Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode is all about school refusal and will be supremely helpful whether you've got a child who periodically doesn't want to go in, including nursery, or a child who is persistent in their desire not to go to school. And we know that this affects a profound and significant number of children. And so I've enlisted some expert help today from Dr. Daniel Weisberg. He's the founder of CAPE and he is, this is superpower basically, in terms of supporting parents and children where there is persistent school refusal. So, it's going to be a cracker. I'm going to hand over to Daniel shortly, but as ever, if you enjoy this episode, I would be supremely grateful if you could rate, follow and review the podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So, until next time, here's Daniel.
Speaker 2Thank you so much for having me and for talking about such an important topic as well. I think it's vital that we talk about this and share as much information as we possibly can.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's such a big kind of area. I think what might be helpful initially, Dan, is can you just give us a bit of a background in terms of how you've ended up where you are now and particularly, I know obviously you support children in lots of different ways, but this area is somewhere where you've got a real strength of experience.
Speaker 2Yeah. So, I sort of fell into it, if that's probably the way to explain it. So, I'm a clinical psychologist. All psychologists train in the same way, a bit like medicine. You all start in doing the basic training and then as you qualify, you then specialise in a certain area. My specialism was paediatric neuropsychology. So, that's an area that aims to understand how children's brains relate to their behaviour, what's going on inside their head and how does that lead to the young child that we see in front of us. And I particularly did that with children with brain-related health conditions, like a brain injury or epilepsy or genetic change that causes their brain to function in perhaps a different way and offer that psychological support and understanding of what's going on. Now, as we're doing this, we also see children who have lots of anxieties and lots of worries about things. And as time has gone on, there seems to have been an increasing number of children who found school and the school environment challenging, potentially even overwhelming. And so, my role has gone from not just understanding what's going on inside their heads, but also understanding and supporting that anxiety that has particularly been associated with school. And you sort of find yourself on this path of now working with a significant number of families who either are not attending school regularly or struggling with school in some aspect and looking for that psychological support. That's where it comes from.
Speaker 1Crikey, it just goes to show, doesn't it, that you can start down one route and then life takes you in a whole different direction. Were you surprised, Dan, that you ended up finding this particular aspect within that brain and behaviour? Very surprised. And at the beginning.
Speaker 2Now, I am not surprised in the slightest. It's actually really disheartening that my job was to support children who have something going on inside their heads. You know, that's what I want to offer. But a huge amount of the work that we do now is supporting families in battling with a system, which is such a horrible phrase, isn't it? But trying to navigate. support from the school SEN teams or the local authority or an EHCP process or just how do we get the right help put into place because it should not be this difficult. I would love to live in a world where parents say I think my child's struggling with this, school turn around and go oh my gosh that sounds really tricky let's help with this, families go great and everyone's happy whereas all we find now is families suggest something, schools try and my experience is that schools are trying and they have exceptionally committed staff who really do want the best for children but are limited through resource and that resource is simply how much paperwork is needed or how much support they have, how many members of staff they have on hand to offer what a child needs or just navigating paperwork oh my goodness me the amount of time it takes just to fill out a form is ridiculous and then to only be met with rejection or not severe enough or something like that is really disheartening but that that's why it's become part of my work is to support families in that process to try and make sure that children are in get the support that they are entitled to.
Speaker 1And I think that that sort of echoes probably the general landscape for parents with children in terms of anxieties or struggling just generally with their children so we're talking very specifically today around sort of school refusal but we see this in essence I'm guessing a lack of funding and a lack of sort of joined up nurse when it comes to those that are just struggling with depression, struggling with OCD, struggling with anxiety that are not school refusing but are just struggling to access services in order to be able to support their needs which in so many of these cases caught earlier enough and supported quickly and so quickly enough can have a much better outcome longer term.
