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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Jess, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to have a discussion with me.
You're such a busy lady.
Yeah.
I feel like lately I have been.
It's been a lot.
Mm-hmm.
We haven't sat down to record a podcast in couple weeks.
Yeah.
This is gonna be a really awkward conversation between us.
Do we even know how to talk to each other anymore?
How's your heart today
Um no.
I texted someone that this morning.
And was their response the same?
No.
I'm still waiting, so no response yet.
That's almost worse.
It is almost worse.
I know she'll respond.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
Today's discussion is on school refusal, which to be honest in what I was going through and researching everything.
putting together my lit review.
It seems like most things it's linked to so many other school refusal.
Well and it's so interconnected with every aspect of
a child and parents' life, but this is applicable to more than just school refusal and separation anxiety.
Where to begin?
Can I begin?
Of course.
I wanted to talk to Scott about school refusal.
First off, I think it's a topic that you are interested in learning more about.
But second off, I would say in our therapy practice, it's something that we're seeing constantly right now.
I think rates of school refusal are higher in our practice at least, like just based on my own observations.
We are getting parents daily messaging the practice looking for support for their children all different ages who are refusing to go to school.
And I would say in in all my work as a therapist, I've seen this since the beginning of my work as a therapist, you know, pre-pandemic, but I would say the last couple of years especially.
It just seems like
This is just a theme that's coming up over and over.
So that's why I wanted to talk about it because I know it's something a lot of parents struggle with, and most parents that come to my practice who are struggling with it feel like their kids the only one.
And they often say to me, we never got to refuse to go to school.
Like how did we get here?
So I just thought it would be a really helpful and hopefully interesting discussion.
Yes.
Actually in the research that I looked
through.
I specifically was trying to find information on or data on pre- and post-pandemic.
Because I have a theory that that has made things worse.
It doesn't create school refusal, but it's just amplified things because we got into habits over two years, a year and a half, two years of like essentially shutdown here, right?
And kids were rarely actually in school for that time
And then parents were working from home more often or all the time and it sort of threw everything out the window that we had done previously.
Mm-hmm.
And what I found was that
There has been a significant increase in absenteeism in children and refusal to go to school.
Estimates are they're saying roughly
it's increased by double.
But the theory is not that the pandemic caused that.
It's just that it's amplified all these other things that were already causing kids to want to stay home from school.
It's also kind of dependent on age, too, which makes sense.
when you're really little, the only person that you know and trust is typically your caregiver or your parent.
Mm-hmm.
And so kids just don't want to be away from us when they're little.
And then as they get older
There's a whole bunch of other reasons why they want to stay home from school, whether it's bullying or they're having difficulty learning or sometimes there's uh a lot of research on
how much more challenging it is for children who are neurodivergent.
There's myriad reasons for it, but it seems that post-pandemic things have just sort of amplified.
Yeah.
I think that makes so much sense.
And I personally wonder too about a lot of kids that weren't in school during the pandemic, right?
They were home and the the social issues that are happening at school right now
Like I think some of those critical years, right?
Like you think of a child who's now, let's say, in grade six or grade seven.
So the first couple years of them being in school where their peers are learning for the first time how to interact with each other, like all these really important things
they didn't have that because they were home.
And then they started school really in like grade two for some kids, right?
So that's the first exposure that they actually had to classmates where you think of a child who's in grade two.
who's had the other past years of being with classmates, learning how to interact, learning how to deal with friends.
That's a lot of social learning that I think is really important and helps shape a classroom to make sure that the kids get along and there's
We limit bullying and all of that, right?
So kids haven't had that.
So I think a another big reason why kids are struggling to go to school is because
the interactions between the peers are not great.
And a lot of the kids that we're working with, they are trying to avoid school because bullying, because meanness, because
they don't have any friends and and all of these different reasons that I do think maybe would have been there, but the pandemic exasperated that for sure.
Aaron Powell Okay, so your theory is that has made things worse for a lot of
families, kids.
Yes, like I think always.
