Skip to the transcript of Episode 8
Show Notes
School refusal or school avoidance is a real problem that is not the same as a student not liking school. Some students miss school for weeks, months, or even entire academic years. The reasons students avoid or refuse to attend school are rooted in anxiety and are not just a desire to do something else. It’s not playing hooky.
Jayne Demsky started her journey with school refusal when it became a problem for her son. As she learned and traveled this path, she was determined that other parents and students shouldn’t have to feel alone or that they were bad people. The resources and connections that she developed over the past decade are now available on her website School Avoidance Alliance https://schoolavoidance.org/.
One of the difficulties in addressing school refusal is that the anxiety signals leading up to a crisis typically happen at home and frequently aren’t recognized by caregivers or educators. Communication between the home and school is crucial to preventing an avoidance pattern from becoming a crisis.
Our conversation with Jayne
Our conversation briefly touches on the challenges of chronic absenteeism, which has increased since the pandemic. We reference an article that describes ongoing research into defining and solving the problem of chronic absenteeism. Their data, which is still evolving, suggests that family engagement with schools correlates with improved attendance, and this overlaps with the need for school and family engagement in addressing school avoidance.
While acknowledging the severity of staffing shortages, Jayne reviews some key ways that schools can help caregivers connect with appropriate staff and resources. She also advocates for mental health education from the earliest grades. Students can then better understand how their mental health is connected to their overall health and how they can use skills to help self-regulate and to know when they should seek help.
Resources
School Avoidance Alliance: Facts, guidance, resources and support https://schoolavoidance.org/
Investigating the relationship between pre-pandemic family engagement and student and school outcomes. An analysis conducted by Learning Heroes and TNTP
https://bealearninghero.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/FACE-Impact-Study.pdf
About Jayne Demsky
In 2014 Jayne started researching, vetting, and aggregating the best school avoidance treatment programs, mental health providers, and therapeutic interventions. The School Refusal Hope website was launched to detail and share this information.
In 2020 she formed the School Avoidance Alliance to expand support, connect with leading experts in the field, and accelerate the flow of information between families, schools, mental health providers, academics, and researchers.
In addition to helping families, School Avoidance Alliance also works with child study teams, teachers, school administrators, mental health organizations, attendance directors, and attendance officers throughout the United States.
Episode Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity but may contain errors.
Jo-Ann Berry: so this is mental health goes to school. I’m Jo-Ann Berry, special educator.
Candida Fink: And I’m, Dr. Candida Fink, child and adolescent psychiatrist. And we’re here.
Jo-Ann Berry: Joining us today we have, Jayne Demsky from the School Avoidance Alliance. I have no idea how many people actually know about school avoidance or sometimes called school refusal, but it is definitely, a concern for parents, educators, everyone. We’re very fortunate today to have Jayne with us, to help us understand more about what school avoidance is and what schools can do to help. So welcome.
Jayne Demsky: Glad you’re here. Thank you. I’m thrilled to meet you. I love the concept of your show. A psychiatrist and an educator, that’s the ultimate. We want teach educators and mental health professionals to work together. So this is the model.
Candida Fink: Absolutely. That’s what we are going for. So it’s wonderful when we encounter people and get a chance to talk to people who are working in that space because we think it’s so critical.
My son suffered from school avoidance and he is 27 now
Candida Fink: okay, so, can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
Jayne Demsky: Yes. So, I got into this because my son suffered from school avoidance and he is 27 now and he’s doing great. But it was actually a long time ago but it really was the worst between 6th and 9th grade. And, there were signs earlier on as well that I missed or didn’t know was going to grow into a full blown chronic absenteeism problem.
The problem with school avoidance and school refusal, those are interchangeably the same words. At that time and still somewhat today, no one heard of school avoidance or school refusal. And I didn’t hear that term until a few years into seeing a number of psychologists and psychiatrists. So one day, when the psychiatrist said, “Oh, that’s school refusal,” I was like, “what?” There’s something that this is like, I’m not crazy. And you know what? Even though we know the term, it’s still not in the average lexicon of an American.
And yes, because the pandemic, it’s gotten worse and worse, but still, outside of our industry, people probably don’t know what it is anyway. So I got involved because during that time with my son, oh my God, it was excruciating. No one understood. He suffered from severe anxiety disorder and the school thought he was manipulating them and it was just so lonely. And hard because you can’t find the right therapist. And if the school doesn’t believe that it’s real and doesn’t want to support you with the proper 504 or IEP or services, it’s a real uphill battle and, it’s very lonely.
So when my son got better, I was like, I cannot let people deal with this. It took so much, energy to learn all the things as I did. I’m like, I want to share this with people so they don’t have to deal with this. So that’s how I started about ten years ago. I’ve grown since then, a lot.
Candida Fink: But that’s fabulous, I mean, to take what you learned from a very painful and arduous and difficult experience, to try to turn that around into something to educate other people, families and educators, I think, is huge..
