Hi im new to the forum. My 13 year old daughter has not been in school consistantly since oct 2016. Started with feeling ill and progressed. She has displayed sleep difficulties over the past year and now her body clock is completely wrong. Falling asleep around 3am and then cant get up for school at 7am resulting in sleep until sometimes 2-3pm. I go and wake her but she doesnt even remember ive woken her and blames me she didnt get up.

She gets annoyed and shouts at me calling me names and appears constantly angry. Since hormones gavd arrived shes worse. Attendance was so low i had school on my back. I saw my gp and got refered to cahms. The diagnosed delayed phase sleep disorder and prescribed melotonin. This hasnt worked!!

Im at my wits end, she is horrible to me her brother and my partner who know doesnt want to be around her as she is so rude. Its put a stain on our rrlationship in the past and caused us to part living together. We have since got back together but live apart and to top it off i have been diagnosed with breast cancer. I had surgery a week ago!!!

School is still an issue amd not much help from school just that i have to take everything away from her until she gets so bored she returns. This clearly isnt working. She doesnt want to do anything, socialise of be part of anything bar horse riding.

Even know she knows im ill she says she doesnt care and doesnt want to help at home.
Her brother has adhd and sensory problems he attends school no problem and is generally good at home.

I have cotacted camhs again and they are going to talk to school snd tryvto support me.

Im anxious she isnt getting educated, our relationship is breaking down as well as the effects on her brother and i will loose my partner.

I have to work as im on my own and have no family support and her father is in australia. I feel so alone with it all.

Noone seems to understand and says she doesng help herself and i should be harder on her. What do i do?? Any suggestions are welcomed.

Hi Cherry

Welcome to the forum. It sounds like you are going through an awful time, my heart goes out to you. And so sorry to hear about the cancer. I so hope you are recovering well.

A lot of what you describe sounds very typical of many kids with school refusal. I can certainly relate to the sleep phase out of kilter, we went through that last year and its like talking to a brick wall, isn't it. My son did the same thing...resulting in not being able to attend. No matter what I did, he refused to go to bed earlier. Reflecting back on this, however, I know it developed from a habit he had even earlier on where he'd refuse to go to bed as he didn't want morning to come, as that meant the trauma of having to get to school again. I suspect this is what your daughter has fallen into. Then their circadian rhythms are out of kilter and that effects their mood. It can make people very depressed and angry. What type of melatonin was prescribed? Was it from the doctor? The melatonin tissue salts that you can buy don't seem to work at all. I think you need proper melatonin and also special lights...you'd have to research it.

I am sure deep down your daughter does care...but her way of dealing with it might be to pretend it doesn't exist, Its easier that way (for her!). Her mind, I suspect, is racing all over the place and typical of school refusers is they over think situations. A number of people on this forum have found their kids then misbehave and make family life pretty difficult. The psychologists we had along the way all told me I need to not take any of that personally. It was my son's way of lashing out due to frustration that he wasn't able to be like the other kids. It did help when I rose above it but inevitably I would be in tears at times too!! So no magic answer for that but your daughter is probably feeling very isolated and maybe even scared inside...not wanting to loose you to a partner, or to the cancer. She will be feeling very dependent on you, despite as a teenager wanting to be independent.

Basically I suspect the issue is the anxiety causing the school refusal and until your daugher learns to manage the anxiety or tries medication or cognitive behavior therapy...she is going to take her frustration out on those closest to her. So any help camhs can give to support both of you is importantl But taking the pressure off the school issue for even just a little while might help.
HOrse riding is actually really good. Equine therapy has been known to help kids who have anxiety, depression and various forms of autism or even behavioural issues. So it is good if she can keep that up as it will be a much needed outlet for her.

Don't stress too much over the education side...things will improve, doors will open but it might just not be in a straight line.
Check out the Red Balloon program (on a previous post) as this might be something you can access if things don't improve.

And if you can, try and step back and accept where your daugher is right now and not where you want her to be. There is a. lot of pressure on us to get our kids ro school and we then put the pressure on our kids. Let her know you want to help and that you get the school thing and are doing all you can to help her feel better overall, and not just about school. Find little ways to help build her self esteem...its hard when she is being so offhand...but try and slip in the praise even for the smallest of things. It helped the relationship between myself and my son.Remind her what she is good at (my son seemed to think he was not good at anything at one stage).
It is hard when she should be helping you, but until she feels better, I doubt she'll be thinking about how others feel.

Taking away technology until they are bored never helps because they just do not want to be at school so don't care how bored they are. They then get more depressed and the fights over not having any device ends up not being worth it. I do not know why schools and some psychologists ever suggest this...they seem to be mistaking it for a behaviour issue and all my observations and the stories on this forum indicate it is not!

Hang in there...you are going through a really trying time, Explain to your partner about school refusal and the anxiety and how the behaviour is a result of that. Is there any way your partner can drop in some praise even if it is the last thing he feels like?
So...accept...praise...support the horse riding...check out Red Balloon, try a slow return to school or get council involved via the school in providing tutors until the situation improves or you find more support. And if things don't improve, ask your GP about medication and then some support for your daughter in learning to manage her anxiety via techniques such as cognitive behaviour therapy. Look this up yourself and see if you can apply it as well. I have done this over the years and found it helpful.
Come. on here any time to off load or ask for help or let us know how you are...it will get better.
take care
Linda

Here I am again on another ranting phases ..... sleep is a major issue with my son as he's not going to school as tried from staying awake all night. I've tired to explain to him that he needs to get back on track and go to school so that he gets a good night sleep the more he is refusing school the more the cycle is growing. I'm on my own and have to work so means leaving him in the afternoon for a while then he just lays in bed and sleeps so we are back to square one again!!! School been out. CAMHS involved still feeling frustrated with the whole thing u

Hi Hevs

My daughter has spend the last year or 2 sleeping endlessly, and not being able to sleep at night. I am a single parent so I had no alternative but to leave her at home (which I did ladened with guilt).

I have discussed this with my daughter several times, CAMHS will put it all down to phones etc but this is not the issue, they are simply trying to pass time, block everything out as they feel so low.

It is really frustrating as you know all they need to do is set a new sleep pattern which will take about 2 weeks to reverse the hours they currently spend. Whilst we can tell them this repeatedly they will not change this unless they want to. My daughter if she planned to go to school, would stay awake all night the night before worrying with anxiety about not being able to wake up...a recipe for disaster!

My daughter would go to sleep around 3-4 in morning and wake up around 2pm, I would be home at 4pm and she would probably fall asleep again at some point before I go to bed, then the circuit started again. the problem with them sleeping in the day is when they wake up they are alone and this just feeds low mood.

My daughter says she would know the night before whether the next day would be a good or bad day - if she woke feeling bad - there was no point trying - and when she did it normally ended badly or she made it end badly (self sabotage) .

Self sabotage was always part of my daughters life - even if she was really looking forward to something she would make sure that it did not happen - again fear / avoidance ruling her decisions, likewise she would often ask for something completely unattainable, knowing I would say no just to have a fight - exhausting behavior - although this reaction has now stopped.

So in short no amount of nagging will change the sleeping, i have tried encouraging activity, sport etc...but it really is down to how they feel. My daughter slept through 3 nights in a row this week and is finaly fighting to stay awake every evening AND starting to attend school again and she might just believe what i have been telling her - but it was a VERY LONG TIME COMING so all you can do is listen, encourage and support and find diversions of interest to them.
k x