Dr Rachel Browne, Child, Educational and Community Psychologist

11/12/2024

When a child is struggling with school attendance, many of the strategies which adults employ can make things worse. Here are the three which I think do the most damage and which I often hear about in my therapy room.

1. Tell a child that school is critically important and that if they don’t attend they will never get an interesting job or lead a fulfilling life. Children believe us. If they can’t attend school, they think their whole life will be blighted. This leads to despair and hopelessness.

2. Make home less pleasant and don’t interact with children if they do not go to school in order that the child ‘chooses’ school. This leads to a breakdown in relationship between parents and children and children who are chronically under stimulated and unhappy. I hear from parents who say that their children just sit on the stairs from 9-3 each day, staring into space.

3. Force them into school, no matter what their level of distress. People do this in the belief that children will learn through exposure that school isn’t as bad as they think and will become less anxious. Exposure doesn’t work if it is forced and you feel out of control, and anxiety is often a reaction not a reason. Children become sensitised to school and soon are highly anxious about everything to do with school, included reading, teachers and other children.

What’s the alternative? Find out what’s going wrong. What is it about this school for this child which isn’t working? Think about whether anything could change. Focus on building them up and do things they enjoy together. Give them opportunities to learn about things which interest them. Tell them stories of hope, and that you’ll help them learn and find their way to a fulfilling life.

For a happy child is more likely to be able to access education, however they do that. If you take away their happiness in order to force them into school, it is an empty victory.

04/11/2021

There is so much more to behaviour than most people think. Children don’t try to upset us, there is usually something behind it. They are communicating their need through behaviour. If we look behind the behaviour we can see a child who is doing the best they can

01/01/2021

To resolve or not to resolve, that is the question. Or at least it seems to be on instgram.

My simple answer- do whatever you want to do that makes you feel good. No Instagram post or general advice can take into account the individuality of your likes, preferences, situation and tell you specifically what will work for you. So resolve if you want to and don’t if you don’t.

If you are setting resolutions make sure you are not using them as a stick to beat yourself up or shame yourself. Your don’t need a new you but you do need to look after the you you are with compassion and kindness. So if you go down the resolution road I’d suggest that the following:

•Don’t list all the things about yourself you are unhappy with- that’s going to make anybody feel bad.

•Set positive aims that make you feel good - what you actually want to do.

•Expect setbacks- that’s life, not a failure on your behalf. Change is hard for our brains and we tend to fall into old patterns particularly when busy or stressed. Reevaluate rather than beat yourself up when these happen.

•Don’t overwhelm your brain with too much- start small with just one or two things, that you can perhaps do on a daily basis.

•Focus on achievements rather than chastising yourself when you feel you don’t achieve.

•And if you want to change goals or even set them aside, allow yourself to. Flexibility with goals is far better for you than adhering to goals that become unobtainable or are making you feel bad.

So resolve if you want to... but resolve to make yourself feel good, not as a reason to beat yourself up, shame and criticise yourself. Resolutions should not be about creating additional stressors in our life - geez let’s face it there’s enough of them in the world for all of us right now anyway! They should be things which make you feel good, reduce your stress and therefore improve your life and wellbeing.

21/09/2020

This is difficult. Uncertainty is difficult. Our brains find uncertainty difficult. Normally we manage this by creating plans and anticipating the future with a degree of confidence and assumed accuracy, but that’s just not possible right now. Our brains feel stressed because uncertainty and unpredictability is ever near and the future is unknown and difficult to plan for.

Then on the flip side, our normal coping strategies- that help us deal with stress- are just not possible. Relaxing and pub is an oxymoron right now. A leisurely browse is fraught with tension. Meeting friends has such a degree of added complexity or planning that it’s not quite the easy relaxed event it should be. Anticipated joy that fills our mind is hard to find, so anticipated dread creeps in instead. As for holidays - the thought of which often keep us going through tough times - well, who knows when they will be back.

It’s a double difficult whammy of increased stress and less availability of coping strategies to deal with that stress. And that is not just double difficult, but exponentially difficult.

Often we blame ourselves for how we feel. Or we shame ourselves for how we feel. We think we should be feeling differently or doing better.

But sometimes we just find it difficult because it is difficult.. So try not to shame the feelings you are having right now, or internalise these to mean something negative about you.

Difficult times can result in difficult emotions. That doesn’t feel nice, but shaming or blaming yourself just makes it even more difficult.

Instead try to recognise and validate how you feel. Everybody’s brain is different and everybody’s situation and experiences are different. Combine these together and it means that how everybody will feel in response to the current situation will be slightly different. Different doesn’t mean wrong, differences are the norm with emotions because differences are the norm with humans. And difficult emotions are the norm in difficult times, but these need extra care not the additive stress of shame or blame.

15/07/2020

Here’s my review of the year so far via the medium of a squiggly line. Just over six months in and it’s been one hell of a bumpy line so far this year. Here’s hoping the next six months will be a bit of a smoother life line....

26/05/2020

Good examples of how our children's feelings sometimes show up. Thanks to Erin Leyba.

22/05/2020

This is a useful training on Adverse Childhood Experiences and trauma.

https://www.acesonlinelearning.com/

You can access the course by clicking the link on the right hand side. You can use the course on a PC, or mobile device.

19/05/2020

I’ve spoken to lots of people in the last few weeks and the collective general feeling is that our capacity cups are fuller, which means we have less capacity left and are much closer to our cup spilling over, creamola foam style (yes I was a child of the 80s, and for that reason snickers will always be marathons too). This cup here is pretty full because There were lots of things filling your capacity cups right now when I asked , and I’ve tried to capture them here by theme. The things in your cup are using up your emotional capacity.... and we all have limited capacity.

For most people Uncertainty, high levels of background stress, greater levels of threat, hyper vigilance for that threat and the resulting attention and energy required to deal with that threat means that our capacity cup fills up pretty rapidly. Add in any specific personal stressors and you might find you are nearer the top than normal.

And of course once you’re near the top it doesn’t take much to make your cup spill over. We can have big reactions to seemingly small things, feel overwhelmed, irritable and completely exhausted. And sometimes it feels like this happens with no apparent cause because it might have been a tiny thing that used our last sliver of capacity and bursts our meniscus so we overflow (that sounds rude to me but it isn’t and I really just wanted to get a big word I’d just learnt from my not so successful attempts at home schooling into a post). What I really mean (and would have said before i learnt that word was) is that it pushes our cup over the edge.

It can help to notice what’s in your cup and, if you are near the top, find ways to manage your capacity to stop it spilling over if you can.

12/03/2020

What parents and other adults can say to kids about the coronavirus COVID-19. How to answer their questions and keep kids feeling safe.

12/03/2020

Homework does have an impact on young students — but it’s not a good one

08/03/2020

06/03/2020

As a parent, what do you do when your child has fears that feel out of their control - things like viral outbreaks and global warming? Learn 8 tips for taming fears and anxieties through connection.