故事墙

Sad and disappointed to read that the plight of today's school Refuser hasn't changed much since my nightmare experience in elementary and high school in the late 50's and  60's.

As a child born with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder I hated school and started running away at age 7. Because I was forced to go to school under fear of the police getting involved I was smart enough to figure out ways to avoid school an avoid the truancy cops. I would leave home in the morning- brown paper lunch bag in hand and walk the 20 minutes to school. I knew that if I was marked "present" in the first class of the morning then nobody knew when I would simply walk out of school and keep going. The feeling of freedom when I was hiding out in the forested areas of my neighbourhood was exhillerating and I knew no cop was going to go looking there. After all they couldn't imagine a seven or eight year old off in the woods all day by himself. But the cops never caught me but I failed two grades making me two years older than my classmates which made things even worse.

In grade 10 I was finally kicked out. At that point I was physically able to take on the teachers who seemed to enjoy making my life miserable and making me feel like a loser. A physical dust up with a gym teacher who took great pleasure in making me feel like a loser because I was a chubby kid and very bad at sports. I ended up taking a high school graduation course at home  WHICH I PASSED EASILY! This was a kid who never got more than a C in any school subject.

Today I am a happily retired multimillionaire who spent 20 years as a [redacted] travelling the world for two major networks  and then moving into the movie business (a childhood dream) as a [redacted] having made over [redacted] movies and winning numerous awards.

My rotten experience in public school made me put both my kids into private school fro JK to grade 12 in classes with a maximum of 15 kids. Both my  children are very sucessful- one a PHd in history teaching at the university level and my son is an up a coming executive. I have been married to the same woman for 35 years.

If only one school official had taken an interest in an obviously intelligent, artistic kid who loved to read and draw and write short stories but who simply could not handle school culture because he suffered both extreme anxiety and very low self esteem.

My son began showing signs of school phobia at the beginning of Grade 11 following the numerous shutdowns of in-person learning. However, looking back, both he and his twin brother began exhibiting signs of school phobia as early as kindergarten. It was only when my son began missing multiple school days (beyond being late) that I became deeply concerned about the pattern that was emerging. The consequences have been severe—not only a drop in grades from A to D, but also a visible decline in his self-esteem, sense of belonging, and other factors that help a young person feel validated. My son—so full of artistic and creative gifts—lies listlessly in bed when he should feel excited about the day, shutting himself off from the outside world. It has been a painful and humbling journey. The mornings have become a source of dread, as I am never sure what to expect. This experience has also impacted our family dynamic by increasing stress to the point that it has contributed to my own anxiety, along with feelings of depression and self-doubt as a parent. A recent psychoeducational assessment identified mild inattentive ADHD along with social anxiety. Previous testing in Grade 5 had only identified “gifted” and generalized anxiety disorder. The ongoing question now is, “Where do we go from here?” Experiencing a child with school phobia has shown me, even as an educator, how limited the current system is in supporting children and families. It has also highlighted the need for broader societal change to better demonstrate that we truly value our youth.

I don’t know where to start. I do know that my daughter was left behind in the school system. She experienced a major trauma in kindergarten, which I reported to the school. In Grade 1, she began having significant difficulties that showed in her behavior. I realized she hated going to school and suspected she had a learning disability. I requested testing, but it was denied because she was considered too young. Despite that, we continued moving forward. I asked for extra help, and while we received some support, it was not enough.

In Grade 2, we were having weekly meetings with the school about her behavior. She wanted to go home every day, and the school did not feel like a safe place for her. I had to move to part-time work due to needing to pick her up frequently. Eventually, the school agreed to conduct a psychoeducational assessment. The assessment provided useful information, but the school was not willing to follow the recommendations. We felt that the principal was dismissive toward both our daughter and us, and that we were being blamed.

At the time, I did not fully understand what was happening, so we tried half days of school three days a week. Things continued to worsen. We sought external support, and it was decided that she should be placed in a behavioral class at another school. We hoped this would help, as our primary concern was removing her from the original school environment. However, the situation did not improve. She remained in that class from Grade 3 through Grade 8, and her behaviors continued to escalate. She increasingly refused to stay in the classroom, and we had ongoing meetings and frequent calls to pick her up. We even escalated the situation to the school board for support, but this also did not resolve the issue. In her final year of elementary school, police were called after she was found walking the halls with scissors. It took four officers to restrain her, and she was transported to the hospital for evaluation. She was admitted to the [redacted] for a week and placed on additional medication. This was heartbreaking. After that, she did not want to return to school, but we felt we had no choice and feared further involvement from authorities if she did not attend. In Grade 9, she was placed in a specialized class. I received daily calls to pick her up because she would not remain in the classroom. Despite repeated meetings and sharing all assessments and recommendations, little changed. She has been suspended many times.

The pattern has continued each year. She is now in Grade 11, and we opted for online learning, but that also did not work because she was placed in regular classes. She is functioning at approximately a Grade 3 level academically, yet is expected to perform at grade level. She wants to return to school, but I feel like the “bad one” for keeping her at home, knowing what the likely outcome would be. The school system has not changed in our experience. That is the short version of our story, though there is much more. She is currently in counseling and has been for several years.

Situation 1: My child has always been extremely anxious about fire drills, to the point of refusing or attempting to refuse school on days when drills were scheduled. A new principal came in and implemented a strategy that allowed my child to receive advance warning 5–10 minutes before a drill, leave the classroom, and exit the building with a firefighter before the alarm sounded. This approach worked well, and over time my child even became comfortable enough to accompany the firefighter who triggered the alarm.

This strategy remained in place for about four years and was effective. Then a new principal arrived. The fire drill accommodation stayed in place initially, but without consulting either my child or us as parents, the new principal decided to observe how my child would react without the strategy. The principal later stated that my child did not appear anxious and therefore did not believe the accommodation was necessary.However, it was necessary. The principal did not seem to recognize that anxious children can mask their anxiety. As a result, the trust that had been built over several years was lost, and my child returned to refusing school during fire drill periods.

Situation 2: At the age of 12, my child went through a serious depressive and anxious phase to the point of discussing self-harm and researching ways to commit suicide. As parents, we sought treatment immediately through a paediatrician and a child psychologist. A plan was put in place, including strategies coordinated with the school, such as having the teacher closely monitor my child and watch for any signs of concern.

At the end of the year, my child transitioned to a junior school located next door. A case conference was held, attended by principals from both schools, SERTs from both schools, my child’s teachers, the psychologist overseeing treatment, and us as parents. The principal of the junior school was fully informed of the concerns and situation. Letters from the paediatrician and psychologist were placed on file at both schools, and we ensured ongoing communication with the new school at the start of the September term.

Anxiety began to emerge shortly after the new school year started. Administration was reminded of my child’s mental health history and academic needs. A case conference was held in November, attended by the same principal, SERT, and psychologist as six months prior. At that meeting, the principal stated that they had not been informed of any mental health concerns or self-harm risk. During the same meeting, one teacher indicated that if my child was feeling anxious, they would need to come forward and inform the teacher in order to receive help, despite having been informed multiple times that self-advocacy is a significant challenge for my child.

Situation 3: My child struggles with fine motor skills, which makes writing very laborious. We frequently had to request handouts, notes, and other materials to help keep up. There were no difficulties with comprehension. One week, my child had two tests. Despite asking for support with notes, the help did not arrive, and my child did not have all the necessary information to prepare. As a result, both tests were failed. My child then refused to go to school due to feelings of shame over the results. I contacted the SERT to discuss the situation, and the SERT suggested that my child might benefit from taking some time to rest and reflect on how they could have performed better.

Situation 4: For a year and a half, my child reported being bullied at school, including name-calling, harassment, and being ostracized. These concerns were raised with the principal on multiple occasions. On one occasion, I was informed by another parent that both of our children had been sent to the principal’s office following a minor schoolyard altercation. My child was very upset, as they do not have behavioral issues, and being sent to the principal’s office was considered a very serious matter.

Because I had a good relationship with the other parent, who was also concerned, I contacted the principal to ask what had happened. There had been no communication from the school informing us of the incident. I emailed the principal in a neutral and respectful tone to inquire, but I did not receive any response. Meanwhile, my child became increasingly anxious about attending school. It took two weeks to receive a response, which only occurred during an in-person IEP meeting. The principal stated that they had not replied to my email because it was based on hearsay and that they do not respond to what they considered gossip. During the remainder of that year, the bullying continued. The following year, a new principal took over. Although more receptive to listening, the situation did not significantly improve, as efforts to address specific bullying issues were reportedly unsuccessful. Eventually, my child became unable to continue attending school, expressing feelings of being unsafe and stating that nothing was being done to address the bullying.

When I informed the principal that I could no longer, in good conscience, require my child to remain in that environment, the response was that the school had “nice kids,” that staff had not observed anything concerning, and that the issue must be my child’s perception. This response appeared to dismiss my child’s experience by attributing it to their learning difficulties, despite those difficulties not affecting their ability to recognize bullying.

Given the lack of effective support, we withdrew my child from the school, began home instruction, and eventually transferred to a different school. Months later, the children who had been involved in the bullying came to our home voluntarily to apologize. This was meaningful to us, as it showed accountability from the children themselves, even though the adults responsible for supervision and support had not addressed the situation effectively.

I have many other scenarios I could share; I could write a book.

My daughter is a bright, intelligent child. She excelled in grade 7. But she was bored. She would always finish early in class. Teachers would tell her to sit quietly if she had no work, sometimes for up to an hour. She was not allowed to go to the library or out in the hall to play cards, etc. In grade 8 (September/October 2018), she became disillusioned with school and started to talk back to teachers. Then teachers would be rude to her, talk down to her, and send her to the office. She started to fake illness to not go to school. Then she started cutting. She became suicidal in January of grade 8. I spoke with the counsellor at her school and told him what was going on with her and asked him to talk to everyone involved at school. My daughter would miss 59/120 days of school by April of grade 8. I would tell her teachers what was going on and ask what else I could do. I was told I was doing everything I could. No one contacted me or asked why she was missing so much school. No one cared. Finally, she had a big fight with a teacher at the school, and my husband and I came in to the school to figure out how to proceed. It was then, in May 2019, that we found out about IEPs. No one had told us that you could get one for your child for anxiety/depression. We met with the vice principal and she questioned if my daughter “really needed” an IEP. I had paperwork sent over from her paediatrician and her CYMH counsellor within a day. To this day - January 2020 - we still do not have an IEP written for her. We had a meeting in October to talk about what we want in it. She has been approved for $9,300 in extra funding related to her IEP, but nothing in writing. We have asked for EAs in her core classes. Nope. She’s not “sick enough”. I don’t see how the extra funding she gets - basically $1000 a month - is spent. Not to her benefit. The only things keeping her going to school are that she loves her math/science teacher (who supports her, recognizes that she is smart but needs to walk around) and bribes from me. Also - drugs are a huge problem at her school. First day back after Christmas: “Mom, you wouldn’t believe how many kids asked me to do weed with them at lunch.” Why do I need to fear that my child will be exposed to drugs at school, of all places? I have talked to the [redacted] and the principal both, and their “hands are tied” unless they know of a kid that is in possession; then they can search their locker. Thank you for engaging with parents.

Despite all the talk and supposed education on bullying, it has not gotten better. If anything, it is worse. In my daughter’s first year of high school, she was slapped in the face during class, and the teacher did nothing. In another class, a boy constantly told her to kill herself; the teacher knew and did nothing. These are some of the reasons why my daughter’s anxiety and depression became extreme and why she consistently refused to go to school.

