I have been seeing an increasing number of school refusal cases in my clinical practice. I have yet to read any studies that provide empirically based findings as to why this challenging set of behaviors is on the rise, but I do have a few (unsubstantiated) theories:
1. Children and adolescents have access to too many enjoyable activities when they stay home. When I was a child, if I were to stay home from school, I would be bored out of my mind. Unless I could have quickly caught up with the story line of “General Hospital,” there would be nothing to distract me from the long, drawn-out day, where I was lacking in social interactions. Today, the average home has TVs hooked up to cable, computers, iPads and smartphones galore and gaming systems, etc. Who would not want to stay home and “play” with their gadgets, in contrast to engaging in the challenging curriculum and unchartered social relations of an average day at school? I am always shocked when I hear how the children and adolescents who are too “emotionally ill” to go to school are allowed to be home, having access to technology. IF you are too sick to go to school, then you need to be engaging in a behavior that as closely as possible approximates the behaviors one would engage in at school. As long as your kid does not go to a school for programmers and gamers, chances are their school day does not entail being locked into technology. So they should not be allowed to do that if they are engaging in school refusal behaviors.
2. Parents fail to see the dangerous waters their child is entering when they engage in school refusal behaviors. When your child is little and screaming about not wanting to go to the doctor, what do you do? Do you negotiate? Do you wait until they are ready to obtain their annual checkup? Going to school is as mission-critical to survival as obtaining appropriate medical care. I always tell parents who meet with me that we need to treat school refusal as a psychiatric emergency. Children not showing up for school is equivalent to adults not showing up for work and not caring for their families’ needs.
3. It is unclear why the child is refusing to attend school. In treating school refusal, it is critical to first conduct a functional analysis to determine why a child is refusing to go to school. School refusal is not a diagnosis; it is a symptom of a disorder. Is a child refusing to go to school because he is being bullied? Is she refusing to go to school because she is having panic attacks in the cafeteria? Is he refusing to go to school because he fears he will not make straight A’s and his rigid, perfectionistic thinking is getting in his way? It is critical to figure out why a child is having a difficult time going to school in order to develop an effective treatment plan, to assist your child in reintegrating back into school.
It is also critical to have the support and the assistance of your child’s school. It can assist you in creating an appropriate action plan to get your child back to school. That plan may entail a school staff member temporarily coming over to escort your child to school in the mornings (nothing quite as effective at getting a kid up and out as a school security guard entering the home). The plan may also entail accommodations such as your child being able to take a break from class if he or she feels a panic attack coming on. There are many creative strategies to assist a child in more effectively managing distress and obtaining the tools and skills necessary to handle life’s challenging moments. What is most important is for children to learn that quitting, avoiding, or running away from problems is not a viable long-term solution. As we adults have all learned the hard way, it just leads to digging ourselves deeper into the pain and suffering.
If your child is struggling with school refusal or school anxiety, I recommend you contact a mental health professional trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) or pharmacotherapies or both. You can search for a therapist in your area on the Anxiety and Depression Association of American (ADAA) website to help you with this challenging, but very important work.
Do you have a bad temper that you wish you didn’t have? Can you imagine the damage such a temper can do to you and others? It can leave lifelong scars that are often difficult to heal.
Bad temper is a persisting angry mood that any of us can have. It is merely a way to remove or displace your frustration, but only few think about what happens after that.
Nothing good really happens when you have a bad temper. Not only does the person at the receiving end suffer both mentally and physically, but you also make a dent in your persona.
A person with such an ill temper will affect others around him by making things unpleasant. It can cause stress, which leads to many health problems.
“We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.” ~ Alfred Adler
Let me take you through a story, which is an excerpt from what I read somewhere that inspired today’s post. It’s about a little boy who had a bad temper and what it resulted in. So, here we go.
What a Bad Temper Can Lead to
Once there was an extremely bright and talented boy. But sadly, he possessed a badhabit; he had a very bad temper.
Whenever he was angry, he did and said things that often hurt people because he had little regard for those around him.
Though he would sometimes realize and accept his mistakes, but still he had very fewfriends to call his own.
This made him sad as he could not understand the reason why people stopped being his friend. He decided to seek his parents help
His parents also remained worried about his irritable nature and temper. Finally, one day the father had an idea.
He asked his son to try out a little exercise. He gave him a bag of nails and a hammer.
He told him that, “Whenever you lose your temper I want you to really let it out. Just take a nail and drive it into the old fence with the oak boards in the backyard. And hit the nail as hard as you can.”
It wasn’t easy for the son to drive the nails into the weathered oak boards in the old fence because they were tough as iron. More so, the hammer was pretty heavy.
However, by the end of the first day, the boy had driven 39 nails into the fence! Wasn’t he really one angry young man!
Gradually, within a few weeks, the number of nails on the fence dwindled down. Guess what? Yeah, keeping his bad temper in control was easier than driving nails into the fence!
Finally, the day came when there was no nail on the fence because the boy didn’t lose his temper. He felt proud of himself as he shared his achievements with his parents.
The boy’s father told him that, “as a sign of your success, you will now pull out one nail, and do that each day when you don’t lose your temper even once.”
It took a lot of efforts for the boy to control his temper, but one day he was able to report proudly to his father that all the nails were gone.
“Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.” ~ Baltasar Gracian
Lesson Learnt About Bad Temper
The father appreciated his son’s efforts as he walked along with him and took a look at the fence. But there’s a lesson that each one of us can learn from what the father told his son about bad temper.
The father said, “ You’ve done well, but I want you to notice the holes you have left in the fence. Whatever happens now, this fence will never remain the same.”
He carried on saying, “When we say or do hurtful things in a bad temper or anger, it produces the same kind of result. It leaves such holes and scars.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you say you are sorry, or how many years pass, the scars remain. And a verbal wound is as bad as a physical one, often worse.”
“Similarly, people are more valuable than an old fence. They make us smile. Some even become our friends and support us, share our joys and sorrows.”
“And if these people trust us, then we need to treat them with love and respect. We need to prevent as many of those scars as we can. If we don’t then people will not like to be our
friends.”
“Keep your temper. A decision made in anger is never sound.” ~ Ford Frick
Moral
Wasn’t that a beautiful story with a valuable lesson? Isn’t it a reminder most us need from time to time?
Everyone gets angry sometime or the other and some of us even have a bad temper, and that’s alright. But remember, once the scars are formed, they take a long time to heal.
Therefore, the real test is what we do with that temper and how we handle things.
Over to you –
Do you have a bad temper? If you do, how do you deal with your temper? Did you leave any scars behind? Share your comments below
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