AnxietyFor someone close55 min read

My child won't go to school any more

Stomach aches every morning, pleading at the door, then whole days at home: school refusal wears families out, and it gets worse when you wait. This guide helps parents understand what their child is avoiding, check first that they are not being bullied, depressed or struggling with learning, and then build a return with the school in small steps, starting with the mornings.

Reviewed on October 25, 2026
Dr Zayan Al-Falasi, psychiatrist

In short

This guide is for the parents of a child or teenager who is finding it harder and harder to go to school, or who no longer goes at all. It explains what school refusal is, how to tell it apart from truancy, and why staying at home brings relief in the moment and makes things worse afterwards. It describes what research has established, while also stating its limits, then offers a concrete method: finding out what the child is avoiding, building the return with the school, organising the mornings and moving forward in stages until the child manages full days. Finally, it says when to seek help, and from whom.

Topic: Anxiety · Children & parents
Who it's for: For someone close
Languages: FR · EN · DE · IT · ES · ZH · AR

Français · English · Deutsch · Italiano · Español · 中文 · العربية

The programme

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If your child talks about dying, says they would like to disappear, is harming themselves or seems to you to be in unusual distress, do not leave them alone and get help the same day; in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country. If they are being hit, threatened, made to hand over money or bullied, their protection comes before any plan to return to school (section 5). A fever, weight loss, repeated vomiting, pain that wakes them at night or symptoms that persist at weekends and during the holidays call for prompt medical advice (section 11). And if your child has not been to school at all for several days, make an appointment with their doctor now, without waiting until you have finished reading this. Allow fifty-five minutes to read.

The notice at the start of the resources is hidden.

1. Before you begin

It is Monday, twenty to eight. Your eleven-year-old daughter is sitting on the edge of her bed, half dressed, and she has a stomach ache, as she did all last week. She is crying, begging you to let her stay at home "just today", promising she will go tomorrow. You have to leave for work in ten minutes. At five to eight, you ring the school to say she is ill. An hour later she is eating, relaxing, feeling better. And in the evening, when you talk about the next day, the stomach ache starts again.

In your home, it may be more a matter of late arrivals piling up, calls from the school nurse asking you to come and collect your child, a child who misses every Tuesday, or a teenager who no longer gets up and says school is "pointless". Or perhaps your child has not been for three months, and you no longer know where to begin.

Three things, straight away.

It is neither a whim nor laziness. The stomach ache is real, and so is the fear. A child who refuses school in this way often wants to go, and cannot manage it. Believing them does not stop you from acting: it is actually what makes action possible, because a child who feels accused of lying shuts down.

Before talking about a return, you check that school is not dangerous for them. A child who is being bullied, threatened or humiliated does not need help to face their fear: they need to be protected. This question comes before all the others.

Waiting until they feel better before they go back rarely works. It is the most natural idea, and the one that costs the most. In general, each week spent at home makes the next one easier to spend at home, and the return harder. It is by going back to school that the fear has the best chance of going down, in small pieces chosen with your child and prepared with the school. That is what this guide helps you build.

2. What are we talking about?

A behaviour, not an illness

We speak of school refusal, or anxiety-based school refusal, when a child or teenager has great difficulty going to school, or staying there all day, because of emotional distress: fear, anxiety, sometimes deep sadness. The expression "school phobia", very widely used in France, refers to the same reality, but it is misleading: it suggests that the child is afraid of school the way people are afraid of spiders, whereas what they dread often lies elsewhere, in being separated from you, in how others see them, or in one particular moment of the day.

It is not a diagnosis. The two major classifications of mental disorders that doctors use contain no category by that name. It is a behaviour, which can accompany several disorders, or none. So you do not treat "a school phobia": you look for what, in this particular child, makes school out of reach.

Researchers recognise it by a few features: the child is distressed when it is time to leave, stays at home and their parents know where they are, shows no serious rule-breaking behaviour such as stealing or running away, and the parents have tried to get them to go to school. This last point is worth saying, because these parents often feel judged as too lax when they are fighting every morning.

It often starts quietly

School refusal rarely begins with a complete absence. Late arrivals in the morning become more frequent, the visits to the school nurse multiply, absences cluster on swimming day or test day, or the child is present but no longer speaks and stays alone at break time. A team of researchers described these early signs in 2019, and suggests that school and family learn to spot them together, because school refusal, once established, is sometimes difficult to treat.

Common, and linked to certain moments

Reviews of the literature estimate that it affects around one or two pupils in a hundred, a figure that varies according to the definition each study uses: in a secondary school of six hundred pupils, several families are therefore living through what you are living through, every morning. It tends to appear at times of transition: starting school, moving up to secondary school, changing schools, the start of the school year, coming back after a long illness. An Australian study of nearly two hundred adolescents seen for school refusal in a psychiatric service found that it most often began in the first two years of secondary school. A house move, a bereavement or a humiliation in class sometimes sets things off; sometimes nothing can be found. To get out of it, what matters most is what keeps the problem going today.