My child had low-key anxiety, but then got suddenly sicker with a whole bunch of things. She had daily panic attacks at school. She was told she was disruptive, and she had to leave the class. In reality, she had her head down on her desk and her breathing was loud. Making her leave class put her more on edge; this made the attacks more frequent. Peers ignored her; this also increased the attacks. In one instance, she was dragged across a hall in front of the school because she was panicking in the corner. She was asked to take a week off. She then started being unable to walk into class. Or be there. She slid into worse depression, couldn't go to class, and lost a whole year of high school. She had a 4-week in-hospital stay that improved her self-confidence at the end of the school year. She started a new school the next year. She was at a small school, which was supposed to help, but didn't. The large public school has been so much better and more helpful.

My son's kindergarten teacher would call me and tell me he would not sit on the sitting mat and for that he was disciplined. He has never sat still and when he and I study for tests, he is either jumping on the trampoline while I explain things to him and he asks questions, or he has a hockey stick in his hands and is stick-handling while I teach. I know he can't do that in a classroom, but he cannot focus while sitting at a desk all day long listening to lectures and doing questions out of books. What adult even learns this way??? Now, he's in grade 9 and at parent-teacher interviews, I'm still getting, “He can't sit still.” I say, “Well, I'll buy him a swivel chair and he can swing back and forth while he listens”, but the school board refuses this. Even a Bosu ball would work, but all students need to have this option so that my child is not considered “special”. My child's teachers are unable to provide him with the accommodations he needs because class sizes are too big, and last year our government issued a policy that any work that is marked is not allowed to come home as homework and must be completed in school. So now my son is told that he must complete his work, that he requires extra time to do, at recess or at lunch! Seriously! That's the only time during the day that he can move! Before, he'd come home with unfinished work, and I would ensure that it was done and teach him what he needed to know using visuals and explanations for better understanding. Since that policy has come in, he has been failing because he refuses to give up his only active gym time at school. Have I already said that I hate our education system! I could do so much better, but my children want to play school sports, and they can't do that if I take them out to homeschool them.

My son started having anxiety in grade 5, and as he got older it worsened. By grade 9, I was fighting with him to go to school; in grade 10, he just stopped going. I had meetings with the school. They offered a quiet room to do work and an in-home tutor. He should be in grade 12 this year, but because they only had one way to deal with this, he is now waiting to turn 18 to be allowed to get an education. We have been to the hospital because of his suicidal thoughts, only to be given a bandaid approach and a name for a psychiatrist with a two-year waiting list. A family doctor said his problem was that he was growing too fast; that’s why he felt dizzy, shaky, and sick to his stomach.

When my children were four and eight, their father decided to absent himself from their lives on a semi-permanent basis, which has increased over the last twelve years to the point of a visit two or three times a year for a meal. Our home caught fire, with me home alone, a month after he left. He bankrupted our family four months later, leaving the children and me homeless and me without a job or money. My family lived a day’s drive away, and I couldn’t leave the County due to legal constraints. The children remember all of this.

We stabilized with a small rental and a job that allowed me to parent without babysitters very often for two years. At that time, a new man came into our lives and became very important to the children as we became closer and eventually married four years later and moved into his home. He passed suddenly six weeks after the wedding from cancer that was undetected until four weeks before he passed, leaving the three of us in a new area and no family support and no social support.

The children “crashed” at different times, my older son within a year of his stepfather's death, and my daughter two years later after the death of my father, her only consistent grandfather.

Life is often unpredictable and traumas happen, both intentionally and by chance. Children must be allowed to heal.

Every day they have good intentions of going to school and doing well, until they go to bed and think all night about everything they have to do the next day. They are then too exhausted to get up in the morning; they basically freeze...fight or flight mode.

My daughter started struggling with her organization in grade 5. Her male teacher would call her lazy and intimidate her to try and get her to do homework. Her best friend turned on her in grade 7, and my daughter started to show signs of anxiety and was sick a lot. In grade 8, she couldn’t go to school in the last month and only dragged herself in to graduate. In the summer of grade 8, we paid $3,000 for the psychoeducational assessment, which showed ADHD-I and anxiety, along with gifted levels of English comprehension and writing. She had low math comprehension in certain areas. Her doctor prescribed Concerta, and she was given a dose at 6 a.m. to wake up. She had appetite loss and was only able to eat two hours after the drug wore off. Often 7 p.m. was her first meal of the day. She was able to attend school full-time without proper accommodations until February. At that point, she was exhausted and full of anxiety, and refused to take the medication. We experimented with different doses and tried a new drug, without any results. Currently, she is completely off medication and is not going to school. She is experiencing social and general anxiety. We moved from [redacted] to an island in [redacted] to give her the quiet nature setting she loves. She is happy but unable to attend school. We have sought help from the high school and youth mental services, but the latter has very long waiting lists.

My son has always struggled with anxiety, but after witnessing his younger sister get injured by their father - she died a horrific death - he has complex PTSD on top of the anxiety. Neither our legal system nor our school system recognizes his poor attendance as school refusal or as a result of his struggling with his mental health. He’s been labelled a bad kid, lazy, unmotivated, and difficult.

My daughter has panic attacks about school, especially when teachers speak in a condescending tone that is intended to imply encouragement but actually just lacks understanding of what my child is struggling with. Oftentimes, the teachers don’t have other solutions or approaches to a situation other than to say, “Well, just try your best!”, and when your child is already trying their best, this feels like failure. My child, too, can be stubborn to try different approaches; for example, she initially refused audiobooks because she had always been an avid reader until PANS caused her some kind of scrambled reading disorder similar to dyslexia that she never had before and never learned to cope with. She would just rather that certain criteria weren’t required, such as reading a book and then answering worksheets about what she has read. She loathes worksheets and homework, and flat-out refuses to do either, especially outside the classroom setting. She would rather read and take a test and be done. It's also been our experience that anything different from the typical course is seen as “catering to” and an “easy pass” for my child; they'll even sometimes SAY so, even when our ideas are just as educationally challenging - easy is not what we are going for - and that attitude, in fact, reinforces the whole doubt of why school is even important for her anyway, since there’s no challenge or new material, a question she often asks me, and at this point, with the attitude the school has given me, as if it is just a requirement of the law and they just need her to be a warm body there for a minimum number of hours a week, it's hard to tell her that it matters. We go to these 504 meetings intending to bring new suggestions based on how my daughter learns best, such as being allowed to draw during lectures (it helps her retain the info she is hearing), or taking larger or more frequent tests on a subject, as opposed to homework and worksheets with redundant, and often subjective, questions that leave her panicking because she obsesses over what the teacher might have been thinking when she wrote the question rather than what she herself has learned from the material. Learning should be a part of life that is more individually encouraging, paced, and designed, especially for kids who aren’t neurotypical. The school has even denied us an actual 504 this year, saying all the accommodations she needs are met through their after-school tutoring program, but they're not. The after-school tutoring program is designed for kids who can’t attend during the day because they have a variety of things going on, but almost all of those kids are neurotypical kids with life circumstance issues...my kid is not...and continuing to push that envelope makes her feel even more isolated and feel as if she doesn’t belong there but has to be there. My child isn’t intellectually delayed, but she is being passed along as such, as long as she shows up. Half the time she can’t even do that because her symptoms are unpredictable and unplanned, and stress makes them worse, and they make it seem like she is just lazy and slow, neither of which is her at all. She is actually quite gifted, and their school counsellor even stated so when she looked at my daughter’s test scores and educational history. It’s almost like they just don’t believe us, that this illness has seriously got her so far off the course of a normal life that school would be better off delayed altogether until we could at least begin treatments. They promised to “just pass her” if she shows up for her twice a week two-hour tutoring. Even they agree it isn’t fair to her...she deserves better, but they put that on her, like, “You deserve better and could do better, but you would have to try harder. If you're not willing to try, then this is what we have to offer.” They don’t seem to realize how hard it is and how much it takes out of her just to TRY to leave the damn house. I've asked them if they'd treat her the same way if she had cancer or was in a coma, and they simply respond, “But she isn’t”, as if this isn't as serious as either of those, and it is! My daughter's own immune system attacks her brain every time she encounters a germ it doesn’t like...this means she doesn’t get normal symptoms; this means we don’t even know when she’s sick, sometimes until she’s suicidal. My daughter is as much at risk of dying from her illness as those kids, and her life right now is about surviving, not redundant math worksheets and character analyses of a work of fiction. Sometimes, even without the PANS challenges, I wonder if these educators have any idea how autism works and what concrete and objective thinking is. My daughter doesn’t give two hoots about character analysis; ask her about the facts, and she will nail that every single time. She's not stupid she's just not interested in the gobbledygook that comes with core model learning in an attempt to form critical thinking skills, which she already has quite naturally, thank you.

When I was in grade 7, I was singled out every day for 4 months, to the point where I begged my parents not to send me back to the school, I would sob almost every day and feel sick at the thought of going back to a school with a borderline mentally abusive teacher and no support. I became depressed and had suicidal thoughts. Because of this, I strongly believe that teachers and school staff should all be monitored more closely on what they’re doing in their classroom. After I left the school, this teacher had many complaints against him, yet they were not taken seriously, and he continued to teach for 2 years at that school. I was blamed for my lack of attendance, and there were no repercussions against my teacher.

My son experienced an existential crisis after his grandfather’s death. Wrapped up in my own grief, I did not see his struggle. He became disassociated and disengaged from school and didn’t want to go. It was a classroom teacher who asked me what was going on with him, because when he was at school, he was shut down.

My 14-year-old daughter lost her very best friend to suicide at age 13 due to depression and issues with school. They were like twins. Best friends for 7 years. My daughter was devastated. Refused to go back to school, too difficult now alone. Tried to go half days. Tried alternate days. Teachers were of little help. School stopped sending homework. Struggled for 2 years. School did nothing to encourage her to return. She dropped out of high school for a year. No calls from school. I finally found an alternative smaller school, where she started in an outreach program and now attends 3 full days.

In the second semester of ninth grade, my daughter completely shut down. She is highly intelligent (was advanced a few years in elementary), and I don’t understand why she suddenly stopped getting high marks. She didn’t complete any assignments, and then finally for the month of June, she did not go to school once, not even for final examinations.

Our road has been long and is still full of twists and turns. My daughter is in grade 11 and is 16 this week. She has not had a “regular” school year since grade 7. Her anxiety began much earlier; from day one of kindergarten, she hid and did not speak. To anyone outside the house, not to friends or teachers. She was diagnosed as having a form of anxiety, select mutism. This continued through grade 4 and included not only silence but also being frozen and crying before school. I couldn’t get her out of the car. She missed on average a day a week. And in the evenings, she was the opposite: she threw tantrums, screaming, crying, and wrecking things. We exhausted all support and were left with the final option - change schools. We moved as a family and apprehensively took her to an ice cream social before the new school year. When a welcome group came to give her a tour of the school, she talked! It was like we could finally breathe after years of tension and fears. She had 3 wonderful years of this, connecting with kids, opening up, laughing, and being engaged in learning. We also discovered that she was educationally way behind and not at level in reading or math. It still was a rough road of enforcing tutoring and needing extra school support, but she seemed to be doing better. The school system started high school at grade 8, so we decided to move again, to be closer to family, but also to give her an opportunity to stay on in middle school. So grade 8 was another fresh start. She still spoke but remained shy and disengaged. By mid-spring, she stopped attending and missed the last month and a half of school. Enter high school, she went in optimistic but didn’t make it past September. And at this point depression had crept in. She just slept all day and every day and withdrew. During all this time, we accessed mental health support through the public and private systems. She had seen every type of support, one-on-one weekly/monthly visits, anxiety groups, and had been put on medication. Grade 9 was a wash; grade 10 was started at [redacted], but the fact that she could stay home meant she barely attended the support hours and didn’t finish any work. By November, she got a placement in [redacted], where we hoped a change in habits could occur. It did, as she returned home for Christmas and started at [redacted] in January. This is the first place that felt right. She has an assigned Learning Support teacher and Counsellor. This team checks in with her and keeps her engaged with learning and even outings with the school, although she still struggles and misses some days. Artemis doesn’t make her avoid going back; her counsellor will message her or check in on these days and has even picked her up for school! Our goal now is for her to get caught up and complete high school. That is all we can hope for; her anxiety will be lifelong, but at some point, the skills she’s been taught will help her live a fulfilling life. Whatever that looks like.

