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Nip in the Bud with Dr Naomi Fisher: How can we support children through school avoidance?

• Nip in the Bud Children's Mental Charity

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Dr Naomi Fisher

Dr Naomi Fisher is an independent clinical psychologist and EMDR-Europe trainer.  She specialises in trauma, autism and alternative approaches to education. She works with children, adolescents and adults. 

She is the author of Changing our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of their Own Learning (Robinson, 2021) and  A Different Way to Learn: Neurodiversity and Self-Directed Education  (JKP, 2023).

In today’s episode Naomi offers her psychological insights, theories and practical techniques and we look closely at emotional based school avoidance or school distress. Naomi gives some practical techniques to help support children not only to return to school, but to return  as learners and thrive once there.

Useful Links

Nip in the Bud films and  resources for teachers:
https://nipinthebud.org/films-for-teachers-professionals/

Nip in the Bud films and  resources for parents and carers:
https://nipinthebud.org/films-for-parents-carers/

Dr Naomi Fisher Website:
https://www.naomifisher.co.uk/

Dr Naomi Fishers books:
https://www.naomifisher.co.uk/books

Changing our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of their Own Learning (Robinson, 2021)
A Different Way to Learn: Neurodiversity and Self-Directed Education  (JKP, 2023)

Anna Freud - Addressing emotionally based school avoidance
https://www.annafreud.org/resources/schools-and-colleges/addressing-emotionally-based-school-avoidance/

Nip in the Bud - Where to get help

https://nipinthebud.org/where-to-get-help/




00:00:03.181 - Alis

Nip in the Bud is a charity that works to support children's mental health by working with mental health professionals of the highest standing, producing free, short, evidence-based films, podcasts, and fact sheets to help parents, educationalists, and others working with children to recognize potential mental health conditions. Today, I am in conversation with Dr. Naomi Fisher. Dr. Fisher is an independent Clinical Psychologist and EMDR Europe trainer. She specializes in trauma, autism, and alternative approaches to education. She works with children, adolescents and adults. She is the author of two books; Changing Our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of Their Learning and A Different Way to Learn: Neurodiversity, and Self-Directed Education. In today's episode, Naomi offers her psychological insights, theories and ideas and we look closely at emotional-based school avoidance or school distress. Naomi gives some practical techniques to help support children not only to return to school, but to return as learners and thrive once there. Hello and welcome to Naomi Fisher. And thank you, Naomi, for joining us in conversation today. Can I start just by asking a little bit about you?



00:01:39.951 - Naomi

Yes. Hi. It's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me. So I'm a Clinical Psychologist, and that means that I'm a psychologist who specializes in mental health. So a psychologist isn't a doctor, not a medical doctor, I am somebody who's trained in understanding how humans behave and their experiences and then I have this specialist qualification in helping people with their mental health problems. I'm also the author of two books about self-directed education and I've specialized, in my career, I've specialized in trauma, autism and then also in alternative approaches to education.



00:02:18.101 – Alis

Before we have a little chat about your books, could you just tell us how you came to doing this? What was it? What's your journey being to helping people in this way?



00:02:29.031 - Naomi

It's a long journey, but I think it really starts with my own school experience, which was that my parents moved around a lot and I moved to many different schools. So I actually attended 11 different schools whilst growing up, which I think gave me quite a different perspective on school but I also, at two points in my school career, was very unhappy at school and, in fact, refused to go. So that was once when I was 5 when I started school, then another time when I was 13. Both times, I think it was responded to you very differently then to how it would have been now. Both times, in fact, the solution for me was that my parents found a different school and we moved and I went to another school and that was okay. That's where I think the roots of all of this came for me. But also, I think it came that, I did a PhD in developmental psychology and autism before I did my training in clinical psychology. So they're two separate doctorates, which you have to do, which I did. And my first PhD was all about how children learn, and particularly how quite young children learn and it was all about how learning is this interactive process, very much not something that adults simply do to children, but something that children and adults interact with, that it's in the relationship between adults and children, that children are very much active participants in the world, always experimenting, always hypothesising about the world. Then when I had my own children, several years later, I saw them at four and five, and I could see everything that I'd learned about in action. Then I saw what was going to happen to them at school and it concerned me that it felt like early years were really very much what I'd learned about in terms of what children needed. Then it was like it stopped at about age five and that started to worry me. I was trying to bring these two worlds together of what I knew about how children learn and developmental psychology and what I saw happening in schools. That led me down the route of looking for alternatives for my own children, which has led me down the route of looking for alternatives generally, and then also just thinking about the psychology of education of learning and what happens in our schools.