I mean I was working in a school before the pandemic, right?
And I mean always girls in grade five, six, seven, eight, they're struggling with friends.
Like that's just been the case.
But then when they already missed out on those years forming friendships, learning how to interact with each other and now for the first time they're back in school at this age, I think it it's just making things so much harder.
That's the thing.
We're I would say we're sort of three years back into it.
Yeah.
Right.
But now like we're seeing the effects of that.
Yeah.
And I mean, do you think there's any possibility that because you have a therapy practice that you're running, that's
expanding and you're seeing more people and seeing like it's just sort of inherent that you would be receiving those kind of clients anyway.
Yeah, and and like I said, we've been dealing with this pre-pandemic too.
It's not new, but I will say amongst the therapy community, amongst my colleagues, we're all talking about
how frequently we're seeing school refusal now.
So it's not just me, it's it's any of my colleagues that I talk to in the space.
They are So you think it's more
Happening more often.
Yeah, we we all believe it's happening more often.
Oh yeah.
I mean the the research seems to suggest that that is the case.
I have so many wonderings as to why, right?
Like right now we're just kind of theorizing.
We can't specifically point to one reason.
Another reason on top of the social dynamics, I'm wondering, is because kids have been home and they have done school from home
And in history, that's not really the case, right?
Where kids had the option to stay home.
So you have these kids now who are in those grades five, six, seven, eight, you know, teen years.
And they remember learning from home.
They remember what it felt like to wake up at home every single day and stay home all day.
And I think that there's maybe a piece of that.
There's a comfort to that.
There's a comfort to that.
And they crave that and maybe they miss that and they know what it feels like.
So I think then you're gonna advocate to feel that safety again and to stay home, whereas in previous years
kids didn't know what that would have felt like.
They couldn't have advocated for that 'cause they didn't know it was an option.
Yeah, and I actually did find a bunch of research on that too, which
That is one of the reasons researchers are suggesting that kids want to stay home from schools because they got used to it and they kind of enjoyed
the comfort of being at home.
Mm-hmm.
Which makes sense, especially if there's so many other reasons.
Like, yeah, if they're having friendship issues or they don't perform super well in front of the class or they don't like being called upon in class or whatever other reason.
Like
When you're in school, it's not the most comfortable situation.
Which maybe it shouldn't be too comfortable because it helps you learn.
But for certain kids, maybe more sensitive kids, I don't know, that makes things way worse.
And I've really been feeling for kids, because I feel like for many kids, school is hard.
Right?
A lot of the the kids that we're coming and we're talking to, the things that they're telling us about school and what's going on at school, it is hard.
Like I had a kid tell me once about her classmate
in the middle of class having a seizure and bleeding everywhere and she thought he was dying.
And that happens.
Kids have seizures at school, but we're not always taking into account how that makes the other kids in the class feel, right?
And then I've had kids talk to me about bullying that they've experienced at school or that they've witnessed at school.
I've had kids talk to me about how they're just really bad at school and they are embarrassed and they don't want their classmates seeing that.
I've had kids tell me that they don't like any of the clothes that they're
moms by and they get made fun of by their peers.
Like school is hard.
And if I think about myself, like if I had to go into a workplace every single day where someone was making fun of me or people were bullying me, right?
Like I wouldn't
want to go.
I would want to stay home and I'd advocate for myself to stay home.
And I think of that very similar to our kids, right?
So a lot of the times
We can't just dismiss it because a lot of their concerns are valid and I hear what the parents are saying.
They can't keep their kids home every day.
Like they have to go to school.
They have to learn.
So I I
It's it's a challenge.
Yeah.
It's just that's the reality of life.
Can we talk about the different ages?
In school refusal?
Because I think there's a difference between the toddler and preschool age child refusing to go to school and
a preteen refusing to go to school.
There might be similar reasons, but I think they become more complex as children get older and there's social dynamics that come into play.
So if we want to start with the toddler age
let's say our toddler who goes to daycare, right?