It begins slowly in the beginning. They wake up and groan groggily that: * they didn't sleep well, tummy ache, headache (*insert any imaginable reason for not going to school). Then it begins to appear to become a "habit" and you explain they have to go to school. "It's the law!"... (because you think they're making excuses, because they're simply tired and don't want to go). You feel you have to push them to go (which causes more angst). You feel it's your duty as a parent to get your child to school, even when it hurts them. And they physically hurt. Then you go through the reasons it could be, i.e., is my child being bullied? trouble in a course, social issues with a friend? And then it begins to happen more frequently. It's insidious. Until one day your child... j u s t s t o p s g o i n g to school!! And your heart breaks, because you know if they could they would, but they c a n ' t. That's when we reached out to the family doctor for an assessment. MORE therapy with the psychologist, anything that would help us help our child. They need to feel heard!! There is a veil that comes over a kid who is struggling, and it is important to let them know it doesn't define them. Keep them interacting socially with their friends, even if they haven't attended school. Support the child to their core. And let them know it's going to be O K A Y! Favourite motto: "This too shall pass...."

While it's only the third day in the new school year, my 13-year-old daughter has only been to school for about one full day altogether, due to extreme anxiety and school refusal. This has been ongoing since the beginning of grade 7 (she's now beginning grade 9). Although her elementary school has been wonderful in trying to accommodate her and her needs, it wasn't enough.

My daughter was in grade 9 - so already a big transition year for her in starting high school. She was also recently diagnosed with ADHD, LD, and anxiety. When she was overwhelmed, her anxiety would peak. She went on ADHD medication that made her anxiety worse. Once she went off the medication, she had missed so much school and was behind already; she had missed important lessons/quizzes/assignments, and it was tough getting back to routine and catching up. Damage was done, but with the school's help, she was able to finish the year and get all of her credits (barely)....She still struggles every day and could use an academic coach to teach her coping, methods for doing homework, how to use her IEP, and life skills that will work for her - so she need not struggle every day to keep up.

I have struggled with a couple of my daughters - it is heartbreaking and makes you feel sad and mean when you start pushing them to go. When you try to make changes to fix the problem, you need to be strong enough to advocate for your child against a system that is not flexible.

My daughter was bullied by peers and struggled through classes, but didn’t struggle enough to get much help. Yet in her mind she was failing at everything - friends, school; then she hit rock bottom when her dad and mom were divorced. She became depressed and had migraines and stomach pains - self-harm, suicide, and severe anxiety followed.

My son was socially awkward from day one in school; the isolation started very young, and the teachers kept encouraging me to focus on play dates outside of school. I did my best, but eventually, the playdate invitations weren't reciprocated, and I gave up. We had our own social support network of kids with whom my son connected, but it didn't help him at school - where he spends 80% of his time. He has been the victim of social isolation his entire school experience thus far. School staff have had limited skills and ability to assist with this, and I believe that this has impacted his sense of self and his mental health in a significant way. Home is the only safe place for him, and if he was a child where home wasn't a safe place, we would be talking about a much worse story here....Our school system needs to do better.

We struggled a lot with school. One teacher told my child that her autism was a punishment from God - that is a terrible thing to tell a child! It led to permanent resentment of faith-based institutions. Another school did not know what to do after my child had a failed suicide attempt - instead of trying to find out what happened, the school tried to distance itself from the whole affair. No action was ever taken against the kids bullying my daughter. This led to a meltdown at school and a second suicide attempt. My daughter was assaulted at school - we were told that she was telling an inappropriate story and refused to stop when asked by the other student to do so (difficulty with social interaction is a symptom of autism) Her failure to stop talking provoked the other student into slapping her across her face. The school principal decided that she should be suspended for a day for her “part” in being assaulted. Victim blaming is never OK! It was after this event that we felt forced to take our child out of that school.

My son dislikes going to school. It started in grade 4. His teacher bullied and embarrassed him because he wasn’t comfortable performing/speaking in front of the class. Grades 5 and 6 were better due to a great teacher. Grades 7 and 8 were also pretty good. The issues started again in grade 9. The school counsellor and a few teachers made him feel something was wrong with him. Grade 10 has been the worst. Started high school. Too many people. Teachers either said he has a problem because he was rude or just didn’t care if he was there or not. Was difficult to see his school counsellor. They had too many kids to see. Also, he does not enjoy most of the subjects. Basically, he’s told: too bad, so sad. All the kids just hide out in the bathrooms. Got many calls from him being upset and having panic attacks while I was at work. He just keeps saying he can’t be there. Tried doing online science. Started late. Wasn’t able to finish. Plus, it was lonely. I don’t know what to do. I hate making him go somewhere he hates, yet doing school online is lonely. Not good for an anxious kid with bouts of sadness and depression. Options? He would like to go to some of the classes but has a hard time with the long, kind of boring ones. Three hours is too long for one class with a short break, like English or Socials. I don’t recall having such long classes for 2 blocks. I think 1 block is plenty.

My son's first year in high school was a nightmare: a very large school, new territory for him to navigate, new influences, and reluctance by him to ask for support. It became a full-time job just to try and stay on top of his assignments, homework, and deadlines. It became so overwhelming for him; he began to skip classes; then we allowed him to drop classes all because he couldn't possibly keep up with the workload. It was a perfect recipe for failure. An unprepared student with reading challenges, poor executive functioning skills, an enormous school, and the ego of a 15-year-old boy reluctant to ask for help. Add to that a system that is set up to enhance the experiences of students who are “normal” or high achievers and that also supports students with lower IQs with a life skills program - this allows the kids in the middle like my son, who doesn't qualify, to get lost in the shuffle. Teachers are consistently inconsistent in the way they communicate assignments and deadlines. As an adult, even I was frustrated trying to navigate the websites and emails in attempts to sort out homework and try to keep my son on track. We are now looking at an alternative high school program. I am hopeful he will be accepted, as they only allow 40 students, and the demand is high.

Our daughter struggled with school from grade 2 onward. Every year brought new challenges. Her anxiety grew into anorexia and depression in grade 8. Her circle of friends dwindled as she withdrew into herself. Once into high school, she fought hard to find a place within social groups to feel as if she belonged. She bounced from peer group to peer group, experimenting with drinking and weed. As a parent, it was terrifying. We had psychiatric help all the way through, but we never could break through her low self-confidence. I truly believe this is a vital piece of her mental well-being. The social pressures, friendships, feelings of being judged by others in high school grew, and she missed so much of grade 11, we thought she might not graduate. Through medication, therapy, and the ongoing support of her high school, she rallied and had a stellar grade 12 year. Her kindness, sensitivity, and high intelligence shine through. Now she is entering university with two academic scholarships. We are Canadian, so we are lucky not to have had SATs to study for, on top of everything else. Otherwise, I’m not sure if she’d be entering university this year. She still struggles, but she is a fighter. We will support her, every step of the way. And honestly, it has been an exhausting, terrifying, and heartbreaking journey.

My daughter started refusing to go to school in grade 2. By grade 8, she was acting out and getting suspended multiple times a year. Many arguments, meetings, doctor appointments, counselling sessions, CPS visits. In grade 9 (new school), same thing. She is smart, shy, and sassy. She knows what to do to get suspended. She really doesn't care about school or her education. She hates school! There is one person that she will go to school for. She is the only staff member she likes. If it wasn't for [redacted], she wouldn't have gone back at all last year.

My child was always anxious, but after being mauled by a dog in 4th grade, he developed school refusal. I was allowed to accompany him into the school and to let him get comfortable and then leave. This worked, and things were getting better, but other kids started teasing him. A teacher (not his own) began to make fun of him and tell him to “man up”. Then neither of us could handle such an unsupportive environment. We moved him to a smaller school for kids with learning differences for that year and the next grade. He entered middle school back in the public system. This school was a small start-up for boys only. The size was a positive but more so were the teachers and administration. In 8th grade, he was diagnosed with dysgraphia. In 9th, with ADHD inattentive. The psychiatrist believes his learning differences were the catalyst for his anxiety back in pre-kindergarten. School was hard for him. Now, with proper diagnosis, counselling, and medications, he is doing unbelievably well. He is in his final year (same school), has an A average, is president of his student council, and is the athletic manager. So to the mum who is struggling - your child can overcome this. I cried every day when I left the school in that awful 4th grade. I questioned our decision to put him back in the public system. I now have that sinking feeling when he does something new - remembering back to our disaster days. Time, patience, great counsellors made the difference. And this kid is one empathetic boy.

Somehow, my bright, well-adjusted grade 7 son began to have anxiety about going to school. We don't know why. When he wasn't in panic attack mode, you would think he is the most well-adjusted kid out there. Within a few months, he was completely unable to go to school at all. We quickly began to look for help. Family doctor gave us a scolding and refused to refer us to a specialist. We went to one therapist after another, spending almost $10,000 out of pocket. We went to the Ministry of Children and Families and got put on a waiting list that was over a year long. Eventually, we walked into the ER and begged them to find us a doctor who would treat our son. The experience was one of the most terrifying, confusing, isolating experiences we have had. We didn't get criticism to our faces, but friends fell away. Why? Why was it so hard? Why wouldn't anyone help us?

My family and I are completely overwhelmed by what we deal with every day. ADHD and anxiety sound so simple; they are busy and worried. Ya, no, it is so much more; it affects every aspect of life for everyone in the family. He tries so hard, so hard. When he is stressed, it is like the connections don’t work in his head, and he shuts down. The system has done nothing. They say he doesn't try hard enough. He tries harder than anyone.

Our daughter’s IQ is 145 with a processing speed of 96 and a working memory of 100. Because her PS and WM are average, she does not qualify for an LD, according to DSM-V. She would have qualified with DSM-IV. The psychologist told us that she is at a high risk of mental health concerns with this profile but can’t diagnose her with anything. She is a perfectionist and most likely has ADHD. I have ADHD, and so does her brother. Her perfectionism won’t allow her to show her anxiety in public, and her high IQ helps her mask her anxiety and low executive functions. At home, she has outbursts, hoards 6 months’ worth of rotting lunches, spends 10 hours on 1-hour assignments in order to get the mark she feels she should get, can’t organize her room, has an eating disorder, etc. The teachers see her studying hard, handing in assignments that are well done, and overlook the fact that nothing is handed in on time. They feel she’s fine so we can’t get an anxiety or ADHD diagnosis in order to get her help. In grade 9, her social studies teacher taught the year through a government simulation. Everyone was divided into parties, and the elected party was given portfolios, with one person in each appointed as the cabinet minister. She chose to work alone, and that meant she had to be the cabinet minister (that hadn’t been explained to her ahead of time when everyone chose their groups). She had to stand up in front of the class every Thursday with proposals for her portfolio (Health), and the opposition could ridicule her, call her names, debate with her, etc. With her poor executive functions and anxiety, she would find herself paralyzed in front of the class. Because she couldn’t allow anyone to see her fear, she gave poor answers to simply make it end. She begged me to allow her to stay home on Thursdays to avoid social studies. She was ready to drop out of school because of this one simulation. When I spoke to her teacher, his response was, “If she can’t handle my class, she needs psychological help.” While he was correct that she needed help, his response was very inappropriate, and he never gave her any consideration or support. She made it through that year, but forever had panic attacks at the sight of that teacher and refused to go down that hallway at school ever again.