Jayne Demsky: I had no idea I was going to get a response. So, like, when I first started around 2014, I just had a website where I shared mental health treatment programs because there are very few inpatient partial programs in our country that were equipped to handle kids with school avoidance at that time. The number is growing, but it’s still not enough. There are not enough beds for kids who really are struggling. And I didn’t want parents to have to waste resources because there are professionals out there who charge to tell parents where they should send their kids, whether they should go to wilderness or inpatient or partial or whatever. And personally I don’t believe in wilderness. That’s another story. But, I just wanted to give this away for free. So that’s what I did.
I spent like a whole year researching and vetting all these treatment programs. And then I put it up and I started seeing that people were coming to my website. So I added more and added more content. And then, about five years ago, I decided really to go all in and just invested all my time in this. And we’ve grown so much. It’s incredible. Now we have a school avoidance master class for parents and then we have a professional development course for educators. And, our mission is to educate parents so they know exactly what to do and they don’t have to struggle while their kid is at home breaking down. It’s difficult to have the time and the energy to pursue all the answers. It’s hours and hours of work that we want to educate parents and educate schools because there really hasn’t been good professional development about school avoidance past.
A lot of these things happen at home and not communicated to school
Jo-ann Berry: Right. I think at this point it might be, helpful for people to know, so you said there were early signs which looking back, you now recognize it. What might parents and educators be on the lookout for in students?
Jayne Demsky: Well, first of all, a lot of these things happen at home and it is not communicated to the school because a parent might not seem, but might not know that the school cares or they might not recognize it. My son and a lot of kids at school are extremely intelligent kids and, he was so smart. But in first grade they had to do these reading logs and it was just read a few pages a night and write two sentences about it. And this was a daily grind and he couldn’t write a sentence and he started screaming and running around the room and crying. And I thought I was an educated person, but I didn’t recognize it as anxiety. I had no idea because we’re taught that anxiety is sweaty palms, fast heartbeat, but kids are different in their presentation. So I had no idea. So that was the start. And he had increasing problems starting writing assignments and it became a constant string of emails to teachers.
So that’s one thing I would say to schools. If you see a growing number of emails of concern from a parent, let’s have a meeting and see what’s going on. And if the child is in middle school, let’s have a way to communicate all the teachers together. So we know if this teacher is getting emails and this one that it’s an issue because looking back, I sent, I don’t know, 300 emails over the course of my son’s education. And it’s a huge sign. that’s the sign.
And more obvious signs are that in intermediate school, fourth or fifth grade, there were some days where he would not get out of the car and get into school and I had to call the principal out. And, it was really those signs. And then when he started to have issues in crying and not wanting to go to school, it was a slow build and it’s different for every child. And, what I say to schools also is it’s really important because a lot of this stuff happens at home, maybe for a month or years before it becomes a crisis. So schools really need to tell parents and educate them about school avoidance. And every time we get a new customer, I say, please let me write a school avoidance section for your attendance piece on your website or your mental health piece. So parents know that this is a thing and what they should do and who they should contact at your school because the school, you want to know about it right away. You don’t want to hear about a year when it’s a crisis situation. So educate parents and let them know that you have social workers, mental health professionals, and an intervention team and you want to help these kids. That is really important
Candida Fink: When I saw that we were talking about before we came, on air, that, the idea of having a mental health section on the website, on a district website or classroom website is, brilliant. like a fabulous idea of a straightforward intervention that we can really sort of hands on help districts with, and having a specific section about school refusal in particular, because it becomes such a crisis so quickly and is so misinterpreted. What I find, it sounds like what you found is that it’s interpreted as a behavior problem being manipulative. You’re just letting your kid get one over on you. Why don’t they just try harder? How can you not get your child to school? And of course, parents internalize that. And as the treater, we’re feeling like, I need to fix this, and it’s not getting better yet. and it becomes just this escalating conversation of sort of blaming the student and often blaming the parent. And I find that that is some of the most challenging, sort of emotional, sort of just escalation. It escalates the whole story well beyond the fundamental problem.
Jayne Demsky: Exactly.
Candida Fink: Love that idea. Defining it. It’s a thing. It exists. I think that’s great.
Jayne Demsky: Yeah. while I was starting this business, I was active in my local town and county’s stigma free campaign. And it was initiative back in 2016, to educate people on mental health, because it wasn’t talked about as much. And I took this to the next degree, and I was like, I am going to make our local school district put a mental health section on the website. So I met with the superintendent. I had to sell her on the whole concept, and she’s like, okay, we’re going to do this. But the most important part of it was, I want you to tell the parents who they should contact for what problems. I want you to tell them you have social workers and intervention people, or, behaviorist and put that in. And she’s like, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I, don’t want people calling us and bombarding us. And that freaked me out. That was the most important part, to know who to contact in a school. So that didn’t happen. But at least there was a mental health section.