Or preschool, we are gonna see school refusal super common.
You're gonna see refusal to go to a babysitter, anything like that.
And most of the time, not always, but most of the time, that is rooted in a true separation anxiety, right?
That's often the first time they're going away from a parent.
And in all school refusal, we always have to look at separation as a leading root cause because the parent, the home is typically the place where they feel safe, where they know how to make sense of the world, where
They've been and they're trusted adults.
It's their trusted adults.
And at school, you go for the first time as a toddler.
You don't know how to make sense of the world.
You don't know how to feel safe.
You don't have your trusted adult there.
And so what does your body do?
Well, it goes into a state of alarm that it says, I have to stay close to my trusted adult
So you cling, you cry, you whine, you hold on to your parent's leg, you say, No, I don't wanna go and all of that is a very natural and important response.
It shows us that the child is attached to their parent, but it doesn't mean don't send them to school.
It just means that they need to know who their safe person and who the person is that's gonna look after them and be in charge is at school.
And over time as they build the relationship with that person, then you start to see that franticness decrease
Yeah.
Now I think it maybe it would be easier for us to say that we trust very much the people that our kids are with and the preschool that we send our our youngest to.
And our middle daughter went too as well.
There are great people there.
So we have no issues.
But I know in certain country countries like the US especially, you're sending your child who's baby still.
Mm-hmm already.
And then by the time they're toddler you don't even spend as much time with your child that way.
And maybe some people just have to send them to wherever has an opening, but you don't necessarily
think that they're taking care of your children in the best way.
So how as a parent can you help your child feel safe or loved when they're
I don't know, maybe their teacher isn't the best.
That's a pretty tricky thing, right?
Like that's Yeah, I mean I don't necessarily have an amazing answer.
Like some situations are tough and there isn't like
Well, if you just do this X, then it's better than it's a good idea.
Find a different school.
Oh well, no school or no daycares have any openings.
Like that's Yeah, that's such a reality.
Like I've known people who have been in that exact same situation, right?
Yeah.
Our kids are taken care of by people that we know care deeply for them.
And and I would say in an ideal world you're able to send them to a preschool or a daycare where
there's at least one person you trust who you can turn them towards.
Like that's what I would want for every parent, right?
And at the same time, giving them pieces of you
to hold on to while they're there, right?
So whether that's like giving them a little bracelet that they can wear or a little stuffy that has your perfume on it or some sort of piece of you so that they can still feel that closeness even when you're apart
I mean that's something that you can control and you can do.
But yeah, I mean ideally like you want your child to be in a place where you trust the caregiver, right?
So that's kind of a hard one because I I would want parents to trust the caregiver that's taking care of their child.
And I feel like I've heard you say that some people have mentioned that they just can't find anywhere else.
They're sending their child to like the only one that they can find.
So in in that scenario, you're gonna do all you can.
all in your power to give them the connection, the feelings when they're there.
Another thing that I found interesting in the research, and I again this is not necessarily specifically related to school
refusal or separation anxiety.
It's kind of all of life.
But it's about how parents deal with their own stress.
I'll just read this to you because I think
This is again something that we've seen even with the parents who have purchased the worry toolkit.
Studies have already shown for a long time.
like these are pre twenty twenty that families with high anxiety or other psychopathology in parents or other family stressors like
whatever abuse and trauma in within the family can increase a child's refusal to go to school.
Yes.
And an anxious parent can unintentionally transmit anxiety to the child
for example, a nervous or overprotective parent might reinforce the idea that the world or school is unsafe.
Parental psychopathology, especially
anxiety disorders have been found to be more common in families of school refusing youth.
So there's that and then there was also the exact opposite where it's like overly permissive parents who just like let their kids do whatever they want has
essentially the same effect.
Their kids just don't go to school and they're like, Oh yeah, fine, whatever.
Yeah, here's how I see this play out pretty often in our practice.
Because we deal, like I told you, with a lot of school refusal and a lot of the parents are really anxious.
Right?
Not all.
