Go To Community

Let’s talk about it together

Connect with Good Inside-trained coaches AND thousands of judgment-free, knowledgeable parents just like you. You ask. They answer. Every time.

Revisit – Back to School Anxiety

School

Subscribe on Apple

Subscribe on Spotify

Family Jobs: What They Are and Why They Matter

Sturdy Leadership™

Feelings Bench™

What is Repair and Why Does It Matter?

Go-to Foundational Ideas

Revisit - Back to School Anxiety

Does your kid beg to stay home or outright say “I’m NOT going to school!” most mornings?

You’re not alone. School refusal feels hard because it is hard. And this is also true: You’re in the right place for support. 

It’s important to know that school refusal, sometimes referred to as school phobia or school avoidance, is more than “not liking school.” It involves persistent fear or anxiety about going to school, which can develop for a number of different reasons for different kids—including separation anxiety, social and peer dynamics, executive functioning, mental health, academics, and more.

As a parent, it makes sense if you feel frustrated or worried. We see those feelings—they’re real and they matter! And, at the same time, we know that you and your kid can get through this. In this guide, we’ll help you:
<ol>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Understand your kid’s behavior</li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Show up as a sturdy leader</li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Learn new strategies for meaningful, long-lasting change</li>
</ol>
<h3>The Big Idea</h3>
If you find yourself thinking, “Ugh, why is my kid so lazy!” or “My kid never listens to me!”, we get it. It’s common to interpret refusing to go to school as a lack of motivation or defiance. Here’s the thing: These interpretations automatically put you and your kid on opposite teams by defining them as the problem.  

So, how can we reframe the situation? Tell yourself, “My kid is having a hard time, not giving me a hard time.” Now, instead of seeing your kid as the problem, you can put yourself and your kid on the same team against the problem. 
<h2>“My kid is having a hard time, not giving me a hard time.”</h2>
When you see it this way, you can remember that your kid’s struggles are a sign of where they need help—not a sign of who they are. After all, school refusal is really about a child struggling to tap into their own potential and capabilities. 

That’s where we come in. The next two sections include strategies for you and strategies for your kid, so you can work together on making it easier to get to school—all while building critical skills like resilience, frustration tolerance, and self-trust along the way. 
<h3>6 Strategies for You</h3>
<ol>
 	<li> Access Your Inner Sturdy Leader</li>
</ol>
Imagine you’re on a plane with intense turbulence. Passengers are freaking out! Now, do you want a pilot who starts worrying in return (“AH! Stop screaming! You’re scaring me!”) … or do you want a pilot who validates your fear and stays in control of the plane (“I know this is scary, and I know we can fly through this”)? We’re guessing you prefer the second pilot, right?

Well, our kids want the same thing: A sturdy leader who can see and validate their feelings, without letting those feelings change their decisions. That’s right: You can care about your kid's resistance to school, you can acknowledge their fears, anxieties, and feelings… AND you can still decide that they are going to school. 

Tell yourself, “I am a sturdy leader. I can offer loving validation and set firm boundaries.”
<ol start="2">
 	<li> Hold Hope</li>
</ol>
If you want to get the best out of your kid, you need to see the best in them. In other words, you need to believe in your child’s ability to go to school and hold hope that things will change. 

Say to yourself now, “I believe we will get through this. I am not alone. I can cope with this.”
<ol start="3">
 	<li> See the Good Inside Your Child</li>
</ol>
Here’s something we know: You have a good kid. Read that again! In order to change anything, you have to start by KNOWING your child is good. You may even have to “fake it till you make it.” That’s okay. 

Start here and say to yourself, “My child is doing the best they can with the skills they have at this moment. Two things are true: This stage is hard AND eventually we're going to get to the other side."
<ol start="4">
 	<li> Regulate Yourself</li>
</ol>
What does your child’s school refusal bring up for you? Anger, guilt, shame, disappointment, rage—all feelings are allowed and make sense. Make space for yourself to feel and regulate these emotions as they come up. 

