10 yrs. Grade 5

Elementary School

Every day, you dread the sound of the phone ringing. It’s 9:30 and you just know it’s the school. The principal may ask if he can come home, or he’s going to be on the line saying he doesn’t feel well. When you refuse his leaving, you must deal with the anger he has, because he just slammed the phone down. And you know he’s not going to participate until he calms down. Even then he feels like no one cares about him. It tears you apart knowing your child feels so helpless, but you don’t know what else to…

17 yrs. Grade 12

Secondary School

The biggest school refusal my child had was when she was put into a small special-needs classroom with high special needs. She knew that she wasn’t learning and that she wanted to learn. She said it makes her feel like a baby. She also had school refusal when she was in kindergarten and grade 1, in a mainstream classroom. She would say, “I try so hard and I just can’t do what the other kids are doing. Spelling and reading are so hard for me.” After having various combinations of tutoring and smaller classrooms where are they specialized in dyslexia,…

16 yrs. Grade 11

Secondary School

My son’s first year in high school was a nightmare: a very large school, new territory for him to navigate, new influences, and reluctance by him to ask for support. It became a full-time job just to try and stay on top of his assignments, homework, and deadlines. It became so overwhelming for him; he began to skip classes; then we allowed him to drop classes all because he couldn’t possibly keep up with the workload. It was a perfect recipe for failure. An unprepared student with reading challenges, poor executive functioning skills, an enormous school, and the ego of…

12 yrs. Grade 7

Elementary School

My daughter’s school refusal and anxiety were definitely linked to her diagnosis of ASD1. We were not able to get that until she was 11, and only via private practice. It led to high anxiety and depression. Even though she wanted to go to school, starting in kindergarten, she experienced difficulty getting there. She experienced social exclusion from preschool onward. She experienced bullying/relational aggression from preschool onward. She had to change schools once, and after that, because her second school told me she didn’t qualify for assistance for her ADHD diagnosis (blatant lie), I chose to change again and send…

14 yrs. Grade 10

Secondary School

I do all that I can to encourage my child to attend school, to do her work, and to try to be involved in extracurricular activities in order to meet people and feel part of the community. Because I am not there with her, I feel helpless and not supported by school personnel. It seems like nobody at the school wants to step up and offer her encouragement, and it leads me to wonder why not. I meet with them every year to update her IEP, and they seem supportive, but then she continues to go to school and not…

16 yrs. Grade 11

Secondary School

Despite all the talk and supposed education on bullying, it has not gotten better. If anything, it is worse. In my daughter’s first year of high school, she was slapped in the face during class, and the teacher did nothing. In another class, a boy constantly told her to kill herself; the teacher knew and did nothing. These are some of the reasons why my daughter’s anxiety and depression became extreme and why she consistently refused to go to school.

16 yrs. Grade 10

Secondary School

Situation 1 – My child has always been extremely anxious about fire drills, to the point where my child would refuse or attempt to refuse school on days when there were scheduled drills. A new principal, bless him, came up with a strategy to allow my child to have advance warning 5-10 minutes before drill to leave class, and exit the building with the firefighter ahead of the alarm going off. This worked, even to a point where my child was comfortable enough to accompany the firefighter that pulled the alarm (that was cool). This strategy was in place for…

17 yrs. Grade 11

Secondary School

My daughter was in grade 4 when she started having unexplained stomachaches. Attendance was always a problem with her. Grade 1 was difficult. The teacher was militant about attendance. She had friends. She did well when there, just hard getting her there. Grade 4, stomachaches. Doctors, chiropractic appointments (chiropractor said it was anxiety), massage therapy. By grade 8, she was talking suicide. Counsellors, teachers, and parents got her through. Grade 10, anxiety was extreme. Suicide watch again. We pulled her out of the public system. She is now trying to finish her grade 12. My profession is teacher….I am at…

13 yrs. Grade 8

Elementary School

When my son was in kindergarten, he would cry all the way to school, saying he didn’t want to go. He would say that I was the worst mom ever and that I was mean for making him go. I could handle this, even though it was heartbreaking, as most days, he would get to school, wash his face (we kept a facecloth in the backseat so he could wipe off the tear stains), and would go in. One day, after several months of this, we had a rough day getting out the door. He wanted to stay home, told…

15 yrs. Grade 10

Secondary School

My family and I are completely overwhelmed by what we deal with every day. ADHD and anxiety sound so simple; they are busy and worried. Ya, no, it is so much more; it affects every aspect of life for everyone in the family. He tries so hard, so hard. When he is stressed, it is like the connections don’t work in his head, and he shuts down. The system has done nothing. They say he doesn’t try hard enough. He tries harder than anyone.