Not all, but a lot of them are are anxious themselves.
And how we s typically see this play out is the parents already feel some hesitation, some anxiety towards sending their kids to school, right?
Let's say on the bus.
They're like, oh, they're really nervous to send their kids on the bus.
the child feels that.
So the child can sense that the parent is anxious about it.
So now the child's brain is registering, well I'm actually not safe to go on the bus.
Look at mom.
Especially our sensitive or neurodivergent kids, like they see it right away
Right.
So they're like, look at mom, she's pacing, she looks uncomfortable, she doesn't look okay with this.
Okay, well that's telling me that I'm I shouldn't be okay with this.
I can't go on the bus.
And then they start losing it.
They start crying, I don't want to go on the bus, I don't want to go on the bus, and then
Mom, this could also easily be dad, you know.
Mom goes, oh, okay, okay, fine.
No, no, you don't need to go on the bus.
Like you're too upset.
And it's like confirms to mom.
I knew it was gonna be bad and it's going bad and they hate going to school, so then no, they can't do it.
It's too much for them.
I wanna protect them and it's always well meaning.
It's always well meaning.
It's not like it's a parent is specifically trying to pass on anxieties to their child.
I feel like especially these anxious parents, which I relate to because I tend to be more on that side.
they want to protect their kids because they don't want them to have to go through hard things like they did when they were an anxious child, right?
So it's that balance of like
Okay, but this isn't you as an anxious child.
You're actually giving your child tools, you're supporting them, but they need to know that they can do the hard thing.
And that means doing the hard thing.
And it feels hard the first couple times.
And if we never give it the child, the anxious child, the chance to prove to themselves that they're capable of doing the hard thing, then they internalize this message of I can't do it
It's too hard.
I can't go to school.
It's impossible.
And then they don't go.
And the message continues in their head.
And the parent comes to me saying, How do we get here?
And then we have to
go all the way back to the beginning and teach anxious parents it's actually okay.
Their children can handle some discomfort and some feelings of this is really hard.
And we give them tools.
You know, we don't just leave kids on their own.
They know that you're always partnering with them and we can do it in little baby steps.
But once children can prove to themselves that they're capable of hard things.
then we start to see some things change.
Yeah, I think and this is now anecdotal.
I don't I didn't look this up at all, but I think I've seen in our own
girls, something along these lines.
And I can see our oldest.
Like they all crave safety.
And specifically safety f with us.
So being with us.
As they should, right?
Which they they should do
And I keep going back to images of our oldest with swimming and with going water skiing and like all these things that are she's very nervous about.
Mm-hmm.
And it's been since she was very young, but things she's very nervous about
And one of us will be like, I'm right here with you.
If anything happens, like she went on a knee board behind a a boat on her own.
I said, if you go under
I will jump out of the boat and I'll swim to you and make sure you're all good.
You're not unsafe.
And then I think just on our most recent trip with our middle daughter, I feel like she's kind of, yeah, uh obviously a few years behind our oldest
And she's doing things that are very similar to what I found our oldest was doing where she's like, I really want to do this thing, but I'm so nervous, I don't know if I can do it.
For instance, when we were down south, she wanted to learn how to swim, but then she's like, I don't know if I can do it.
And I think
You might be a little more of the anxious parent where you're like not letting her go underwater at all, where my default is to allow her to struggle a little bit.
So go underwater.
Maybe even breathe in a tiny bit of water, just so she learns then.
I can't do that.
I have to hold my breath.
And I'm going underwater.
Oh, I better kick a little bit harder so I stay above.
Without us allowing her to do that in
A pretty uh like in a controlled environment.
It's not like she's unsafe because And they're never unsafe, right?
Literally right there next to her by the end of like two hours, I think she was swimming across the pool on her own.
Yeah.
At four years old.
Like, maybe that's a normal thing, but I feel like the only way for her to have been able to do that is just to struggle a little bit at the beginning.
To understand, oh, if I don't do this, this thing happens.