Place your feet on the ground, take a deep breath, and say these words, “My child's struggles are not a barometer of my parenting. I am a good parent with a good kid having a hard time.”
<ol start="5">
 	<li> Stay Present</li>
</ol>
Angst about your kids' future is totally normal. At the same time, when we fast forward to the future, we start focusing on potential worries, not current problems. Remember: We can’t solve worries, we can solve problems.
<ol start="6">
 	<li> Put Progress Over Perfection</li>
</ol>
Remember to celebrate even the smallest wins and progress your child makes, no matter how incremental it may feel. Overcoming school refusal is a journey and not something that is solved overnight.
<h3>6 Strategies for Your Kid</h3>
<ol>
 	<li> Connect</li>
</ol>
When it comes to school refusal or any other parenting struggle, a strong relationship with your kid is your most important parenting tool. 

Work on establishing trust and connection with your child. Play video games together, take a walk, eat ice cream— whatever works. If connection feels hard to build, keep trying. We promise, your efforts matter.
<ol start="2">
 	<li> Identify Triggers</li>
</ol>
Get curious about your child’s struggle! How can you and your child get on the same team and define the problem, together? 

For example, you might explore specific triggers that contribute to their anxiety about school.  Ask, “Hmm, I wonder… What does the lunch room feel like? I remember my cafeteria… Oh boy, was it loud at times! Hmm, what about recess? What’s that like? Oh, it’s not fun? I wonder why… I know it can feel hard to figure out which crowd to hang with at times… I felt that way at school when I was your age, too.” 

Brainstorm with your child what they can do if those triggers come up. After all, your goal isn’t to remove triggers, your goal is to help your kid see that they can be resilient in the face of triggers. This difference is massive in helping your kid move from a state of avoidance to capability. 
<ol start="3">
 	<li> Validate</li>
</ol>
Acknowledge and validate your child's emotions and experiences, while holding hope that this will get better with time. Use language like:

“I believe you… and I know this won’t be forever.”

“Something about school feels terrible to you right now.”

“I know this is hard and I know we’re going to get through this together.” 

The more you allow their feelings to exist, the less overpowering they become. When we show our kids that we aren’t afraid of their school-related concerns, they actually start to become less afraid, too.
<ol start="4">
 	<li> Start Small</li>
</ol>
Gradually expose your child to school-related stimuli in a controlled and supportive environment to help reduce their anxiety and build self-trust. This may involve short visits to the school or meeting with teachers or counselors in a controlled setting. 

Encourage your child to stay connected to their peers and plan times for them to hang out together or connect online—as a foundational need, not as a reward. Staying connected to people in school will increase feelings of safety within that environment. If the first step feels too big for your child, start with a smaller step. 
<ol start="5">
 	<li> Collaborate With the School </li>
</ol>
Advocate for your child’s needs! You are the sturdy leader of your family and you know your child better than anyone. 

When you bring your child to school, you may need another adult there to help you make the transition successful. It's important to be on the same page, use similar language, and complete the process together. Remember, the more you can partner with your child’s school and view the problem from a “same team” mindset, the better. 
<ol start="6">
 	<li> Get More Support</li>
</ol>
You don’t need to struggle alone. A personalized approach is often necessary and essential for change to happen. Finding the right type of support and guidance can make all the difference in reaching your goals. If your child is struggling with anxiety or depression or if you aren't making progress after trying these strategies, therapy can be an important and impactful next step. 

We know parenting feels hard because it is hard. Something else we know: We can make it feel easier, together. Find support and community <a href="https://community.goodinside.com/c/common-threads/school-avoidance-refusal">here. </a>

Understanding School Refusal: Support for You and Your Child

<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Gi_GuideforWhenYourChildisBullyingOthers_v1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" download="">Download Guide</a>

Guide for When Your Child is Bullying Others

Rudeness

<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Gi_GuideforWhenYourChildisBeingBullied_v1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" download="">Download Guide</a>

Guide for When Your Child is Being Bullied

<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Gi_GuidetoParentTeacherConference.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" download="">Download Guide</a>