My child's anxiety has always been due to bullying or inappropriate behaviour from other kids. She has never felt supported or protected by anyone at the school. She once got punched on the school bus by a boy with fetal alcohol syndrome. When I went to the vice principal about it, the boy was fully protected, and I was told: he's special needs; she needs to be aware of that and not do anything to get punched. Her entire school career has given her the message that other kids’ poor behaviour towards her must be tolerated because: they are special; she is intelligent and caring, so she needs to learn to co-exist with other kids, even when they are not nice to be around.

My daughter's story is really long. I will try to shorten it up. Her struggle with anxiety has been since birth but really came out during sophomore year in high school. When we first approached the school, they immediately looked at her grades and said she'd be fine. She didn't need a 504 for her GAD [Generalized Anxiety Disorder] or major depressive disorder. Her school refusal grew. [redacted] and [redacted] programs took her away from school, and her mental health issues grew. After the first day of senior year, she was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. When asked if my daughter could get a home health care aid waiting for another [redacted]/[redacted], I heard crickets. A couple of weeks later, the person in charge was confronted again, and his response was, "I just didn't do it." My daughter ended up going to a therapeutic high school and actually graduated (we didn't think it would happen). She is now faced with going on to a technical college, and some of the same fears are coming back. She has gone from having 5 classes, down to only starting with 2. I hope that, this time around, she will be okay.

My daughter was in grade 4 when she started having unexplained stomachaches. Attendance was always a problem with her. Grade 1 was difficult. The teacher was militant about attendance. She had friends. She did well when there, just hard getting her there. Grade 4, stomachaches. Doctors, chiropractic appointments (chiropractor said it was anxiety), massage therapy. By grade 8, she was talking suicide. Counsellors, teachers, and parents got her through. Grade 10, anxiety was extreme. Suicide watch again. We pulled her out of the public system. She is now trying to finish her grade 12. My profession is teacher....I am at a loss as to what to do.

I do all that I can to encourage my child to attend school, to do her work, and to try to be involved in extracurricular activities in order to meet people and feel part of the community. Because I am not there with her, I feel helpless and not supported by school personnel. It seems like nobody at the school wants to step up and offer her encouragement, and it leads me to wonder why not. I meet with them every year to update her IEP, and they seem supportive, but then she continues to go to school and not feel connected.

Being from a divorced family, my child has struggled with two different parenting techniques, along with a few teachers who also do not condone her behaviour. Without a calm, understanding, and encouraging environment, I believe we take steps backward in not helping these children, and it would be very helpful to have everyone on the same page, working together in a more personal environment.

The school has failed us on so many levels. They actually lost my daughter’s file that included all the psychological assessments and family court orders, etc. It is exhausting, and I’m starting to feel that school officials themselves are bullies.

My kid would not get out of bed for 3-4 days at a time. I was scared, terrified. We were able to get her into a youth residence to help start her mental health healing. She did very well at the in-house schooling. The program allows a maximum stay of only 3 weeks, so while it was a total blessing and introduced us to a lot of very helpful resources, it was only a reprieve, not a solution.

If a child suffers from anxiety, they should be given a survey to rate where the problem areas are in the school. They could rate which settings cause them the most anxiety, and teachers/parents could help work out a plan to ease the anxiety during the school day.

Our daughter always did well in school until grade 8. She was in [redacted], loved projects, and did well in most subjects. She hardly ever missed a day of school. One year, she got an award for perfect attendance. We noticed that she excelled in certain things like projects, often going over and above what was asked. In grade 8, things changed. Workload increased, more teachers making more demands. Suddenly, she couldn't make all the assignments perfect the way she wanted. It was harder to get her to school. Grade 9 was more challenging and, although she made it through first semester, it was more and more difficult to get her to school. Second semester was worse. If she missed classes, she would feel too far behind to go back, and this perpetuated the problem. We tried online learning, but that was difficult to manage. By now, she had an ADHD diagnosis. In grade 10, she had dropped out by October and never went back. We tried Alternative program - that lasted about three weeks. She put a lot of effort into the work but attended only two days. We feel the school did not take us seriously when we met with concerns, including attendance – in their eyes, she hadn't missed enough days to be concerned. They have many other students with bigger issues, and our daughter just wasn't that big a deal. As time went on, they tried to help, but it wasn't easy to get her back into the school. Now she wants to start fresh in a different school in a different town, but that doesn't solve the underlying problems with her learning style and needs.

Our son was doing OK in high school in the first couple of years. In grade 9, he was a fraction away from being an honours student, but was constantly being bullied, and the staff just didn't seem sure of how best to support him. Previously, it had been suggested he may have autism, but he was “doing well” in class so it wasn't thought that he needed more support or further assessment. At the start of grade 10, there were a couple of bullying incidents within the same day; this put him in bed for a couple of days straight with anxiety and migraines. After that point, he has had to wear sound-cancelling earphones almost 24/7 due to what is now suspected to be hyperacusis related to PTSD related to those bullying incidents. After that, we tried for the next year and a bit to make the mainstream high school work, but his anxiety and depression kept increasing. After an ASD diagnosis was finally confirmed, we were back at the school, and the support in place was pretty much the same: no additional therapy or mental health support at all. His school refusal started about a month into that September and got worse and worse as the semester went on. He missed the last month of school and ended up failing his science class because he couldn't go back to even do his exams. He didn't feel like he was supported well enough to make it through his exams, and he also hadn't had the time and guidance to learn what he needed to learn. The next semester was the same story and, after another month of not attending school, we switched to a private school that runs similar to a combination of group home with a self-directed learning structure. Our son is now attending 4-5 days a week. In the new setting, he is struggling with the self-directed and semi-independent learning format. The rest of the supports at the new school seem good. There is a small school in the public system that has the mental health support in combination with more traditional classroom learning, but it is not within our district. We would have to move houses to be able to attend there. Next year, we are hoping to be accepted there or to find other options, as within the current school, we expect that our son will take at least an extra year to complete his studies, due to the curriculum differences. We feel between a rock and a hard place. Our son needs the mental health support, but the longer he is in high school, the longer he feels like he's getting nowhere and having to go to school just to get the piece of paper to move on. We need more small schools, more LST departments trained to help kids like our son, and more treatments available within the school to support these kids.

From grade 1 through to the end of grade 8, my son struggled with the school system. He was diagnosed with ADHD in grade 2. The general response from teachers and administrators was, "Well, we have other students on IEPs so we get it." or "My child has...." As they say, "If you’ve met one person with ADHD, you've met exactly one person with ADHD." I don't care what worked for Billy and Susie - they aren't my child. I explained my son's needs - or my awareness of his needs - like this: You are his teacher. Your expertise is teaching. I am his mother. My expertise is my son. If you offer advice on how I can help his learning at home, I will listen because you're the expert. If I offer advice on how to help my son in class, maybe listen to me because I'm the expert on him. All I can say now is that high school has been like an awakening. Grade school was one really long night. Grade 9 has been a bright, sunny morning.

My youngest son was an exemplary student in elementary school. Teachers loved him; he had many friends. He entered grade 8 in an 8-12 school, and he sank fast and hard. Too big a school, too large an age gap to compete with. From a school of 400 to a school of 2,000. It was too much for him. We need to provide elementary, middle, and high school again, or what I had: elementary, junior high, and senior high. The age gap is just too much for some kids. Most will do fine, but the vulnerable will be influenced by older kids who bully the younger ones into doing things they don’t want to, in order to fit in.

My daughter is not defiant or lazy. She is not mean, weird, or difficult. She has anxiety. She has a mental health condition that makes it so hard for her to get to school and do what is expected of her. She feels a level of stress and worry that is not normal. She lives her life being overwhelmed, overthinking everything, and not seeing anything positive about herself or her life. Although school is important, my girl’s well-being is much more important. So, welcome all children into your classrooms with open arms. Tell them how happy you are to see them. Never assume anything. And appreciate even what seems like little effort from them, as it’s not so little.

The biggest school refusal my child had was when she was put into a small special-needs classroom with high special needs. She knew that she wasn’t learning and that she wanted to learn. She said it makes her feel like a baby. She also had school refusal when she was in kindergarten and grade 1, in a mainstream classroom. She would say, “I try so hard and I just can’t do what the other kids are doing. Spelling and reading are so hard for me.” After having various combinations of tutoring and smaller classrooms where are they specialized in dyslexia, she was in a mainstream private school classroom by grade 10. She is on the honour roll. If you ask her, though, when she is finished school, what she will do, she will say she wants to work in sports, but have nothing to do with classroom or school ever again.

My son was born different. I didn't notice how much that would be a problem until he started school. It took 6 years of headaches, tummy aches, tears, wetting his pants, purposely throwing up, uncontrollable ticks, constant errors on paper when it came to tests, constant reminders that my child was impulsive, unorganized, easily distracted, lazy, lacks effort, to be diagnosed with anxiety and possibly ADHD. We went to therapy with a child-adolescent mental health worker for another 5 years. We did really well with cognitive behavioural therapy. He was put on Concerta, and never did get a learning assignment for ADHD because he was “t grade level”. We went from me running and picking him up or letting him stay home whenever he threw up, to me sitting with him in the car or at school until he was ready to try and get through the day. Now, almost finished high school, he'll take two to three days a month, and I tell the administration that he's taking a mental health day: no, he's not sick; he's overwhelmed. It’s been a long journey to get here; the school still doesn't seem as supportive as I would like; teachers still criticize his behaviour or the physical symptoms that clearly scream his anxiety is getting the best of him. But we are truly grateful that he's made a few relationships with a couple of teachers that get him and will work through his challenges and difficulties, and you can see in his marks the confidence they have given him.

My son’s struggles began very early in his education. Preschool days were hard....He would try to run away from class to come home. He just didn't want to be there from the start. Every day was a struggle. He didn't learn well from a young age, and I pointed that out to the school team, but they ignored my pleas for extra help till it was too late. My oldest child was diagnosed with dyslexia and my youngest had the same learning difficulties, but the school passed it off as laziness. Then, in second grade, they finally agreed that he had learning issues, but they no longer called it dyslexia. One teacher actually laughed at us when we mentioned he may be dyslexic like his older sister. I spent many days crying and asking for meetings with the school for testing and special learning programs, but they took years to react and process. By the time he was identified and offered help, he was hating everything about school. My son is incredibly intelligent, and many teachers have attested to that fact. He just learns differently from most students and can't follow the norms set by our educational system, such as standardized testing. It's ridiculous to think all children can pass a single standardized test. I should have given my son private lessons and education out of the school system, but I could not afford it as a single parent. My son is now in high school. He still misses too many classes, but is somehow passing, and he will hopefully be graduating this year. I can say that I am so very proud of his accomplishment, because it's not the school system that was beneficial. I believe that teaching him that high school was merely a means to an end encouraged him to realize that this torture will someday end, when he can finally join the workforce and be done with the school system.