If I kick harder, my head will stay above the water.
But I always I see my dad or my mom right next to me and I know if I'm really struggling, they're
obviously gonna pull me out.
So I'm not unsafe.
Yeah.
And I think that is a beautiful description of how we need to support our kids.
just in general, right?
I think that there's a misconception out there right now with all the parenting information that's online of like, you know, validating feelings, all the important things that we talk about.
that sometimes is misinterpreted as don't allow your kids to struggle, right?
Yep.
And I actually think that that does a disservice to our kids.
Because if they don't know that they're able to go through a struggle and come out of it on the other side, they're never gonna do something that feels tricky for them.
And there's a lot of things in life that are gonna feel tricky for them, right?
Life in general is very tricky.
Like going on a school bus is really tricky
And I would never like our kid has had our own daughter has had struggles going on the school bus, both of them.
And so I would never say, go on the school bus where it's tricky or you're getting bullied or it's unsafe and just deal with it.
Yeah.
It's never that.
It's always this
idea like visualize Scott standing right beside our daughter as she's learning how to swim.
You're always there, you're always coaching, you're always providing support.
And if for example if they're getting bullied badly
You never like just deal with it, you have to deal with hard things on your own.
Yeah.
No.
Just stand up to the bully.
The stand up to the bully.
No, of course you're gonna intervene because you don't let your kids struggle to the point of it's dangerous for them, which bullying is.
But there is an important piece of if it's a safe bus ride, you know the bus driver's safe.
They're sitting in a spot that's safe.
They have something to do.
Everything about it's okay.
We can give them tools for if it feels hard, if they feel like they're gonna cry, all of those things.
We can allow them to try and do the hard thing, meet them at the school and be like, wow, look, you did it.
You are capable of doing something difficult
You know, and that's just one example if it's the school bus.
There's so many reasons for school refusal.
We won't be able to get into all of them.
Probably would have to do a part two.
But it is important to note that your child is capable of doing hard things
And the key is that you're alongside them and they know that they're never in it alone.
And if you were that anxious parent who's like, well, I was so anxious as a kid, I bet you the difference is you didn't have the support from your parent
Like you didn't have them coaching you through it and saying, You're never gonna go through this alone.
I know you're capable.
You didn't have them telling you the story of how you did the hard thing and asking you how that felt in your body, right?
So you're not putting your kids through the same trauma
that you had, you are doing things different and you can still support them in doing the tricky thing.
Mm-hmm.
That's just all anxiety, anxious
Children, but I think it does relate to the school refusal discussion.
Yeah.
I feel like we keep coming back to older kids.
Oh yeah.
Right, like being in in actually in school rather than in
And I'll say that's mostly what we're seeing right now.
So that's probably why my own.
Which makes sense there.
Yeah.
Because I feel like younger children going to preschool on
Daycare.
Again, it's a little bit simpler explanation for it.
Like it's separation anxiety.
And if if that is you, we have a not to pitch our course, but we have a great course on that.
It's the separation and goodbyes course
goes into all things separation and all the ways that you can support them.
So if you're looking for a little bit more support on that, that would be a great option
Because yeah, typically for those younger tots, it's it's the separation anxiety that we're seeing.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly
kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from
our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me, so Jess.
If you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unspeakable.
Safe touch, and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff, like tickling that goes too far, and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturedfirst.
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And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
One thing that I found interesting was there was a study done on youth who they
tried to determine the reading levels and then also tried to look at their absenteeism and school refusal.
And there was a very significant link between
Things like having difficulty reading or doing math or any subject in school and refusing to go to school.
So it seemed like that was also a big thing.
Like we're talking about bullying and
parents anxiety and all that.
But there's also the pressure to perform in school if a child feels like they don't have
the ability to read well and it's embarrassing for them.
Or if they're just really struggling with school or they have a learning disability or something like that.
It's important to try and recognize that because early intervention can help them
from what I was reading, actually enjoy going to school.
Yes.
But some kids just need more help with that.
