I see this goal all the time, in IEP’s on facebook groups talking about the children, in school groups talking about students returning to school… But every time I see it, I cringe and say “Hell No” in my mind. So today, I’ll write it down instead of keeping it to myself.
Never have a goal of “building resilience so a child can return to school”. Or “building capacity by coming to school 3 days a week, until they are ready to return full time”.
If you are thinking of returning to work after being totally traumatised, perhaps been abused by a co-worker or boss or suffered severe depression or anxiety because of the work environment – you would not return to the same job in the same way unless changes were made. It’s your human right to not return to a place that caused you that trauma in the first place.
HR or management would sit with you and come up with a plan. They’d put things in place so that you could either return to the same job, but with a different boss, or in a different store (away from the toxic people or thing that caused the trauma), or a different job; that isn’t traumatic or causes problems. They would not just say (unless they are a bad HR rep or manager): “come in 3 days a week, with the same everything that caused the problem in the first place” – because they’d be in breach of employment law, and they’d be re-traumatising you. You don’t build up tolerance for things that harm you.
Eg: if you are being sexually harassed by your boss – HR wouldn’t say: “just work for them 3 days a week and rest the other 4 days of the week… until you can ‘tolerate’ being around them for 5 days a week”. Because that’s F’d up! This doesn’t build resilience or tolerance – it causes trauma. It just forces someone to be around the abuser or the abuse thing – and learn to hide their trauma.
But this is what schools do. They often do no changes at all, or lip service changes, or an IEP that they don’t follow and expect the child to do 3 days a week, until they can endure or tolerate 5 days of the same abuse/pain that forced them into ‘school can’t’ or ‘school refusal’ in the first place. This doesn’t increase capacity or teach the child how to cope. It teaches the child that they don’t matter, that their pain is not valid, that they must learn to put up with pain and shut up and grin about it.
If you did that to someone in the work environment – you’d be up for a lawsuit. But schools see no issue with it and that’s what the ‘go to’ recommendation is all the time. – To just get used to it.
Adults will label a child who is not attending school as recalcitrant, reluctant, with ‘behavioural issues’, or attachment issues or blame the parent for coddling them and being a helicopter parent. The child or parent is none of these things. The child – is simply a child who is using behaviour to communicate an unmet need. The parent is simply a parent who knows their child pretty well and knows that they need something to be made ‘able’ but possibly don’t know what that ‘something’ is.
A child who is screaming, biting, hitting, crying is not being bad or having attachment issues – they are communicating that they do not feel safe in that environment. You can not change that safety feeling by doing 3 days a week. As you build up to 5 days a week – the safety goes the other way. They lose the ability to feel safe – they feel less and less safe. They are losing their autonomy and ability to say no, and to object to the trauma. This is the opposite of creating safety – it literally traumatises and creates a dangerous environment for them. Control and choice are the first things needed to gain safety.
Think about it – I beg you. If you’d read the research – you’d know that this is called exposure therapy. And if you knew anything about trauma victims, PTSD or neurodiversity; you know that exposure therapy is not recommended for these people – in fact it’s the one thing you should NEVER do to these people. Read my other blogs about this topic for more information.
Just please remember doing something a bit more often, to rid yourself of fear, is for SOME people with OCD – it’s not for trauma victims. Kids showing these behaviours and refusing school are depicting and showing that they are trauma victims. You should never suggest building resilience to trauma victims – that’s a sure quick fire fall into severe depression and suicide.