School Refusal

[Otherside]

I'm not actually in school (Due to the fact that I'm in my twenties), but how many of you were like this back when you were at school? (Or were like this if you're still there?). I definitely showed a lot of signs of this though, and did have a lot of anxiety with relation to attending school, for a load of different reasons (bullying, pretty must being the outcast, fear of group work, fear of crowds, SA, the last three which were not helped by the first two of those). I also managed to skip a load of lessons. I didn't, for example, attend PE classes from about when I was about 13/14 onwards due to the fact that dealing with people was probably going to happen during those sessions. The school decided it wasn't worth pushing me to go, and sort of left it. The same thing happened with drama classes. And probably some other classes as well.

Not exactly proud that I skipped a load of stuff to be honest. Somehow, I managed to get decent grades despite all the class skipping at the exams I had when I was 16. Still, I'm glad I'm no longer in school, and there is absolutely no way in hell that I would ever return to it.

• School refusal is when a child or young person starts to miss school frequently because of vague illnesses or symptoms.
• The symptoms the young person complains about are similar to those associated with worry, for example stomach aches, diarrhoea, nausea, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, vague and general aches and pains, etc.
  
  
• The child or young person shows extreme determination not to attend school, for example reluctance to get dressed, to leave the house or enter the school premises.
• The child or young person appears to be anxious or agitated on the mornings of school attendance.
• The child or young person may have difficulties settling to sleep on school nights.
• The symptoms appear to settle fairly quickly after getting into school.
• These symptoms are worse the night before starting a new school week, after school holidays, and are less obvious during weekends and holidays.
• A child or young person who has a genuine fear of attending school often wants to be on their own at home or outside of school.
• School refusal can present for two main reasons:
  
  
  - Firstly that the child or young person has a phobic reaction either to the general school situation or to a particular situation or thing within the school.
  
  - Secondly, where the child or young person displays a fear of attending school but the main source of the worry is leaving home or separating from family.
  

Playing Truant on the other hand, it not done out of anxiety.

• Truancy is widely used to describe children or young people who avoid attending school without their parents? knowledge or permission.
• Truancy is usually seen as a deliberate act of defiance where the child or young person finds something they would prefer to do rather than attend school.
• Truancy is often done for social reasons. Several young people will meet up outside of school to be together or socialise. They may form a truanting group.
• Truancy is sometimes connected with anti-social behaviour.

Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be a common thing for people with anxiety?

[Ironman]

I really liked to get my education, so that kind of outdid the social stuff. I just never got invited to anything and I didn't really care.

[Cuchculan]

Mine came after my school days. Mind you I did leave school early. But I did go back, or at least try and go back after the anxiety kicked in. I lasted about a year. Think I learned more in that year than I did as a young teen in school. More of a mature student then. Just couldn't sit still in the classes. Had to call it a day.

[1]

Started skipping during my last year of High Skewl.

[Total Eclipse]

I started skipping in 6th grade (I felt I was being judged because I was so tired and didn't have energy) and was afraid of being judged in gym.

[unpopularbugs]

I'm the same way, I remember when I sat in the stalls at lunch. I hate show I stutter, how I can't hold eye contact for too long, and how I'm labeled as being shy.

[lethargic nomad]

I pretty much stopped going to school from age 12 1/2 on. It was a combination of being teased at school, not being able to get my homework done in time to go to sleep at a decent hour so I was too tired to go the next day, being naturally nocturnal, laziness, and depression about my mom's leukemia.

There were a few short attempts at making me go but they only lasted a month or two and then I'd stop going. For a while they had me going to some school for kids with problems where I only had to come twice a week for a few hours. Even that I stopped going. Parents didn't know that and finally the truant officer came to our apartment and hauled me in. I was considering jumping out the bedroom window (2nd floor) to escape. I was so petrified. Later I flew from Los Angeles to Spokane, WA to stay with my aunt who lived alone. Huge change of scene. She was very nice to me but even there I stopped going to high school after a couple months.

It was horrible. My dad was so angry at me. Cause legally the parents have to get their kids to go to school. Parents can be fined or put in jail if the kids don't go to school until age 16. My dad was always saying that I just made everything worse for him when he already had to deal with my mom's cancer treatment. He was also mad at me for not helping around the house. Said I was lazy.

Finally my dad paid for some crappy private school where I just did most of my studying at home and only came in once or twice a week for tests and to talk to some dufus. Really didn't learn much of anything from that but at least legally I was in school.

Oddly, community college was no problem for me. I started going at age 18 after getting my GED. I wish had started at 16. At the time we didn't know that there is a California equivalent to the GED that you can do at age 16. For the GED at the time, you had to be 18.

[Otherside]

It was horrible. My dad was so angry at me. Cause legally the parents have to get their kids to go to school. Parents can be fined or put in jail if the kids don't go to school until age 16. My dad was always saying that I just made everything worse for him when he already had to deal with my mom's cancer treatment. He was also mad at me for not helping around the house. Said I was lazy. .

Yeah, same here. They send out warning letters here if your attendance goes low enough. I got one of those once. My parents knew about the absences so the weren't supposed. I was faking being sick a lot. =/ Got to the point where they didn't believe me half the time.

Didn't have a problem at community college either when I went at 19/20 to get my level 3 qualifications (here we have a level system to say what the qualifications are. So they 16 exams are "level 2", the 18 qualifications are "level 3", first year of degree level 4, so on so on). Spent a year there, got the damn thing, didn't skip that much, and got high enough marks to go to uni. Found it lot easier than school. Partly because they more understanding of my anxiety/mood issues, and partly because they treated you more like an adult, and if you didn't turn up or put the work in that was your problem, not theirs, and they weren't going to chase you for it. You'd just fail.

[lethargic nomad]

I liked that at community college you could choose your own schedule and what classes to take. Since I'm not a morning person, I only took afternoon or evening classes. If you want to transfer to a 4 year university you do have to follow a plan and take certain courses but you still have choices. For example, you had to take one physical science course and one biological science course, but you had a number of different courses to choose from.

High school is just horrible. You have to show up early in the morning and you only have maybe only 1 or 2 classes that are electives out of the 6. And you are surrounded by surly teenagers who don't want to be there. At least in college, everyone is there because they want to be there. No one is forcing you to go to college. So you don't get the misbehavior and shitty attitudes that you see in high school.

https://www.ccsf.edu/dam/Organizatio...ut%2009-10.pdf

[HoldTheSea]

I went to a boarding school and you would get written up if you missed class, toward the end when I was close to graduating I stopped caring and started skipping a lot, they saw that the writing assignments weren't doing anything so they started forcing me (they would take away a privilege if I didn't go to class). One time I was forced to go to class even though I was high as a kite so I wore sunglasses inside and wouldn't take them off when the teacher told me to.