Yeah, and and I think that's a really important point 'cause we see this often too, of kids when we really get curious about it, 'cause I had a mom say
You know, it's so funny, like she refuses to go to school every morning, but then if I say at lunchtime, I'm gonna bring you now, she's like, Yeah, no problem.
So the mom is so confused.
She's like, I don't get it.
It's like she doesn't want to go in the morning, but at lunch it's fine.
And then I said, Well, what subjects do you have in the morning?
And what is she doing in the morning in school?
Right.
And the more you get curious, the more you understand, oh, it's
subjects that feel hardest for her.
That's in the morning.
And so it makes sense she wants to skip that, right?
Because it's embarrassing.
She has trouble reading.
She feels humiliated in front of her peers.
And then so sometimes it's a conversation of, okay, well then how can we support her with that?
And sometimes that's extra support at home, though I am always mindful of how much homework a child's doing, because I sometimes think
that the kids who struggle the most in school get the most homework and work the hardest after school on their schoolwork, which just makes them resent school that much more and have less time to rest and play, which is also important for them to learn how to learn at school, you know?
Yep.
But sometimes the question is what supports can we put in place to make school not feel as hard for these kids?
Do you think school is
Higher pressure now compared to even when we were in school?
I'm not sure.
It really depends on the teacher, the school, the parents.
Sometimes the parents put a lot of pressure on their kids to perform at a certain level
Especially parents of multiple kids and let's say one kid was really smart or like always had really great grades and then the next kid doesn't and they think, Well, you know, why are you struggling so much, you know?
It depends on the parents' career goals for their children.
Some parents really, really push academics.
Some kids have been learning and they've been in like
learning based schools since they were two and they're exhausted, you know.
So there's just so many factors.
It's hard to say.
Art in general, kids feeling more pressure, you know.
Possibly.
But it's probably individual based on the situation.
It depends.
It depends.
I know.
Sorry.
Such a political answer.
Such a political answer, I know.
Non-committal.
You know, there's always so much nuance.
I just have a hard time saying this or that.
I know.
You know what?
What I would like to know is what is the most common thing you're seeing from parents that come to
the practice.
Like what would you say is the most common reason for young kids not r wanting to go to school?
'Cause we've talked about a bunch of different reasons, but
We're seeing all of them.
I don't know.
It's hard to say one.
It's often a blend of a few.
I would say we're seeing a few different things.
I would say social dynamics at school, especially in these girls
Yeah, boys.
Especially in the girls though.
This goes pre pandemic.
Yeah.
You know, grade four, five, six, seven.
I mean you dealt with that too, right?
Yeah, I dealt with that too.
But now they know that there's an option to not go.
It's a tale as old as time.
But the social dynamics are huge.
I think for some boys, I think the research would show we see this more often
who don't have boundaries around gaming.
We are seeing a school refusal in the morning because they're staying up really late and they're gaming and maybe talking to their friends online.
And then it comes to time to go to school in the morning and they don't want to go.
They're exhausted.
I think we're seeing a lot of struggles in school because of not a lot of boundaries around screens, especially again in those like middle years.
And I think that's a a major issue.
We have to have boundaries with screens.
Where's I seeing it?
There was a government, I wanna say Denmark, but I don't know.
It's one of the Scandinavian countries.
And they posted guidelines for the amount of time at different ages screen time is acceptable.
But how
Like if you give a child a phone in those middle years, they should be on a screen for an hour or less every day.
Yeah, I just um I'm doing a a couple presentations in schools in the next few weeks on screen time, so I just finished writing it.
And uh just finished writing the presentation and that was a big thing that I'm covering is
how we're seeing this school refusal and this is more in boys, I would say.
But a lot of times if you get curious, they're not having that boundary bedtime.
You know, they're staying up way too late.
They're talking at their friends and sometimes getting into
Trouble, you know, fights, they're angry at their friends or something like that while they're gaming, you know, someone is losing for the team or whatever.
Like
And they don't want to go to school the next morning, and it makes sense, so you're exhausted, right?
