School refusal has been increasing globally since the Covid 19 pandemic. If your child is unhappy about attending school, you’re not alone! It has been defined as “Significant emotional distress at the idea of going to, or staying at, school.”

School Refusal or School Rejection?

Is it really school refusal, or can we look more broadly, and ask the question, is it actually school rejection. Are they telling us, through their behaviour, that our current school system is not meeting their needs?

Perhaps your child often complains of headaches, tummy aches or feeling sick in the morning before school? Or maybe you are called to pick them up from sick bay during the day. These are signs that we need to take note of. They are bringing us a message.

Causes of School Refusal

Reasons can be many and varied, depending on your individual circumstances – bullying, stressful life events, illness, transitions such as moving or changing schools. Missing too much school can make it difficult to keep up with learning expectations in class, and can negatively affect their social and emotional development. It can also be stressful for families, and difficult to deal with.

This article explores the possibility that the education system may not be meeting the needs of our children. It is based on my personal experience of 20 years supporting children with learning difficulties and challenging behaviours, and supported by current research into the nervous system and child development. Invariably, when asked if they enjoyed school, these children said “no”.

I offer suggestions for addressing the”why” behind school refusal, and share my dreams for the future.

School Refusal – What are the Children Saying?

Through school refusal, children are telling us that they don’t want to be at school! We need to ask ourselves “why?”. This begs the question “is it the children that are the problem or is the education system that we are trying to mould them to fit into”?

Could our school system be outdated, and not meeting the needs of today’s children?

My Story

As a creative person, my daughter struggled to fit the school system. 

All I wanted from her first year was for her to settle in, and make friends. However, the education system had other ideas, and wanted her to start reading in Kindergarten. I already knew that at 5 she wasn’t ready. Brain science tells us that children are ready for academic learning at around 6-7 when the two hemispheres of the brain have integrated.

The next year she was put into a class of emotionally disturbed children, who “needed extra help”. Her anxiety understandably increased, and she didn’t want to go to school. 

She changed classes, but the anxiety was still there. Becoming increasingly anxious, I sought medication to deal with her stress levels. Finally, I realised that I was medicating her to fit into an environment where she didn’t feel safe. Her nervous system was telling us this. We changed schools.

Understanding the “why” Behind the Behaviour

Then, in year 3, she became more unsettled, and her school refusals increased. She would often miss several days at a time, staying home while I “put her back together”. Eventually the school asked me how they could help to keep her in school. Finally, I “got the message”, and we started home schooling. 

Needing to understand the “why” behind her behaviour, I began studying, training in a neurodevelopment program, the Extra Lesson. We did the program together, and I started taking in students. I met many amazing young people, who taught me about classroom struggles.

Medicating Children to fit the Environment

This was 20 years ago, and clearly little has changed. We still use attention-enhancing drugs to make children fit into the classroom environment. So often, children who don’t fit are deemed to “need a diagnosis”. While this may feel helpful for some, not all parents want their child to be diagnosed and medicated. 

Perhaps you’re having a similar experience?

What if these behaviours are bringing us a message? Like my daughter, are your children, through their behaviour, telling us that they’re not comfortable at school?

What is the Role of Education?

Sir Ken Robinson, internationally renowned creativity and education expert, in his book Imagine if… identifies two main roles of education:

• To help people develop their natural capacities
• To make their way in the world around them.

He suggests that the current education system is no longer fit for purpose. We need to re-imagine  the concept of school-based education. He notes that our mainstream schools are traditionally biased towards academic ability, suggesting that this narrow perspective means they are “missing the vast diversity of human potential“.

The world is changing, and we need to change our education system to meet not only the needs imposed by new technology, but also to recognise the gifts inherent in each one of us.

All Children are Born Gifted

I believe all children are born gifted, and it is the role of education is to help them to develop these gifts, to lead the lives they deserve, building the capacity to achieve to their highest potential.

Children come with many talents and inherent abilities. They love to learn, and are naturally curious. Pressures of standardised testing, with a focus on marks and exams takes this enjoyment away for many. Failure to achieve can leave children with a sense of failure and damaged self esteem, through no fault of their own.

In a world that focuses on analytical thinking, where is the education stream for the creatives and the free thinkers? 

We Need to Feel Safe to Learn 

For many children, the classroom does not feel safe. The volume of sensory input can feel overwhelming, and the nervous system acts to support survival. This may be seen as a fight/flight response, or acting out. This behaviour is coming from below conscious awareness, and is bringing us a message.