But I call schools every day because we hear from schools every day, and I have to go to their websites and I have to search for their phone numbers or emails and I get very frustrated because it’s not apparent how to contact a lot of these people. There are not a lot of phone numbers. Sometimes it’s just an email with a click direct to their email to email them. The parents having a problem needs to call someone on the phone and no one answers the phone. And it’s really frustrating. I would love for schools to every staff member to have a picture of themselves, their phone number, their email, best times to reach them, turnaround times when you’ll hear back from me. There’s way too many times parents are calling schools and might not getting returns back, calls back. Schools are overwhelmed. I get it. And there are so many issues at hand, but then the parent feels, wow, my school really does not care. so I really am a firm believer in all that transparency.
Schools that worked on relationships with families had fewer problems
Candida Fink: Yeah, Jo-Ann that ties into the piece that you sent me about family, engagement, reducing.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right. Yeah. And now I forget the exact source and district. But anyway, they did a study in a, well respected university.
Candida Fink: I think we’ll look it up and have the resource, we’ll have it.
Jo-Ann Berry: In the show notes. But anyway, they used Illinois because it was a representative cross section nationally of rural, urban, race, all of the factors and discovered that the schools that worked on relationships with the families through whatever means, and they measured it through a bunch of different ways, like attendance at parent events, attendance at concerts and games, a newsletter. In elementary schools, often the teachers have weekly or bi-weekly newsletter. But as you get into the upper grades, it’s more of a school wide thing. But what was the effort on building relationships with the parents? And obviously, I mean, it seems obvious the schools that had better or more, engagement with families and parents clearly had fewer, absence problems, behavior problems, all of the things, it just worked better, which is common sense, but it does take work. and back to the point of not being able to reach people, especially in the upper grades. I would say you got a giant high school with a couple of thousand kids, 3000 kids, and there’s two counselors or whatever, they are overwhelmed, which is part of the larger problem. From your perspective, it sounds like the superintendent was well aware that this is a problem, but didn’t have the resources or didn’t want her staff to feel overwhelmed by all these, knowing that there’s a whole bunch of people out there that have situations where they do want to talk to somebody. So I think highlighting that as a larger problem systems issue.
Jayne Demsky: Right?
Candida Fink: Yeah.
Jayne Demsky: In terms of important as well in all of our training that, our research for school avoidance, and you have to share that research because that’s an important piece that you found there.
Researchers for school avoidance say parents, school collaboration and early interventions predict outcomes
Jayne Demsky: I want to share that to my schools. But researchers for school avoidance show that the best predictors of, improved outcomes are parent – school collaboration and early interventions. And the problem is these things are just so easy to say. And of course school is like, we are intervening early when we hear about it and of course we collaborate with parents. But you have to go to the next step to actually look at your policy, procedure and communications and say, we need to really focus. How do we achieve this? It doesn’t just happen. Right? That is so true.
Candida Fink: Preparing and being proactive and planning is so critical. So much of this work ends up being reactive rather than planned for.
Jo-Ann Berry: And that just made me think of, it’s like, when you’re painting a room or a house or whatever, and they say 90% of the work is the prep work, the yucky stuff of scraping and sanding and all that. It’s similar to this. It’s like you’ve got to think about it and what does it look like? Put the stuff on the website, get the photos up, whatever, all of those things and give the staff time to do this.
Jayne Demsky: I know, yes, I know. Yeah. And I feel for schools because I can see how overwhelmed everyone is. We know there’s a shortage of, school professionals, mental health professionals. So schools really are in a bind and they have to decide what are our priorities. And I say, listen, if the kids aren’t going to school, you have no one to teach.
Candida Fink: If there’s been a theme across every episode we’ve done, it is the fact that mental health gets siloed out or thought of as second nature is so counterproductive to any other goals in a school, which is you have to be mentally and physically healthy, you have to be there, you have to be awake for us to teach or to have someone to teach and to take next steps and for kids to learn. So that these fundamental pieces, mental health is not separate, it is part of the whole background and it just comes up in every context that we are speaking about. Mental health in school is reframing mental health as a foundational piece, not, oh, let’s think about that now. And that’s a big shift. I think, like for many, many districts.
Jayne Demsky: It is because, these are educators. They’ve been educated as educators. They didn’t go to med school or become a psychologist or mental health professional. So we are asking a lot of them. And the shortage of mental health professionals makes their roles even that more important. And a lot of like with school avoidance, if the school is not on board and supportive, these parents are in an uphill battle. It really takes the school to believe and want to help this family to make a difference.
Candida Fink: Huge.
First line treatments for school avoidance are cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy
Candida Fink: I know we’ve talked quite a bit about the educator side of things. Can you tell us a little bit in your work, in your foundation about sort of the types of treatments that are helpful and sort of how families can find resources and what they should be looking for. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jayne Demsky: Well, the first line treatments for school avoidance are cognitive behavioral therapy, which includes exposure therapy. And exposure therapy is a major component. But the problem is there are very few professionals who do exposure therapy or do it right. So, part of our education to our parents and our schools is we have a mental health, professional who runs a clinic and we have different modules on different pieces of CBT and exposure therapy. But they teach the premise of these, therapeutic approaches. Not that we want the parent or the school to become therapists, but we want them to follow this kind of model for schools. bringing kids back to school is based on exposure therapy. So we call it like reintegrating kids back to school because kids who’ve been out for weeks, months and years happens often. You can’t just say, okay, we want John to come back to school on Monday and we expect him here. Just not going to happen. The kid’s not going to walk into school miraculously.
