My Daughter Ran Away From School Too Often

There are as many reasons to run away from school as there are children who do it. It’s important to pay attention to school avoidance—it can be a serious cry for help—but truancy is not always as big a problem as parents and educators think it is.

One of my daughters—a curious, sociable, and energetic child—hated school from the age of three, when I enrolled her in nursery school. I worked from home, and she loved spending time there with me. She always had projects of her own that she wanted to work on, and she experienced school as a waste of her time. Her academic skills were advanced for her age, and continued to develop through pursuing her various interests. In kindergarten, she developed a bad case of ‘Monday Morning Sickness’—she’d be great all weekend, then fall terribly ill on Monday morning. If I kept her home from school, she’d be well by 10am, and get progressively ‘healthier’ as the week went on.

The details of my daughter’s school avoidance tactics changed as she got older, until she was truant more than she attended during one year of high school. This was terribly worrying for me, but I’m glad to say that this story has a happy ending. After many years of conflict between us, and countless attempts to find a good solution, she became an enthusiastic and successful university student. Finally, she was able to throw herself passionately into topics she found meaningful, at a depth and complexity she found challenging. Finally school was worth attending.

Understanding School Truancy

Is school truancy about a creative and independent spirit, a bad fit, or simply a cry for help?

In my counseling practice, I’ve worked with many parents who are concerned about a child’s attempts to avoid school, and I’ve learned there are many reasons for running away from school.

Running away from school can involve a bad fit between the child’s temperament or learning needs, and what is being provided at school, as was the case with my daughter. It can involve any one or more of a number of emotional issues, sometimes reflecting worries to do with family problems—divorce, neglect, economic uncertainty, illness or conflict at home. School truancy can also be a way to avoid having to do with social pressures, including bullies and problems with social skills. One solution is seeking teenage counseling, which provides teens with the tools and support they need to manage anxiety, stress, or other issues contributing to school avoidance

One of the most frequent reasons for school avoidance that I’ve seen in my private practice occurs when smart kids have serious learning issues, including attention problems, uneven skill development, learning disabilities.

School truancy issues are highly individual, and reflect particular circumstances. They’re different across children, and they also change over time, as kids develop. Some children run away from school when they’re young, but then later love it, as eventually occurred with my daughter. Others enjoy school when they’re young, but reach a point where they have no time or use for it. Sometimes kids in the latter category are going through a stage where they’re more interested in other things—social, creative, athletic or other interests—and sometimes they’re independent learners, and create alternative educational and career paths for themselves.

While sometimes children run away from school for a relatively simple and benign cause, other times it’s a serious cry for help.

9 Action Tips for Parents Whose Child Runs Away From School

1. Listen to your child

Ask questions, patiently and calmly, with the focus on understanding what’s happening. Try to look beyond this as a simple discipline problem, the fact that your child isn’t doing what he’s supposed to be doing. Let him do the talking. Listen actively to his answers. Try to remain open to what he’s saying, without judgement or criticism.

2. Do some soul-searching

Are there problems at home that might lead to your child needing more attention than she’s getting? Does she have worries you can help her with? Does she need help with social, emotional, or academic skills? Does she need more focused time with you when you’re not checking your phone or thinking about your next commitment?

3. Focus on collaborative problem-solving

Avoid anger and blame. Don’t stigmatize or punish, your child. Don’t waste your time feeling guilty. Look at the issue as a shared problem, one to address and solve with your child and others, including the child’s other parent, as well as teachers and administrators. Perhaps there are friends or family members who can offer some insight or help, a grandparent, sibling or someone else who knows your child and the situation.

4. Think about simple fixes

Would it help if the early morning getting-ready-for-school routine was made less rushed? Maybe you could get up 30 minutes earlier and have some easy time together before school starts. Would it help if the after-school arrangements were different? Is there anything you can do to smooth the end of the day for your child? How about if you were more actively involved in the school, perhaps doing some volunteer work on a regular basis?

5. Talk to the teacher

How does the teacher see the problem? What strengths and challenges has he or she identified that might lead to your child not wanting to go to school? Does the teacher like your child? When you’re in the school, does it feel like a positive environment for your child?