00:04:48.381 - Alis

You said that it stops at around 5. What was it that you thought was good about the early years education in our schools?



00:04:58.171 - Naomi

Yes. So in early years, the child is very much the driving force in what they do. Adults, in a good early year setting, adults will set up an environment full of the things that children like to do and that they know children learn from. They're there, the adults are there with the children, helping the children learn, but they don't sit them down and say, 'now we're all going to do this. You must do this.' The child is very much the active participant, and it's play. They're learning through play all the time. They're learning to think about themselves as a person who can make choices, whose choices are valuable, who can learn things through those choices. They're very much active. They're not a passive participant at all. Then the difference that I saw looking at what happened as children went into formal primary school was suddenly there was a lot more sitting and listening. It seemed to me that schools were designed in a way which made it unnecessarily difficult for children to learn because there are lots of the things that are happening, particularly in primary school, where we're saying that in order to learn, children must be able to do all these things like sit still in their desk, not call out, not get up and run around, which are all things that young children are really driven to do and actually, adults aren't in the same way. We're different. We develop neurologically over time as we grow up. And yet we're insisting that children do these things that are very hard for young children and I think that we cause a lot of problems in our education system because of that.



00:06:35.091 - Alis

What sort of problems?



00:06:37.341 - Naomi

Well, I think that what happens is when young children... Because development is very variable, so young children are very variable. In fact, one of the formative experiences I had as a clinical psychologist was I worked for a while in a neurodevelopmental diagnostic clinic in London and we used to see children at particular points in their school career. We would see a lot of 5 and 6 year olds and they would be the children who had often managed fine in nursery and reception, but weren't able to make that leap into year 1 and year 2, where they had to do more sitting and listening. Then we would also see children at that crux point between primary and secondary, when the demands of the whole everything got more, everything was harder as secondary school started. Then we'd also see children around 13, 14 when the pressures of GCSEs ramped up. This is actually a known thing in the research that these are the points where young people get referred. I was thinking, but it's not that those are points of vulnerability in development, it's that the changes in the school system at that point are leaving a group of children behind because they're not ready to make that leap. Neurologically, they're not ready to make that leap, just because that's how development is. Children all develop at different rates, but what's happening is that we're locating the problem in those children, and those children are often learning things about themselves, like they're bad or they're not trying hard enough. There's all sorts of things that happen. Then once a child has learned those things, they carry that with them, and that causes problems for them later on. I was seeing these 6 year-olds and it really concerned me that they seemed to me to have entirely normal 6 year-old behaviour, but I was being asked to pathologize that effectively and say, 'There's something wrong with you because you are not able to sit in a desk and listen yet.' Actually, probably, from my opinion, most of those children, if we'd given them a couple more years, they would have been ready to sit a desk. It's just that we were asking too much of them too young.



00:08:35.611 - Alis

You used the word 'leap'. What do you think that schools could do so that it's less of a leap and there's some sort of bridge to help with that transition from early years into more formal schooling or from year 6 to year 7, for example?



