Richard Hogan: Not all children are happy to go back to school

'We have to get comfortable with uncertainty if we are to manage this year successfully.'

Primary and secondary pupils and students will return to school over the next week. It has been a busy couple of months for school management, who have been preparing for the safe return of the children to the school milieu. Nothing has disrupted our lives like this global health crisis and the thoughts of more disruption have worried people about what this year will look like. We don’t exactly know.

We are in a rapidly changing landscape, and the variants of this virus have created further chaos, so we have to get comfortable with uncertainty if we are to manage this year successfully. In short, we have to get used to living with Covid-19.

Most children will be looking forward to returning to school, meeting friends, and connecting with their peers. However, there are students who thrived during lockdown and are not excited about moving back into the school environment.

Some students find school incredibly challenging, whether that is managing interpersonal relationships, academic difficulties, being bullied, or just the monotonous routine. For them, the lockdown was relief from the pressures forced on them by school. 

So, the thought of going back into that situation is causing huge stress and fear. Many parents are worried about how they can support their child’s return to regular school life. And it is difficult to push a child into school when they refuse to go.

This is one of the biggest challenges for parents and it has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Many parents are confronted with children who just won’t go, who have become caught in the routine of learning from home and now refuse to go to school.

When I’m talking to the parents, I first try to understand what the child is rejecting, rather than just thinking of the behaviour, to grasp what the behaviour is communicating. It might be a rupture in peer relations, excessive gaming, academic performance. The reason is vital to ascertain before you ever start to think about an intervention.

A child who refuses to go because they were bullied requires a different approach than a child who is stuck excessively gaming.

If you have a child worried about going back to school, or who refuses to go back, ask yourself what it is they are trying to stop.

Primary school children might not want to be away from mom or dad. Over lockdowns, they have become more attached to one parent, generally the mother. And going back to school will mean a separation from the person who is providing them with the reassurance they so desperately crave.

It is all too much for them and, as a result, they refuse to go, which causes huge tension and conflict in the family, because it is not sustainable and places incredible pressure on the parents.

Seperation

If you have a younger child worried about going back, it is important that you slowly start the separation process. If the first day you separate from them is the first day back, more than likely you will find yourself walking away from the school gates with them attached to you. Building their confidence to be separate from you is crucial if Monday is to be successful.

When a child becomes attached to a parent, their ability to self-soothe is diminished. So, build their confidence and always be careful about how much reassurance you give your young child. When a child looks for reassurance, be careful: Parents can often give them exactly what they are looking for, but, in the process, they are telling the child they are right to be worried and, therefore, the child will seek more reassurance. Thus they get caught in a terribly negative relational dynamic.

If you have an anxious teenager, again, think: What is causing them such disturbance? Start from this position.

Try not to let all conversations revolve around their fear. Introduce reframing conversations, so that they see you are not worried about them.

Often, the fear itself becomes a very powerful voice in the family unit.

Avoid this and ask them positive leading questions, like: ‘What are you most looking forward to?’ ‘This weekend, why don’t you invite a couple of your school friends over?’ These kind of positive questions introduce an alternative way of looking at returning to school.

Teenagers can often get caught in negative thought patterns; helping them to reframe their thoughts is an important part of parenting them.

The year ahead will not be without disruption. But we have managed so much over the last, difficult two years. We are moving out of this pandemic.

And we will have taught our children how to be resilient.