Speaker 2Absolutely I'm completely on board with that a huge amount of work has been done into the idea of prevention which shows if we stop a problem from getting worse in the first place not only does it support families from an emotional and psychological point of view now it stops that crisis and then financially if we want to think of it from that point of view we don't have to deal with the crisis side of stuff which is where all the funding from for mental health tends to be directed because that's where young people have the most need and even CAM services now the child and adolescent mental health teams are so overstretched that the only way that they can manage it is to support only the most risky children which leaves so many children in that void of we know something's going on but we're not severe enough to use that phrase to be able to get access to the support that is not a system that is sustainable or helpful or that works and so that's where we try to get involved is to try to intervene in that prevention part prevent the problem from getting worse before we have to deal with that and hopefully we never have to deal with that.
Speaker 1Yeah and I think that's I guess in lots of ways there's a whole other conversation Dan I think we need to have another whole episode is actually about it's a system that is fundamentally broken and not fit for purpose anymore but what would be I think we would like to try and do for those that are listening is how is really making this an impactful in terms of real how can we help parents so I think what I'd like to start off with is why are from the work that you have done and obviously you've worked with so many families broadly speaking are there some common themes around why a child may begin that whole process of school refusal if we're really trying to catch it in those early the early start to this what are the common themes and that's
Speaker 2a really cool question um the challenge with answering that question is it's it's really difficult to say um because every the the role of a psychologist is to understand what's going on here and we understand it by supporting families and understanding their individual circumstances because every family is unique every family does things in their own way with their own histories with their own relationships and that is part of our understanding of what's going on for a child so actually when we see people on television for example you know those um catch-all psychologists someone calls up saying I'm really struggling and a psychologist says you need to do this and this that's not what we do that's like the super nanny type way of working you know I'm going to tell you what to do our job is much more nuanced so we need to understand each individual's family circumstances but if we take a step back and look at all the families that we've worked with who are struggling from an anxiety point of view and particularly a school refusal point of view there are some common themes there certainly are one of them is neurodivergence now that absolutely does not mean every child who is struggling with school is neurodivergent it just means we see a huge number of children who are neurodivergent who struggle with the school system and that that's a big part of it now neurodivergence is a catch-all umbrella term it essentially means anything that means your brain is wired slightly differently so it covers ADHD and autism but it also covers dyslexia or dyscalculia and any learning differences it's just your brain might be slightly different it's just for some children that difference is quite significant which means the neurotypical system can't manage structures are in place that become too challenging for neurodivergent children so the environment might not be right it might be too busy it might be the demands of work are too heavy going it could be absolutely anything but that's simply unmanageable or very challenging to manage because a child's brain is wired slightly differently. I'm sure we'll come back onto that shortly because that doesn't mean that there has to be school refusal straight away. But there are some other themes as well, which include a family history here. And the family history includes illnesses and family circumstances. So when we know that there are things going on within families, children can find being away from that very challenging. So if your family circumstances mean that you're really used to being comfortable at home and you're that safe and secure, suddenly being away from that can be very challenging. Now, again, we can sit here and say, well, everyone's got life challenges. And that's true. And most people are fine with that. It's hard, but they're fine. But just for some children, that's a step too far. And again, understanding it means. we can get the right support in place. And then thirdly, there's also unmet needs, be it emotional and psychological needs, so anxieties and mood challenges or stress. But I'm also thinking about special education needs. So dyslexia or autism, sensory processing challenges, which essentially mean if those are misunderstood, and then you're just expected to be in that school system, it can be. it can be. it can be far too overwhelming. And then, of course, there's other things that we might not even know about. Bullying and social media and the cyber world and that side of things, which, again, we have to take that step back and really investigate it so that we can understand it to see what's happening here. So these are just possibilities of what could be happening. Now, I say all of that. There might also be circumstances where there's none of this going on. A child seems to be absolutely fine, and they've done really well in prime. They're doing fine in secondary. And suddenly, one day, the brakes come on and they cannot get in. Now, that would appear totally out of the blue and unexplained. So, again, our job is to take that step back and try and work out what might be going on there. And sometimes it's really difficult.