So we have to set the conditions up for our children to want to go to school
And the conditions being set up involve getting adequate sleep the night before.
Right.
And another reason why sometimes kids aren't getting adequate sleep the night before is there just too much extracurriculars.
So again, you have well-meaning parents
Who want the best for their kids and who want to enroll them in all the things, right?
So they have gymnastics one night, karate one night, skating, whatever it is.
Skating one night.
And you have so much extracurriculars going on that your child's never going to bed on time, they're exhausted.
And the child will try their very best to get their need for rest met.
So that's another thing that we we want to get curious.
So I feel like especially like a lot of times I can give you kind of like one common theme.
I would say school refusal.
Every case I'm seeing has just a few different layers of complexity.
Like sometimes, especially in the younger, we s I saw a lot of JK school refusal this year.
junior kindergarten.
And a lot of that was separation struggles.
And and it was resolved by a lot of kind of bridging the separation, matchmaking with the teacher, like that kind of stuff.
But then I would say these older kids, I'm seeing layer upon layer upon layer.
Yeah, like with our middle, who's four and is in junior kindergarten, I think it's largely to do with separation.
Yes.
And
Apparently we've both been late to picking her up, so then that caused an extra worry with her.
Yeah, we're not immune to this, just an FYI.
So this happened to us recently.
Our daughter was really upset and always crying every time she had to leave to go to school.
I got curious after like dealing with this for a very long time.
We went away, I thought it would get better.
It didn't
And then she said, well one time you were late and I thought you weren't coming.
And so we're like, okay.
And she's like, now I think you sometimes gonna forget about me or not come pick me up.
I mean I was like 10-15 minutes late one time
Of course.
Your brain jumps to that, especially when you're a sensitive kid and maybe I was frazzled that day and she took on that energy, right?
So now we have to do work to support her so that we can help her know that we'll never forget about her.
We'll always come pick her up.
You know, and she's safe and all of these things, so we're not immune to it.
And there's just so many reasons why it could happen.
Have you observed any success stories where a child overcame?
Severe refusal and what helped them overcome that?
Many, many, many, many success stories.
So there's so much hope.
Again, different things.
I had a kiddo who had separation anxiety
And a lot of it to do was feeding off of his mom's anxious energy.
And the mom, incredible mom, was doing everything she could to get this little girl to go to school.
And she ended up being very frazzled in doing so.
You know, trying every trick in the book.
It's like the tips I give are good, but if you're doing them all at one time and you're overloading your child, they just take on your energy, right?
So child is
Catching on to mom's energy, realizing that she was a little bit unsafe because of mom.
And so a lot of my work was with mom.
Yep.
I had another client at our practice who was dealing with bullying
We had to resolve the bullying issue, you know, another one who struggled with school and we had to get some support in the class.
So it's just there's a lot of different reasons, but what you really need to do is just get curious about
what are the key Of course always get curious.
Always get curious.
But there's not a one size fits all to school refusal.
You also need to look at the relationship of course.
I mean need I even mention this at this point
But if things are rocky at home or things are hard at home or there's a disconnection in relationship between you and your child, they are going to do whatever they can to stay close to you.
And you'll see more school refusal too.
So you can always check back in with that.
See if you can do some connecting things over the weekend when they're home and look at bullying, look at social dynamics.
Look at how they feel close to their teacher.
Do they have someone to connect to?
Do they have someone to be attached to at school?
Who's their safe person?
Do they have a way
For some kids, it's just a lot to be away from their parents all day.
And so for some kids, we've even given them a notebook where they could write little things that they want to tell their parents that happen throughout the day and they can
Write a note and then show their parent at the end of the day.
For our daughter, I bought her these little crocheted hearts and I'm weird little worm hearts things.
Look like worms.
And I gave her one worm heart and I took one worm heart and now we've just been carrying these worm hearts around with each other every day.
She keeps it in her hand pretty much all day too, I think.
Yeah.
