Refusing to go to school
Description
School refusal happens when your child tells you or starts hiding from you that he does not attend classes. It is possible that this is related to strong stress that he experiences in the educational institution.
A comprehensive approach to such a situation, as well as psychiatric or medical help if needed, is important, as studies show that mental disorders are the reason why about 46% of children in the European Union fail to complete secondary school your education.
Parents can do a few things to help their child who doesn’t want to go to school, including making therapy appointments.
Using a comprehensive approach to solving this problem has an approximately 83% success rate of children who have been treated with cognitive therapy returning to school at a one-year follow-up.
Refusal from attending an educational institution is also considered as a sign of illness, and also there may be other completely different reasons.
What are the symptoms?
Your child may want to stop going to school at any age, but it most often happens at ages 5-7 or 11-14 -years of age. During these years of their lives, children face the changes associated with starting school and the transition from primary to secondary school.
They often change the school, they may go to study in another city, which changes cause stress for the still immature human personality. Preschool children can also refuse to attend an educational institution, even if they have no previous experience.
Usually, the child or adolescent, in addition to refusing to attend classes, also experiences primary distress at the thought of having to go to school.
A distinction must be made between children who are lazy and run away from classes and go to cafes, i.e. the truant and those who experience anxiety and fear and are often ashamed and feel inferior to that they are not able to go to school.
In the first case, the children usually brag to others that they do not go to school – i.e. truant, and in the second case they are worried and stressed – they suffer from the syndrome of refusing to go to school, although the definition of syndrome is exaggerated, in this case it is used to distinguish between the two types of behavioral manifestations.
Symptoms of this particular type of behavior are expressed in prolonged absence – usually a week or more without a valid reason such as illness and/or severe anxiety even at the thought of having to attend classes .
Distress or negative stress related to attending school is most often expressed in the following:
• The child cries or complains every morning before going to school;
• The teenager misses the bus or train to school every day and goes home with this excuse strong>;
• The child regularly develops some symptom of illness when it is time to go to school.
Treatment of refusal to go to school
Most often it consists of cognitive behavioral therapy in combination with systematic desensitization, specific behavioral techniques and therapy in which the child gradually is exposed to a gradual increase in the intensity and duration of the emotionally distressing event, encouraging him to change his maladaptive and maladaptive beliefs gradually enough that the child is able to overcome his previous distressing experience of attending stress free school.