Speaker 1Yeah. I think that you've raised a really key piece because, of course, I've come into this and asking you that question from that perspective of, well, surely there must be some sort of magic potion. That we understand about why it happens. But you really highlight a very crucial point is that there's so much at interplay here. There are obviously some, as you say, when you take that step back and you look more broadly, can we spot some sort of patterns that we might be able to see? But for every single child, those pieces of the jigsaw are always going to be slightly different that has led to that so that there is. We don't make this assumption that all neurodivergent children are going to struggle with school because their needs are not necessarily being met. I think from a parent's perspective, it can be really difficult, particularly in the scenario that you've just described, where you've got a child who they've been in primary school, never been a problem. They've done a first few years at secondary school, and then suddenly the brakes come on. And I think for parents, it's really difficult to know amongst all of this backdrop of increase in mental health issues. As a parent, how do I know? That in this particular school refusal, in a loving, compassionate way, I'm going to encourage and scaffold them into school. And when do I then accept that actually this has been going on for several months now, and every single morning is a massive battle and there's tears and overwhelm? Do I then start saying, actually, is this something that I need to do more for? Because it isn't just my child having a bit of a moment and doesn't want to go
Speaker 2to school. That's a set of circumstances that is very common for us. We see that a lot. And it's one reason why I really don't like the psychologist as an expert model, if you will, where we come in and say, right, you need to do X, Y, and Z, a bit like the magic potion sort of thing. I wish there was, oh my gosh, that would be amazing. Say this, do this, put that in there, and then you've got a perfect child. No, that's not how it works. We find that families are trying, and they're trying to do everything in the way that makes sense to them. And that making sense is based on how they were parented or the environment in which they're in or the resources they've got. So me coming in saying, right, you need to put a routine in place or you need, that's not helpful because families are doing that and are doing that really well. And when it doesn't work, then there is very likely to be something else bubbling away underneath. And our job is to try and find what's happening here. And it could be a whole range of things. Just like you said, it's very, very unlikely to be one thing happens and it leads to school refusal. What is very likely is there's a bit of this and something here and something with that. And sometimes there are things that we don't even know are things, things that have just happened that have just planted a little seed in a child's brain. And we have just found ourselves almost like a perfect storm of events in a situation where they now can't tolerate being at school. What most families do is hear their child say, I don't want to go to school. They don't like it. I hate it. All that sort of school's horrible language. And most parents will say, okay, that's very nice. Come on, get your uniform on and, and get in, especially when you, you know, you're in that morning rush, you've got 32 seconds to get out the door because you've all woken up too late and the cereal down your face. I'm just describing my morning routine. So that's what most parents do. And now sometimes more often than not, it works. We see that children reluctantly get into school and once they're in, they're fine. And when you raise it at parents evening and say, you know, are they okay? The parents say they're fine, you know? So generally that's the pattern, but when parents follow that route and get their child into school, but their child is not fine and they're really expressing distress. And then there starts to be a bit of a withdrawal from school based things like school clubs or reluctance to put school uniform on or the Sunday night before a Monday morning, the anxieties are going up, you know, these sort of patterns where it just goes a little bit beyond that typical, this is just a child being a bit reluctant. That's when it would be good just to check it out with the professional. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong. Absolutely not. That could just be a child pushing the boundaries a bit further. I'm certainly not saying there's something wrong, but it's now gone another step and it's really useful just to see is there everything okay? Is there anything we can do? Because sometimes we just don't know as parents. Children are not the best communicators. Schools, if a child is masking in particular, aren't always the best communicators. So we don't know. So it's just that hunch that you get as a parent that something might be going on here. And that's when we can start investigating this a bit further. Now it might even be a bit further down the road for some families where, again, you've tried all of these things. You've tried this talking it through, and putting things into place, and a child takes a teddy with them, or the little actions. But if we've misunderstood what's actually going on here, sometimes these actions can exacerbate the problem. It can actually make it worse. And we are then becoming that parent who's putting their child in a situation that they find deeply distressing, and all the actions we've tried to put into place aren't helping. So we're starting to find that it's becoming an increasingly complex set of circumstances. So we all need to stop and take a step back and look at why is this happening?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think the crucial thing that is coming up repeatedly that you're saying, Dan, is this idea that we're so much better off really acting, not preemptively, but as soon as we see that there is, it's gone beyond just simply, oh, today's wet, and I've got chemistry, and I don't particularly want to go in today. There's a difference between that and then the challenges that we get, which is typically, as you say, the Sunday struggling to fall asleep. At night, in and out of their bedrooms multiple times, super distressed. Am I right in thinking, because I think this seems to be a bit of a recurring theme that comes up, is around this masking that children get. So we as a parent have a child who's overwrought almost at home. It is a constant battle to get them into school. And yet when we begin that dialogue with school to try and have that conversation, more often than not, school is saying, actually, they're not being dismissed, they're not being dismissive of it, but what the child is presenting at school, it's a whole different ball game.
