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.
how anxiety shows up in the body — and why your daughter's stomach ache is real
The stomach ache arrives at 7am, right on schedule. It disappears by mid-morning on a day she stays home. The symptoms are real — here's the neuroscience of why, and why it matters for how you respond.
what's your school avoidance parenting style? (a totally scientific quiz)
A completely rigorous, evidence-based personality assessment for parents of school-avoidant children. Sharpen your pencil. Try not to read ahead.
what does "emotionally based school avoidance" actually mean?
EBSA — emotionally based school avoidance — is a term you may have started seeing everywhere. Here's what it actually means, why it replaced older terms that are still in common use, and why the framework matters for your daughter specifically.
the signs were there. I just didn't have a name for them.
I filed the stomach aches under: she's a worrier. I filed the Sunday evenings under: she doesn't love Mondays. I filed all of it neatly, in folders that made sense at the time. None of the folders were labelled school avoidance.
7 warning signs your daughter may be heading toward school avoidance
Most parents don't see it coming. Here are the seven early warning signs of school avoidance — and why they're easy to miss until the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
the art of shutting up (which I have not mastered)
She says she needs a minute. I say okay. Then I wait two minutes, which in school avoidance parenting years is approximately one geological epoch, and I go back in. On the art of shutting up — and why I haven't mastered it yet.
the link between instagram, tiktok and your daughter's school anxiety
It's not a rant against phones. It's a look at the three specific mechanisms — social comparison, the always-on social environment, and sleep disruption — that make Instagram and TikTok a particularly difficult combination for girls who are already anxious about school.
she was fine on the weekend. sunday night changed everything.
The Sunday cliff and the 6pm dread that arrives before you've done anything wrong. What I think I've started to understand about it — and the part where it stopped being just hers.
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.