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…

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…

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.

18 yrs.

Secondary School

My daughter’s story is really long. I will try to shorten it up. Her struggle with anxiety has been since birth but really came out during sophomore year in high school. When we first approached the school, they immediately looked at her grades and said she’d be fine. She didn’t need a 504 for her GAD [Generalized Anxiety Disorder] or major depressive disorder. Her school refusal grew. IOP and PHP programs took her away from school, and her mental health issues grew. After the first day of senior year, she was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. When asked if my daughter…

17 yrs. Grade 11

Secondary School

My child had low-key anxiety, but then got suddenly sicker with a whole bunch of things. She had daily panic attacks at school. She was told she was disruptive, and she had to leave the class. In reality, she had her head down on her desk and her breathing was loud. Making her leave class put her more on edge; this made the attacks more frequent. Peers ignored her; this also increased the attacks. In one instance, she was dragged across a hall in front of the school because she was panicking in the corner. She was asked to take…

17 yrs. Grade 11

Secondary School

I have struggled with a couple of my daughters – it is heartbreaking and makes you feel sad and mean when you start pushing them to go. When you try to make changes to fix the problem, you need to be strong enough to advocate for your child against a system that is not flexible.