Unfortunately, one paragraph would not even begin to explain the pain, anguish, and heartache our family has undergone over the last 10 years around school refusal. We are truly exhausted. Our son could read at 2 1/2 and was so excited to start JK and follow his two older sisters to "big" school. He went the first day and came home and refused to go back the next day and almost every day since, and he is now in grade 10. He was eventually asked to leave JK in October that year because "he isn’t ready for school and he questions the teacher too much". We then tried private school, which cost a fortune and wasn't much better for him until grade 5. Most days, he was taken kicking and screaming, and some days, even in his PJs. He started having behavioural issues and disrupting the class, and spent more time in the principal’s office than in class. Because of the way he/we were being treated, we moved him back to the public elementary school. Eventually, halfway through grade 7, the school asked us to withdraw our son and homeschool him. This was their suggestion. He remained home for the remainder of 7 and all of 8. He started mainstream high school in grade 9 by his choice and missed many days, but still passed all his courses. Now, in grade 10, things are continually getting worse. He has missed 90+ days this year already. Over this 10-year period, our son turned from a friendly, outgoing little boy that questioned things, was eager to learn and take on new challenges, was intelligent beyond his years, loved to read and draw and write, was happy and such a delight, into a young boy that was angry, depressed, smashed dishware, threatened to kill himself, talked of suicide, slept all the time and was defiant about everything, refused to read or write or do any type of schoolwork. The issues originally were based on school refusal. Now, at 15 years old, he very rarely leaves the house for any reason. He prefers to be alone and has periods where he will sleep for days on end. He has no friends, hasn't ever been invited to someone's house or to a birthday party, won't join school clubs or teams. Even things like going to a restaurant to eat or on a family vacation aren't enough to get him out of the house anymore. We have tried doctors, paediatrician, psychologist, psychiatrist, intensive family therapy, and nothing appears to make a difference. He has had blood tests and MRI to make sure nothing physically was wrong. He will assist in making a plan for himself to get to school, but in the moment nothing can get him to go. He has been physically sick he has passed out. We have bribed him with all manner of items even most recently on the suggestion of paediatrician, and offered to pay him for every day he attends with an immediate cash amount each day. Even though he thought that was a good idea and agreed, he has not been able to attend. He is now failing all his classes; this just perpetuates the vicious cycle for him. His school refusal now affects his entire life. He is no longer disruptive in school and not as defiant at home, and we find that when school is taken totally out of the equation, he slowly comes back to being able to participate more in life. We truly fear for our son’s future. He still seeks out learning and knowledge using the internet and is a wonderful musician who refuses to play in front of anyone but his teacher. How will he get an education that will allow him to someday get a job to support himself? He has so much potential and is missing out on so much of what life has to offer. We are not, and it appears no one is, able to help him. We now allow him to make the choice each morning if he is able to go to school, and if not, we do not bribe or coerce; we accept and carry on. He says that he wishes he could be like everyone else and that he would do anything to be more normal. Hopefully, your research will help others in the same situation.

My daughter has high-functioning anxiety and depression. School is the thing that triggers her anxiety the most. Every day, she feels extremely pressured by the amount of homework she receives in advanced courses. She literally feels like it is endless and that she can’t catch a break. She gets marks in the high 90s, but it's the constant homework and pressure that makes her hate school.

When he was just a baby, my second-born did not like crowds. At family functions, he would go to the quietest spot until he just could not take it anymore and would beg to go home. He was always anxious as a child. He began saying he was quitting school when he was 9 years old. At 11 years old, he was diagnosed with diabetes; this did not help his anxieties, as he was the only child in our school with this disease at the time. At 12, he told us he was gay. I had hoped that this would make him feel better, knowing that his secret was out and that he had our full support and love, but he just seemed to sink into a deeper depression and an anxious state. He soon began self-harming and stating that, at 16, he can quit school and we couldn't do anything about it. We sought help from counsellors, but the anxieties continued to get worse. By the end of grade 8, he had quit all sports and clubs he had been involved in because the panic attacks had taken over. Our family physician was adamant that he did not need medication and that skipping school was not '' cool''. In his 10th year, he missed a total of 86 days of school, with our family doctor telling me that I had to force him to go to school, even though he was having severe panic attacks and extreme pains from anxiety-based IBS. He passed his year because he had wonderful teachers who cared about him and sent his work home along with the instructions. During the summer, we changed doctors and got him on anxiety medication. It's been a long road and, although he still has some bad days, when he needs to stay home, this year has been much better, and he has rejoined the sports and clubs at school. He's even talking about what he wants to do after grade 12. We were lucky, I know, but we are taking it one day at a time.

My son has been experiencing anxiety about going to school since kindergarten. Throughout his educational years, he has been yelled at by teachers and principals, and has even been physically restrained in order to make him stay at school. He has been locked in a classroom so he wouldn’t escape. He has run away from school, even in grade 1. Now in grade 9, he experiences physical symptoms such as stomach pains, headaches/migraines every school day and even suffers from depression and anxiety.

My heart breaks for my son. I worry about his future, and as it stands, school does not give the support he deserves; he will probably end up in a trade. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if he could be an engineer, the educational system would have to change.

My daughter started having trouble attending school in grade 7. For months, we worked as hard as we could as parents to try to get her to attend. We felt we were listening to her concerns while also pushing her to go. It wasn’t until months later that we learned not only that her IEP (for an LD that limits written output) was not being followed, but also that she was being humiliated in front of other students for limitations that were part of her diagnosis. It was really disappointing to find this rigidity at an alternative school that claimed to be attentive to individual needs. We started noticing the negative feedback on her written work (for example: I know you know more about this topic. You need to show me what you know. Try harder. Not enough. Etc.) School had become a place where she felt demoralized and we felt badly for not having realized that. We tried to work with the school to rectify the situation and implement her accommodations, but we found the school very resistant. They had just met her, and they decided she needed to be pushed harder rather than be accommodated. She switched schools but remained distrusting of teachers and felt fearful that we might continue to push her into things she could not handle. Episodes of school refusal recurred over the following 6 years. We worked with a family therapist to improve communication and work to ensure she felt our support. We paid for private assessments because we didn’t feel we could wait for the school board to do it. We connected to an agency that supports children with LDs and related mental health challenges. We paid for private school for a few years so that she could have more individualized attention in smaller classes. We searched and found an alternative school that might work. Our daughter engaged and tried everything because she actually really loves being at school and wanted to be able to be there. She continued to have a lot of difficulty with overwhelming negative thoughts in the mornings that kept her from being able to go to school. The pattern would re-emerge. She now has a transcript with numerous incomplete credits. At one point, she even chose to go into a residential mental health program that housed a [redacted] class so that she might have an opportunity to attend classes without the barrier she experienced about going in. That worked for a while, but the program was more intensive than she needed. She most recently attended a [redacted] class in the community, but when the same barriers to getting to school came up, their responses alienated her and made her feel judged all over again. She turned 18 and aged out of her most vital support service. She has now dropped out of high school altogether. She is very bright and, when she was able to attend school, her grades were generally in the high 80s. I have witnessed her working extra hard to try to engage in education for years, and I have seen how it has eroded her self-concept and made her mental health worse. We advocated the best we could, and still we ended up here. It makes me very sad to think of all the lost potential out there - all the young people who feel rejected by an education system that is not set up with their needs in mind.

As a mother, I want to teach my son to advocate for his own health. If he truly does not feel well enough mentally or physically to go to school, I let him rest that day. I do ask him to use his words and tell me why he doesn’t want to go to school. School is a lot; life is a lot. I want my teenager to take self-care days if he needs them. He does not abuse this, and he is back to school next day, and all is good. He still maintains good grades and gets along with his teachers.

My son has been diagnosed with multiple mental health disorders; stress and lack of structure are triggers. My son has been bullied and suspended many times because his bully will tease and want to fight; then, if my son retaliates, he’s punished every time; if he goes to a teacher, nothing is done, and seeking justice is big for him. If you keep teaching a child that one child’s needs are more important than their own, their anxiety will get higher, their stress will get worse, and therefore everyone is in a worse spot. Teachers don’t realize how little words, facial expressions, or "gossiping " affect kids; kids can hear, and children will talk. Our children battle hard every day to just walk out the door and go to school - add on their disabilities and pressure to be perfect, and their fight with their mind to hang on through the day, just to see every adult placing judgment on them, and we’re doomed. I get called every day, and all I get is, “Well, what are we supposed to do?” I get told they don’t have time to accommodate him; they have a full class; and no one would learn if you had to spend equal time with each student. So he’s neglected.

The worst of it started in grade 3; by grade 4, my daughter’s teacher had alienated her from her fellow classmates, and subsequently staff, due to issues with her peers. The school counsellor did nothing but make the problems worse; the principal told the teacher to send her to the office whenever there was an issue, as they believed that when she got upset it was interfering with other kids’ ability to get an education. I took her out of school when it got bad enough that she started getting stomach pains on a regular basis. Grade 5, same thing but worse: physically assaulted and verbally demoralized by other students, treated as the problem and not the victim; severe stomach pains diagnosed after multiple incidents in the ER over many months as impacted bowels due to anxiety. As issues continued at school, numerous meetings between staff, her parents, and our counselling team resulted in nothing but smoke and mirrors from the school. She began self-harming to try and manage the immense stress caused from school. In her words, she said the pain from cutting herself helped distract her from what was happening at school. In early January, she was officially diagnosed with ADHD, ODD, and multiple anxiety disorders. In spite of knowing this, knowing she had begun medication and would take time to find dosage and balance, teacher and principal ended up saying they wanted her removed from the classroom. I refused, And, after my daughter began to say she wanted to kill herself, I pulled her from school for her own safety in February due to the school’s inability to get on board with the IEP and recommendations by counselling team and psychologist.

My son has been saying he hates school for 5 years now. It started in grade 1 when he reflected that his whole class seemed selfish and mean. He said no one listens to the teacher and everyone wants to do what they want to do. I knew he was an empathetic and sensitive child from birth, but now hearing him, in grade 1, feel this unease in the classroom was difficult. Apparently, that class had six or seven high-spirited boys and the constant classroom management was stressful for all the kids. He missed 35 days in grade 1. In grade 2, he was in a grade 2 /3 French class. He would come home so upset and confused, saying that all day long he feels dumb and he never understands what's going on. At that time, I tried to move him into the English stream, but was persuaded to keep him in the French stream by the principal. We had him tested for CAPD, and it came back that that disorder was possible - he would have to be tested again in a year. My son started to have belly aches in grade 2 before school, or would run around the house hitting himself in the head. I thought perhaps he was autistic. By the end of grade 2, it was agreed he be moved into the English stream for grade 3. He underwent a psychological assessment and many visits to a paediatrician. I also brought him to a private therapist. My son continued to hate school and I continued to bring him but give him one day a month home; it was normally two or three. In grade 4 and now 5, he has made himself throw up, he has felt so sick about going. It has been a real struggle, and we have spent thousands of dollars and tried a few ADHD medications. I am tired; he is tired; and next year he moves to a middle school where I'm worried he will have even less support.

This is the second time we have experienced school refusal due to anxiety, first in kindergarten and now in grade 5. (We left public school in kindergarten and were forced to move into distributed learning.) Thank god they have that in BC, so we could do part-time homeschool and attend part-time classes at a local brick-and-mortar school.

The teacher and school refused to allow us to attend KINDERGARTEN on a part-time basis. We were pressured into full-time and told that there was something wrong with us; the teacher actually said, "Must be nice to be able to come and pick up your child, a luxury for you and your husband to do a different schedule,” and "The other children will want to do the same." This was even with a note from a DOCTOR telling them that our whole family had PTSD from a car accident that had taken place around school the year prior, and the DOCTOR had diagnosed my son with PTSD that was strongly related to school. This teacher believed my child had “attitude” and was convinced that if it “really” was anxiety, then best to let his ANXIETY peak.” Teachers are not counsellors or psychiatrists, and I find (being a counsellor myself) that there are VERY IMPORTANT decisions being made about children’s mental health by SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION and TEACHERS who are not only not qualified but dangerously IGNORANT to the point of detriment....We were not supported by the teacher or the principal, who saw my son and said "HIM? PTSD? What a great-looking kid...." The teacher would use manipulation tactics in front of my son to get him to stay for the whole day: "Well, he is really going to miss out."; this would send my son into anxiety. She told me I was too sensitive (I am an older parent so it’s easy to be judged as being the high-maintenance, helicopter parent) and that he wasn't listening....