Speaker 2That's a very common set of circumstances, even more so in girls than boys. Masking difficulties is a really effective strategy, because it just means you can put your head down and get on with it. The problem is, it is not a sustainable strategy, because you are putting a huge amount of effort into, or children are putting a huge amount of effort into just getting through that really difficult period of time. And then as soon as they're home, it comes out. And sometimes it all comes out before they've even got home, in the car going home, or on the way back home, whatever that may look like. That is common. And now I often think that's a credit to parents. The parents have created an environment that their children feel safe to let it all out in, but that's not sustainable for a child's well-being, or even for a parent's well-being. How are you supposed to support your child who's going through this daily, this almost release of pressure, uh, from everything that they've held up and and actually we see that unsustainability as children progress through school the demands of school go up the demands of exams go up social pressures become more challenging and the cracks appear in that masking and so it doesn't it doesn't last what's much more helpful is finding ways to to support that emotional regulation early on i'm not a fan of pathologizing things you know this a lot of time this is normal lots of children do this it's not indicative of there being an underlying problem it just means they've not yet developed the skills and dealing with things emotionally and i'm also a big proponent of children need to learn how to deal with things that are distressing um life happens and life is sometimes horrible and and bad things do sometimes happen or things go wrong and if we are teaching children how to deal with things that are distressing and i'm not a fan of pathologizing children that the only way to deal with that is to avoid it then that's not a strategy that's going to help you in life it's much better to learn how to tolerate distress now there's of course nuances to this um and i'm certainly not saying don't let your child do absolutely everything that's causing them a huge amount of distress that's where the nuance comes into it but actually children need to be exposed to difficult things but when those difficult things are too overwhelming there is something else going on here and that's that's not helpful a conversation that often comes up is a difference between what is just normal yeah avoidance of stuff and not really liking things and what then is actually a deeper issue um we we get this question a lot and i wonder if you you've seen this too from many families yeah and i think that's
Speaker 1the really difficult thing as a parent to discern and of course i don't believe that there is there is a a hard question to answer but i think that's the really difficult thing as a parent to hard line in terms of what it is but we parents hear all of the time i talk about it a lot you talk about it a lot down this idea that we don't want to facilitate avoidance because all that does is reinforce we want our children to be able to tolerate a certain level of discomfort but not so much that they feel that they've literally been thrown under the bus but how can parents begin to discern the difference between helping them tolerate a bit of discomfort and actually i'm putting you in a situation where you're not able to tolerate a bit of discomfort situation that is totally beyond your capabilities
Speaker 2yeah it's an excellent question and one that parents will probably get wrong at some point but that's that's okay actually it's it's okay for it to go wrong and i wonder if we as as parents are really scared of getting it wrong we really don't want our kids to be harmed but actually that that children getting things wrong or even us getting things wrong as parents is okay it's how you deal with it afterwards where the improvements can come that's what helps to build resilience and that's what helps to build healthy relationships when you fix things that have gone wrong but yes that difference between what's just i don't really want to go that general reluctance and a little bit of worry versus a deeper issue here um what often happens is that there's three things that i look out for almost three three factors it's the intensity of it it's the persistence of it and it's the pattern of it and it's those three things i think can help you look over the see the difference so for example if you think of the the persistence when it's a deeper issue this isn't just a one-off thing you know just before swimming on monday or the the spelling test on friday or something like that it's every day all the time and then if you add that into the pattern the other area well if that if that difficulty goes away over weekends or goes over goes away over school holidays for example you're again starting to recognize that this might be something specifically associated with school and then there's the intensity of it which is once you're in school if a child is then fine that's not particularly intense uh but if they're in school and they remain upset and the distress remains and the the emotion that's experienced with it remains at a high level you know there is crying and panic attacks and difficulty with breathing and the the tantrums for example that's far more intense and so or when those three areas the intensity the persistence and the pattern are all much more significant that's when i think you've shifted away from this isn't just my child being a little bit boundary pushing this is there is something else going on here
