavior (positive reinforcement)

Privileges should be taken away if your child is disrespectful to you or others, refuses to comply with house rules, or calls you or anyone else names.  These are behaviors that must not be reinforced. Privileges are electronics, internet, gaming, money, driving, sleepovers, and time with friends and these should only be allowed when the child is behaving appropriately. Don’t worry about thinking you’ll be mean, you’re actually doing your kid a favor doing this (more about this later). Reinforce ‘good’ behaviors only and always punish ‘bad’ behaviors.

Great job for getting through Lesson 1. See you next Lesson.