March 10, 2025 • 16 mins
When your child says they hate school and have no friends, what really works? Discover why building friendships takes 200 hours of intentional time, and learn practical strategies from hosting craft days to finding 'third spaces'. Plus, understand the two key relationships that create true school belonging and why sometimes the best friendships might not be with peers at all.
Quote of the Episode: "Friends don't usually land in our lap—they require intention and time."
Key Insights:
- Close friendships require 200+ hours of intentional time
- School belonging needs two key relationships
- Third spaces beyond home and school are crucial
- Adult friendships can be valuable for children
- Structured activities help build new friendships
- Medical and psychological checks may be needed
- School relationships often need parental facilitation
- Quality family time remains foundational
Resources Mentioned:
- Jeffrey Hall's friendship research from the University of Kansas
- School belonging research
- Happy Families
Action Steps for Parents:
- Facilitate Intentional Friend Time
- Organise structured activities
- Create regular playdates
- Use third spaces effectively
- Work with Schools
- Identify potential friend matches
- Build teacher relationships
- Focus on school belonging
- Consider Broader Solutions
- Explore adult mentoring
- Check medical factors
- Strengthen family connections
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You have a child who, after a couple of weeks
of school being back, is saying, don't want to do
it anymore. I don't like it. I've got no friends,
I hate school, no one's nice to me. Doesn't make sense.
I want to stay home. School anxiety, school refusal or
emotion based school avoidance. So many families are struggling with it.
The numbers are rising, as they have been for the
(00:26):
last couple of years. Today on the Happy Families podcast
what to Do when your Child doesn't want to go
to school. Hello and welcome. We're so glad to have you.
Along with the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting Solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast, we are Justin
and Kylie Colson and every Tuesday on the pod we
(00:47):
answer your tricky questions. They don't come much trickier than
this one. If you'd like to submit a tricky question,
we've got a super simple system at Happyfamilies dot com
dot Au. Just scroll down to podcasts, click the record button,
start talking. A couple of people recently have said that
they haven't had success with that. You can send us
a voice memo, or you do is open up the
voice record app on your phone, talk to that and
(01:08):
then send it to podcasts with an s podcasts at
Happyfamilies dot com dot au Kylie. Here's today's message.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm using AI as I'd like to remain anonymous and
not have my voice on the podcast. Our eleven years
old is so anxious about going to school as she
has no friends. She's cried so many times the last
two weeks over having to attend school and is flat
out refusing to go. She doesn't do any extra curricular activities,
(01:40):
hate sports. We've tried multiple things, and she doesn't last
past a few lessons if she doesn't find someone she
meshes with, or if she doesn't like the coach or teacher.
We also don't have the spare funds at the moment,
even if she wanted to do anything. We aren't religious,
so any sort of youth grind is out too. Her
(02:02):
social anxiety is through the roof. She refuses to do
any new activities, so this makes it hard to introduce
her to new things. I'm just at such a loss
as to how to help her, short of intensive therapy,
which again we can't afford. Anyway in which I feel
we can help her involve spending stupid amounts of money.
(02:24):
How do you get your child help when funds are
minimal or none.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
This is so tricky for parents across the country, across
the world. We struggle seeing our kids challenged, and we
struggle seeing them in a hard place, so hard, and
the friendship challenges that our children experience especially tug at
the heart strings because I think all of us, at
some point in our lives have experienced that feeling of loneliness,
(02:51):
that feeling of being isolated or excluded, and we don't
want our kids to experience that.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Data shows that loneliness is increased, and you know who's
most affected by it, our youngest people. Like it's the
most hyper connect hyper connected time in the history of
the world, and yet so many kids are feeling so
so lonely. We've been there, We've experienced the whole school refusal,
school avoidance, emotion based school avoidance is the technical term
for it. It's so hard. There's another element to this
(03:22):
in addition to the heartbreak, and that is having a
lack of resources and thinking, if we had some more money,
maybe we could try this, Maybe we could take them there,
maybe we could have this assessment done, maybe we could.
