There is a particular kind of exhaustion that belongs to the parents of children who cannot go to school. It is the exhaustion of watching a person you love being unable to do something as ordinary as walk through a gate.
Emma O’Riordan’s son Eoghan (now 17), who has an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis, first showed visible panic in the first year of secondary school. More anxiety crept in before coming to a head on the first day of second year. Eoghan was sitting in the car, pulling at his shirt and tie, turning bright red, struggling to breathe and suffering a panic attack. “I took him home and that was the start of it,” she says. Months and years passed while O’Riordan tried to work out ways to support him.
Emma O’Riordan
The family sought help from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs), but O’Riordan says his referrals from the GP were rejected three times. This was because it was “just panic” and “not severe enough for the service”. With help from a psychotherapist uncle, Eoghan slowly recovered to sit a reduced Junior Cert, in which he passed three subjects. “I told him to take the win . . . he had been through so much,” says O’Riordan.
Determined to help him find his way, the extended family have watched Eoghan recover. This has been facilitated by a flexible approach that has helped him navigate his way back. This year, he passed his motorcycle test and he now drives himself to Youthreach, a national education and training programme for 15- to 20-year-olds who have left mainstream education.
Eoghan’s story is a hopeful one and an indication that with the right support and therapeutic response, a child’s crisis can resolve.
“When a person doesn’t go to work, we don’t call it work avoidance, work phobic disorder or work refusal,” says Alan Oates, a psychotherapist from Marino Counselling in Dublin. He has developed an intervention model for children who are struggling with the school environment. “We pathologise it for children but we don’t for adults,” he says. “And yet, children are like adults, just younger and smaller. Our brains can’t differentiate between a principal shouting at us and a bear chasing us.”
There are no figures for the number of Irish children who are unable to attend school because of anxiety. However, the latest attendance data from Tusla, the child and family agency, shows more than one in five primary and secondary school children missed more than 20 days of school in the 2023/2024 year.
Oates says school refusal is “rarely defiance or attention seeking”.
“It’s telling us adults that there is something wrong in their life and we need to really listen and find a way to support them.”
Every child in crisis needs the same basic things: to be believed, to be understood, to have someone actually assess what is happening rather than simply demanding attendance, says Oates.
Nessa Hill’s daughter used to run for the climbing frame every morning until a change of rules removed that option. “There were even more rigid rules and sanctions imposed, to the point that my child just became incapable of being in the classroom” says Hill, who is chief executive of Neurodiversity Ireland.
Nessa Hill, chief executive of Neurodiversity Ireland, rejects outright the term ‘school avoidance’
Hill rejects outright the term “school avoidance”. “It’s definitely better to talk about school distress or school breakdown, because school avoidance says it’s the child avoiding the school.” She argues the classroom has not been examined the way any other workplace would be. “We haven’t stood back and critically analysed our education system to say, ‘why are we asking 30 children to pile into one room and sit facing a board, on uncomfortable seats with harsh lighting and too much noise and total overload of the senses?’.”
When Hill sought help, she says the education welfare officer options amounted to: get her daughter back into school, arrange home tuition or find a place in an independent school 90 minutes away at a cost of €10,000 a year. Hill, who is neurodivergent, is passionate about education. “I’m a practising barrister. I believe in education. I am as highly educated as you can be. I want that for my children.”
Michele Van Valey, a neurodivergent psychotherapist who teaches mindfulness in schools, explains why she believes the standard fix of daily exposure and building tolerance through repetition collapses for children like Hill’s daughter. “If a child is having a traumatic experience in school, you want them to face that same trauma over and over to build resilience,” she says. “But that often does not work.”
She is blunt about what the goal actually is: “We’re not trying to keep them happy, we’re trying to keep them functional and out in the world with their peers.”
Who should be doing the adapting, then? “The adults need to figure out a way to meet the kids where they are,” says Van Valey.
O’Riordan’s younger son Cillian (10), who is autistic, was separated from his established friend group when his class was shuffled, she says. This created enormous stress and he was crying every day. O’Riordan says an education welfare officer arrived after 20 days’ absence and the use of the word “school” sent him screaming from the room. “I didn’t need to explain what I was dealing with . . . I took my own approach again with him and stopped pushing. I told him every day to just do his best,” she says.
A turnaround came when he was moved into a properly resourced autism class. “It’s worth it,” says O’Riordan of the 27km round-trip. “He is happy but it’s not an option for many parents. That is not right.”
The Department of Education last month published its implementation plan for the review of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act. The Government has called it a “clear roadmap” towards inclusive education and aims to address areas including curriculum design, staff training, resource allocation, and the wellbeing and inclusion of students.
Some campaigners say it lacks statutory student-support plans and independent mediation, both of which have been deferred to separate legislation.
Cillian’s anxiety dropped within days of finding a supported classroom, his mother says.
Parents and campaign groups such as Neurodiversity Ireland argue these children are not broken. Hill says: “We’re looking at all these children in crisis; it’s the system that is in crisis. That is what needs to change.”
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