Is Your Kid Terrified to Go to School? Understanding School Avoidance with Jayne Demsky from School Avoidance Alliance

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March 11, 2024 • 65 mins

In this episode, you'll hear:

The difference between typical kid behavior and serious school avoidance issues
Underlying issues that contribute to school avoidance and how to overcome them
Do's and don'ts for parents dealing with school avoidance

Jayne Demsky is an advocate, a mother, and the founder of the School of Avoidance Alliance. Jayne's son is now 27, but in 2009, his school avoidance started, and Jayne quickly found there was very little information available, a huge stigma around mental illness, and no help from the educators or administrators at the school. In fact, the pushback from the school was so extreme that she had to hire both an educational advocate and a special education attorney to get her son the help he needed.

Contrary to popular belief, most children dealing with school avoidance are good students and do not deal with bullying issues, but rather have underlying issues like mental health issues or undiagnosed learning issues. Many kids dealing with school avoidance do not have awareness of the root cause and are unable to articulate why they are uncomfortable going to school, leaving parents and educators to become detectives to identify the reasons. Cognitive behavior therapy is essential to overcoming the issues and reintegrating children into school, but the worsening nationwide mental health crisis and lack of access to mental health professionals leave parents and schools in charge of recognizing and intervening appropriately.

Over the past ten years, Jayne has been spreading awareness about the issue, helping families and schools navigate and overcome the challenges of school avoidance, and making sure parents know they are not alone in their struggles.

In this episode, Mathew, Dr. Frank, and Jayne discuss what school avoidance is, how it differs from “just not wanting to go to school," the underlying issues that contribute to it, and how schools and parents must work together to solve these issues for our kids. She outlines what to do and what not to do if your child is having issues with school avoidance, her journey of learning about and navigating school avoidance with her son, and why school empathy is the number one factor determining successful reintegration.

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