Teenage daughter refusing to go to school
For the last term and a half our 13-year-old daughter has been refusing to go to school.
This currently consists of not getting up, or not getting dressed, or ripping her school uniform so she has nothing to wear, hiding her shoes, refusing to leave the house, and so on.
Last term she often said that she felt unwell, sometimes a headache, sometimes feeling sick, or sometimes her arm hurting. She had many investigations by the GP and the hospital; generally the diagnosis was that she is a healthy girl, but tense, and the GP has suggested an anxiety disorder.
This term, the only way we have been able to get her to go in has been to micro-manage her morning routine, checking every 5 or 10 minutes that she is awake, starting to get dressed, packed her bag, wearing shoes, and so on.
Even then she will still sometimes refuse to leave, just standing there motionless. On various different occasions we have had to put her shoes on her, and this morning I had to physically drag her from the house to the bus stop, with her trying to grab onto the door, the railings, the gate, and then refusing to get on the bus until I dragged her on with me. She was crying and screaming all the time.
The school is obviously unhappy with her lack of attendance, and we have been in to see our daughter's head of year and headteacher several times. The school reassures us that whenever they check on her, she is playing happily with friends, or working well in lessons, and that there must be some problem at home. However, during the two week half term (just ended) she was a lovely, happy girl, enjoying meeting up with her friends to play.
The school is now talking about us being prosecuted for failing to send her to school. (We are in the UK, where - as they keeps reminding us - parents can be sent to prison if their kids do not attend school.) Her attendance this term is currently around 55% - typically we can get her to go in 2-3 days a week.
I am in tatters over having to use force like this. As I write this it is two hours since I got her on the bus, but I am still shaking and in tears. Furthermore, using force like this could no doubt also get me sent to jail.
There are clearly some issues with school: for one, her allocated school locker is a touchy subject. She complains that she doesn't have one, but gets evasive and gives inconsistent answers when we quiz her on this at different times. It seems that the school gave each of them keys to their own locker, but now another girl is using our daughter's for her PE (Physical Education) kit (so that she has two lockers, one for her books and one for her PE kit).
The school claims not to have records of which locker was assigned to which girl, and has asked for us to get further details of this; when we suggest that we talk to the school about her locker she demands that we not do so.
(This reminds me very much of when I was bullied at secondary school: the boys who were taking the books out of my school bag told me that if I went to my parents or the teachers they would make my life even worse.)
There also seem to be some issues to do with her homework: while she is generally a bright girl, she sometimes gets stuck on homework. She absolutely hates to be noticed or make a fuss, so won't ask the teacher for clarification or help. But she is also very eager to please, and hates to disappoint, so she hates to hand in work that isn't perfect. Then she's stuck.
Neither me nor my wife know how to help her with this stalemate.
We are awaiting referrals for help with her mental health around this, but are completely out of ideas.
It is also particularly hard (i.e. often impossible) to get her to go in on a day that there is PE. Unlike our other daughters, this one seems embarrassed by the changes her body is undergoing; she is very much in the middle of her changes; she hunches her shoulders forward so the shape of her chest can't be seen.
Her school attendance is at the point of tearing our family apart.
I don't think the issue is just one of bullying: I think there are multiple issues all happening at once. Obviously resolving any one of these issues is going to take time, but we need her to be going to school every day.
We have obviously considered moving her to another school, but the homework and body-image issues will follow with her, and it has been our experience (both with other daughters and those of our friends) that there will be bullying at any school. So she would have to start again; at least at the current school she does have some friends.
(When we ask her if she'd like to change schools, sometimes she says yes, sometimes she says no.)
We have tried discussing the subject head-on with her, but again she gets evasive and becomes uncommunicative.
Both my wife and I work full time. It is likely that one of us will have to give up work to deal with this; that would involve selling our house (we live in the house that my wife's parents lived in before they died; it has been in her family for something like 30 years) and moving to a much cheaper area. We have lived in this area for 25 years, so all our friends and support network is here.
Our daughter has two older sisters: 16 and 18. The oldest is away at university. Neither of them had any problems with school attendance; they are both bemused by her behaviour, tell her she must go in, but she still won't.
We have been unsuccessful in determining what specific issues there are, nor has she confided in her sisters or friends (that we've been able to find out). We are only aware of the locker issue because of noticing her evasion and inconsistent answers to some very specific questions. The other issues are really supposition.
If anyone has any ideas we are clutching at straws.
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Though this has been answered I will tell you what worked for me as the teen when I was in high school, and what it was like for me.
