Hi
We hope to get some advice from this forum if anyone can relate to our dilemma
My 14 year old is suffering anxiety and refuses to go to school and hardly leaves the house.
She is her second year of high school. She finished the first year as very active and happy involved in many activities - school musicals, music lessons, dance classes, academic awards. Earlier in her second year she began missing classes - feeling sick often. This became more and more regular.
We thought it was just something she was physically going through. This continue to become more and more frequent to the extent where she was absent weeks at a time. She has now missed more than half of the school year.
She then got to a stage where she would just refuse to go to school at all despite lots of tears, tantrums by both daughter and parents.
She became extremely withdrawn from most activities and would spend days in her room. She quit all her out of school activities and would refuse to even leave the house to visit relatives. In fact at the time of writing this she hasn't left the house for 3 weeks - not even to the corner store.
She refuses to go to school saying that she can't face the other kids or some of the teachers. She also will not even visit grandparents or relatives or go to the local stores - she cannot face anyone and 'doesn't want to see people'. She is now always angry and rarely leaves her room.
Attempts to get her to leave the house end up in emotional and distressing yelling episodes for everyone.
Every school morning, despite promises the night before to go to school, also ends up the same. We have now given up trying to get her to school. Some nights she goes to bed with a plan to go to school but she will a complete mess and emotional wreck the next morning.
Any attempt to get her to leave the house outside of school will have the same result. She will be a complete emotional mess.
The school tried to assist though its own counsellors. This seemed to minimally work at first, but now has no effect at all. They have tried plans and given her some tools to assist but this hasn't worked.
The school suggested we see an external counsellor. She saw a psychologist who said she suffered from 'social anxiety'. the psych suggested we focus on small steps and just try to get her out of bed, then to breakfast and then to school over a period of time.
The psychologist also tried to get our daughter to visit her regularly to review her progress, however she also refuses to go there. The day of the last planned visit she was again an absolute emotional mess.
The school suggested that bullying may have caused some of this but had no real evidence of this and had not witnessed I so there was nothing they could do determine why she is feeling this way. No other circumstances have changed at home that may have contributed.
This is extremely frightening to us as parents as we know our daughter is missing out on important parts of her education. She is also missing out on what are supposed to be the best years of her life as a young teenager at school as well as away from school.
It is also devastating to us as parents feeling that we have failed to raise our daughter well and that we may have done something wrong in how we have brought her up. It is also shattering to see the impact on my wife who also feels that she is doing her job as a mother and wife.
We have a 12 year old son who is generally shy but don't have this issue. We fear that this may also affect him in some way.
We have all but given up trying to get her to school again this year. As for activities outside of school, the many failed attempts that have ended in frightening tears - we really do not know what to do.... We will try again to get her to see the psych. next week.
Any thoughts, advice, guidance, suggestions for our daughter of for us as parents, we would be very grateful....
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Originally Posted by petrified
