My son has suffered from anxiety toward school since he entered grade 1. In kindergarten, he loved school and was even subtracting numbers and adding numbers from the dice correctly. Soon after entering grade 1, he started to dislike school and say it was hard. His teacher would email daily telling me he was not paying attention or was disrupting the class. I had him privately assessed again and found out he had a learning disability in reading and writing, but also a full-scale IQ of 122. A very difficult and challenging diagnosis. When I addressed the school with the new psych report, I was told they would make accommodations on his IEP. Unfortunately, nothing was done, despite several meetings with the school. Each morning was a fight to go to school, until it got to the point where he told me he just wanted to die. He was sick each morning, would throw up. Of course, I couldn’t send him to school if he was vomiting. By mid-morning he was as good as new. He’d tell me how hard school was, how no one helped him, and how he was sent to the time-out room if he didn’t do his work. By grade 2, the anxiety toward school progressed into dissociative behaviours, and he was admitted to the hospital. At this point, I was now on leave from my teaching job. After his admission, we tried to go to school, but I got calls daily to pick him up. I finally said enough. I pulled him from school. He’s had a tutor who has brought his reading up to grade level, an excellent team of psychologists, and will be starting in a school for students who have complex needs and trauma backgrounds this week. And I finally get to go back to work and teach as well.
School Phobia and Exclusion
Youth Mental Health Canada
