how to use the summer to prepare for september (without making it feel like homework)
If you have a school meeting coming up, or you're just in the middle of it and could use something concrete to hold onto, the free guide below covers word-for-word responses for the conversations that don't go the way you hoped.
the end of the school year hits differently this time
The last day of school came and went, and I spent most of it trying to locate the feeling I was supposed to be having. I think it was relief. It kept slipping away every time I got close to it and turning into something I hadn't budgeted for emotionally and definitely wasn't prepared to deal with in a Trader Joe's parking lot.
the post-covid rise in school avoidance: what the data actually shows
Before my daughter stopped going to school, I had a vague sense that this kind of thing happened to some kids, somewhere, occasionally. I did not have any sense that it was happening at a scale significant enough to have its own research literature, its own clinical terminology, or its own entry in a BMJ journal article with the phrase "perfect storm" in the title.
oh, you just have to get her to school
People mean well. I want to start there, because what follows is going to sound uncharitable, and I am trying very hard to remain a person who extends good faith to others, which is something I have to remind myself of more frequently than I'd like since we started navigating this particular situation.
when she stays home: what the research says about making the most of a hard day
There is a version of the home day that goes fine. She sleeps in a little, comes downstairs eventually, eats something, does some work at the kitchen table, doesn't spiral, and by 2pm the day has passed without incident and you both move on. There is also the other version, which is the one that tends to actually happen.
this is, against all odds, good news
I have learned, through years of practice I didn't ask for, to read any headline involving my kid's school district with the same resigned energy I'd bring to a voicemail from the school's main line. So it says something that I got all the way to the end of this one without flinching once.
the (not so) hidden connection between neurodivergence and school avoidance in girls
I went looking for something else entirely and found the number that stopped me cold: in one large study of kids experiencing significant school distress, 92% were neurodivergent. If your daughter is struggling to get to school and neurodivergence hasn't come up yet, this might be the post that finally makes the pattern make sense.
the questions aren’t procrastination
For a long time I thought she wasn't listening. I thought she was procrastinating, buying time, running out the clock on a morning she didn't want to move through. What I understand now is that the questions were never procrastination. They were a form of self-reassurance.
what if therapy isn't helping? (and the thing nobody in the system will say out loud)
What if the constant focus on the anxiety — the appointments, the check-ins, the careful monitoring, the conversations about school and how school is going and what we're going to do about school — is making things worse rather than better? It turns out there is research on this. More than I expected.
the 5:50am briefing
I have been awake since 4:30am, not because an alarm went off — I stopped needing one months ago — but because my brain has quietly decided that this is simply when the day begins now. I get up at 5:30. At exactly 5:50am I go into her room. Not at 5:48 and not at 5:52 but at 5:50.
how to actually find a therapist for your school-avoidant teenager (the part nobody tells you)
Finding a therapist who takes your insurance and has availability and works with teenagers and comes recommended by someone who isn't just a name on a list is its own entire experience. Here's the practical version — the one I wish I'd had when I started.
when you're not on the same page (and your child can tell)
Trying to keep a boat afloat while rowing in completely different directions produces a very effortful kind of going around in circles. And the worst part — there is no captain. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, the teenager climbed up and took the wheel.
she refused to go to therapy. so I went first.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being caught in a loop that has no obvious exit. The school needs a therapist. The therapist needs a child who will attend. The child won't attend. And the school is waiting. On the catch-22 nobody talks about — and what I did when I couldn't find a way out of it.
she is not her school avoidance
Somewhere in the middle of all of this — the appointments, the school meetings, the forms and the phone calls (the endless phone calls!) — it is possible to lose sight of something important. Your daughter is not her school avoidance. She is a specific, particular, unrepeatable marvel of a person who is somewhere in the middle of becoming whoever she is going to be.
if your child is finishing the year online: what to think about, and how to approach september without catastrophising
Some students are finishing this school year online. Not because they chose to, but because it was the option that allowed them to finish at all. On what to think about now, how to use the summer well, and how to approach September without catastrophising.
the grief of the end of the school year (when you're not counting down to anything)
end of year burnout in school-avoidant teenagers: what it actually is and why anxious kids hit it harder
The school year has about six weeks left. And if your daughter is struggling more than usual right now — more withdrawn, more exhausted, more resistant — you are not imagining it. Here's what academic burnout actually is, and why anxious teenagers hit it harder than their peers.
I took the phone. it made things worse.
The advice was to make home less comfortable. The phone was the obvious variable — several clinical justifications ready, I had been doing a lot of reading. So I took it. What followed was a fight that took hours to come back from, and a lesson about which variable actually needed changing.
how to work with your school when your child can't attend: what parents actually need to know
At some point in most school avoidance journeys, the relationship with the school becomes its own problem. Here's what rights you actually have, what to ask for, and how to have better conversations with the people who hold a lot of power over your daughter's education.
the days you lose it (and how to come back from them)
Every parent of a school-avoidant child has days where they lose it. Here's what that looks like, what the guilt feels like, and how to come back from it.
if you're in the middle of it — the slow mornings, the sunday evenings, the conversations with the school that don't go the way you needed them to —
this is for you.
get a note in your inbox each week. no advice you haven't already tried. just a parent who's in it too, and the occasional thing that's actually helped.