MY SON REFUSES TO GO TO SCHOOL
What do I do?
Try to determine why he won’t go to school. Is he having difficulty with:
- School work – Does he need an evaluation to determine if he has a Learning Disability; need a tutor, or is he bored and needs to be challenged?
- A teacher – Is a teacher giving him a hard time?
- Peers – Is he having a problem with friends, lack of friends or is he being bullied?
- Feeling safe – Is your feeling threatened by peers?
- Physical ailments – Is he feeling ill?
- Emotions – Is he feeling sad, alone, angry, moody, withdrawn, anxious or upset?
- Drugs or alcohol – Is your son experimenting with marijuana, pills or alcohol?
Open the lines of communication with your son. Be willing to listen to him without judgment and without thinking ahead of what you are going to say. Use “I” statements such as: “I feel concerned about your future if you continue to miss school.” Instead of, “You’ll never get anywhere in life without a high school education.”
Be empathetic. Try to remember what it was like when you were a teenager and the difficulties, struggles and challenges you faced.
Try to resolve the problem together. Ask your son what he thinks he needs to be successful in school.
Things not to do:
- Don’t engage in a power struggle.
- Don’t blame. It is easy to say your son’s problems are the fault of his friends, or because he does not try hard enough.
Sometimes the conflicts your teenage son is experiencing in school are just too much for him and he feels he cannot be successful. If you come to this situation, know that there are alternatives. Changing the environment can often give your son an opportunity for a fresh start. You may be able to do this by changing schools. This is not always feasible. An alternative is a private school with academic and behavioral support.
Triumph Youth Services provides this type of solution.
Triumph Youth Services offers a small, highly structured family environment for youth. This family-like community promotes a social environment that takes on both therapeutic and healing properties instead of enforcing negative behaviors.
Triumph Youth Services offers an accredited school with smaller classroom sizes; individual, group and family therapy by licensed therapists experienced working with adolescents; and a supportive, trained staff acting as role models for appropriate behavior.
Contact Triumph Youth Services today and find out how we can help your son, you and your family.