And because of the cost of living challenges that so
many people, almost everybody struggling with right now, it just
adds another layer of complexity and a layer of feeling helpless,
(03:43):
feeling like you're out of control. So for our anonymous
listener who has sent this through, we feel your pain.
We have some suggestions and some ideas that could be helpful. Kylie,
I've got a couple of things. I know you've got
a couple of things. Why don't you kick it off first,
and then I'll add some ideas around that.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I think the harsh reality for all of us, whether
we are eleven, twenty two or in our fifties, friends
don't usually land in our lap. No, they actually require
a whole heap of intention and time.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, and we should highlight here we don't know what
has happened in this family, Like there might be a
lot of time, effort, and intention going into building friendships
and it's just not working. We don't know, but they
do take work. You can't just have a friendship land
in your lap.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And research which support that it takes more than two
hundred hours of intentional time. It's not we're hanging out
in class together, or we're in a group with fifteen
other kids. It's two hundred hours of personal interaction with
somebody before you would consider them a close friend.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I feel like you've taken my job as the doctor.
You're talking about the science. The research that you're referring
to is something that you and I have talked about
a number of time. Tis because adult friendships are tricky
as well. And there was a there's a university professor
at the University of Kansas. His name's Jeffrey Hall, and
he published a report a couple of years ago now
that showed that it takes roughly fifty hours of time
(05:14):
together to move from being a mere acquaintance to a
casual friend. Fifty hours to say, oh, yeah, we're friends.
But it takes to go from that basic friend status
to being a genuine close friend, Like you said, two
hundred hours. And that's not two hundred hours of sitting
next to summoning class. That's two hundred hours of intentional
(05:37):
activity and side by side time time face to face,
side by side, going camping, or you're spending time on
the weekend having a picnic or playing in the park
or whatever, Like it's genuine time together, building your relationship,
not just being near each other.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So when you look at the friendships that are flourishing
in the school playground, I would suggest nine times out
of ten, those friendships exist outside of the playground as well.
They're being fostered by families who are coming together on
the weekends after school for play dates, and they're actually
spending intentional time together outside of the flurry and activity
(06:17):
of the school, classroom and playground. So I know that
it sounds like this all lands in mum's lap. It
kind of does. That's the sucky thing about this. It
actually does.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Especially if you're a child who's really struggling to make
it work without that parental invention. It's just too hard.
You've got to get kids into your backyard or into
your living room or at the park down the street
with some parents supervising and being around while the kids play.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
But the amazing part of this acknowledgment is it doesn't
cost a cent. It doesn't cost a cent to be
intentional about making opportunities for your children to have experiences
with other kids.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Okay, let's get really concrete about it. What specific things
can parents do in that situation You've done this a
lot more than me. What have you done?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So I would suggest that your child has a handful
of kids that they would love to be friends with.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They usually do, and that they may have some level
of acquaintance, but.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
If they can't give you any clarity talking to the
classroom teacher about the children that she spends time with
in the classroom or the children that they feel she's
more suited towards. Because sometimes we're inclined to want to
go to the popular kids because they're larger than life
and that's where we see the party at. But the
reality is they're they're not our people. We don't fit
(07:43):
into that space. But there are other kids over here
that we've missed because there's so much flurry over here.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I want to put an exclamation mark on what you've
just said there. We do need to get to the break.