The rest is for members

Create your access to read this programme in full, along with every other resource.

7-day free trial, then $9.99 a month. No commitment, cancel in one click.

Start a 7-day free trial See the plans I already have an account

What the rest contains

3. Afraid, or skipping school? Four situations to tell apart
4. What your child may be dreading
5. Three things to look for first
6. Why staying at home keeps the fear going
7. What staying at home does for them: looking for clues
8. What research says, and what it does not establish
9. The first week
10. Talking with your child
11. Morning stomach aches
12. Building the return with the school
13. The return ladder: moving forward in stages
14. The morning, decided the evening before
15. The days when they do not go
16. What home has changed without meaning to
17. Thoughts, how others see them, and falling behind
18. By age
19. When the refusal has lasted for months
20. Obstacles and relapses
21. Treatments
22. When to seek help, and from whom
23. Frequently asked questions
24. Key points
25. Sources and foundations

Frequently asked questions

How can I tell whether they are really afraid or putting it on? Look at the distress in the morning, the immediate relief when the decision to stay at home is made, and the difference between school days and holidays. A child who refuses school out of anxiety does not hide, and their complaints follow the school calendar. Even if an element of comfort has been added over time, the original fear still needs treating.

Should I force them to go? Neither force them all at once, nor leave them at home waiting until they are ready. The return is built in steps chosen with them, announced in advance, small enough to be manageable. What distinguishes this approach from coercion is the preparation, the gradual progression and the agreement on the steps.

They say they will go on Monday. Should I believe them? It is often a sincere promise, made to end a painful conversation, which the fear on Monday morning will sweep away. Do not reject it: replace it with a precise, dated step, smaller than the one they are proposing.

They feel better as soon as they are at home. Isn't that proof they should stay there? On the contrary, it is the hallmark of the problem. The relief that follows the decision to stay at home is real, and it is what keeps the fear going, by teaching the brain that school was dangerous and that home is the solution.

Should we change schools? Yes if your child is being bullied there and the situation has not been resolved, or if the school refuses any adjustment. Otherwise, rarely: without work on the avoidance, the same fear is likely to reappear elsewhere, with an unfamiliar group to face on top of it.

How long before things improve? In the trials, school attendance often improved from the first weeks of treatment. Fear can take longer to go down: in two trials, it was still decreasing in the months that followed. Knowing this stops you from concluding that it has failed when your child goes back to class still feeling afraid.

My teenager won't see anyone. What can I do? Seek help for yourself. In a trial on school refusal, in children aged seven to fourteen, training only the parents and teachers, without seeing the child, improved attendance as much as the other approaches. A large part of the work is done at home and with the school. Suggest that your teenager come along later, without making it a condition.

Is medication needed? Not as a first step. No medication is recognised for treating school refusal itself, and the few trials give conflicting results (section 8). The question arises when depression or very severe anxiety accompanies the refusal, and the decision lies with the doctor.

They are sixteen and school is no longer compulsory. Should we give up? The rules vary from country to country. In France, education is compulsory from three to sixteen, and since 2020, every young person aged sixteen to eighteen must be in education, in an apprenticeship, in training, in employment, doing civic service, or receiving support towards one of these options. But the question becomes above all one of their plans: a qualification, a training course, an apprenticeship. A teenager who stays at home for months becomes isolated, and step-by-step work also applies to going back into training.

Is it my fault? No. School refusal has many causes, and the things you have done to spare your child are the ones any parent would do on seeing their child suffer. What matters is not knowing who caused the problem, but that you are among those best placed to make it stop.

school refusalschool phobiaanxiety-based school refusalabsenteeismseparation anxietysocial anxietybullyingdepressionparentsschoolreturn to school

Depression & moodFree to read

After the birth: baby blues or postnatal depression?

Tears on the third day are often the baby blues, and they pass within a few days. A sadness, an anxiety or an emptiness that lasts for weeks is something else, and it can be treated. This guide helps new parents and those close to them to tell the difference, to recognise the one situation that calls for action the same day, to understand the frightening thoughts that go through the minds of so many parents, and to get back on their feet, starting with the nights.

55 min readFree to read

Depression & moodChildren and teenagers

Depression in children and teenagers: a guide for parents

He slams doors, no longer sees his friends and sleeps until two in the afternoon on Saturdays; she has a stomach ache every morning and keeps saying she is useless. This guide helps you recognise depression behind irritability or withdrawal, ask about suicide without beating about the bush and make the home safe. It describes the treatments that have proved themselves, what is honestly known about medication in young people, and a seven-step method you can start this very week.

50 min readMembers only

Stress & burnout

Tinnitus: easing the distress when the noise won't go away

A whistling that nobody else can hear, which fills the quiet of the evening and eats into your nights. This guide first sets out which signs mean you should see a doctor quickly, then explains why the distress varies so much from one person to another. It then offers a step-by-step method, drawn from the therapies that have proved themselves, so that a sound that will not go away stops running your days and your sleep.

55 min readMembers only