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I just wondered if anyone had any advice. My AS14 has always struggled at school. He came to live with us at age 4. He has global developmental and speech and language delay. We had many aggressive outbursts in mainstream primary school and were lucky enough to get him into a special school for secondary. First year (Scotland) was not the best with still a lot of aggressive outbursts however the school headteacher did put in a lot of work with AS and second year has been better. He does not engage in learning very much however his behaviour has vastly improved.

He struggles socially and does not really have any good friends, he has sensory issues, attachment and early trauma to deal with so to be honest in the last few months if he goes to school and does not have an incident I have been fine with it.

However, lately he has been refusing more and more to go to school, we took advice on this and try to play it down making the day as boring as possible for him in the hope he will be willing to go in the next day. Coming to the end of the school year, the school transitioned him to his new timetable, new subjects and gave him a new PSA. This really freaked him out and we had 3 refusals in one week, with some quite extreme behaviour. He is not aggressive, he just shuts down. As soon as it is either time to get ready for bed or time to get up he just ignores us and hides in his room and refuses to engage. I have tried to be really understanding but am finding it really difficult that he is unable to verbalise what this issues are. I am guessing he is just feeling really insecure with so many changes etc but I do not know how to help.

I have also been unwell over the last week and was hospitalised on Friday just for the day. He has had a great weekend, although very quiet as I was not up to do anything but as soon as I mentioned it was bedtime and time for his shower, he changed completely, ran to his room and is currently hiding face down on his bed refusing to talk or engage. I have told him I am not cross with him and just want to help and that I am downstairs if he wants to talk to me. I am guessing this will probably mean he will refuse to get up for school and I just do not know what to do.

I have meeting with headteacher tomorrow so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Edited 17/02/2021

I hope your meeting went well and was useful. I saw this post last night but it is such a faff to log in each time (this time I’ve done 2 separate log ins as I logged into the AUK site first!) that I didn’t reply then so hope it’s not too late. My son was school refusing at that age. It is so hard because you have a legal duty while they are at school to try and get them there and it’s not always the best thing. My son ended up taking a knife and wanting to kill himself ( he didn’t attempt this fortunately but might have) We had an emergency referral to CAMHS and appointment the next day. They said school should be doing more and they did assessments which identified various learning difficulties and a specialist teacher worked with him and school to gradually reintegrate him. It didn’t work in the end (because school didn’t stick to the agreed plan) but he went into supported learning at college in yr 11. Is he able to respond to counselling at all? Do school have any idea what is happening? As well as learning difficulties my son was being bullied which the school were in denial about and he was reluctant to talk about. Is there any counselling available through school? How is he socially? Another thing that helped my son was having an involvement in sport which was in school but went beyond school. Does your son have any outside interest he can build up which will help his self esteem? My son also had some good friends through this which kept him going. At the end of the day your sons mental health is more important than school. Education Welfare will not be a problem either if you continue to show you are working with school. Home Ed is also something to consider. I found Bryan Post very useful and in fact emailed him and got a reply

Edited 17/02/2021

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