rise & try again 4/6/26 rise & try again 4/6/26

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.

rise & try again 3/12/26 rise & try again 3/12/26

the morning I stopped saying "you have to go"

There was a particular version of mornings that I got very good at. I had a script for it and everything — the gentle knock, the chirpy opener, the escalation. You have to go. You have to go. I got very efficient at it. What I couldn't see, from inside that sequence, was that I was running it entirely on the wrong assumption.

rise & try again 3/10/26 rise & try again 3/10/26

"school refusal" vs. “school avoidance”: why the words matter

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.