We did that school (distributed learning) from half of kindergarten to grade 3. We had to, as our child’s anxiety about school (from the car accident) was huge separation anxiety, and the teachers let us sit in the room there; then we gradually stood at the back of the room; then we sat outside the door, etc. We gradually were able to leave our child at the school. THAT TOOK 4 YEARS.

We did our first year of public school, grade 4 and now this year, grade 5.

SO many teachers, including this one we are switching classrooms from, TALK about my child IN FRONT OF my child, like they have no understanding - and they are talking about MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. I stopped this teacher (present grade 5 situation we are in) in the hallway in the first week of school. I had to stop her from talking to me about my SON - in a public hallway with parents walking by at the end of classes - about my son's anxiety. She too said, "It’s just attitude," even though I sent her a one-page laminated sheet detailing his school life, letters, [redacted] anxiety program, and all of it. I told her that I had booked a meeting with her next week - please stop talking about this in the hallway, and she kept going! IN FRONT OF MY SON and his friends! BOUNDARIES. This was a red flag for me since September. It is now January 7; we've had 2 new principals; I've asked twice to get my son removed from this class. I have called [redacted], BC Family Services. My child went from grade 4, wanting to go to school 20 minutes early and read books and get to class to say hi to his teacher, to grade 5, depressed, highly anxious, having nightmares, unable to get out of bed, and angry like in a rage. The first thing that school does is, “What is wrong with the parents?” In our case, we were lucky that the school counsellor knew us from the year before. She only works 2 half days; she could vouch for "who we were" and what our son was like the previous year. My son was shamed, yelled at, sent out of the room, and more. This teacher is not up to date; she told the kids, “Life is a competition," and “Use your voices - speak up three times a day and I will measure if you do it right” It's not education; it is her manipulation. I could go on about how she "genders" everything, how she, without knowing my son more than 3 days, grabbed him by the arm, how she called the children “honey”, “sweetie”, “dear” (not as endearment and not earned), how she does not know anything about CONSENT. It’s a buzzword for her, like inclusion, like standing desk for special needs. My son has been taught to NOT GENDER and not say, boys can do this, and girls can only do this, or vice versa; my son has been taught that no one touches him, that they need to ask, and that no one should go through his desk and rearrange it because it’s not perfect. She did this; she completely took away any of his own personal respect or power in the classroom. And she sat in a team meeting for an hour and did not speak because her union told her to stonewall us. Because she was guilty of doing it, and my son spoke up. How many other kids in that room are having their rights violated? That is why they have high anxiety, and why they are in school refusal. My son refused to go; he was sick 6 times, very ill since the start of school, due to stress. This is a grade 4/5 class.

When I spoke on several occasions, like parent-teacher interviews, about my child's anxiety, this teacher just smiled and said nothing. Nodded her head. We told her what the previous teacher did in class, "catch the calm time", which helped my son a lot. She said they could only do that once a week; all the other grade 4/ 5 teachers do it every day. It was all about her needs and refusal to look at the anxiety/trauma needs of the children. When I asked them to adapt, they said, “We can't. Your son is only 1 out of 23 other kids. [redacted]'s response to that was, "Yes, and tell me, are there any other children in the class who could benefit from this new style or program?" The school's response? SILENCE. The truth is, in that class, statistics for 8-10-year-olds now show that anxiety is ON THE RISE - and we have First Nations kids in the classroom who have trauma. The power lies in the teachers and school system, to not change...that's where their power lies. Serving the children means to them - that they have no "real power". It is heartbreaking.

To know where we began due to trauma, with school refusal and anxiety, only to be now in this situation where my child, BECAUSE of the treatment from this teacher, is now BACK to that place...and because of his age, he's very social and bright, he wants to be around kids and not be homeschooled. He actually wants to be in school; that's the thing, even on his most anxious days, he wants to go, until this year, and what is brutal is that as BC Inclusion states: EVERY CHILD HAS A RIGHT TO FEEL WELCOME, SAFE, and READY TO LEARN.

None of those has happened yet this year. It’s January. A child should feel confident and secure by now in school. His learning has been deeply affected, as much of his energy is spent on managing anxiety now.

I hope this switch works...and don't even get me started on how to deal with the bias passed to the new teacher from the old teacher, or the "conversations" that happen in the staff room about who we are and how hostile we are because we are advocating and know our rights.

I am a certified addiction counsellor; I am a workshop leader; I am a keynote speaker. Thank you for doing this survey; there is much more work to be done. Let's do it.

We have two children with anxiety and school refusal. We have gone from a family who had it all together to barely being able to keep our heads above water. We have lost friends, money, and opportunities. We have not been able to support our parents as they age. Almost every day is a struggle to stay positive.

My daughter took a mental health day from school and missed some important information for a test a few days later, so she had extra work to catch up on which only added to her anxiety.

My son has struggled since junior kindergarten. He has slipped through and is not getting a proper education. He has been suspended 4 times this year. He just wants to be in school and learn. They are not following the Individualized Education Plan and safety plan and he suffers. I feel bullied and intimidated by the school system.

A seven-year-old with severe ADHD fitting the classic explosive child behaviours with some defiance and work refusal witnesses his closest relative, his grandmother, die while being resuscitated; mother works in the school. He is returned to school after one week of grieving, to "keep a normal routine", as kids just bounce back through these things. The first day of mother's return to work, he witnesses an outpouring of sympathy towards mom. None for him. The lockdown drill happens. How would you support him?

My daughter has been feeling anxious about going to school. She feels she does not fit in, that no one likes her, and she just wants to stay home. The teachers have been great, but I worry about the time it is taking them to cater to her when they have 30 other children that need to learn.

Last year, my son would constantly complain that he was too sick to go to school. His stomach would hurt, and we would always agonize about whether to send him to school or not. If we kept him home, he always felt better. We suspected that he had dyslexia, but the school completely ignored our concerns. They blamed us as parents and told us he had a behaviour problem. We finally paid to have a psychoeducational assessment. He was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and school-related anxiety. As a parent, I felt guilty for sending him to school, where he was constantly set up to fail, where every day teachers ignored his needs. I realized at that point that school was not a safe place for him. It was a place where he experienced failure every single day. He did not have a behavioural issue before we took him to school; it developed because of being at school. We fought hard with the school and the district to get him the accommodations he needed and invested heavily in private tutoring (since NO instructional supports were provided through the school). With all our efforts, the anxiety has all but disappeared and he does not have a behavioural issue.

Every day, you dread the sound of the phone ringing. It’s 9:30 and you just know it’s the school. The principal may ask if he can come home, or he’s going to be on the line saying he doesn’t feel well. When you refuse his leaving, you must deal with the anger he has, because he just slammed the phone down. And you know he’s not going to participate until he calms down. Even then he feels like no one cares about him. It tears you apart knowing your child feels so helpless, but you don’t know what else to do, as he can’t come home every day. He’s almost failing as it is. There’s no extra support, as your child isn’t deemed needy enough. There are no academic assessments because the district has a two-year waiting list and one psychologist to do them all. And you have no idea what else you can do to help your child feel worthy, intelligent, and strong. Hearing your child say it would be better if he wasn’t born because he causes so much trouble breaks your heart into pieces.

Our son became ill in the early spring of grade 6. He missed 3 weeks of school when we tried to send him back even though he wasn’t completely healthy. We kept getting phone calls to come and pick him up. We decided to just keep him home until the doctors could diagnose his illness. There was little communication from the school, no work sent home for us to complete with him, and no outreach from his class. He felt like no one at the school cared about him. After physical diagnosis and treatment during the summer, he began grade 7, but by Thanksgiving, we couldn’t get him to school at all. Despite the challenges from the year before, the teacher had placed him in a class separated from his two best friends. He complained that his brain didn’t work right and that he couldn’t remember anything. Math was a huge source of anxiety, which we attributed to missing 3 months of the previous year. We sought help from the youth counsellor and social worker, a child psychiatrist, a child psychologist, and several specialists. He was diagnosed with unexplained chronic pain, severe depression, and anxiety. Other than offering a modified day, the school offered no support. On the days I could get him to school, my son reported sitting at his desk, with no one talking to him, and trying to catch up on work he missed. The school refused to put an IEP in place. My son felt stupid and inadequate. I took a leave of absence from work to try to help him, to no avail. He has missed 13 months of school now, and we don’t know where to turn.

My son has suffered from anxiety toward school since he entered grade 1. In kindergarten, he loved school and was even subtracting numbers and adding numbers from the dice correctly. Soon after entering grade 1, he started to dislike school and say it was hard. His teacher would email daily telling me he was not paying attention or was disrupting the class. I had him privately assessed again and found out he had a learning disability in reading and writing, but also a full-scale IQ of 122. A very difficult and challenging diagnosis. When I addressed the school with the new psych report, I was told they would make accommodations on his IEP. Unfortunately, nothing was done, despite several meetings with the school. Each morning was a fight to go to school, until it got to the point where he told me he just wanted to die. He was sick each morning, would throw up. Of course, I couldn’t send him to school if he was vomiting. By mid-morning he was as good as new. He’d tell me how hard school was, how no one helped him, and how he was sent to the time-out room if he didn’t do his work. By grade 2, the anxiety toward school progressed into dissociative behaviours, and he was admitted to the hospital. At this point, I was now on leave from my teaching job. After his admission, we tried to go to school, but I got calls daily to pick him up. I finally said enough. I pulled him from school. He’s had a tutor who has brought his reading up to grade level, an excellent team of psychologists, and will be starting in a school for students who have complex needs and trauma backgrounds this week. And I finally get to go back to work and teach as well.

There is no one face of anxiety or depression. Compassion and understanding are the key. What if this were your child? Show love and compassion to not just the child but also his/her parent(s). They’re doing their best. It needs to be a collaborative approach built on trust and understanding, to make school a safe and welcoming environment for our most stressed students.

When my son was in kindergarten, he would cry all the way to school, saying he didn't want to go. He would say that I was the worst mom ever and that I was mean for making him go. I could handle this, even though it was heartbreaking, as most days, he would get to school, wash his face (we kept a facecloth in the backseat so he could wipe off the tear stains), and would go in. One day, after several months of this, we had a rough day getting out the door. He wanted to stay home, told me he had a stomachache - and I knew he didn't - so I picked him up and locked him in the backseat and drove him to school. That day he told me "I want myself to die"....I knew this was more than just not wanting to go to school. We visited our first psychologist a few weeks later. Some weeks and months were better; some years were better, when he had a teacher that understood him and worked hard to make him feel included. Other years were hard. This year was grade 7.... it was not easy.... so many different teachers, no important and meaningful connections. He went from a school where he made some of the teams he tried out for, but at the new school didn't make one team, didn't have great relationships with his teachers, and struggled a lot. Missed on average one day a week, sometimes more.

We submitted our human rights complaint at the end of grade 5, after 3 months of school refusal that was met with shock from school and division admin because they didn't understand why she didn't want to be at school. We had over [redacted] of emails (and that doesn't include phone calls and meetings) from issues going back to grade 1, detailing incidents and asking for planning. If they'd put in even a minimal plan for her, then we wouldn't be here. The division even sent a social worker to our house, who spent 3 hours trying to determine what other things she was avoiding because she was too afraid. They did not believe it was only school. In the end, the social worker was finally convinced that the only place my daughter was truly afraid to go was school. Not that it helped much. Things are getting better. Her new school had a phenomenal counsellor who basically held everything together for the second half of last year. The day before school finished, we found out she'd been transferred. Hopefully, at least the plan will continue to be followed.