But this is so important. Having watched our six daughters
go through various iterations of school over the last twenty
years or thereabouts, there are so many kids who sit
in class and who are at a practical level. They
are almost invisible because they're not the popular kids, and
they're also not the unpopular kids. They're just kids. Who
(08:12):
are in class, who people almost don't notice. They're everywhere,
there are so many of them. This little girl may
be one of those kids. Finding another one or two
kids like that could be the answer, because they don't
need heaps of friends, no, just one.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And so once you've got an idea of the children
that your child would be best suited with, then the
next step is reaching out to the parents. So it
may be just as easy as sending a little note
off to the teacher with some invites for a couple
of friends and inviting them over for afternoon tea.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Or do what we've done and say here's our email adress,
here's our phone number. Can you just give this out
to all the parents, because there's obviously privacy laws and
we can't ask for theirs and you're literally just include
a note and say, I've got a girl in the
class who really would like to be friends with your kids.
We thought we might do a little play date. Would
you be up for it? If your child would be
happy to do it, can we please play?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And one of the other things that I really love doing,
especially in the holidays, creating a little craft day or
something the kids really enjoyed having a handful of friends
over and doing some kind of structured activity because for
new kids coming together, they actually need some structure around
their friendship.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
It doesn't have to be the whole time, but if
they get together and do an hour of craft and
then they have another hour of playtime, it ticks every box.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
So we've done lots of different things over the years.
We've had little cooking classes where the kids have been
able to bake some cookies and then decorate them once
they've called down, which gives them time in between to
have some play date. We've done painting days. We've just
had a pool, you know, hangout and they've played a
whole heap of games in the pool. And we've also
done Easter days or you know things like that where
you can actually kind of theme it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And yeah, calendar date or something like that. The break
a handful of other ideas that my work. If those
things aren't quite resonating for you on the Happy Families podcast, Okay, Kylie,
my response to this is a little bit different to yours.
(10:17):
You've taken the approach let's see if we can build friendships.
Maybe we've tried before, but if we go with these angles,
we might be able to get some kids over or
spend some time at the local park, but we can
get the kids face to face, side by side, doing activities,
building the relationship, maybe something could work. My approach is
slightly different. The first thing that I'm going to suggest
is to the degree that you can, recognizing that funds
(10:38):
are limited, I think that it's worth going in getting
things checked out medically. When a child is struggling that much,
it's worth just checking is there anything going on with
neurodivergent challenges? Is there anything happening from a psychological point
of view that we're not aware of. Getting in to
see the GP and just exploring that initially can give
(10:59):
you some direction. The second thing that I want to
emphasize is just how important this thing called school belonging
is and working with the school on it. What do
I mean by this, Well, there are two relationships that
really matter at school. The first one, and I've talked
about this in the podcast quite a lot as school
has commenced this year, but I'm going to emphasize it
again real quick. The first one is there one kid
(11:22):
at school who when your child enters the school gates
sees them and says, hey, come sit with us. That's
what it means to belong and working with the teacher
with that specific goal in mind, or the school guidance
counselor or the school chaplain, whatever that welfare person is,
that wellbeing person is in the school working with them
(11:42):
to identify one child who is open to taking on
the responsibility and finding the joy in seeing your child
and saying, hey, come sit with us. Children who have
that are happy to be at school. They look forward
to being at school because they know that they're being noticed,
they know that they belong. But they also one other
thing in terms of relationship, and that is an adult
(12:03):
who notices them, who calls them by name, and who
was able to have a quick chat with them about
something that's going on in their life. It might be
something in the classroom. It could be the cross country
the other day, how'd you go? It might be Hey,
I heard that this thing's happening, and I know you're
interested in it. Are you're going to try out for?
It doesn't really matter so long as there's an adult,
usually the school teacher, who says, hey, Kylie, it's so
(12:25):
good to see ye. Hey, what happened the other day
with that audition you were trying out for, or how
did you go the other day at the swimming carnival.
I know that was something that you were really really
hoping to do well in. I didn't get to see
your races. That interaction with an adult combined with a
child who says, hey, come sit with us. What a
difference that makes. So I'd be working with the school
(12:46):
directly and asking what can we do to support my
child to build these two relationships. The last thing I'm
going to mention is the importance of third spaces. So
you've got home, you've got school, and this is where
that whole question money comes in. We've tried extra correct activities,
but she won't do them, and we've tried extra correct activities.