6. Think about an assessment

Your child may be experiencing a psychological or cognitive problem you’re not aware of, perhaps an undiagnosed attention deficit or learning disability. It can be easier for a child to run than to deal with a circumstance where people are telling him he’s not living up to his potential, where he’s working hard but not getting very far.

7. Look for signs of serious problems

There are many less serious concerns that lead to kids running away from school, but truancy sometimes results from involvement with drugs, alcohol or sexual activity. It can also reflect experiences of bullying and social rejection or neglect, whether from teachers, peers or both.

8. Be creative

Consider changing classrooms or teachers. Think about home-schooling possibilities [which can be done collaboratively with other parents, or as part-time supplements to school]. Explore reducing or increasing your child’s academic load. Think about giving her days off—maybe one ‘mental health day’ for each four or nine days she attends. For some kids, the fact their parents are willing to consider alternatives like these is enough to ease the strain they’re feeling and help them move toward a solution.

9. Give your child as much control over the problem as you can

Do some problem-solving together, and be respectful of the solutions he generates. Work with him so she feels ownership over solutions and a partner in your actions moving forward. Ask he what she thinks will help, and give that a try if at all possible.

Summing Up

Ultimately, school avoidance is not a one-size-fits-all problem, and it’s crucial to approach it with understanding, creativity, and collaboration. By listening to your child, addressing any underlying concerns, and seeking appropriate support when needed, you can help them find a path that works for their unique needs. For some, it may be a phase that passes, while for others, it might signal the need for long-term adjustments. Either way, focusing on their wellbeing and being open to alternative approaches can lead to a more positive outcome for both the child and the family.

Before you go…

You might also like to read » Why Children Lie and What You Can Do About It

A version of this article first appeared in the July 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine (print edition).

The post Understanding School Truancy: Navigating the Reasons and Finding Solutions appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Discovering the need to homeschool

The desire for parents to homeschool their children, comes from a range of reasons.

Some of them being — the pressure to perform and be boxed into a group of the same age, no role model to follow, the non-personal touch of the school system and the wrong use of authority by teachers and school staff, which give children a wrong idea of authority.

Being a decision that will affect almost every aspect of your and your child’s life, during the learning years of your child, it’s one that has to be well thought over. Yet for some parents, this decision may come naturally. Like it did for Priya Desikan, who has a seven year old son, Raghav. “Our son requested flexibility in going to school, and of course with a regular school that did not work. So he said that he wanted to be home and I just went with my heart. I did not read or research much on homeschooling before we decided to pull him out of school, simply because he had already decided [and he was only five then]. I realised that he knew exactly what he wanted in life. So we listened to him instead. It was only after that I read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society that we realised that we were part of an inspiring and loving community of homeschoolers in India,” says Priya.

For Mumbai based P. Aravinda, the sole inspiration to homeschool her daughter was the observant, inquisitive and eager-to-learn attitude of her child.

But often parents may not see or let themselves see that the child’s innate curiosity will lead them to learn. In an earnest effort to prepare the child for school, parents modify even the home environment. However, when Aravinda’s daughter was young, though she had not thought about homeschooling, she was not thinking about schooling either, and thus kept the home environment free from eating and sleeping timetables, expectations of keeping clothes clean, need to recite and memorise shapes and colours.

She continued this way till her daughter was five years old, and in these years she had also been observing the neighbourhood children—most of whom had started schooling at age 3 or 4. They had spent a year before that preparing for the ‘interview’. “It was clearly difficult to imagine giving up what we had going for what the schools had to offer,” remarks Aravinda

Books such as How Children Learn by John Holt, Continuum Concept by John Liedloff, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, to name a few, exposed her to new ideas and also helped her discover that she was not alone in the way she interpreted what she was seeing. That emboldened her and she decided to foray into the inviting yet intimidating territory of homeschooling.