Guide to Parent-Teacher Conferences

Back to School Routine Hacks

Fall Parenting Playbook

Back to School Anxiety

A Primer To Behavioral Issues at School

Scripts to Use Ahead of a Challenging Task to Build Frustration Tolerance

Confidence

Scripts to Use During a Challenging Task to Build Frustration Tolerance

When Your Child Says They Won’t Play with Another Kid

When Your Child Is Copying the Behavior of Others

Navigating Tricky Friendship Moments: Your Role As A Parent

Foundations

<ol>
 	<li>WAIT. Pause, remember this isn't an emergency. Give yourself permission not to fix anything or make any major changes. Kids often need time and just some support to figure things out, not any major intervention.</li>
 	<li>Use “It’s almost like” - to go from sticky situation to open up a larger story:
<ul>
 	<li>“When you’re with Mila, it’s almost like she doesn't want you to be with anyone else… to play with any of the other kids… huh…”</li>
 	<li>“When a friend does something that upsets you, it’s almost like they become a bad person, they kind of go from friend to NOT friend huh…”</li>
 	<li>“When your friends are all together and you’re not there, it’s almost like they don’t even like you - huh. It feels like that.”</li>
</ul>
</li>
 	<li>Use “I get that” or “That’s tricky” to validate and get on same page:
<ul>
 	<li>“I get that... I’d feel the same way too.”</li>
 	<li>“Ugh… that’s tricky.”</li>
</ul>
</li>
 	<li>Use “I wonder” to open things up:
<ul>
 	<li>“Hm. I wonder if there’s anything we haven't thought about here…”</li>
 	<li>“Hm. I wonder if there’s another way to handle it…”</li>
 	<li>“Hm. I wonder what would happen if you...”</li>
</ul>
</li>
 	<li>Use “I know you’ll / we’ll figure this out” to add hope and confidence.</li>
 	<li>Use “There’s something about this” - to deal with an in-the-moment tricky situation:
<ul>
 	<li>“There’s something about this that isn’t feeling good to you… you wanted to have Ethan over and now something about playing with him doesn't feel great. Hm.”</li>
 	<li>“There’s something about recess that’s been feeling really hard for you. I believe you. Let’s figure it out.”</li>
</ul>
</li>
 	<li>Say “I believe you.”</li>
 	<li>Say “It’s hard to figure out what to do when…”:
<ul>
 	<li>“It’s hard to figure out what to do when a good friend upsets you...”</li>
 	<li>“It’s hard to figure out what to do when one of your friends wants to be with you all the time and you like them but also want to be with other people sometimes…”</li>
 	<li>“It’s hard to figure out what to do when your friends are doing something you don’t want to do but you also don’t love being the only one not doing it…”</li>
</ul>
</li>
 	<li>Say “Friendships are hard. Balancing what you want and what other people want, speaking up and listening, doing what feels good to you and being flexible… it’s all so tricky.”

</li>
 	<li>Say “I don’t know when this will be resolved, I don’t know when you’ll feel better. Here’s what I do know: I know this stinks, I know I’m right here with you, and I know we’ll get through this together.”</li>
</ol>
<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GI_TrickyFriendshipSituationsGuide_v3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" download="">Download Guide</a>

Guide to Talking With Your Kids About Tricky Friendship Situations

When Your Child Tells You That Other Kids Were Unkind

Scripts to Respond to After School Dysregulation

Tantrums

Scripts for When Your Child Has Trouble Making Friends

When Your Teen Comes to You With Friendship Struggles

Gi Report Card

When Your Child Feels Left Out

When Your Child Gets In Trouble At School

When Your Kid Says “I’m Not Going to School Today!

How to Get Your Child to Open Up About Their Day

How to Talk About Grades with Kids

When You Disagree With the Teacher’s Approach

When Your Child Refuses to Do Homework

Build Your Child’s Cognitive Flexibility with Puzzles

“But They Get To Do That! Why Can’t I?”

When Your Child Says “I’m So Stupid!”

Use this checklist to help prepare you and your child for the back to school transition.



<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" download="" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GI_BacktoSchoolBundle_v3A.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download Checklist</a>

10 Day Checklist to Prepare Your Child For the New School Year

Grounding Exercise After Leaving Your Tearful Child

Anxiety

Scripts to Use When Your Child Cries at Separation

Scripts to Develop a Separation Routine in Advance

Scripts to Use When You See Your Child After School

You follow Good Inside’s DFK framework in your home and notice that your DFK’s school does something very different in the classroom. We can help you bridge that gap with key ideas, scripts, and strategies that will help your child’s school and teacher understand our approach and your DFK.



Remember, there may be ways you’ll need to amend these examples for your DFK, but think of this as a starting point.