Teachers are trying to teach at all levels, and they are overwhelmed. Less mature students are being moved along in the education system and are in grades that aren’t academically fitting for them. They are creating chaos and upset in a setting that is above their social and academic level. I believe if children aren’t academically ready for a certain grade, they need to be held back, as it’s now creating stress on them and on those that are academically ready for these classes.

Our son had to literally be "peeled" off me every morning and practically dragged into the school kicking and screaming. It was awful for both my son and me. The three teachers who had to drag him in every morning would kind of chuckle as if it was funny. It became a routine..."Oh, here comes [redacted]"...ready, set, grab, and peel. We talked to his teacher, the school counsellor, and his family doctor, and they all acted as if it was "normal" and said that he'd simply grow out of it. It was far from normal. They also didn't see the hour it took nearly every morning just to convince him to leave the house. Mornings were terrible from kindergarten through to a few months into grade 2. Luckily, in grade 2, we signed him up to be a "greeter", which allowed him to develop leadership, a sense of responsibility related to the school. It also was an opportunity to meet/see other children in an unthreatening way.

My daughter’s school refusal and anxiety were definitely linked to her diagnosis of ASD1. We were not able to get that until she was 11, and only via private practice. It led to high anxiety and depression. Even though she wanted to go to school, starting in kindergarten, she experienced difficulty getting there. She experienced social exclusion from preschool onward. She experienced bullying/relational aggression from preschool onward. She had to change schools once, and after that, because her second school told me she didn’t qualify for assistance for her ADHD diagnosis (blatant lie), I chose to change again and send her to a very expensive dedicated-to-learning-disabilities private school. I receive no transfer of funds from her school division or government assistance to achieve that. The private school had strengths but weaknesses as well. No schools, public or otherwise, had any understanding of how to engage with a student (or parent of one) with depression and anxiety. At her private school, in fact, I was told that if her absences (due to depression) continued, they would have to “shut that down” (meaning: expel her from the school). When my daughter skilfully self-regulated, she was told to “stop the drama” (for removing herself to calm down). When she tried to speak to a friend for consolation immediately after being bullied by a girl who was already known by the school to be actively bullying her, she was told to “stop gossiping” This lack of skill in both recognizing and handling nuanced behaviour is extremely problematic. Only one teacher in all the schools she was in recognized the relational aggression that occurred. All of the others engaged in blaming and dealing with the circumstances in a highly unskilled manner. We don’t need awareness. We need acceptance that these circumstances are REAL. Acceptance will lead to real solutions. Awareness is just lip service.

My daughter initially complained of headaches before school - we saw a paediatrician, had her vision and hearing checked. No one indicated anxiety was a possible cause, and it was only a random internet search that tuned me in to the topic of school refusal. That allowed me to speak more openly with our daughter regarding her feelings about school. I had to - and was thankfully able to - change my work schedule to walk my child to class right at starting bell, as the pre-school chaos was very overwhelming for her. Having to attend while so anxious and emotional led to feelings of hopelessness that she would not be able to “make it through the day”. he ultimately had treatment for depression (including suicidal ideation). A private psychologist provided wonderful support. Our daughter recently told me that this year at school is “like ombre hair- it was really dark but now it’s getting lighter.”

While sitting in the principal’s office (school and family relationship has been difficult because school has tried to impose their point of view), the psychologist says, “It takes a village to raise a child,” to which I responded, “You’re NOT part of my village.” Schools need to learn to respect parents’ point of view and to work together, rather than playing the “know-it-all” or the “expert” card! My child is not the only one who does not trust school; I as a parent DO NOT trust schools!

My son had a psychotic episode two weeks before his 12th birthday. It’s been almost two years, and his mental health recovery has been slow. The first day of grade 7, he curled up in a ball on the floor outside the office, with his hood pulled over his head. People and other kids were staring at him. An Educational Assistant (EA) came over and demanded he remove his hood because it violates school policy. I informed her he was unwell and not coping. Removing the hood would cause further stress. She looked at me and said, “Oh. This is that boy we got an email about.” Two more EAs came over to stare. No one offered him comfort or tried to help him. I had to take him home that day, and even though his teacher in his specialized classroom, when he’s there, is great, the damage was done. My son has been in psych, and a day program, and a hospital stay. He’s been to school maybe 20 days in two years. There’s not much support in our school system. When he’s struggling, he just stays home; otherwise, the school just calls me to get him. There are no resources for him.

My son's class of 25 is currently in a music/food prep kitchen, which was quickly converted due to massive school population growth. The room is crowded, and the acoustics make the room so loud, even noise-cancelling headphones don't help him. They didn't have coat hooks and needed to use bins on the floor until January. How can we expect students to feel valued and safe at school when they're crammed into makeshift rooms? Funding needs to be increased so school overcrowding doesn't get worse.

“You can do better than this” was the common message given to our child. Because we are a high-functioning , educated, middle-class family, our child was always overlooked and under-supported. We did the right things as parents in our home to accommodate his needs but the school didn’t attempt to accommodate. Every intervention to support him was a punishment. “Go to the library to finish your work quietly....go sit in the hall because you’re being too disruptive....your child doesn’t know how to control himself in class....your child would have much better grades if only he applied himself”....IF ONLY.... If only the school would listen and not judge us because we were a “good family with a bad kid”. If only the teachers would make time to communicate with us about the struggles they saw. If only the education system had more services so we didn’t have to wait three entire years for a psychoeducational assessment and an appointment with the school counsellors. If only the school counsellors saw that his need was just as great as the underprivileged kids’ needs. If only being sent to the school counsellor wasn’t a punishment for poor behaviour. If only the city we lived in had more resources. If only people would listen and not judge. If only we didn’t silence our frustrations because we were afraid to “rock the boat” with the school and its staff. We are grateful for the “if onlys” because they have brought us to a new city, a new school, and a new start. We have access to more support, better service with the educational system, and a greater strength to advocate. But all of those “if onlys” came with a cost. A memory of negative experience in school that to this day haunts our son. If only we could erase those memories.

My daughter was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and anxiety at age 7. Despite years of trying, my (very high-functioning) daughter received her first IEP at the age of 11. (She is currently 13.) It was too little too late. At this point, she had endured years of bullying and numerous outbursts from teachers (in frustration to her panic attacks and crying), so did not feel safe in class. Between [redacted] and [redacted], my daughter missed over 180 days of school. We moved her to a new school in November 2018 where she got a fantastic plan, which was followed until December 2018, when teachers/admin decided it wasn't necessary because she was doing so well (too well!). In January 2019, she missed 15 days of school. The plan is finally being followed regularly, but only after a big fight with the principal. Since [redacted], she has not missed a day of school! In March 2019, she received her first report card in 5 terms. [redacted] average (she has no academic accommodations)! Here's hoping that continues!

My son has had issues all his life. In preschool, red flags were noticed and professional services were obtained. During his time at school, he was told he’s being a baby, he’s a "drama kid", to get over it, has a victim complex- by the principal of his school- and was being yelled at by the vice principal, when it clearly stated in his psych evaluation that he’s sensitive to tone of voice and body language.

We’ve dealt with school refusal for 6 years, all of my son’s primary schooling. It wasn’t until last year, when he ended up dropping out of grade 5, that I understood school refusal to be a thing. That we weren’t alone. That he wasn’t the only kid unable to attend school at times. School refusal would present itself as severe meltdowns that have even led to very scary panic attacks. My son suffers from anxiety (that most teachers can’t see and therefore refuse to accept as truth), but otherwise does very well in school and has many friends. I’ve asked him multiple times if perhaps we should homeschool but he LIKES school, and so we continued. It’s been a huge challenge in grades 5 and 6, and now he’s unofficially labelled as “chooses not to attend”, and some of his teachers have been impossible when it comes to help. I feel very strongly that our school cares little about the actual education of the child and more about the falling-into-line piece. We have high hopes for the high school he’s chosen for next year.

I would love to tell my whole story, but I feel it’s too long and honestly still so emotional of an experience to retell in full. I will share that I followed my gut and was right that my son had learning disabilities and wasn’t just misbehaved. I will say that being told your child will “get over it” or just needs to settle in, when you knew the problem was bigger, was exhausting. Lastly, I will share that, when a child doesn’t want to go to the park, you might think “oh why?” and ask questions. Did something happen at the park? When a child refuses to see the dentist, you assume they are afraid and offer comfort, accommodations, and a reward system (sticker or toy). So why, when a child fears and refuses school, does the school so quickly blame the student and his or her home? Parents are literally leaving their children in the hands of schools during those hours and are typically not welcome in the process of their daily socialization and education in school.

My son has hated school since kindergarten (he's in grade 2 now) and it breaks my heart. I've put him onto the bus crying more times than I can count, then I try to go to work and be productive. Would I continue at a job that I hated? No, but I expect my child to do that. It's so hard. This year, he finally has a teacher who "gets" him, and I'm terrified to lose her next year. It creates so much anxiety in our house. We are seeing a child psychologist this month and hopefully getting an assessment done. Another part of the problem is that, without a diagnosis, there is very little help for him. We got him a mental health worker before Christmas who has barely seen him and doesn't seem to be helping at all.

Our daughter is very scared of thunderstorms and high winds, and if she thinks there is such weather coming, she says that she will not be going to school. We will do whatever we can to support her, but the fear is real and can incapacitate her. The school has been extremely supportive, and will offer whatever help they can, but really all she wants is mum or dad.

My son has a diagnosis from a psychologist/paediatrician. He has been suspended from his school [redacted] times. He is only in grade 2. He also does not even do full days at school, because he does not have supports in place, even with documentation saying he needs the supervision. I have had phone calls multiple times saying they have lost him in the school and they cannot find him. The police have been called. I’m not sure what else to do to help my son. I am a single mother of three and have to pay for his education out of my pocket because there are no expectations for him at school. They don’t force him to do work, because they can’t, because the teacher has three of her kids in the classroom that she needs to teach, so she cannot be helping him one-to-one as he needs. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome needs to be talked about more, so that the teachers and principals are aware of how it affects children in their day-to-day life. Just because his disability is not visible, he does not get the same support as other kids with disabilities. It is brain damage.

My son would have anxiety attacks starting in grade 3 and self-harmed in these moments at school. He would be sent to the office to sit in a noisy office till the end of school. He would come home red-faced and refused to talk about it. He would make himself sick and beg me to be homeschooled. His teachers only poked the bear when he was stressed out. Only in grade 6 did we finally switch schools, and this new one got all the tests and help in less than a year. With the new school, we had rides to appointments and help from social workers and counsellors, and my son was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. He was put on meds and is a totally different boy a year later. I cry thinking of how blessed we are to have a school ([redacted]) care for my son like family. He has his bad days, but so do we, and these surveys are proof that we are in the right school at last.

Things were fine with my son until this year, grade 4. I was warned about his teacher, that she favours girls and is hard on boys. My son thinks differently from other children; he is very well-read and is a sponge of information. Within the first few weeks of school, I was getting phone calls and emails about his interjections and questions, which the teacher didn't approve of. We talked about it at home and that was when the school refusal started. The principal, who is new, also began to micro-manage the school and changed a lot of the structures and rules that my son was accustomed to. For example, this year, I was not allowed to walk him to his classroom, as the principal felt the children should get used to the separation from parents at the door. I understand they can't have many parents in the halls each morning, but once it surfaced that my son was having trouble getting to school, I wished there had been more understanding. Things in December were the worst, with meetings at the school and a lot of tears and anger in trying to get to school. Things are still not great, but we are getting help from a lot of outside people, and I have written off the school for assistance. They have just left us alone - to arrive late; this, I guess, is their way of supporting us. We are counting down the days until the end of grade 4 and are considering changing schools next year.

