Therapy for School Anxiety and School Refusal

The honeymoon is over!

Now that school has been in session for over a month, the calls, year after year, start to pick up at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis. Why?

• “My child refuses to go to school!”

• “My son has huge temper tantrums every morning - I can barely get him out the door.”

• “My teen is skipping classes - I don’t know what’s going on!”

• “She seems so shy, and tells me she’s sick every single morning with a stomach ache or headache. Is she ok? What's really going on?”

At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, our child counselors and teenager therapists specialize in anxiety, anger, and trauma therapy for kids, teens and college students.

Image Credit: Caleb Woods on Unsplash

School refusal can look like any of the above. So that means, you need at targeted plan from therapists who won’t miss what’s really going on underneath the surface.

And school refusal can be a real challenge to deal with, especially when that refusal is leading to lots of absences, missing morning classes, making you late to work, and leaving you and your child or teen just exhausted from the overwhelming outbursts every single weekday.

How do we treat school refusal at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis?

As anxiety therapists, and counselors who particularly specialize in anxiety-driven anger, we really focus on our three step approach. First, we want to identify and empathize with what’s going on. Second, we need a robust list of coping skills for your child or teen. And third, we need a game plan - but only when we’re ready to approach it.

Step 1 - Is my child anxious or angry? Why are they refusing to go to school?

Anxiety can look like anger issues, temper tantrums, and big fights. It can also look like running away or being extremely shy. And, it can look totally fine on the outside, while inside your kid is experiencing big emotions.

There’s also a chance that the school refusal could be due to a negative experience at school, or even a traumatic event. That’s why we need to take the time to explore what’s going on in their brains, and in their hearts, to get to the meat of the matter.

Step 2 - Coping Skills are Crucial!

Once we figure out the underlying cause of the school refusal - anxiety, trauma, stress, etc - then we can build coping skills to take the heat out of the emotions.

We always want to focus on tailoring our coping skills approach to the child specifically, which is why we love to practice tons of different skills. We’ll try breathing skills, muscle skills, and meditation or mindfulness skills so that your child or teen has a toolkit.

We’ll also track how effective they are, so that we can come up with our coping skills plan to use in the morning before school, at school, and on the way home from school.

Step 3 - Game Plan. How do we get back to school using gradual exposure?

If your child is fully refusing to attend school, we want to create a gradual exposure plan using a fear hierarchy. Basically breaking down our ultimate goal (full return to school) into manageable baby steps. Perhaps we start with just going to the front doors. Then we go to the office. Then the office for an hour. Then the office for an hour followed by an hour in the class, etc.

Or if the anxiety is due to a particular peer group, we might look at an exposure plan targeting social anxiety. Or a plan focused on homework. Or not being called by the teacher.

Of course, these anxiety exposure plans depend on input from your child, to make sure it’s tailored to them, and it needs input from the school in terms of who can support the anxiety work and what accommodations can be made. We need to wrap around. And our therapists are more than prepared to do so.

I need to my kid to go to school like yesterday. How do I get started?

To get started, you’ll need to meet up with an anxiety specialist who can help you dig into what’s underneath the surface, build coping skills, and create a supported exposure plan.

As anxiety therapists, Compassionate Counseling St. Louis specializes in working with kids, teens, and families, and we’ve years of treating school refusal under our belts.

Schedule a free phone consultation with us here - and if we’re not the best fit for what’s going on, we can connect you with other great resources.

Kelsey is the owner and founder of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis. Curious to hear more about trauma therapy in St. Louis? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anxiety and anger management therapy for kids, teens, and college students. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.