Certainly she isn’t alone going against the tide. Ann and Ashley Manning have a daughter aged 24 and a son aged 28. They were both homeschooled for about twelve years until they got certified for the Higher Secondary School Certificate [HSC] from National Institute of Open School [NIOS]. Ann and Ashley homeschooled because they believed that children are given to parents, for them to steward and bring up into mature adults, the home being their best environment and the best method of learning tutoring one-on-one.

The curriculum affair

Most homeschoolers use a mix of structured studies and unstructured studies. Some follow standard curriculum like NCERT, CBSE, IGCSE or Accelerated Christian Curriculum. Some do only those subjects in which the child has shown more interest. Some focus on the basic reading, writing and arithmetic while others stress on extra curricular activity and leave the child free to make her own curriculum. Some do not adhere to any structure at all. Learning for unschoolers happens very organically , slowly and internally. Often it is not visible or tangible, but if observed in continuity then one can easily observe the blossoming and learning happening uniquely with each child. My 6-year-old son, Ishaan learnt to count and recognise numbers from his surroundings which includes books, Internet, TV, films, drawing, painting, and outings with me. When I am reading a book, he comes to me and asks how many pages is the book and is happy when there are more than 500. He asks me number related questions like, how old is the earth, how many years ago did dinosaurs walk the earth, how old is India as a country, how many floors are there in our building, how many floors does the Empire State Buildings have, etc. Gourika, my 11-year-old daughter, reads fluently as she plays a lot of online games and looks up YouTube videos of films and music. Being a radical unschooler, I never taught my children to learn any of it… but I never stopped answering when they asked.

Deepali and Shankar from Mumbai, use as a guide, the Waldorf Education module for their daughter. “People who are new to homeschooling believe that without structure there can be no learning. We are not trying to recreate school at home. We just want to instill in our child, love for life-long learning, to be creative, to stand up for their rights and for the rights of others and to have a good judgment of right and wrong. It is very important to have a natural rhythm to your life. But not as hard as a cane school structure. Just like the rising/setting of the sun, our days flow easily and our life goes on smoothly,” explains Deepali.

Aravinda has a lovely take on following curriculum, she says, “A good curriculum is one that flows from our minds, through our conversations, back and forth to various experiences and ideas. We are following a curriculum but I don’t know if you would call it ‘fixed.’  I can observe that there is a structure, for example, my child often makes interesting connections and observations at some times/places, like in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, just before sleeping, soon after getting up, while playing with clay or blocks or water or sand, en route, while in train/bus. So as a family we like to allow for the conversations that spring forth at such times.”

Padma and Rajappa from Chennai have a son who is six and a daughter who is four, and they find that the most fulfilling aspect of homeschooling is that the whole family is in love with learning, learning is not limited by time, place or activity, it goes on wherever we are whatever we do. This family follows the principles of TJEd [www.tjed.org] as it suits their family. According to this educational philosophy, children aged 0 – 8 years are in Core Phase and are in their prime to learn the core values necessary for life. “With this in mind, we have been unschooling while applying principles from Montessori, Waldorf, Charlotte and Mason,” explains Padma.

Should a tutor be allowed to help?

Often some of the learning is also outsourced to tutors and mentors. Especially children who take exams spend a few hours each day with tutor mentors. Shailaja Karnam and her son Tarun Maudgalya run IGCSE mentorship centre in Hyderabad for homeschooled children who wish to take the O and A Level exams. They also prepare them for the certification and do all the needful paper work for the children. There are also a few international schools in Bangalore and Pune which allow candidates to take exams privately. For homeschooled children who wish to take Indian examinations the NIOS is the best options and many who have passed exams through this mode have taken admission into colleges in India. However with the implementations of the Right to Education Act, the possibility of NIOS being phased out in a stepped manner is being discussed. But there is still some ambiguity on this front and till the final decision one can continue with NIOS.

Like me most of the parents I know who have been unschooling their children are not worried about exams. They say they will cross the bridge if they need to or their children wish to go that way. But life and learning is about tuning in with new and creative livelihoods that are perhaps yet to be found. Some unschoolers do get into colleges and institutes when they set their minds to it.  Most unschoolers have a trust that their children since not so externally driven, dive deep into whatever they wish to pursue and find a way out.