Speaker 1oh that's so helpful because it you know if you think about it i'm just recalling for lots of parents who'll be listening who maybe are dropping off their you know 18 month old at nursery and there's a lot there's the i mean it's a whole different ball game in terms of separation anxiety but there is that intensity as we're handing them over about separation but we then hear that oh they settled really quickly afterwards that's the sort of classic i mean i'm giving an example with an 18 month old but it's the same sort of piece i'm guessing as we as we progressively move up is that actually is that down to do with anticipation being more of the challenge than the actual environment once they're there
Speaker 2that absolutely is what it is we are rubbish i'm talking about humans in general at knowing about what's what's going to come next we are really bad at this there's been all sorts of great experiments um we can't plan ahead like we think we can like i remember a famous psychology experiment sent two groups of people into a supermarket one with a shopping list one group had just had a massive meal and were full up and one group was starving hungry and they all needed to buy the same things but the group who were hungry bought much more than the group who didn't like we're so rubbish at thinking ahead but children do the same thing um so young babies we see this all the time there is that separation from parents you're suddenly in a different environment you don't have that immediate care that we know we get at home and that's not nice so they cry and that's what children know brings attention but we then say it's okay i'm going to pick you up at the end of the day and you're going to have lots of hugs and lots of cuddles it's going to be all right and they get in and oh look there's a toy and they're off um now okay we're talking about very young children here but that pattern is exactly what we're looking out for through primary school and even into secondary school where it's children who might be upset at the fact they have to go in but once they're in they've seen their friends or they've got on with it and things are okay and they're picked up at the end of the day and they're like oh my god i'm going to pick you up at the end of the day and everything's okay the problem comes when it's the children who are deeply and persistently unhappy about going in not just a little bit of complaining but actively refusing to get out of their bedroom then it's once they're finally in school they need a huge amount of support from teachers just to to help to calm them they have to go to a separate room that you know a sudden it's a massive difference here and even that isn't enough to help them get through the day you know moods go up and down throughout the day but that high level of psychological arousal we'll call it that high level of stress is there the whole day and that's exhausting exhausting that's what i mean by persistent and the pattern and that that's where a problem is
Speaker 1and that's such a helpful metric those just you know really focusing in on those three dan can i ask is there generally a difference if us picking this up in primary school as opposed to secondary school do you does it tend to be a very different pattern in terms of the ability to be able to support a child is it more challenging once the they've moved into secondary school because a whole different dynamic isn't
Speaker 2it it's a whole different dynamic but usually before that age we don't actually know how severe this is because we are very good at saying that they're just young they just need to keep going and we sort of push them in the right direction and we're not going to be able to do that in primary school which which is for most children the right thing to do it just so happens that for some children that that can be too difficult um but how are you supposed to know as a parent children don't come with an instruction book or a troubleshooting guide you're going to do what professionals tell you and what are professionals who are involved teachers what are they going to say come on they'll come in they'll be fine they just need a bit of a uh a back rubbing and then they're absolutely okay sort of thing so you you're going to listen to that of course you are um so yes you get them pushed in but once you make that transition into high school everything jumps up and of course all those jumps you know academic social behavioral it comes with hormonal changes and biological changes just puberty happens to come at the most difficult time of a child's life anyway so throwing all that in in a big melting pot can then be too overwhelming and that's when we start to see these difficulties so it's that early primary school ages when i would typically say it's it's clearer but again not always sometimes there are younger children sometimes a child's got all the way through to a levels before they say i can't do
