you know you're a parent of a school-avoidant child when...
While other parents are buying pencil cases and new water bottles, you are restocking your bag with face wipes, a lint roller, an eyelash curler, and propranolol, because looking like you have it together is a skill you have had to learn from scratch.
things that can actually help school avoidance in the first week of school
September is the hardest week of the year for a lot of families navigating school avoidance, and the first few days have a way of setting the tone for everything that follows. This is the shorter, more immediate version, the things worth doing and asking for in the first week, before everything has a chance to go wrong.
the dread arrives in August. here’s what to do with it.
August 10th. Five weeks until school starts, give or take, and the calendar that looked so reassuringly far away in June is suddenly not far away at all. The school meeting is booked, the emails have been sent, the plan exists, and still there is something sitting in the chest that the plan hasn't touched.
how to prepare for your back to school meeting (before september arrives)
August has a way of arriving faster than you think it will, and if you have a school-avoidant child, the weeks between now and the first day of school are not just summer — they're the window where the conversation with the school either happens or doesn't.
we don't have a plan for 10th grade and I am doing great
It is July. September is six weeks away, give or take, and I have not yet successfully answered the question of what 10th grade looks like for my daughter. I have, however, created several documents, attended two meetings that ended without resolution, and read the same three articles multiple times as though they might say something different on the fourth pass.
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.