school refusers


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School Refusal
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I started a blog for parents of bullied children

My daughter's school refusal came about after 18 months of severe bullying during years 7 and 8 by a very manipulative girl and those she held influence over. The educators involved were dismissive of the bullying and did little to protect my daughter, discipline the aggressors or educate the bystanders. In the end she felt suicidal and could not go near the school building without dissolving into panic attacks and tears. I had no choice but to remove her from the school.

That's when I began to feel seriously bullied myself, not only by the lack of support from the school we left (who chased me for a terms fees as notice for taking her out of their school) but also from our local Education authority who put the pressure on for having a child out of school. My daughter refused her new school for the first term because they chose to put her in a large school where she had no friends, although along with support letters from CAMHS and our GP, I had requested a smaller school where she had several longterm and trusted friendships.

Her refusal of her new school was seen as her manipulating me to get what she wanted, of me keeping my daughter as a victim, emotionally abusing her and sabotaging their efforts to get her back into school. The case was referred to children's services with the recommendation that my daughter go to live with her father (who she has had significant issues with in the past). She went to stay with him in January and is now attending most lessons but school personnel are reluctant to allow her home to me in case she regresses in my 'toxic environment'!.

Thankfully the social worker involved in our case is a lovely person who sees the bigger picture, in her assessment she states that from her own meetings and observations with our family, she does not support the referral notes about me or my daughter. Some times a good one comes along and we got lucky this time, but they are few and far between in my opinion.

Anyway to get to the title of this post. It has been such a long journey (it's not over yet either!) and what I have missed along the way was being able to communicate with other parents whose children have been bullied. I started a course yesterday for website building and in time I hope to set up a support forum for parents of bullied kids. In the meantime I got to start a blog (it's for practice but can be used to turn into a forum website in the future when I have more tech skills) - so I have started to build the blog. Here it is:-

http://epicinschools.blogspot.com/

Re: I started a blog for parents of bullied children

Hi Clarity,

That is a really great idea. I can see from what you say that there is no support out there for bullying and what to do, despite so much talk about it these days. Talking to other parents is so helpful - as you will have found from this forum. I hope you get the Blog up and running and launched some time soon as it is definitely a gap that needs filling.
Wishing you all the best - and keep us posted on how the course progresses and what you learn as we can all benefit from your story and your experience. I hope others from here who have experienced bullying feel they can contribute.

I am just so sorry to hear how hard things have been for you. Whenever you tell us your story I just shake my head and wonder what on earth the authorities are doing to you and why - and why there is sometimes...and only sometimes a gem that shines through and understands exactly where we are coming from. It is probably ignorance and arrogance (perhaps a lot of silent hang ups about parenting in our community). It is also easier to point the finger than start the ball rolling to get the right kind of help. And it costs money (as someone mentioned the other day on here).
Well done, Clarity - and i hope you are able to help lots of others on your road forward.
Take care
Linda xx

Re: I started a blog for parents of bullied children

A good blog! Well done!

The challenge is to get it read by the people who matter. I will comment on it in my blog - not sure what else I can do to spread the word.

Simon

Re: I started a blog for parents of bullied children

Thanks Linda, I think in order to heal from my own experiences I have to do something to support others. Those gems of genuine people working within education and social services are too few, we need more of them and perhaps with firmer voices from students and parents, change will come. Same for school refusers - so much misunderstanding and ignorance in our existing systems :(

Simon, thank you so much for your encouragement and for mentioning EPIC in your blog. I will do a post on School Refusers also. I don't have much traffic yet but will be doing some local articles in paper and mags and posting on anti-bullying sites etc once the blog/forum is more established with content. In the meantime I am really enjoying learning how to use photoshop and dreamweaver etc and find out about optimising and lots of other essential tools for the online world.

Re: I started a blog for parents of bullied children

Oh your poor daughter clarity, how awful girls are just soooo horrible, i wonder how they will feel when there older and it happened to there child, if they would remember doing it to others and feel any remorse for how they have messed up a familys life makes me soooooo angry,

You are so strong this must be horrendous for you what you are going through i cant begin to imagine your blog is brilliant well done to you, look forward to reading it to see your progress

xxxx

Re: I started a blog for parents of bullied children

Thanks Jo for your kind words of support. It has been a very tough journey, first supporting my daughter through the bullying, then trying to get her into a new school and finally being blamed for my daughter's reactions is just beyond cruel.

What they (our local Education authority) don't realise yet is that I am not a victim and I won't keep quiet about their poor decisions and mistakes. I sent an email to our local paper yesterday and am hopeful I can do an anonymous article about bullying in our schools and a link to the blog.