Speaker 1this yeah but i think it goes back to the comment that you made earlier on is that in lots of ways if we are seeing a child in primary school struggling at times to go into school we've got a real opportunity to support and nurture them so that the wheels then don't fall off later on and as they enter into secondary school because we know transitions are particularly challenging for young people anyway and that transition from primary school to secondary school depending on the dynamics and how big but everything just gets amplified doesn't it in that secondary school process
Speaker 2absolutely it does and amplifying something that's normal is manageable but it's amplifying something that was already problematic then it becomes hugely challenging i would agree with
Speaker 1that i talk a lot about having conversations with our children how can parents begin to have the conversation because my suspicion from a lot of what you've said is that if we've got a real issue here around school refusal it can pop up at any point and this sort of random 13 14 year old at secondary school has probably i'm imagining there's been some little things earlier on that have either been masked or not necessarily been picked up that i'm thinking that as parents we need to be able to have conversations with our children if we've got a really good if we're nurturing and cultivating a good dialogue we might be able to pick up some of these
Speaker 2things earlier the theory there is great but not always um but yes communication is important here i would absolutely think that's the case now as as parents there is so much that we can do again i bet a lot of parents are doing this anyway but being present is one of the most important things a parent can do just being there and being understanding and supportive and being present is probably the best way i could describe it now parents think and i don't know if this is a modern phenomenon if this has always been there but parents generally fall into the pattern of i need to do everything i can to fix this set of circumstances and sometimes that approach is absolutely needed you know there are practical things that need to be done let's do x y and z and we're done but when it comes to an emotional side of things anxieties and worries and the demands around school sometimes that fixing approach doesn't help so that the language i use it is that of acknowledge what's happening and validate it so we're acknowledging acknowledging it with that means we're just sort of hearing it we're listening to it we're validating it with using empathy so i get you i understand that must be so difficult even if we don't understand that is absolutely the language i would use you know it's that must be really tricky i can see you're upset i'm so sorry anything that just says i get it and then we want to try and move the conversation on and not sit and talk about it actually because sitting and talking about it is one of those things that can actually exacerbate the problem now there are times where yes we need to talk about it of course but when it comes to anxieties talking about it raises more questions for children so there is a type of thinking that i call overthinking i don't call it that that's i mean that's the language i use around it essentially out of everything that children think about it probably all starts as pretty normal stuff that this is what everybody's thinking about but sometimes some of that normal thinking just crosses a boundary into overthinking and all that means is you are thinking about the normal stuff and you're not thinking about the normal stuff too much you're too much about the exam too much about what's going on on snapchat too much about what your friends think of you that that sort of thing and overthinking is characterized by what if questions you know what if they don't like me what if they think i'm weird what if i do something that embarrasses me that sort of tap thinking all you've done there is open the door to a world of hypothetical infinite possibilities and of course remember our our really bad human brains that aren't very good at stuff we can't possibly think about every single possible set of circumstances so our shortcut is let's just think about the worst possible ones and that's exactly what children's brains do we go to what if they don't like me to i'm gonna have no friends i'm gonna leave school on my own and i'm gonna be a loner forever sort of thing and so it's suddenly far too and if you actually follow those what if thoughts with children you ask them what's the answer to that you will usually get to a catastrophic outcome which is something really bad happening to them sometimes that's even death um something really bad happening to somebody else to a point where that's so scary even if it's the tiniest of tiniest possibilities of that actually coming true the fact that that is a possibility is so overwhelming that it's so scary that it's so overwhelming we just say no i'm not doing any of it and then then avoidance comes into it and the talking about this with children simply just keeps our attention on the fact that these possibilities are there even if parents are saying don't worry it's not never going to happen we're still talking about it so acknowledge move on move on and that