I had a very rough time in High School. Not because of bullies or some such but because the entire system was more about grinding you down into conformity then educating you. I had been thought the same things, the same lessons, some times verbatim, in most subjects. It was like 8 hours of mind numbing tedium every day. When I did have a subject that I was interested in or excelled at the school either didn't offer it again, or wouldn't let you take it. And I don't just mean optional classes. I loved history, specifically European late medieval history. However that subject was no more then a week long in "World History". There was a "creative writing" class that I truly enjoyed, and I hate English as a subject, but it only lasted 9 weeks, then I was not allowed to take it again. All in all the class load was such that going to school was really just a horrid experience. A true internal fight between doing what was right (going to classes) and doing what I thought was better (skipping school and going to the public library).
What it created,in my mind, was a set of people (teachers and administrators) that I had to basically "put up with" while at the same time feeling like a moo cow being herded though a milking carousel.
From the outside, parents and other concerned adults thought it was a bulling problem, or that something "really wrong" had happened because by 10th grade you could not get me to go to school. You could drop me off, walk me into class, and the first chance I would get I would just leave. But I could not express why. If I said the classes were wrong or uninteresting, no one paid attention to that.
The fix, was for me to "drop out" of high school. My grandfather withdrew me from school. Did the whole, "Well if your not going to go I can't make you." route. Then proceeded to encourage and require that I follow my education outside school. If I wanted to lean about X then off it was to find someone that could teach about X.
After about a year of this kind of education, I was well informed in how to use resources outside of school to further my education. At the same time, I learned that the high school diploma wasn't as valuable as it had been made out to be, but that I probably still wanted one.
As the next school semester started, we approached the school district (this would have been the second half of 11th grade) and laid out the facts for them. I was a good learner, but I didn't do well if they couldn't offer anything to teach. Making me learn the same match skills 4 years in a row isn't going to work, but here I can do basic and complex math. It took some effort, but we convinced the school district (not any one school) to allow me to take night classes at my own pace to make up for the core classes I didn't have or had previously failed. This means I took classes from 9th, 10th, and 11th grade at night for a semester "passing" high school in about 18 weeks.
With the core classes out of the way, they wanted me to take a GED, just to make sure I was actually able to. So I did and got a perfect score. I did 12th grade in school, but with the oddest schedule anyone had ever seen. I requested 1 English class, cause I suck at it, and they required me to take several electives, because you can't take those at night.
I Graduated on time, when on to collage, blah blah blah, generally a success.
Now the reason why I tell you this really long story, is because your daughter may be in a similar situation. Not everyone is going to do so well with the conformity factory schools have become. Add in bullies, and the increasing amount of stress (in all my life I have never been so stressed as in High School), and you have a really emotionally negative situation for some kids. Essentially the entire system is working against them, and they don't know how to express that, because it is literally the entire system. TV shows, movies, media, ads, parents, friends, churches, doctors, literally every single person a teen looks up to is in on the system and pushing for the same goal. And there they are (the teen), just waning something, anything different.
Now you say your in the UK, so I don't know what you can do. But is there a way you can give your daughter a break? Can you withdraw her from school for a short while? Is there a way she can experience life out side of school? Can she direct her education on her own for a while? Is there any way you can provide her a break, a rest, or retreat from High School. Even for a year. Even if she falls behind. It could make all the difference in the world. Even if it's her changing body and hormones that have her tied in knots, a year from now, that will be in a totally different place.
A year, or even a semester, can make a huge difference, and it can give you time to rebuild any damage this has cause at home.
To the already excellent answers on how to deal with your daughter, i would like to add that the school is totally failing her and your familly.
Your child is in their care, she has serious problems at the school and all they can offer are threats? They cannot even be arsed to sort out the locker thing? Really?!
They have to start understanding that this is a huge problem for your daughter, for you and also a risk for them as school. Their failure could lead to anything from sanctions from the authorities to bad press, so they really should start doing their job.
At the very least they should answer straightforward questions like who is using your daughters locker and who of the school staff has failed to act on this. This in turn may give you clues on what is really going on.
Getting them to cooperate in trying to find out what is happening may actually benefit your relationship with your child by showing her that you are on her side. When i was her age i had a tiny run in with the school, but my dad sorted it out and it still makes me smile:
There was a party and to avoid outsiders gatecrashing it, when a kid bought a ticket their name would be crossed off the list. An older girl bought a ticket in my name and also spread the rumour that i allowed this. The school said there was nothing they could do about it.
When my dad went to school to sort it out he accidentally stumbeled into the principals office without knocking. The latter somehow misinterpreted this, got al defensive and apologised profusely while cautiously backing up. (My dad is a very nice an sociable guy, but sometimes a but clumsy). Needless to say, i got a ticket to go to the party.
Another possibility that occurred to me while reading this is that she may be having gender identity issues. My youngest child (now 17) recently transitioned from their birth gender (female) to non-gender binary and had their breasts removed over the summer. The change in their demeanor has been striking - they are much happier in school now.
We have been to see several different therapists to help with this, including family therapy for all of us, therapy for just my wife and I, and private therapy for our child. This has taken place over the last 2 1/2 years or so.
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