"I don't want to go to school"
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Anonymous
| My daughter (8) was doing OK this morning, but when it came time to get dressed, she cried in bed and kept saying "I don't want to go to school". She comes home in a great mood every day, so this is new. I remember doing something similar when I was a kid, so I think it's normal. She eventually went but it was heart breaking. Any tips to get her to the bus on time? |
Anonymous
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Why doesn't she want to go to school?
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Anonymous
| Heartbreaking? |
Anonymous
| Get to the why. |
Anonymous
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Yea I don't want to go to work sometimes...we all just have these days. Sometimes event prompted (bullying, a test, etc) or just due to crummy sleep, rainy day etc.
As pps suggested make sure the why isn't something like bullying and then otherwise just ignore it. Ofc you can offer a mental health day if it seems critical but I would be careful about offering her an out for every day she doesn't want to go. |
Anonymous
Ok drama llama this is far from heartbreaking. |
Anonymous
| You basically ignore it. |
Anonymous
| Could she be not feeling well? |
Anonymous
| Did she get enough sleep? |
Anonymous
| Sometimes kids get like this when they are coming down with something. At another time, ask how school is and if anyone makes her uncomfortable. Try giving her something to look forward to after school. |
Anonymous
| Are you serious right now? |
Anonymous
You win..worst parent for today. Congrats. |
Anonymous
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So my kid says some version of this about 90% of school days. It's usually because she doesn't feel like getting out of bed and getting dressed. There is also an element of "school is boring" which I get especially because I think 2nd grade has been pretty boring for her thus far and might be just a boring grade because it's the last grade of "fundamentals" before they start digging into writing and science and social studies in earnest and doing harder reading and math. We address this by scheduling fun activities for her after school (she is always more motivated on days she gets to go to swimming or ballet or has a playdate). We are teaching her cursive at home this year and I got some Beast Academy workbooks for math because she enjoys them.
If she was crying inconsolably I would definitely dig in deeper but if if it was just one morning of that I'd chalk it up to a bad day and move on. |
Anonymous
All of this. I will note it took one of my kids, at age six, a few weeks to tell us that there was a kid in her class who was hitting her daily because she had been assigned a seat next to him on the carpet - kid hit everyone so I wouldn't exactly describe it as bullying unless you say he was bullying the whole class. She was so upset about it that it took her a while to be able to say something. So sometimes you have to gently persist to see if there will be something that eventually comes out. But then again a different one of my kids, now age 10, also went through a day or two of not wanting to go to school because she was feeling crummy. But she also wanted to go to school because technically she could under the sick policy and she had people she wanted to see and things she needed to do. So she got conflicted. So there was crying. So we had to sort through that. |
Anonymous
I didn't post above but I will say if you have an anxious kid like I do, several mornings I just acknowledge it and then we move on. "It's okay to feel like you don't want to go to school AND you are still going". Then we move on with our routine, I may help pick out her clothes and lunch/snacks on those days to keep things moving. Once she gets going, she's usually just fine. I prefer to use the afternoon/evening time to dive into what else is going on (stress about school, friend issue, etc). |