Speaker 1doesn't because obviously a parent is going to be thinking but but but i haven't given them a solution i haven't helped them so from a for the parent that's listening that's thinking okay i'm doing the acknowledging bit i really believe that i'm doing the empathy piece but when i try and move the conversation on to something else my child is saying that you don't understand you don't care you don't or the parent is thinking but i'm not having that solution why does that mechanism work so much better than us drilling down and then trying to persuade them otherwise
Speaker 2yeah often because children don't have the skills to express exactly what's going on and we only get one side of the story so you're getting a very biased view and i'm not saying it's wrong i'm absolutely not saying it's wrong but it's only one side of a story which then we as parents really struggle with so then we try and fix it and we're fixing something based on one side of the story i cannot tell you the number of times where families come to me with a clear picture of what's happening and that is happening that you know it's not made up or anything like that these are real challenges but then when we speak to school their perspective of the situation is entirely different um and that's not through school not believing families or school not caring or anything like that it's just they see it differently um a bit like in a sports game if you've got two teams playing a game and an event happens 50 of the people on that pitch will be saying it happened this way and the other 50 will be saying it happened that way it's the event you've all seen the same thing but the perspective is is completely different and that from a psychological point of view is really important so we take that that child's voice and the family's perspective and also the perspective from another side and try and come to an understanding of how are we in this situation so the acknowledge and move on is fine but sometimes yes you do need to talk about it so that's when i'd say you know i can see you're upset let let's figure this out let's work out what's going on not fix it if we fix it through just get on with it or say this to this or next time you're in this room you must do that that's not going to work it's a bit like the people who are who are anxious in social situations and they rehearse in their head what they're going to say and how they're going to say it and then you get into that situation it just doesn't come out that way at all um that's the same thing for children who are anxious for some reason about school so rehearsing it to the biggest help so as parents talking fine but to a limit acknowledge and move on is the general pattern but what you are what you're encouraging here is is communication you know that let a child express themselves we're not pretending this is easy we are not saying never talk about it or i'm not interested we're just saying tell me what's happening i hear you it sounds really tough we'll see what we can do move on and then move on yeah that's that would be my
Speaker 1my approach and i think this idea about sort of fixing i think seems to be a bit of a common theme that is being directed at parents so i'm going to ask you some controversy well i'm going to ask you some of the controversial questions that are probably um out there is that obviously from a political stance we've seen an increasing amount of narrative around over diagnosis too many people with mental health issues that potentially the argument is that they're not and potentially parents being over sensitive and over pandering and we should just crack on and just get these kids to go into school we're creating these issues what would you i'm not saying i believe it i'm just simply saying that some people will be voicing that narrative and not voicing it quite vocally
Speaker 2the the biggest problem with that narrative is it says these problems are a result of poor parenting you're parenting too softly for example um that is a gross over communication and it's generally inaccurate that's just not what's happening here and so i would i do not think this is a case of poor parenting however there is a however on this and the however is i do think that we and again i don't know if this is a british thing or a societal thing or just a human trait um we are very good at trying to find a reason for why there is a problem now i actually think there's been a shift here so i don't think there's been a shift in the way that we've been doing and i don't think this is a human thing i think this is actually a societal thing when i was at school if there was a problem with like your behavior or something like that my parents and the parents of my peers would side with the school every single time if the teacher has said it therefore this is what's going on and there's not even a conversation about it whereas now it really feels like if something is raised by a teacher parents do not have that approach parents saying well what have you done wrong at school to make my child fall into that pattern why are why why is this happening you've not done your job as a almost like we're robustly defending our child and that there has to be an element of that that children should have a voice in this and and their