The world of critiques and challenges

Every pioneer who has tried to do something that has never been done before or is far from the accepted ‘norm’ have in history of this planet faced challenges and it is never a cake walk for anyone who wants to tread on paths not walked before. Most homeschoolers will tell you how the very people who criticise them when they started with homeschooling end up praising and appreciating the decision. Deepali says, “When we initially started off on this path, we were met with lots of criticism. But over time, people have realised that we are serious about homeschooling and our child is a very happy, social, kind, loving girl who is equally at ease with children of her own age as well as adults.”

Anne says, “The biggest challenge we faced was from friends and family accusing us of messing with our children’s futures and lives. When our children’s friends accused them of not going to school, we helped our children handle such situations by giving them common sense answers like: We don’t go to school, but we have school at home. Building bonds with them which would never have happened if they had gone the regular way, spending 6 hours in school, 8 hours asleep, another 4 – 6 hours studying and us left with the dregs of their time, energy and motivation. Seeing them grow into people of character with right priorities and focus, a vision and dream for their lives and already on the way to fulfilling them, make us want to homeschool all over again.”

Challenges of facing the world and answering their questions may at times take a toll on your emotional wellbeing and balance in life. But from my experience I can tell that within a few years of learning with our kids and growing with them, one would often be treated as an inspiration.

For Priya the journey of usnchooling has been more of an exercise in self awareness and self knowledge. She says, “Every day poses a new challenge—of understanding oneself a little more, of being there with my child the way he wants me to, of getting out of my child’s way so that he can blossom the way he wants to, of unlearning what one has been conditioned to learn and conform to ever since one was born. To me, that is what this journey of ‘living and learning’ with my child is about. The greatest fear and challenge that I face every day is to let go of what my mind and heart are so used to clinging on to. The way I deal with both my fears and challenges is to try and look at what is happening without any coloured lens and look deep within myself. Very often, I have found that when I free myself of those old patterns and habits, I free my son.”

Aravinda’s challenges are closer home as she feels, “My main challenge is that we don’t have enough other kids around to do things with but I am often amazed to see the way that thoughts flow according to their own course and inner curriculum.”

Parenting challenges

When in school teachers teach right from wrong. And wrong behaviour is always punished where as the same situation maybe dealt differently at home, for parents are always known to favour their child. This raises the problems of fostering the right behaviour in children, and strong conviction amongst parents is needed for its important in their core years to learn right from wrong.

The support system

With the world being critical of people who dared to tread away in a path that has never before been walked over, there are people and groups who can act as support systems. Sangeeta Chhabra who lives a completely ‘organic’ life at her eco-farm and has been homeschooling her daughter says, “Today there are many groups of homeschoolers and one can readily avail their support for numerous challenges. Unlike few years back, when we decided to homeschool our daughter Annica, me and my husband were the only black sheep doing it.”

Financial implications

Often, one may come across financial problems while educating their child, but with homeschooling the problem is almost no present since it’s a give and take relationship. Parents give the knowledge they possess. “A parent has to be 100 per cent sure, to homeschool their child; it cannot be 99.9 per cent. Since the compulsion for putting aside a certain amount for school is gone, nothing more than what you have in hand is needed,” says Sangeeta.

For areas where a child shows particular interest and the parent has not much expertise may only call for little to no monetary investment, for we can find a lot of passionate people around to teach no cost.

No matter what method parents adopt to homeschool their child, the underlying motive and intention is always to increase intimacy and bonding among family members and making learning in partnership with children the pivot. It is about increased self awareness and trusting in one’s inner voice.

“Seeing my children plan to homeschool their own kids when the time comes, because of the benefit they see it has for themselves,” says Ann, “is so fulfilling and rewarding that I would homeschool my children all over again if I was given a chance to.”

Homeschooling is challenging, but certainly these challenges are not looked as problems. And if one expects that this path will be without any challenges or obstacles; that will be quiet unrealistic.

This was first published in the December 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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