“Say, ‘We are concerned because Sarah is saying in the morning that she doesn’t want to go to school. Healy suggests making an appointment to talk with the teacher. I would want to see if there really is a problem at the school in terms of how he or she is being treated by teachers or other children.” So I wouldn’t want to just come out with some way to make the child feel less anxious at the moment or exert pressure to go. “The question here is not just what the parent says to the child, but what the parent’s position is about whether the child’s concerns may be legitimate. A pat answer, he adds, is probably not the solution.
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It may be necessary, Kohn says, to be a detective over time to try to arrive at a full answer, rather than go by what your child tells you at that moment. The obvious response to the child here would be, ‘How come, what’s going on?’ “It’s obviously different if the child has a transient concern, like, ‘There’s a test today’ or ‘My stomach hurts,’ as opposed to there being a pattern of concern about what school is like over time,” says Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve. “Are there bullies on the bus or in the lunchroom? Is he embarrassed about his handwriting or about reading out loud?” ‘Hating’ school, Healy points out, is sometimes the first signal of an undiagnosed learning difficulty such as dyslexia. Talk to your child about what is happening during the day, advises Healy. I’d ask, ‘Is this academic? Is this social?’ If kids suddenly don’t want to go to school because it’s boring, that’s very different from a kid who doesn’t want to go to school because he’s being beat up every day, which is very different from the kid who doesn’t want to go to school because the teacher is being nasty.” “If a kid has been loving school all along and suddenly comes out with that - that would be a signal for me. “There could be a lot going on,” says Jane Bluestein, author of The Win-Win Classroom.
Healy suggests explaining that school is the child’s job and attendance is non-negotiable, but that you want to understand and help. “But if your child says this repeatedly, please pay attention.” Reluctance to go to school, Healy says, may signal a problem, whether it’s social, emotional, or academic. “Every child has a bad day now and then,” says Jane Healy, author of Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Your Child’s Learning Problems. From the tough-love approach to doing a little detective work, here’s how experts suggest handling it when your child doesn’t want to go to school. Everyone has days when they feel like they can’t even.
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