The Anxious Middle/High School Adolescent

This chapter provides an overview of anxious middle/high school adolescents who have difficulty attending school due to substantial anxiety in social and performance situations. The chapter focuses on understanding the feeling, thinking, and doing parts of distress, easing physical feelings of distress through better breathing and relaxation, dealing with the thinking part of distress, and managing the doing part of distress by gradually reintroducing a child to school and increasing his time in the classroom. The chapter is designed to educate parents about these parts of distress and presents strategies for addressing each one. These strategies emphasize cognitive strategies to replace distressing thoughts with more realistic thoughts. The chapter also covers special topics and circumstances that are common to this type of situation.

Understanding Your Child’s School Attendance Problem

This chapter is designed to help parents keep track of and record their child’s attendance, level of distress, and morning behavior problems. The chapter is designed to assist parents in becoming more aware of a child’s actual time in school, identify how their child’s behavior changes during the week, discover why their child is having trouble attending school, seeing whether the methods in the book are indeed working, exchange more detailed information with school officials and others, and look for signs that a school attendance problem may be recurring after the initial problem was fixed. Worksheets are provided to assist parents in these tasks and to ease communication with school officials. An introduction is given regarding different reasons why students have trouble attending school to steer parents in the right directions in the book.

The Anxious Elementary School Child

This chapter provides an overview of anxious elementary schoolchildren who have difficulty attending school due to substantial distress while there. The chapter focuses on understanding the feeling, thinking, and doing parts of distress; easing physical feelings of distress through better breathing and relaxation; dealing with the thinking part of distress or when a child says he does not want to go to school; and managing the doing part of distress by gradually reintroducing a child to school and increasing his time in the classroom. The chapter is designed to educate parents about these parts of distress and presents strategies for addressing each one. These strategies include breathing retraining and muscle relaxation training and gradual exposure to the school setting. The chapter also covers special topics and circumstances that are common to this type of situation.

Severe School Attendance Problems and Extended Time Out of School

This chapter provides an overview of severe school attendance problems or those that have been recurring for more than several months and likely over a period of years. The chapter offers suggestions for pursuing alternative paths toward graduation that could include virtual or online learning, home-based instruction, alternative schools and academic programs, and accruing formal credits in nontraditional ways. Other suggestions include pursuing community support for mental health problems and family conflict that may need to be addressed prior to a new academic plan. The chapter also addresses circumstances under which a child may be out of school for an extended period of time due to crises beyond the family’s control, such as the current pandemic. Additional resources and final comments are provided as well.

What Are School Attendance Problems?

This chapter provides an overview of types of school attendance problems, including full-day absences, partial absences or skipped classes, tardiness, morning behavior problems in an attempt to miss school, and distress during the school day. This chapter also includes a summary of what the book is about as well as a discussion of conditions under which the book will be more helpful or less helpful to parents. This chapter provides suggestions for seeking outside professional help if the book is deemed less helpful. This chapter also covers prevalence of school attendance problems, common characteristics of this population, adjusting to a new school, medical conditions associated with absenteeism, and how to define success. This chapter also asks parents to collate main contact information for parties needed to help resolve a child’s school attendance problems.

The Disengaged Middle/High School Adolescent

This chapter provides an overview of disengaged middle/high school teenagers who have difficulty attending school due to a desire to do fun things outside of school during school hours and who may feel disconnected from school. The chapter focuses on helping parents better monitor their child’s whereabouts, setting up regular meetings with their child, developing written agreements for getting ready for school and for going to school, escorting a child to school and from class to class, helping a child know what to do and say to decline offers to miss school, changing what parents say to their child, and helping a child become more engaged at school. The chapter also covers special topics and circumstances that are common to this type of situation.

Prevention and Special Circumstances

This chapter provides an overview of prevention strategies to help stave off possible future school attendance problems once they are resolved. The chapter focuses on continued practice of methods that best helped a child return to school; continued tracking of attendance, distress, and morning behavior problems; continued contact with school officials; continued meetings with a child; and continued reminders and expectations regarding school attendance. Special circumstances include leaving for work early in the morning, multiple children in a family who have difficulty attending school, children with developmental disorders, and referral to the legal system. Suggestions for what to do if the book was less helpful are also provided, and the chapter is linked to the next one on more severe school attendance problems.

The Attention-Seeking Elementary School Child

This chapter provides an overview of attention-seeking elementary schoolchildren who have difficulty attending school due to desires to be with parents at home. The chapter focuses on setting up a regular morning routine; paying attention to appropriate behaviors and ignoring inappropriate behaviors; setting up formal rewards for going to school without behavior problems; setting up formal disincentives for refusing school with behavior problems; changing what parents say to their child and how they say it; handling excessive calls, texts, and questions; dealing with a child who runs away from the school building; and physically bringing a child to school under certain circumstances. The chapter also covers special topics and circumstances that are common to this type of situation.