autonomy or their agency should be heard so parents are advocating for their children but that is part of a wider shift here onto i'm blaming something and that's where i think the the where streeting might have been going with this which i think came out of that and i think that's where i think the the the the the the the the the the really badly and didn't work because it's it's oversimplified something that is far more complex than that because parents don't not care parents don't just blame everybody else i think everyone else is the problem parents want to support their children but it's hard to do that in a system that makes that really difficult so i i hope i've tried to answer that there's a bit of nuance to this here but yes there is a shift onto diagnosis and label now a big part of that goes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning which is that of the system now i don't like the idea of labels at all you're talking to a psychologist i think a label doesn't particularly help an understanding of what's going on is much more helpful but if we go to a school and say well my child's got x y and z challenges it's not formally diagnosed but it's just we think this is what's happening schools can put the help into place but they're limited they're limited because they they will only get the the extra funding or the extra resources if there is a formal label that says you've got this diagnosis so we're forcing families into getting these assessments and treatments just to get the support and that that's been part of the shift as well but usually it's a much more complex people but my big big summary out of all of this is blame is not helpful you it is is never the answer here um parents are trying and trying to the best of their ability and just want the best for their children um and sometimes there are more vocal parents than others and actually we need more vocal parents and i would say go for it you know defend your child absolutely to make sure they do have what they need and our job is to try and support parents in in that process and doing
Speaker 1that yeah and i think you've probably raised a couple of you know really big uh societal issues here just generally around this i think we societally we feel that we need to blame somebody for something and i think that's definitely a big shift and i i think the drive around diagnosis in lots of ways is the byproduct of a system that will only kick into touch you know begins to work when there is a very specific label given and so schools don't have the funds and the capability to do that to support children where there is a suspicion that there may well be some neurodiversity and we would like to be able to support them on that assumption but don't need to go down that diagnosis route which schools are unfortunately not in a position to say great we've got extra resources here of course we will be able to support them because they need funds in order to do that so it becomes this whole cyclical so it has there has to be a blame in lots of ways because there needs to be a reason for that happen about it and i think that's a big part of
Speaker 2behavior i absolutely agree and yeah and i think that is a wider societal thing we see it well yeah we see it all the time but that does not excuse schools or local authorities in particular from not providing the support you know if children need additional help they don't need it just for the fun of it they need it because they are currently at a disadvantage and that's not fair so getting the support in place just essentially makes a level playing field so that then children go on to thrive that that i think is what a just and fair society should offer but yeah that's limited by resource and you've got to prove to the nth degree that you are disadvantaged um
Speaker 1yeah i think it's a big and and dan i'm so grateful for the time that you've given in terms of sort of talking through this is such a big big subject what we will be doing just for those of you that are listening is that we will be sharing the details of uh dan and also cape themselves who can and do advocate um and support parents who may well be in a process where you know it's it's more complex than a child that is beginning to experience some of those three um areas of intensity and and and really are going through a stage where they're just not wanting to go to school but for those of you who are really needing to advocate to have those conversations around local authorities and schools and services and having a joined up approach is really down where you're you excel in your expertise and in terms of what cape can offer um in order to do that so we will we will be sharing that so please don't worry you will be able to to link directly and dan can i just say thank you so much it's been so helpful so practical and certainly for me i've come away so much more knowledgeable just from that you know the 40 minutes or so that we've spent together so thank you so much oh it's such a
Speaker 2pleasure and thanks for having me um and yeah i really appreciate it and just to be able to talk these things through as well um is is really helpful so so
Speaker 1thank you yeah keep doing all of your important and great work thank you
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