So it takes a whole plan strategy to reintegrate. So we talk about reintegration plans with schools all the time. And what’s really important to note as well is sometimes I’ll speak to a school and they’re like, we are doing that. And I’m like, oh, tell me about it. They’re like, okay, yes. So we told him that we want him to come for one period on Tuesday, Wednesday, want to come for two periods, Thursday we’ll want to come for three periods and next week we’ll come for a full day. I’m like, yeah, that’s not the concept. You have to meet the child where they are.
The purpose of exposure therapy, as you know, is to get comfortable on that level of exposure, your hierarchy or fear. And it’s called habituation and learning to exist and feel that, you can handle that level before you move on. So you can’t expect the child has to feel comfortable coming in for that period a day and it become where he’s not having a panic attack or anxiety disorder before you move to the next step. And again, schools weren’t educated on this so we don’t expect them to know. So that’s why I always beg, please take our course. Please take our course. Right.
And for parents, we have the school avoidance master class for parents. And, that is everything I wish I knew as a parent because going through it, there’s so much to learn. Because school avoidance because it, intersects with absenteeism, which brings into compulsory attendance laws, truancy laws. It affects school’s average daily attendance, which is what their funding is based on. So therefore, there’s a lot of pressure on school to get that child back in their seat because if they are not back in their seats for a certain amount of days during the year, the school is going to lose funding. That’s why schools get extra demanding about you must get your child to school and they don’t have the ability or the room to be more supportive and more Let’s take our time, let’s make this work as a good long term solution because they are stressed and they are pushed. So that’s just another issue.
But getting back to the school master class, also, it intersects with, educational disability law. So parents have to become experts on that as well. That’s something that we teach. And every time I was dealing with school avoidance in these years with my son, I was constantly reading up on special education disability law. I was reading case law. I was desperate to find a case about the kids of school avoidance in the courts. I couldn’t find one, but, I learned a lot. And then when I got back to school, I started interviewing special, education attorneys because I was like, I have to conquer this. I have to know what a 504 is, what an IEP is. I need to help school. So we do that on our website. And in our course we have a special education attorney.
But it’s really important to note is that once parents learn, and I was the same, that there is something called a 504 plan where the kid can get accommodations and modifications and an individualized education plan which also has modifications and accommodations. but, it includes services. Every parent’s like, okay, I need that. I need that. So what happens is it takes time.
First of all, I want to tell every parent, if you’re listening, you must put this in writing and you must send it to the director of special education. And I would get a timestamp or an email stamp that they received it, because once it is received, a time clock regarding the laws goes into play and they have to respond to you in a certain period of time. So always get that in writing. But what happens? It takes a long time to do that, to get the school to meet with you, to find out, to have the review, to decide if they want to evaluate. Now, this could take 30 days, 60 days, and in the meantime, a child is breaking down at home and they’re missing more and more school. So I was still thrilled when I spoke to the special education attorney in Texas one day, and he’s like, there is no law against schools providing accommodations and modifications at the intervention level. Without a 504 plan, without an IEP, there’s nothing saying they cannot do that. So why are we waiting? Why are we not helping this child right now? We are losing precious time. So that’s a really important factor. I love to tell schools and parents, I’m sorry, I’m blabbing.
Jo-Ann Berry: No, this is fine.
Candida Fink: This is critical information.
Jayne Demsky: The IEPs, they’re awesome and they help kids. But when they were developed, no one was thinking about how school avoidance comes into play with these instruments. So along with a 504 plan and an IEP, we must develop a strategic plan addressing the school avoidance. that doesn’t happen a lot. We’re just addressing things that happen when the kid is in the school building. But we need to figure out a plan on how to get this kid covered with the IEP. And a lot of the times, and I was the same, I had a 504 and an IEP eventually. It took me years to get, and it didn’t address the school awareness. So that’s something that’s really important.
Candida Fink: I find districts are very. I’m sorry, go ahead, Jo-Ann
Jo-Ann Berry: No, I was going to say, I noticed in, our Q and A document that we sent you that some schools will turn off Classroom, which I can’t even understand. Many, many schools either use the Google Classroom or a similar platform. For folks who don’t know, particularly over the time of the pandemic, it was so essential, to have that. So teachers can assign students work. In case anybody doesn’t know this, we can assign, like, if we want half of the class to do one thing and the other half to do another thing, we can do that we can assign individually, if a student is ahead or behind or whatever. so it’s an excellent tool, I would think, for someone who can’t make it into the building because they’re in a body cast or because they can’t get out of bed, but they can do it on their own time. And there is some resistance, I noticed, and I think this is true to allowing students to complete their work not at school, but if they’re working on their education as best they can, seems like that’s an excellent tool for, schools to be using. It’s not the same as being present, as we all know, but it’s better than not. And at least they can be learning at the rate that they can learn, or doing what they can do outside of the class, which that’s a plus. And that might help in some instances with what you’re talking about, the, exposure.