I can't even say the word anymore, but we don't
(13:09):
have any money anymore. In our experience, our children, when
they do extracurricular activities, they don't tend to say, oh,
I've got friends and I want to spend more like
two hundred hours with them. They just do that activity
and that's often all there is. So finding a third space,
which is usually going to be the neighborhood or maybe
(13:29):
the park down the road, or if you live near
the beach, it could be that finding a place where
the kids can hang out with other kids and enjoy
each other the third space is so valuable.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
You mentioned a couple of weeks ago about a guy
that you had been listening to in your feed who
suggested that when his kids came home from school, he
wasn't concerned about whether or not they spent time with
other peers. He actually wanted to foster relationships with other adults,
people that they could glean from and learn from. They
(14:02):
could have mature conversations with models. Yeah, and so in
this situation, maybe there's a grandparent, maybe there's an auntie
that maybe there's a friend down the road who has
a little bit of extra time on their hands that
they could spend with your daughter as well. I know
that sometimes that seems a little bit left field, But
(14:23):
for me growing up, the people that I loved spending
time with most were the people who lit up when
they saw me walk into the room.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Because you had some friends, but not heaps of friends.
But you used to spend a whole lot of time
with Donna, who lived two doors down, and you spend
a whole lot of time with Jill, who was the
mum of one of your friends, and they were really
your best friends, right, that's who you look forward to
hanging out with after school.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And because like I said, they lit up when when
our kids were a little bit younger, they had a
piano teacher, Carol, And as soon as she walked into
the room, no matter what we were doing, her whole
face like she's her whole face Sean into my house
and she just elevated us because we felt like we
(15:17):
were literally the most important people in her world in
that moment.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There's a lot of a lot of content, a lot
of answers that we've given here, building friendships, bringing adults
in as friends, creating space as third spaces for kids
to develop those relationships, checking out additional needs, looking at school, belonging,
and the one that we haven't mentioned, it's just more
time with family so valuable because that's the relationship that
(15:40):
matters more than any other. It is a tricky question.
We definitely can't be comprehensive in the time that we've gotten.
We will have to wrap it up there because we've
gone well over time. But we hope that that's been
a useful suggestion for people who are struggling with school
refusal around relationship issues. If you'd like to submit a
tricky question, please send us a voice memo to podcasts
(16:02):
at happy families dot com dot au or visit us
at happy families dot com dot A you to submit
your questions there. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. More information and more resources
are available at happy families dot com dot au
You have a child who, after a couple of weeks
of school being back, is saying, don't want to do
it anymore. I don't like it. I've got no friends,
I hate school, no one's nice to me. Doesn't make sense.
I want to stay home. School anxiety, school refusal or
emotion based school avoidance. So many families are struggling with it.
The numbers are rising, as they have been for the
(00:26):
last couple of years. Today on the Happy Families podcast
what to Do when your Child doesn't want to go
to school. Hello and welcome. We're so glad to have you.
Along with the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting Solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast, we are Justin
and Kylie Colson and every Tuesday on the pod we
(00:47):
answer your tricky questions. They don't come much trickier than
this one. If you'd like to submit a tricky question,
we've got a super simple system at Happyfamilies dot com
dot Au. Just scroll down to podcasts, click the record button,
start talking. A couple of people recently have said that
they haven't had success with that. You can send us
a voice memo, or you do is open up the
voice record app on your phone, talk to that and
(01:08):
then send it to podcasts with an s podcasts at
Happyfamilies dot com dot au Kylie. Here's today's message.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm using AI as I'd like to remain anonymous and
not have my voice on the podcast. Our eleven years
old is so anxious about going to school as she
has no friends. She's cried so many times the last
two weeks over having to attend school and is flat
out refusing to go. She doesn't do any extra curricular activities,
(01:40):
hate sports. We've tried multiple things, and she doesn't last
past a few lessons if she doesn't find someone she
meshes with, or if she doesn't like the coach or teacher.