So there's just
You gotta look at all the factors, and I know in one episode we can't cover it all, but hopefully it helps parents start to get curious and wonder.
What's one thing you wish every parent or caregiver understood?
about children's emotional development and their capacity to handle challenges.
Oof.
Really giving me a good question at the end here.
Children need to know that they are not alone with the challenges that they face.
They need a parent to come in not to save them, but to support them, in a developmentally appropriate way, of course.
But they need their parent to almost be their coach, right?
And to be alongside them, to model to them the skills that they can use.
But to show them that they are in fact capable of trying and doing things that are tricky for them.
A parent's job is not
to come in and fix every situation.
And what I would really want parents to know is that their children being sad or having a hard time or feeling uncomfortable doing something new, those feelings aren't necessarily bad.
And if we take away if we strip a child from their ability to feel discomfort and struggle, it's not going to help them in the long term
They need to learn how to struggle and feel discomfort safely, of course, knowing that you're right there to support them.
Yeah
And I'm assuming you're not saying like if a child is struggling with reading or writing or math or whatever it is, you're just gonna be like you have to struggle through it.
No, because that wouldn't be what a good coach would do.
Right?
Good coach is like, oh you're struggling with this, let me show you how to do it.
Or let me get you some help.
Let's get you some help.
Right?
So when I say let children struggle, it's not your classic
You know, 80s, let 'em struggle.
You know, it's not that.
It's you're always there.
You're supporting them.
You're right beside them, right?
Just like you with swimming.
I'm right here.
I will never let you drown
I will never let you drown, but I know that you're capable of kicking your feet and swimming.
And if you ever think that they're drowning, you're gonna pick them back up and you're gonna help them because they they can't do that on their own yet, right?
And
Things like bullying, things like learning disabilities or neurodivergence, stuff like that, that would be considering drowning to me at school.
And that's when you're gonna step in and really advocate for your child and make sure that they get the support that they need
So you're never gonna just say, just deal with it, you know, everyone has bullies.
No, we're not doing that.
Yeah.
But you are gonna coach your child into what they can do, what's in their control, and help them do hard things without just like pulling them out of school completely necessarily.
Right
Finally.
Oh, I thought that was the last question.
Oh man.
Okay.
I know it's another one thing though.
If you could give just one piece of advice to parents struggling with a child refusing
daycare or school because that's what we've mostly been talking about.
What would that piece of advice be?
Get curious?
Yep.
Yeah.
You kind of already said it, but I wanted to finish.
The episode on that.
So good.
Nice way to pick up what I was putting down.
Yeah, I would really get curious.
I think why your child's struggling is going to be unique.
And sometimes you have to get curious with the therapist.
Right?
I mean, as a therapist is pretty much what I do.
It's just help parents get curious and then help parents find their own answers.
So
Get curious, try and get to the root.
Maybe there's multiple roots of what going on and and even in doing that your child will feel really connected with you and they'll know that you care.
And that will even be like an incredible place to start.
Nice.
I just want to note that we do have some pretty good resources for
A whole bunch of the things we talked about today, like we have a separation course, we have our friendship toolkit, which is really helpful for like tricky friendship situations, we have
a school toolkit, which is really good for kids who are starting to go to school and struggling with separation anxiety.
So I mean this whole thing isn't a giant ad, but like we have some actually incredible resources that our team has made.
So I'll just make sure we link all of those.
Honestly I'm kind of thinking that
These reports or reviews that I'm doing, we should turn into blog posts.
The information I was finding was so interesting and it opened my mind to a lot that I wasn't considering.
Well even the research I think it just helps to have extra compassion on your kids and like understand where they're coming from, right?
But that's why I just wanted to note that like we have these resources that our team has built and they're really helpful and so if parents are struggling, definitely
Check it out and hopefully we can continue to support you.
Cool.
Well, thanks for listening today.
We uh hope you enjoyed it.
Let us know on whatever platform you're using or send us an email.
We look forward to recording a new one next week.
Can't wait to talk to you again.
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