And what we see in my school is if students have been out for some number of days, whatever it is, and they feel like they’re behind, they don’t want to come back because they feel they’re too far, behind. And if they can at least keep up to a little bit or completely through Classroom or some other means, then that will remove that, that won’t take the place of whatever discomfort they’re feeling coming into the building or interacting with certain people or whatever it is another barrier, but at least that barrier is reduced. And so I would encourage teachers or schools who are thinking that that’s a helpful way to address the problem, that it is not very punitive, right. It’s just this punishment and it hurts the student, as you say, there’s no requirement that says they can’t. You shouldn’t have to have a law to say student has access to education remotely.
Jayne Demsky: Yeah, well that comes down to it’s state by state and district by district implement these laws. But the reasoning behind turning off the Google Classroom was because they wanted to take the child off their rolls of being enrolled so they weren’t counted towards average daily attendance.
Candida Fink: Right.
Jayne Demsky: That was to help them with their funding. But obviously it is debilitating to a family. And we have a peer to peer support group. And one of my family members, she was like, now a lot of kids with school [?] can’t even do their schoolwork because they’re just so severely anxiety driven. But this child, he was able to do his homework. So the mom was, you know, he’s going to do his homework every day and that is a gift. And they turned off his Google Classroom and she’s like, what message does that send? My child was doing his work, that was his connection. So we always say to schools, know you cannot break off connection. You have to keep connected to these kids. It’s like saying, you don’t matter, we don’t care. It’s so sad. And schools do send letters, and this happens a lot also, where we’re evoking so and so’s attendance for chronic absenteeism. And then if you want to, let us know if you’re making alternative education plans, if he’s homeschooling, if he’s going to private school, and if you want to re enroll, come here, bring your driver’s license. Show proof of residency. I mean, it’s crazy.
Candida Fink: So that’s complete lack of engagement with the child, the student, and the family. That’s just robotic. Here’s numbers, here’s this, that’s that. You’re done. Doesn’t say anything about understanding the process, understanding what’s going on and working with the student and their family. And so, debilitating and demoralizing for families and kids to have that kind of response when the suffering is so profound. I mean, these kids and families, I’ve just preached to the choir here, but are suffering so greatly. And the idea that it’s responded to with the punitive response or disconnection in particular. Turning off Google Classroom or Yeah, bye bye. See you. you’re unenrolled. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I would say as recently as 15 years ago, one district I work with, their plan, they hired a company that sent people to the home to scare the kids into coming to school.
Jayne Demsky: Really?
Candida Fink: There was a company, I heard from the district that they had sort of contracted with someone to help with school refusal. I was like, oh, yeah, good. Turns out it was these people who just went in and went, you need to go to school. It’s horrifying. Horrifying. I think it is a tiny bit better because of activists like yourself and more discussion of mental health. But the response of punitive measures, calling the truancy officer, scaring kids, scaring families, literally sending people into the home to drag them to school. This was not actually uncommon, that was specifically unusual, having this company to do it. But that approach was pretty much what was happening for a long, long time.
Jayne Demsky: Still is when people call me, obviously. Hopefully, they’re interested in reevaluating, those procedures and policies. But it really depends on the leadership of, on top, the superintendent, maybe the director of special education, special services, and principals in the building. If they don’t buy in or learn about restorative versus punitive, it’s hard for people underneath to push forward in the head. And if I get a social worker or a counselor, I’m like, I have to explain to them, you are the champion. You reached out. It’s up to you to save these kids. You have to push this idea uphill because it could be a real uphill battle and the professionals know this.
I was supposed to speak at a truancy conference a few weeks ago, I got COVID. But, I speak to truancy professionals, and I speak at juvenile justice conferences. And, everyone there, well, all the professionals know that punitive is not working. And I said to a researcher once, I said, we have to really do more. And she’s like, well, we see that the average trickle down from research to getting out there to the masses is like, seven years. I’m like, we don’t have seven years of lives to waste. We’ve got to get on this now. It’s urgent. It really is urgent.
So when I heard that complacency, I was really sad that it was just accepted. Like, well, we just hope the information gets there. But no, you speaking whenever we. Anyone listening, speaking. This is a movement. This is something that needs to change, and it’s better for our society. and people say that sometimes I’m being dramatic. I’m not. This saves the life of a child who is isolated in their home. A lot of these kids do become suicidal. I’ve heard way too many of them, and it is heartbreaking. And this truancy problem, that is one of the biggest problems I hear from parents all the time. And it’s heartbreaking. I hate when I hear, I’m sorry. I’m just going to tell you. I have another parent in North Carolina. Her husband died a year and a half ago, and then she lost one of her sons seven months ago, and obviously the other son is traumatized. The school has taken them to truancy court. And I’m like, how can they not get that? The kid is in trauma. It’s just trauma related. And it’s like, this poor woman and this child, they’re being beaten down. Yes. That breaks my heart.
Jo-Ann Berry: Yeah. How could that even possibly be possible?