<h2>How to Start the Conversation</h2>



<ol>
<li>Explain why you’re explaining. “I want to share some information about our awesome kid (Child’s Name). Sometimes her behavior has been interpreted in ways that haven’t been helpful for her, so we want to get ahead of that and tell you what we’ve learned about her development.”</li>
</ol>



<ol start="2">
<li>Explain what it means to be a DFK. “We believe she is a Deeply Feeling Kid. Not sure if you have heard that term? It’s a whole approach developed by a clinical psychologist that helps reactive kids, the ones who go from zero to sixty, and often push adults away when they need them the most. These kids have traditionally been labeled as defiant or difficult or dramatic. This new framework does just the opposite. It sees these kids as good kids having a hard time. Not bad kids doing bad things.”</li>
</ol>



<ol start="3">
<li>Make sure they know you’re on the same team. “We would love to share a few details about this DFK framework with you. We see ourselves on the same team, Team (Child’s Name). We know this might feel new, it’s new to us too, but we know that doing this together will help everyone.”</li>
</ol>



<ol start="4">
<li>Share some key points. “DFK’s feelings transform really quickly. This means that a feeling of being left out, confused or misunderstood can turn into big emotions without any warning. These big emotions look like rage, not listening, mean words, hostility, and even aggression. These emotions actually mean that this child is afraid. They are afraid of their own experience, emotions, and bodies. And we need your help to make them feel safe.” </li>
</ol>



<ol start="5">
<li>Offer some helpful DFK strategies. “So what to do? It’s so tricky. To start, we’ve noticed that just thinking about her as a good kid who is having a hard time changes our way of interacting with her. We’ve also noticed it's super important not to react with punishment or harsh criticism, as this only leads to DFKs concluding, ‘See? I really am bad inside’, and then they further identify with a bad kid role—which none of us want! This doesn’t mean we have an anything goes approach. Not at all. But pulling her to the side or out of a classroom and saying, “I'm here. We’re going to get through this. You’re a good kid. It’s okay,” is really important instead of responding harshly. DFKs also do well when they know they’re not alone, but most of this work has to be done in advance, before the spirals start! So, if we know math is hard for her, we might share a story about when math was hard for us when we were her age—before she starts. This really helps.”</li>
</ol>



<ol start="6">
<li>Show flexibility to bridge the home-to-school gap. “We know that school is different from home. And we know that in the classroom, it is just you and so many kids who have unique needs! So, we would love to brainstorm together about how any of these ideas could be possible in the classroom.” </li>
</ol>



<h2>Dos for Teachers: Strategies That Help DFKs</h2>



<ul>
<li>Containment. A DFK experiences themselves as out of control—and this is terrifying to them! In their toughest and biggest escalations, DFKs need an adult to take them to a smaller space (a “container”), sit with them there, and wait it out. No, this doesn’t reinforce bad behavior.</li>
<li>Seeing the Good Inside by wondering what was under “bad” behavior. For example, you see a DFK push another child on the playground. What should you do? Pull the DFK inside and aside and ask, “Huh, I saw you push Marco. And I know you and I both know that there’s a no pushing rule in this school. So I'm wondering what happened there? Something must have felt really bad right before that. Let’s talk about it so we can figure it out.”</li>
<li>Telling stories to “de-shame” struggles. “I’m thinking about how we have writing later on today. Did you know that I hated writing when I was your age? It was so hard!”</li>
<li>Leading with believing, even before you understand. “Something about this feels really bad to you. I believe you.”</li>
</ul>



<h2>Don’ts for Teachers: Strategies That Escalate DFKs</h2>



<ul>
<li>Talking with them directly about how they feel. “You look mad, mad, mad!” This feels too intense and intrusive for DFKs and will lead to an escalation in intense emotions.</li>
<li>Punishment and consequences. DFKs have a core fear that they are “bad inside.” Punishments and consequences are stored as confirmation of this fear and lead DFKs to develop more shame and further identify with the bad kid role—all of which leads to more out of control behavior.</li>
<li>Calling them out publicly and inducing shame. DFKs are already very shame-prone and very sensitive to what others see in them. Calling them “out” in the middle of a class (“You have a time out now!” or “I’m sending you to the principal!”) leads to an even more intense shame spiral.</li>
</ul>



<a class="btn btn-primary" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.goodinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/GoodInside_PrintableArticles_ExplainingDFKSToTeachers_v2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" download="">Download Article</a>

Explaining DFKs™ to Teachers

Deeply Feeling Kids

Emotional Vaccination™

The Importance of Separation Routines

Why Do Kids Have a Hard Time Separating?

When Your Child Cries At Separation

Back to School: The Strategies, Scripts, and Support You Need to Separate with Confidence