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.
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.
why teenage girls are disproportionately affected by school avoidance
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.
"school refusal" vs. “school avoidance”: why the words matter
small steps. gentle support. a new try every day.
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