Colman Noctor: What about the children who are reluctant to go back to school? 

Some students welcomed lockdown as an opportunity to escape from the pressures of school life, but their parents need to encourage them to reengage with the world 

Picture: iStock 

For many parents of young children, life has returned to some semblance of normality since the schools reopened last month. From my family’s experience, the return to school has been unanimously positive. 

On April 12, some 200,000 students will return to secondary school, and so for many families the apprehension or curiosity about how this will go is now very real. 

Many of us are familiar with the phrase ‘kids are resilient'. Although this statement is meant to allay parental worry, it simply is not true. While I believe many children to be strong and courageous in the face of adversity, in my practice I also bear witness to many occasions where adversity seems to come out on top. This can often be more to do with the length of time that a child has had to withstand a stressor, as much as it is about the stressor itself. Our mental wellbeing can be a victim of endurance as well as acuity.

In a recent My World Survey 2, a national study of youth mental health, researchers suggested that 25% of Irish children will experience depression or anxiety to a degree where intervention will be required.

In my work, I have heard many stories of the impact of Covid 19 and the resulting lockdowns on young people. The accounts of loneliness, dread, loss and hopelessness are a regular topic of conversation. The reasons for these challenges are self-explanatory. Young people have lost important experiences of socialising, sport, hobbies, relationships, romance, gossip and laughter which all support their mental fitness. So it is likely that many young teenagers will be chomping at the bit to get back to school, but there may also be those who are less enthusiastic.

Avoidant coping strategies 

The endurance of adversity is taking its toll on many young people, and as a result many are becoming apathetic. The fight seems to be gone out of most of the young people, especially the first to fourth years who have yet to return to school, that I speak to, which is a worry. When hope dissipates, risk increases.

However, despite the common narrative that all young people are struggling just now, there have been exceptions to this rule. A number of parents have contacted me, predominantly about young people in the middle teenage group, and said their children "loved lockdown" as not having to be in school or face the normal pressures of life was suiting them. Apparently, these young people do not want to go back to pre-Covid life and are dreading the restrictions being lifted.

Why would any child appear to thrive in lockdown? For those who have been tormented by bullying behaviour, or those who are more introverted and others who dislike social pressure, or have an anxious disposition, I can see the benefit of the removal of the normative stressors would be experienced as a relief.

But is this really a good thing? Surely if that were the case, every child who presents for treatment of social difficulties should just be told, ‘Well stay at home then’, problem solved. But, of course, that is not what we do. We attempt to put in as many supports as we can to allow these children to develop the skills to negotiate the outside world even though they find it very challenging. We supportively direct these young people to face their fears and try to teach them the skills to overcome these anxieties. In some cases where this is unsuccessful, then a formal home-schooling arrangement can be put in place but is usually a last resort.

In mental health terms, avoidance is not viewed as a good coping strategy. If we enable avoidance, there is no longer-term improvement in the child’s anxiety level. Instead, it often infiltrates other areas of the child’s life. Children who develop agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) will often begin by avoiding going outside unless absolutely necessary. But over time they develop avoidant coping strategies, to the point that often when they present for treatment, they have been isolated for such a long time that the prognosis is much poorer.

Encouraging independence 

The worry is that we see avoidance as coping when it is not. The absence of the feared stimulus, such as school, can temporarily appease anxiety, but life is not as accommodating as we would like it to be, and so developing some mechanism of managing fears is necessary for children. 

Avoidance enables anxious thinking rather than empowering the child to challenge it. For example, if a child comes into their parents’ room at night complaining that there is a monster under their bed, the tired parent may suggest ‘OK, jump in here then’. The child’s anxiety is allayed and everyone gets a good night’s sleep. However, we need to be aware of the other possible messages being communicated, for example, ‘there is a monster under your bed’. 

Instead, the parent should return the child to their own room, check under the bed if necessary, and explain that there are no monsters there.  Next, what needs to be conveyed is that they fully believe in the child’s ability to sleep in their own room, communicating a ‘you’ve got this’ approach. This is a more labour-intensive approach than the former, but one that I believe will pay greater dividends in the longer term.

Despite the fact that your child may seem to be less anxious in the last 12 months, that does not mean that lockdown has been good for them. Eventually the ‘new abnormal’ will be over and we will be expected to return to the normal hustle and bustle of everyday school life. Inevitably our skills of interaction will become rusty, but reality will dictate that we need to engage with the world again. As with so many things, in the lives of adults and children, we have to learn to engage with the world on its terms, not ours.

Stepping back into the world

Although avoidance may well be appealing in the short term, it inevitably creates a long-term problem.

I believe we need to acknowledge that if a young person is ‘thriving in lockdown’, this is not necessarily a good thing. The reason for the perceived lessening of stress is coming from the temporary removal of the stressor, not the presence of a new coping strategy.

In life, we cannot control how others behave, we can only control how we respond to the behaviour of others.

It is for that reason that the child who is appearing to be fond of lockdown isolation may indeed be the child who needs to be encouraged to interact with others more not less. As parents, we need to help them to stay in touch with the challenges and situations that provoke anxiety, no matter how counterintuitive that may be.

I would urge parents to realise that sometimes the statement ‘kids are resilient’ while referring to how well children adjust to social isolation may well be more of a case of ‘kids are avoidant’.