We also don't have the spare funds at the moment,
even if she wanted to do anything. We aren't religious,
so any sort of youth grind is out too. Her
(02:02):
social anxiety is through the roof. She refuses to do
any new activities, so this makes it hard to introduce
her to new things. I'm just at such a loss
as to how to help her, short of intensive therapy,
which again we can't afford. Anyway in which I feel
we can help her involve spending stupid amounts of money.
(02:24):
How do you get your child help when funds are
minimal or none.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
This is so tricky for parents across the country, across
the world. We struggle seeing our kids challenged, and we
struggle seeing them in a hard place, so hard, and
the friendship challenges that our children experience especially tug at
the heart strings because I think all of us, at
some point in our lives have experienced that feeling of loneliness,
(02:51):
that feeling of being isolated or excluded, and we don't
want our kids to experience that.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Data shows that loneliness is increased, and you know who's
most affected by it, our youngest people. Like it's the
most hyper connect hyper connected time in the history of
the world, and yet so many kids are feeling so
so lonely. We've been there, We've experienced the whole school refusal,
school avoidance, emotion based school avoidance is the technical term
for it. It's so hard. There's another element to this
(03:22):
in addition to the heartbreak, and that is having a
lack of resources and thinking, if we had some more money,
maybe we could try this, Maybe we could take them there,
maybe we could have this assessment done, maybe we could.
And because of the cost of living challenges that so
many people, almost everybody struggling with right now, it just
adds another layer of complexity and a layer of feeling helpless,
(03:43):
feeling like you're out of control. So for our anonymous
listener who has sent this through, we feel your pain.
We have some suggestions and some ideas that could be helpful. Kylie,
I've got a couple of things. I know you've got
a couple of things. Why don't you kick it off first,
and then I'll add some ideas around that.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I think the harsh reality for all of us, whether
we are eleven, twenty two or in our fifties, friends
don't usually land in our lap. No, they actually require
a whole heap of intention and time.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, and we should highlight here we don't know what
has happened in this family, Like there might be a
lot of time, effort, and intention going into building friendships
and it's just not working. We don't know, but they
do take work. You can't just have a friendship land
in your lap.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And research which support that it takes more than two
hundred hours of intentional time. It's not we're hanging out
in class together, or we're in a group with fifteen
other kids. It's two hundred hours of personal interaction with
somebody before you would consider them a close friend.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I feel like you've taken my job as the doctor.
You're talking about the science. The research that you're referring
to is something that you and I have talked about
a number of time. Tis because adult friendships are tricky
as well. And there was a there's a university professor
at the University of Kansas. His name's Jeffrey Hall, and
he published a report a couple of years ago now
that showed that it takes roughly fifty hours of time
(05:14):
together to move from being a mere acquaintance to a
casual friend. Fifty hours to say, oh, yeah, we're friends.
But it takes to go from that basic friend status
to being a genuine close friend, Like you said, two
hundred hours. And that's not two hundred hours of sitting
next to summoning class. That's two hundred hours of intentional
(05:37):
activity and side by side time time face to face,
side by side, going camping, or you're spending time on
the weekend having a picnic or playing in the park
or whatever, Like it's genuine time together, building your relationship,
not just being near each other.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So when you look at the friendships that are flourishing
in the school playground, I would suggest nine times out
of ten, those friendships exist outside of the playground as well.
They're being fostered by families who are coming together on
the weekends after school for play dates, and they're actually
spending intentional time together outside of the flurry and activity
(06:17):
of the school, classroom and playground. So I know that
it sounds like this all lands in mum's lap. It
kind of does. That's the sucky thing about this. It
actually does.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Especially if you're a child who's really struggling to make
it work without that parental invention. It's just too hard.
