‘Children are holding a mirror up to us’: why are Britain’s kids refusing to go to school?
The Guardian says For many, lockdown was a relief. Some never went back at all. As a new academic year begins for most of the UK, more children than ever are worried about returning. What’s being done to get them into the classroom – and is that always the best idea?
illie was seven years old when she started struggling with going to school. Her teachers weren’t too worried initially, her mother, Sarah, says: she was managing fine academically. But Millie, who is autistic and has a sensory processing disorder, seemed to find the busy classroom overwhelming. The following year, she began seriously to resist.
“It would start the night before,” says Sarah, a children’s nurse. “She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat her dinner, then in the morning she’d be absolutely flat out – it was taking an hour to get her out of bed. I would have to dress her, she’d be like a rag doll. And all the time they kept saying, ‘Just get her in, she’s fine once she’s in.’ It got to the point where I was physically unable to carry her, she’d be lying on the floor kicking and screaming.”