School reluctance or refusal - what's the difference?

Rachel Leslie, Annette Brömdal, Cris Townley and Glenys Oberg, writing for The Conversation, explain the difference between school reluctance and school refusal and give tips to help children cope.

School relucatance

Most children will show reluctance to attend school on occasion. This might be due to a stressful event, such as a test or a spat with a friend and is temporary. This is called ‘school reluctance’ and might be accompanied by complaints of a tummy ache, headache or clinginess. In response, parents can help by validating the child’s feelings, like saying ‘I can see you are worried about having to write the test today’. When the child endures the stressful event, parents can reinforce motivation and confidence by expressing admiration for the child showing courage and ability.

School refusal

In other cases, when a child feels overwhelmed by stressors that make attending school threatening or impossible, they may show ‘school refusal’. This is clearly more serious and may be indicated by the following:

spending significant portions of the school day in the office or sick bay
extreme difficulty in getting ready in the morning, even with basic tasks such as dressing or making breakfast
physical symptomssuch as nausea or dizziness that worsen on school days, but may also be evident on weekends
persistent absences from school, even with encouragement and support
extreme emotional reactions—crying, anger or complete withdrawal—when school is mentioned.

School refusal is closely associated with social anxiety, separation anxiety and school anxiety. This anxiety can become overwhelming and trigger a child’s need to avoid the environment that is causing them emotional distress. This causes stress in families and can have negative impacts on a child’s academic progress, social skills and general well-being.

Supporting the child

If your child is refusing or can’t go to school, they need empathy and support. You can try the following:

seek professional help.A psychologist may help uncover and address the root causes of their distress
work with the school.Talk to teachers and staff about accommodations such as flexible schedules or sensory breaks, and how else they may offer inclusive, affirming and supportive learning environments
think outside the box.This can include prioritizing well-being over attendance. Consider a break from schooling or alternative forms of education, which may suit your family better
seek support from other families.You are not alone—there are many other families who share this experience.

Provided by The Conversation

Image provided by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.