We need to feel safe in order to learn, and benefit from classroom instruction. However, while adults may see the classroom as a safe environment, for many children their nervous system is telling them otherwise.

The result is often disruptive behaviours. However, traditional classroom management strategies involving punishment and exclusion can simply make things more difficult for the child. Their nervous system tells them that they are not safe, and need to stay alert. Consequently we see even more reactive behaviours.

With nervous systems constantly on high alert, is it any wonder that some children find this environment all too difficult? It’s perfectly normal to become defensive when we feel criticised.

Is Your Child Ready for School?

Many children enter the school system with delays in their early sensorimotor development. In other words, although they may be the accepted age for starting school, they are not developmentally ready. This is apparent, not only through their behaviour, and is confirmed with assessments for developmental readiness.

When children struggle to keep up early on, they miss important foundations for later learning. It doesn’t magically get any easier, and they will continue to struggle, no matter how hard they are trying. Learning delays become cumulative, and assessment invariably shows reading and number skills well below expected levels. The flow-on impact is poor self esteem and often, understandably, school refusal.

Would you ask a child to run with a broken leg? No matter how hard they try, and how much they want to to achieve, they will continue to struggle until the underlying issue has been addressed. The same happens when the early foundations for learning are incomplete.

We learn through our senses. Our nervous system picks up the sensory information and takes it to our brain for processing. The foundations for this are built in infancy and early childhood.

Early Development Supports Learning and Behaviour

According to Dr Bruce Perry, developmental neuroscientist and researcher in children’s mental health, our brains develop in a specific sequence. Each new stage builds on the foundations of earlier stages. This means that when early aspects of development are incomplete, subsequent stages may be a bit “wobbly”. In this case, children may not be quite ready for academic learning.

Children who have experienced early trauma will often have signs of immaturities in aspects of their early development. These may show up as difficulties in a number of areas, including listening, visual perception, sense balance, memory, hand-eye coordination, fine and gross motor skills. All of these skills are essential for classroom learning.

Early Trauma Affects Learning

Trauma is defined by Dr Gabor Mate, best-selling author and expert on trauma, as “an invisible force that shapes our lives…and the way we make sense of the world”. Research shows strong links between traumatic events during infancy and early childhood and learning delay.

The impact of covid lockdown was experienced as a trauma for many of us. This means that the experience was too big to be processed at the time. It was a frightening time, facing an unknown, unseen enemy. Add to this the pressures of home schooling and social isolation. Even though lessons were sent home, not everyone had access to computers, printers, or the time to educate children at home. 

Many young children also missed early socialisation experiences, while living in a stressful time. In NSW this was preceded by a major bushfire experience, which had also been very frightening and overwhelming for all of us.

The result meant that children may have missed out on important aspects of their learning and early development.

School Refusal – Putting it all Together

Putting all this together, trauma, early development and learning delay, is it any wonder that an increasing number of children and young people are refusing to attend school?

Maybe it’s time things changed. What if we saw education more holistically, honouring  children as uniquely gifted individuals, rather than products on an assembly line,  empty vessels waiting to be filled, or as  Dr Stephen Porges said his book “The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory” as “machines to be programmed”. 

What if we asked instead ”How can we help this child to develop their unique gifts?”

Dreaming into the Future 

Imagine if schools were:

• Offering an education based on an understanding of childhood and developmental readiness for learning 
• Holistic, addressing learning in all its forms, including social, emotional, physical, behavioural as well as academic
• Based on the principles of creativity, collaboration and compassion, as opposed to competition and testing 
• Able to address the importance of not only being safe, but also of feeling safe as a foundation for learning
• Not only trauma aware, but also trauma sensitive and trauma responsive 
• Offering movement-based neurodevelopment programs to ensure children are ready for academic learning
• Based on the needs of childhood, rather than political whim.

Counselling Can Help

If your child is reluctant to attend school, or you are struggling with absolute school refusal, counselling can help. 

Perhaps you can talk to your child, their school, and/or their school counsellor?

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Related Articles

• Success Stories – using a Neurodevelopment Program to Address Learning and Behaviour
  
• Understanding ADHD – an holistic approach to healing
  
• Does my child really need a Diagnosis of ADHD or Dyslexia?
  
• Links between Trauma, Listening and Learning Difficulties
  

References

• Robinson, K and K. Robinson. (2022). Imagine If…Creating a Future for Us All. Penguin. UK.
• Goodard Blythe, S. (2012). Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning. Wiley-blackwell. UK.
• Porges, S. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory. Norton. New York