My 9-year-old son has always had a lot of anxiety around school, but this year we have experienced full school refusal, which has required me to miss work and is affecting our income. Now that he is a “big kid,” I cannot simply make him go or carry him to the car like I used to, which was difficult for me as well. I have had to look more deeply at why this is happening, and what I see is sensory overload, fatigue, and low self-confidence. He is shutting down, and I am not sure why. We need professional help. While he is very bright and considered a “pleasure to have in class,” his output this year is almost zero. After meeting with his teacher and school counsellors, they recommended that he be assessed so a formal IEP can be put in place to address his specific needs. The challenge is that the wait time for this through the school is approximately three years, and if we pursue a private assessment, it costs between $2,400 and $4,000. We will need to find a way to raise the funds, but in the meantime, we do not know how to best support him, and he is falling further behind. It feels like we are drowning. One positive is his teacher, who recognizes that he is a bright, capable child and has offered several accommodations without an IEP. These include a soft morning start as a library helper, temporarily eliminating homework, allowing him to use a keyboard instead of writing by hand, and taking breaks to walk around the school when needed. Despite this support, he continues to refuse school, saying he “hates it there,” “hates the people,” “hates the teachers,” “hates the principal,” “hates math,” and anything else he can think of. In reality, there are many people at the school he likes, and who like him. We are struggling.

Please feel free to use any of my longer-form answers, in full or in part, if it helps to illuminate the points you want to address. I firmly believe we cannot fully address this issue without considering the surrounding social factors, including parents working in precarious or gig-based employment, a lack of social supports in schools, and a curriculum that remains rooted in outdated approaches to learning.

My son is a very bright child. He reads above grade level, has math skills above grade level, and is kind and willing to please. He was in Grade 1 last year and began receiving notes home about his behaviour. It did not sound like our son. We spoke with him, and he told me he was being sent out of class almost daily for about a month. We set up a meeting with the teacher. She told us she was sure he had ADHD and that medication should help him. She also told us we needed to be tougher on him and discipline him more at home. She said other children would not want to play with him and that he would not be invited to birthday parties if this did not change. She added that things would get worse and that by Grade 2 he would fall behind other children. She began sending home daily notes that my son would read before we received them. These notes would start with either “he had a good day” or “he did not have a good day,” followed by comments critiquing his behaviour. His anxiety became so severe that he was constantly chewing his shirt and the skin around his nails. He stopped wanting to go to school. These behaviours were new and concerning to us. The guidance counsellor had us complete an ADHD checklist, and we also consulted a private child psychologist. He reviewed the information, met our son, and concluded that our son was not the issue, but rather the school environment. As a parent, I felt helpless until I decided to change schools. He is now finishing Grade 2 with the highest marks in his class. His anxiety resolved within the first two weeks, and he now has many friends. At a parent-teacher meeting, his new teacher told us that the previous school had transferred his file when he enrolled. I was unaware that he had a file and would have liked to review it. She said she was surprised after reading it because none of the concerns described were present, and that our son has no issues. Our family went through a very difficult year because the previous teacher did not recognize that he was simply an energetic child. Changing to a school with teachers who focus on positive reinforcement and a supportive mental health environment made a significant difference for us.

Started in grade school. Teachers are stuck in old ways of teaching and are not listening to the child. Bullying from both teachers and other students can contribute to anxiety and stomach issues.

The end of grade 6 was very challenging for my child. He was struggling with anxiety and refusing to attend school, and he missed close to 20 days of school in the last couple of months. As a concerned parent, I advocated for my son and took him to his paediatrician (who was not helpful). We did have a wonderful resource teacher that my son connected with and who provided resources and suggestions. In preparing for the change of schools for grade 7, I made an appointment to see the guidance counsellor with my son before school started to 1) ensure that his IEPs were transferred over to the new school (unfortunately they were lost); 2) introduce my child to the guidance counsellor; 3) familiarize my son with the school and his homeroom; and 4) make sure my child knew where he could go and talk to someone if he was struggling. Despite my continuous advocacy for my son, there was minimal support provided. I had to email each teacher individually to provide them with a synopsis of my child's struggle with anxiety, despite the guidance counsellor’s assuring me that she would make sure the teachers were aware. There were very few accommodations made for school time that my child missed as a result of anxiety and attending an anxiety group through the [redacted]. Compounding my child's anxiety were my own health struggles which required major surgery. This was a very stressful situation for my child, and even though I informed his teachers and guidance counsellor, there was no acknowledgment or assurance that they would check in on my child while I was ill. I guess my own experience with school refusal was and continues to be met with indifference from the school. Rather than supporting my child, they ignored him. As I've mentioned previously, because my child is not a shit disturber, but a very gentle and kind young man, the school has failed to assist him with his struggles so that he can be successful.

My eldest son was suicidal 3 years ago. The demands of school outstripped his ability to meet the expectations. He was in the mental health unit for 2 weeks. Upon returning to school, it was a long, hard battle with a school with zero knowledge of how to help. Ultimately, we had to pull him out to homeschool. He has been out of receiving proper education for 3 years. Our second son, currently 10, is the one from this questionnaire. I had to homeschool all 5 kids last year due to the inexperience of our school. We attend an INCREDIBLE school now, although, even now, two schools called Social Services on me. My 10-year-old has struggled all year with school refusal, and I have been searching where best to get him counselling. We are currently waiting yet another week to meet as a team to discuss medication for him (he has hit depression and withdrawal the past month.) There are NO accessible supports for him, and there is NO way he should have slid as far as he has. It is not due to the school at all; our missing piece is accessing counselling for him.

My child was always anxious about school. He has a learning difference. When he couldn't do things, he attracted attention by acting silly. He started getting into trouble; this made him more anxious. There was downward spiral. The school did not recognize his learning disability. They thought he was purposefully choosing not to do his work. The more they pushed for compliance, the more anxious he became. He started experiencing physical symptoms. He would willingly go to school each day, but when he got there, he was unable to do what they asked, so they sent him home. We went to a psychologist who recommended homeschooling. We saw a psychiatrist who said to enroll him in a school that will attend to his learning disability. There is no school near us for special education. We have no choice but to educate at home.

My child missed half a school year in kindergarten. Five days a week for six hours for a five-year-old is too much. From kindergarten to Grade 3, every morning was a fight and my child was always too tired. Coming home with timed math tests, with results of 2 out of 20 correct, was devastating for my daughter’s confidence. Why are eight-year-olds undergoing timed math tests that create so much stress that they refuse to go to school?

My daughter has a [redacted] disease that causes low immunity and weekly infusions in hospital. This is a critical and complex disease that will not go away until she receives a transplant. She is struggling to find routine and normalcy. She has been diagnosed with separation anxiety and does not want to be away from home. This leads to refusal to attend school.

Up until his Grade 5 year, my son loved school. However, in Grade 5, his teacher did not comprehend that he was not a “typical” Grade 5 student. Despite my providing her with information about his LDs, ADHD, executive functioning issues, and his learning needs, she felt he should be able to remember his homework and start his work independently. She also felt she could not continue to follow through on a learning program (that we had paid for and that he was successful in) and its basic recommendations, despite my offering to do the “extra work” with him at home if she started it at school. She felt it was giving him too much one-on-one time. Grade 6 started out much better, but halfway through, my son truly realized how far behind his peers he was and began hating school and refusing to go on some days. His teacher was much more accommodating, and I do think this helped a lot. She was willing to research his ASD and dyslexia and make things easier for him while still maintaining certain expectations. This year (Grade 7), he started at a private school designed specifically for kids with LDs and ADHD. He is much happier there because he feels more accepted and supported. It also helps that “everyone is just like him,” and everyone has supports of some kind, so he does not feel like he stands out anymore.

My son would refuse to go to school and tell us he’s stupid and he hated himself and wished he was dead. The school and division had no supports for him and refused to have a psych consult for his reading. Six days before his diagnosis, the Inclusion Coach told us, “He’s just not ready to learn to read yet.” Then he was diagnosed as dyslexic. We moved him out of [redacted], despite the school saying he could do it. His anxiety has improved, and he no longer wishes to die, but every day he knows he’s not getting what he needs. He’s smart and knows he is smart enough, but no one teaches to his brain.

Our daughter loves learning and is a strong student, but over the years her anxiety has become so linked with the overstimulating school environment that she cannot even do schoolwork at home because it is so stressful for her. In our entire region, there does not exist a program she is eligible for where she could attend school in a small classroom environment with only a handful of other students. This is how we see her being most successful. There are also significant gaps in both the public health and school systems in terms of programming. Early on, she was not eligible for specialized programs offered through [redacted] or private programs because they “only work with students whose academics are affected by their disorders.” Because she was strong academically, she did not qualify. Over the years, however, she has attended school less and less due to anxiety. Her academics are now affected. She has not attended enough school this year to pass her grade. She wants to attend school and recognizes its importance, but struggles greatly with it. We have worked with many levels of support over the years, including psychiatrists, psychologists, inpatient programming, behaviour consultants, and family support workers, yet we remain in a situation where our bright, creative, nurturing daughter is not attending school. She experiences shame, guilt, and depression, and questions the point of living. If someone could see what she struggles with daily, there would be no doubt about how critical this issue is, as our daughter is only one of many. The impact of school refusal extends beyond her. I have been off work for two years to support her. As a contractor, I have no access to unemployment benefits and no funding available for parents in our situation. My husband has taken on a second job in addition to his full-time work. The emotional toll of supporting our daughter has been significant, and our home environment is very challenging as we all, my husband, our daughter, and our son, cope with the effects of her anxiety and school refusal.

After many negative experiences with my child’s school staff, a psychologist said to me in one of the meetings, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I responded, “You are not part of my village.” When the school system is not part of the solution but part of the problem through aggressive policies, it becomes part of the problem. Therefore, you are not part of my village.

My daughter would love to play and learn like the other kids she knows, but when the bus rolls up, she shakes with fear. She goes to the stairs of the bus and looks at me. I tell her she can do it, and then she begins to shake her head “no.” This can turn into her running back to the house or hiding in a bush, anywhere she can until the bus driver tells me they cannot wait any longer. Driving her does not work either. She wants to go but then says she cannot. It is like watching a child learning to jump into a pool. Some just do it, while others overthink, hesitate, and talk themselves out of it. School refusal in our house means I cannot work outside of my home, and I may even lose my home business. It means chaos and uncertainty. For my daughter, staying home means safety. She can make her own choices, and she knows how the day will go. People laugh at me and say, “You cannot get your kid to school? What is the matter with you?” Those words sting. My self-esteem is low, and my confidence in parenting is shaken. I have dealt with this from JK to Grade 1, over three years. We do not have any solutions.

For our family, anxiety and school refusal followed years of our children being sent to the hall or the principal's office for not sitting still in his seat or for being a distraction to the others in class. Even after having assessments done and recommendations from the psychologist for accommodations for ADHD and LDs, he was seated at his desk with no writing tools with his desk turned backwards, so he couldn't have anything at his desk at all. Little was done to address the LDs until it was too late. His self-confidence tanked, and he just believed he was stupid. He finally reached a point where he couldn't do it anymore and threatened to jump in front of a bus if we made him go back to school.

My now 13-year-old has exhibited school refusal since kindergarten, not just protest but a full-on refusal to leave his bed. No punishment or withdrawal of privileges has ever helped. I wish we could homeschool, but his father (my ex) will not agree to it and, frankly, I am not equipped for it. I have tried and continue to try all available resources and do not know what else to do. My son is steadfastly unreceptive to therapy, and he is also unresponsive to traditional discipline or withdrawal of privileges.