Jayne Demsky: Right? How can that happen in this day and age? How are they humans? How is that not happening? Another thing, judges must be educated. If you are, an administrative laws judge listening to this or someone in the court or legislation, we really want the judges to be educated on school avoidance because they’re making a lot of these rulings with, no information to help them understand the situation, right?
Candida Fink: Absolutely. No. I think that’s the idea of restorative justice, mental health courts. There’s just so many layers here, like the idea that placing this problem under mental health, then the idea of putting them in a mental health, if they have to sort of take action somehow, that it would be a mental health court, not just juvenile justice, delinquency kind of story. I mean, you’re absolutely right.
Jo-Ann Berry: well, I would say even using the word truant or, it’s a horrible idea. It connotes crime and evil doing and bad things, when that’s probably like, are there truants? Maybe. I don’t know.
Jayne Demsky: Jo-Ann I feel the exact same way. Are there truants out there these days? Is there a kid really smoking a cigarette on the corner?
Jayne Demsky: It makes me think of 1950s movies.
Jayne Demsky: In black and white.
Candida Fink: I think of West Side Story and Officer Krupke. I mean, really, the whole thing.
Jayne Demsky: I hate that word. And in, some of my research, and I was trying to say this to someone, I did an interview on a news station the other day. I wasn’t able to finish my discussion about it. That, in the research, it says, okay, how does school avoidance and truancy differ? Well, school avoidance is driven by emotional distress, maybe a lot of times anxiety related. And the parents know where the child is. They’re usually at home. Truancy, on the other hand, is seeking tangible rewards. I can’t even say the word surreptitious.
Jo-ann Berry: Surreptitiously.
Jayne Demsky: Surreptitiously.
Candida Fink: Surreptitiously.
Jayne Demsky: Right.
Jayne Demsky: Like behind surreptitiously. And it’s concealed by the parent, which is true. But are these kids being secret? And if they are missing school, there’s a reason for it.
Candida Fink: Absolutely.
Jayne Demsky: Can we get a new word? Can we just say absence?
Candida Fink: Right. Couldn’t, agree more? I think, yes, from a mental health perspective, I think kids who are struggling with chronic absence from school, there are always bigger stories. There are so many stories now. Some are very specifically anxiety disorder related school, I almost sometimes will call it, with families and districts. In the letters I write, I will call it school phobic because I want them to understand the mental health and anxiety connection. It’s not such a term. That’s not a DSM-5 diagnosis, but I think it sometimes sort of carries it a little differently or is heard a little differently than refusal or avoidance.
But even beyond that, the idea that trauma in families, lack of resources, unhoused families, loss, just mental illness in the parent, illness, you could go on and on and on. Violence in a community, lack of support in a community. I mean, there is so much that goes into the idea of kids who are not able to attend regularly. And the idea that we’re going to call it a crime and be blaming of the parent or blaming of the child to me is astonishingly uninformed and damaging, and harmful at every level. So I agree with both of you. The word needs to go, and we really need to think of it as a much broader issue under which sort of school sort of phobic response and even school work phobic response. Right. So we were talking about how, like with your son and so many of the kids I work with, and I’m sure you see this too, Jo-Ann. Doing the work itself triggers these anxious responses. So even that needs exposure work. Being able to just literally open your computer and look at your assignments, being able to open Google Classroom can stir up so much emotion or just can’t be done. It can just be a real shutdown. So anyway, that was a lot.
It’s hard often to get meetings specific to school issues
Jayne Demsky: Candida, I’m curious.when you have a child with school phobia, you are you ever brought into the school to go into a meeting to, advocate for them?
Candida Fink: I am invited on occasion. often they don’t want me to be there. The district doesn’t really want me to be a part of it. I will tell you, it’s hard often to get meetings specific to it. The school just keeps trying to handle it like one piece at a time rather than a more comprehensive [approach]. But when there are meetings and there’s just a logistic issue of me being able to be there because I just don’t have the time in my schedule. But I have been there many times by phone or virtually. I send very detailed letters and then I invite parents and teams, school teams. I’m in the loop on numerous email chains. We talked about your emails and emails and emails, and I will continue to send important documents as needed or make calls when I can. And when they are willing to accept them, they often just don’t want to hear about it, is the problem. Right. And even when I have gone to meetings, we’ll put together an entire plan and then it just falls apart and people are inconsistently following. I mean, I have a couple of cases recently, and it’s been three, four, five years between middle school and high school of educating. And this mom is an advocate, and I can’t wait to connect her to your organization. But I can’t tell you how much great information she shares. We talk about it. She uses that language, she brings it into the conversation. And two out of the six teachers respond at all. Had a meeting once where literally none of the teachers showed up. None. Zero.
Jayne Demsky: Is this for an IEP meeting?
Candida Fink: This was for a review. Like, things were crisis like IEP. I know, legally, they have to show, right? Things are kind of crashing and burning. I need a team meeting, please. Nobody. Not a single teacher.
Jayne Demsky: Wow, that is really bad. does child have an IEP? Now?