You've got to get kids into your backyard or into
your living room or at the park down the street
with some parents supervising and being around while the kids play.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
But the amazing part of this acknowledgment is it doesn't
cost a cent. It doesn't cost a cent to be
intentional about making opportunities for your children to have experiences
with other kids.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Okay, let's get really concrete about it. What specific things
can parents do in that situation You've done this a
lot more than me. What have you done?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So I would suggest that your child has a handful
of kids that they would love to be friends with.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They usually do, and that they may have some level
of acquaintance, but.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
If they can't give you any clarity talking to the
classroom teacher about the children that she spends time with
in the classroom or the children that they feel she's
more suited towards. Because sometimes we're inclined to want to
go to the popular kids because they're larger than life
and that's where we see the party at. But the
reality is they're they're not our people. We don't fit
(07:43):
into that space. But there are other kids over here
that we've missed because there's so much flurry over here.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I want to put an exclamation mark on what you've
just said there. We do need to get to the break.
But this is so important. Having watched our six daughters
go through various iterations of school over the last twenty
years or thereabouts, there are so many kids who sit
in class and who are at a practical level. They
are almost invisible because they're not the popular kids, and
they're also not the unpopular kids. They're just kids. Who
(08:12):
are in class, who people almost don't notice. They're everywhere,
there are so many of them. This little girl may
be one of those kids. Finding another one or two
kids like that could be the answer, because they don't
need heaps of friends, no, just one.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And so once you've got an idea of the children
that your child would be best suited with, then the
next step is reaching out to the parents. So it
may be just as easy as sending a little note
off to the teacher with some invites for a couple
of friends and inviting them over for afternoon tea.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Or do what we've done and say here's our email adress,
here's our phone number. Can you just give this out
to all the parents, because there's obviously privacy laws and
we can't ask for theirs and you're literally just include
a note and say, I've got a girl in the
class who really would like to be friends with your kids.
We thought we might do a little play date. Would
you be up for it? If your child would be
happy to do it, can we please play?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And one of the other things that I really love doing,
especially in the holidays, creating a little craft day or
something the kids really enjoyed having a handful of friends
over and doing some kind of structured activity because for
new kids coming together, they actually need some structure around
their friendship.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
It doesn't have to be the whole time, but if
they get together and do an hour of craft and
then they have another hour of playtime, it ticks every box.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
So we've done lots of different things over the years.
We've had little cooking classes where the kids have been
able to bake some cookies and then decorate them once
they've called down, which gives them time in between to
have some play date. We've done painting days. We've just
had a pool, you know, hangout and they've played a
whole heap of games in the pool. And we've also
done Easter days or you know things like that where
you can actually kind of theme it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And yeah, calendar date or something like that. The break
a handful of other ideas that my work. If those
things aren't quite resonating for you on the Happy Families podcast, Okay, Kylie,
my response to this is a little bit different to yours.
(10:17):
You've taken the approach let's see if we can build friendships.
Maybe we've tried before, but if we go with these angles,
we might be able to get some kids over or
spend some time at the local park, but we can
get the kids face to face, side by side, doing activities,
building the relationship, maybe something could work. My approach is
slightly different. The first thing that I'm going to suggest
is to the degree that you can, recognizing that funds
(10:38):
are limited, I think that it's worth going in getting
things checked out medically. When a child is struggling that much,
it's worth just checking is there anything going on with
neurodivergent challenges? Is there anything happening from a psychological point
of view that we're not aware of. Getting in to
see the GP and just exploring that initially can give
(10:59):
you some direction. The second thing that I want to
emphasize is just how important this thing called school belonging
is and working with the school on it. What do
I mean by this, Well, there are two relationships that
really matter at school. The first one, and I've talked
about this in the podcast quite a lot as school
has commenced this year, but I'm going to emphasize it
again real quick. The first one is there one kid
(11:22):
at school who when your child enters the school gates
sees them and says, hey, come sit with us. That's
what it means to belong and working with the teacher
with that specific goal in mind, or the school guidance
counselor or the school chaplain, whatever that welfare person is,
that wellbeing person is in the school working with them
(11:42):
to identify one child who is open to taking on
the responsibility and finding the joy in seeing your child
and saying, hey, come sit with us. Children who have
that are happy to be at school. They look forward
to being at school because they know that they're being noticed,
they know that they belong. But they also one other
thing in terms of relationship, and that is an adult
(12:03):
who notices them, who calls them by name, and who
was able to have a quick chat with them about
something that's going on in their life. It might be
something in the classroom. It could be the cross country
the other day, how'd you go? It might be Hey,
I heard that this thing's happening, and I know you're
interested in it. Are you're going to try out for?
