09/12/2025
A few tips about EBSA
✨ EBSA (Emotionally based school avoidance)
Unable, Not Unwilling.
And if you’re living it, I promise you are NOT a bad parent!
EBSA isn’t kids “refusing school” so they can sit at home on their consoles all day. They’re not lounging around joyfully levelling up on Fortnite, cackling with snacks and freedom. Most kids in EBSA can’t even enjoy anything, their nervous system is in full-blown survival mode.
They’re often crying, shutting down. Frozen, stuck in freeze mode. Withdrawn, struggling to talk and eat. Barely functioning bless them.
EBSA is fear. Sleeping from exhaustion after meltdowns. Not laziness, not bunking off, and it is definitely not a parenting issue. EBSA is a nervous system condition, not a behaviour choice.
Many kids with EBSA wish they could attend school, to see their friends, to feel included, to learn, to be “like everyone else.” They don’t stay home because they don’t care. They stay home because there are barriers that are yet to be unpicked (or because we wait years for bloody tribunals)
Not all children/young people with school based anxiety will show physical symptoms, but most of them do….
Many of these kids wake with their stomachs in knots every morning. It’s Kids throwing up in bushes on the way to school. It’s Kids panicking so badly when they get there, they vomit in the corridor. Kids who suddenly go silent and disappear inside themselves when they struggle to recover from meltdowns.
Teens who self-harm because they can’t cope with school . Teens who quietly whisper that they don’t want to be here anymore. Kids aged seven diagnosed with depression by psychiatrists. Kids who chew their fingers until they bleed and dissociate. Kids who’ve been dry since age three suddenly bedwetting again from stress. Teens with constant pain in their joints, bellies, and heads. Kids pulling their own hair out in clumps through distress.
This is not a lack of resilience?
This is not “just push them through the door.”
And it’s definitely not “they’ll be fine once they’re here.”!!
Anyone who thinks forcing a child into school will fix this is bluntly, an absolute fu***ng moron!
I am not saying education doesn’t matter.
It matters deeply. But unsuitable education causes harm and no child should be sacrificed to a system just to tick an attendance box.
And to the parents living this right now, I hear cases like this every single day. Keeping your child at home while you fight for appropriate support is NOT bad parenting! it is safeguarding their mental health.
And in my opinion, mental health comes before everything!
You are their safe place. You should never feel bullied by the services meant to help you. If your gut is screaming that something is wrong do listen to it.
Please also make sure any physical symptoms (vomiting, shutdowns, panic attacks, bedwetting, headaches, upset tummies, pain) are discussed regularly with your GP. The morre support you can get from professionals, the better.
I’ve lived EBSA as a parent for a long time.
I know how relentless, frightening and suffocating it is. Our children just need the right support.
But Keeping them safe, Listening to their nervous system & responding with compassion instead of fear is good parenting. That’s love!
And please remember this bit of actual law, because schools and LAs love to pretend it doesn’t exist….
📝 The full-time education you must ensure your child receives MUST be suitable to their age, ability, aptitude, and any SEND they may have.
(Section 7, Education Act 1996)
“Full time” does not mean dragging a child in no matter the mental damage. You do not have to physically force your child into school
It means the education they receive (wherever they receive it) must be appropriate for them-at that time.
If school is making them ill, shutting them down, or pushing them into crisis, then by definition it is not really a suitable education.
Keep your evidence together, make notes. Make a WhatsApp chat with yourself called EBSA. Add it all.
Keep emails. Record symptoms, GP visits, refferals if you can, log meltdowns, shutdowns, photo physical signs, every bit of it. Be transparent and be honest but mostly be BRAVE!
You’re not hiding anything. You’re protecting your child. I know how lonely this road can feel, but I promise you, there are thousands of families walking it alongside you. I wish someone told me this when I was walking in the trenches.
Love always,
Leigh
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PS if you made it this far, here is a medal for you because I do waffle 🥇