Candida Fink: That was just another quick point to make before we ran out of time getting an IEP. And I’m sure you see this for school, refusal can be a heavy lift. They did not want to define this as something worthy of an IEP because you said this. We’re responding to what’s happening in school, not about, that’s happening at home. That’s not an IEP thing. So it took two or three, four years. We finally got it right. So I’m sure you’ve run into that.
Jayne Demsky: Over and over all the time. it takes a really strong parent, determined parent to get through this maze. That’s why we do what we do with educating them. The course. We try to feed them all the expert information in one quick place and have our parent peer to peer support group. We also have a private Facebook group because otherwise, parents feel alone. And, yeah, it takes a strong human being. And I have to say, I, really feel I’m a strong person. But at some point during my son’s crises, I felt like I was falling apart. And I really would really have to push myself to get off the couch in the morning to make my phone calls to find out how to help the kid. I was able. I never got debilitated. I was always pushing, pushing, but it breaks a human down. And many of our parents also are breaking down in the home. They are at near break from an emotional breakdown. and oftentimes the school will say, well, the parent isn’t working with us. And so I say, what is the proof of that? Well, we call in the morning. They, don’t answer our calls. I’m like, listen, after a certain point, we dodge those calls because what are you supposed to say? My son has anxiety, and then you’re going to say, we’ll get him to school. It’s just not parents don’t want to answer the phone. They can’t deal with it at some point.
Candida Fink: Because of that punitive approach.
Jayne Demsky: But there is hope. I want to tell you that I have people in my peer support group whose kids have been out for months, ten months, 18 months, 20 months, and they have recently returned to school, all of them, like over the course of a few months. And, the parents were determined, driven. They felt supported. In our support group, they took our master class, so they understood their rights and, they persevered. And when I heard that these kids are back to school, tears came to my eyes. I was like, wow, this is just amazing. What an accomplishment. It was huge. It’s huge. So don’t give up hope to parents. Just educate yourself. And contacting the school immediately and realizing that the school might not be educated on school avoidance. So you have to be the educator and the one to be the knowledge expert and don’t rely on them because they don’t know..
Jo-Ann Berry: Right. Well, it’s kind of like a negative. It’s like all I see is the kid is not in my room or in my class. And in a public school where a teacher has 120 students, it’s difficult. And I’m not defending it, but I’m just saying it’s difficult to say, oh, this kid has been absent for X number of weeks. They must be sick. When they come back, I’ll deal with it kind of thing. For many of the individual teachers, it is a systemic problem. And I agree, teachers should learn more about what that looks like and how they can help. Maybe one teacher can’t do a lot, but at least that student could maybe keep up in one area or know that they have a person, because that’s another thing we know. As long as a student feels like they have a connection to an adult, it can be anybody, an adult in the building. And if it’s this one teacher that was willing to accept some work or when the student comes back, and this is what we do. In my school, a student has been out for a while or every day, it’s like, good morning. How you doing? Cute T shirt. Hey, I didn’t know shoes came in that color. Whatever.
Candida Fink: It’s like, try to just to welcome them back. And I know in the exposure system, we work, right. Some kids will need to spend some time in a safe place or with that safe adult when they’re first in the building. They’re not going to suddenly be able to do work or attend classes and stay in a class or participate in a class. It’s a very gradual process for many kids.
Jayne Demsky: Yeah. Catching up on schoolwork isn’t the first goal.
Jo-Ann Berry: No, absolutely not.
Jayne Demsky: It’s getting the child back into school comfortably. And that’s another mistake which happens if kids are able to get back to school, then the work is thrown at them and it’s not modified. And that just obviously set the kid back.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right? Yeah, I think that’s definitely, a thing that many teachers need to have a change of heart on. It’s like, well, the student just missed an entire unit. Let’s just excuse that. Or they miss X number of assignments. Which ones are actually important for them to be able to feel competent in this class? Or is it better for them just to come to class, participate in a conversation, or just listen? Sometimes that’s because not everyone likes to talk in class. So maybe just coming and sitting in the room and knowing that that’s okay. And what I do, especially when we get new students, sometimes you’re just going to feel like you can’t stay in here. Just ask me to go to the restroom. I’m going to say yes. You know when you have to go and just come back within ten minutes and I won’t have to have people looking for you. But just go, take a break, walk, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, do whatever. But you can have a chance to reset and hopefully come back. And if you can’t come back, that’s okay too. But just ask. You don’t have to say, I’m having a situation. Just say, I need to go to the bathroom.
Jayne Demsky: I have to tell you something. I spoke to a parent yesterday from our peer support group. Her daughter is back at school and she told me that she fought for this one accommodation that I’ve never heard schools agree to. And it was awesome that the child was told she didn’t even have to ask to go to the bathroom. She was just able to get up and leave and there was a safe space for her to go. Not even that there was an adult there and that no one came in. Because what happens is even if the kid does go to a safe space, then there’s an adult, a professional coming with them five minutes later. Are you ready to go back? Are you ready to go back? You ready to go back? And it’s not relaxing, it’s anxiety. Even more anxiety provoking. they would leave her alone and then she would go back when she was ready. Now she had this modification in place, accommodation for a year. She only used it four times. So it was just the fact to know that she had that huge. So I love that, that it wasn’t even used.