It doesn't really matter so long as there's an adult,
usually the school teacher, who says, hey, Kylie, it's so
(12:25):
good to see ye. Hey, what happened the other day
with that audition you were trying out for, or how
did you go the other day at the swimming carnival.
I know that was something that you were really really
hoping to do well in. I didn't get to see
your races. That interaction with an adult combined with a
child who says, hey, come sit with us. What a
difference that makes. So I'd be working with the school
(12:46):
directly and asking what can we do to support my
child to build these two relationships. The last thing I'm
going to mention is the importance of third spaces. So
you've got home, you've got school, and this is where
that whole question money comes in. We've tried extra correct activities,
but she won't do them, and we've tried extra correct activities.
I can't even say the word anymore, but we don't
(13:09):
have any money anymore. In our experience, our children, when
they do extracurricular activities, they don't tend to say, oh,
I've got friends and I want to spend more like
two hundred hours with them. They just do that activity
and that's often all there is. So finding a third space,
which is usually going to be the neighborhood or maybe
(13:29):
the park down the road, or if you live near
the beach, it could be that finding a place where
the kids can hang out with other kids and enjoy
each other the third space is so valuable.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
You mentioned a couple of weeks ago about a guy
that you had been listening to in your feed who
suggested that when his kids came home from school, he
wasn't concerned about whether or not they spent time with
other peers. He actually wanted to foster relationships with other adults,
people that they could glean from and learn from. They
(14:02):
could have mature conversations with models. Yeah, and so in
this situation, maybe there's a grandparent, maybe there's an auntie
that maybe there's a friend down the road who has
a little bit of extra time on their hands that
they could spend with your daughter as well. I know
that sometimes that seems a little bit left field, But
(14:23):
for me growing up, the people that I loved spending
time with most were the people who lit up when
they saw me walk into the room.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Because you had some friends, but not heaps of friends.
But you used to spend a whole lot of time
with Donna, who lived two doors down, and you spend
a whole lot of time with Jill, who was the
mum of one of your friends, and they were really
your best friends, right, that's who you look forward to
hanging out with after school.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And because like I said, they lit up when when
our kids were a little bit younger, they had a
piano teacher, Carol, And as soon as she walked into
the room, no matter what we were doing, her whole
face like she's her whole face Sean into my house
and she just elevated us because we felt like we
(15:17):
were literally the most important people in her world in
that moment.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
There's a lot of a lot of content, a lot
of answers that we've given here, building friendships, bringing adults
in as friends, creating space as third spaces for kids
to develop those relationships, checking out additional needs, looking at school, belonging,
and the one that we haven't mentioned, it's just more
time with family so valuable because that's the relationship that
(15:40):
matters more than any other. It is a tricky question.
We definitely can't be comprehensive in the time that we've gotten.
We will have to wrap it up there because we've
gone well over time. But we hope that that's been
a useful suggestion for people who are struggling with school
refusal around relationship issues. If you'd like to submit a
tricky question, please send us a voice memo to podcasts
(16:02):
at happy families dot com dot au or visit us
at happy families dot com dot A you to submit
your questions there. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. More information and more resources
are available at happy families dot com dot au
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