Candida Fink: It’s a great accommodation.
Jo-Ann Berry: Yes. And I would say to, the point of somebody checking in right away, just walk by, you don’t have to say anything, just make sure that the kid is okay. And obviously, if they’re in a puddle of tears, you might ask if you could be helpful. And sometimes somebody just needs to have a little cry and that might be it.
Candida Fink: Jumping on them, ready to come back to class isn’t helpful.
Jo-Ann Berry: But to be, once again, back to relationships attuned to. If the student presents this way, they’re just saying, I need a minute. Or if they’re presenting that way, they’re saying, please help me. But they don’t have the language or whatever. So once again, the relationship building and understanding. And I get that that’s hard when you’ve got a school, a big high school with a couple of thousand kids. But somebody should know, right?
Jayne Demsky: I have a school who told me that they instituted something, which is awesome, that at least one staff member and sometimes two, besides just knowing a child’s name, they want them to know specific information about this child. So one person knows more than just your name. They would know, like, if they have siblings, if they have a pet, if they play sports, if they play chess, what their favorite class is to know about them. So that child feels that someone in the building cares.
Candida Fink: Yes. I love that so much. I do. I think you said that was like a school wide, intervention or model. So I think ultimately what we look for is the idea of making some of these interventions universal so that they’re not interventions, they’re just universal, sort of mental health supporting and preventive. But that’s obviously long term. So that kid doesn’t feel like they’re the only one being sort of checked in on that. Every kid knows they have someone.
Jayne Demsky: Right.
Jo-Ann Berry: Well, and it also helps, everyone in school feel more connected and spreads out that it’s not just the teachers, it could be the cafeteria lady who’s saying, hey, how’s your dog doing? And I think that would, for many of adults who work in schools, they would welcome that opportunity, because they like being around the kids. I mean, why do you do those jobs? As we were talking about earlier, a lot of times kids will be like, oh, you just hate us. You’re giving us this test because you hate us. It’s like, if we hated you, we couldn’t come in here and do this every day. We like hanging out. Sure, there’s days when you, child, are on my last nerve. But overall, we can’t do it if we don’t like hanging out with you guys. And that’s true, I think, for pretty much anyone who works in a school.
Candida Fink: I think we’ve had this fabulous conversation. I think we’ve gone over, but it’s not over anything. This was so important.
Mental health education in schools is a huge component that’s missed
Candida Fink: But as we start to wind down, Janye, if you could just sort of review your, your presence where people can find you, how they can connect with you and your organization, that would be terrific if you could.
Jayne Demsky: Thank you. So our website is schoolavoidance.org and we have tons of information on our website. And then we also have a school avoidance masterclass with some, leading clinicians. We’ve been very lucky that when I been doing this for so long and I connected to many, researchers and clinicians around the country who specialize and they built modules and talk about like, cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy in home strategies and special education, which was so important, and a school insider, so parents know how they’re right and how to work with school. So that’s the school avoidance masterclass for parents and for schools. It’s so important. We have our educator professional development, and you can find all about that on schoolavoidance.org. And, as you say, mental health is foundational to school. School avoidance education is foundational to improving outcomes and preventing more chronic absenteeism. So please check that out.
And parents, we also have a private Facebook group on school avoidance, and you can find that at, school avoidance. And I just wanted to say one more thing that I really advocate for all the time, and I haven’t heard many people talk about it lately, maybe because I’m out of the loop, but I think that mental health education in schools is a huge component that’s missed. And I do know that there is mental health first aid, and I don’t want to knock that. That’s a great program. It’s a very small piece of information. It’s great to start mental health first aid, but kids need comprehensive mental health education early on in their lives, and especially cognitive behavioral therapy. Because why do we have to be in therapy to recognize that we have automatic thoughts, that we talk to ourselves throughout the day, that we have automatic negative thoughts that really shape our emotions and our behaviors? Why do we have to wait for that until we go to therapy? If every child knew that, they would be able to deal much better in the world. So what are we waiting for?
Candida Fink: Emotion ed. just like Phys ed. Also a thing, that theme that comes up over and over with everyone we talk to in this space. I’m, reinforcing exactly what you’re saying. Mental health education from the ground up, pre K to twelve, should be really integrated.
This has been a, wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. and, for anyone out there, do check out, the school avoidance Alliance. We will, of course, have the links in the show notes. thank you.
You can find us at our website, mentalhealthgohostoschool.com. And our social, media. We’re under that same handle. We’re on Facebook and Instagram and Linkedin. and write to us, send us notes. Let us know what you thought about this conversation, if you have other questions, ideas, for topics or coming from here. And, Jane, this has been fabulous. We hope that you will come back and join us again at another point. We can sort of assess where things are.
Jayne Demsky: I learned from you, and it was a nice conversation, so thank you. I love learning.
Candida Fink: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Jayne Demsky: All right, have a great day. Bye.