00:08:51.071 - Naomi

Yes. I found that schools vary hugely in what they do and essentially, I think what needs to happen is it needs to be more gradual, rather than simply be a leap because for lots of children, it does feel like a huge step. Parents sometimes say to me, 'It's like we fell off a cliff when they went up to secondary school', for example. They were managing okay in primary school, and then it was like everything was pulled out from under them. I think anything that we could do to make that transition more gradual, to bring in the best elements of the part before, so to bring in the best elements of early years and to recognize that some children will need more of that early years provision into year 1 and year 2. That doesn't mean that they're going to be behind forever. I think this is the problem, people often feel that the formal learning is superior and that children must have that, otherwise they will miss out. But actually, developmentally, if they can have a bit longer to be more play-based, they actually may well then really speed ahead in later years. I do find it interesting that in Wales, they have a play-based curriculum till seven. They are moving into doing that in Scotland as well and I do wonder why people are often talking about Scandinavia, other countries that don't start formal education till 8, but I find it really interesting that right in the British Isles, we've got Scotland and Wales noticing that something different needs to happen. I would really like it if England was able to also say, 'Actually, this is informed by developmental research that young children need something a bit different in their early years'.



00:10:21.841 - Alis

Do you think that some of the decisions in school with regards to those sharp changes could be as a result of external pressures? For example, in year 1, the phonics check.



00:10:35.201 - Naomi

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's all because of that. I think if you ask most teachers, they will say, 'Yes, we know that it's a huge effort for our 5 and 6 year-olds to sit, but we're worried about that phonics screening check. We don't want them to fail it'. No, I absolutely think that's what it is. I don't think teachers are choosing to do something, I think most teachers will tell me, 'Yes, we can see they need to play, but we can't because of the constraints of the curriculum'.



00:11:02.901 - Alis

You mentioned your books. Tell me a little bit about the books that you've written. What were they called so our audience can go out and grab them? But also what's the bulk of what they're about?



00:11:17.291 - Naomi

My first book is called Changing Our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of Their Learning. The second book is A Different Way to Learn: Neurodiversity and Self-Directed Education. They are both really about how children learn outside school. I think that came out of my own experience because I didn't send my children to school at the time that they would usually have gone to school. I home-educated them for a while and they are now in a democratic school. But as I was watching them learn, it occurred to me that as a developmental psychologist, I had learned all this stuff about how children learn. Loads of research studies, lots about it but Nobody had ever said, 'But actually, this is all about how children learn in the context of school'. I myself, when I did my PhD, I did a cognitive psychology PhD, I tested hundreds and hundreds of children all in school. I visited schools, I would see the children and it never occurred to me to look at children who were outside school. I think for most of us, it doesn't because that isn't really something we have in our heads. I think it's interesting because I was looking at autistic children and now, having been a home-educating parent, I realized that a very high proportion of autistic children are home-educated or are educated out of school because school wasn't meeting their needs. That was completely invisible to me as an autism researcher because I simply went in through the schools and I assumed that's where the children would be. Children go to school for a lot of time. In terms of a psychology intervention, I might see a child for 20 hours, and that would be seen as a long intervention But schools, they're seeing them for 20 hours every week, no problem, 30 hours every week. An enormous intervention. I started thinking, this is this huge intervention into childhood and learning, but we're not perceiving it like that because everybody does it. It's like this invisible intervention. As I was watching my own children learn and as I was seeing all the other children that we got to know, because when you home educate, you get to know other home educating families, I was thinking, 'Wow, they are learning in really different ways to how I was trained to think about child development and learning'. That's kind of where my books came from as well. To sort of open this window on what learning looks like outside school.



00:13:38.861 - Alis

Right. Thank you. You talked a little bit about you refusing to go to school a couple of periods in your own journey. That's really what I'd love to focus on now is the notion or what it's now called is EBSA, that emotionally-based school avoidance. Could you tell us what's meant by that, first of all?



00:14:06.321 - Naomi

That's a bit of a controversial term in itself. Basically, this is an area of lots of controversial terms so when I was younger, it would have been called school refusal or school phobia. Now people often talk about emotionally-based school avoidance and what that essentially means is young people who aren't going to school because of the way it makes them feel. That's the emotional element to it. They find school distressing and as a result, they are reluctant to go. Some people are also now moving towards using school distress, or others are using emotional-based school non-attendance, so there are many different arguments. The other language that people sometimes use is barriers to school attendance, because the problem with the term emotion-based school avoidance is that it locates the problem in the child. It says this child has EBSA or whatever you're saying, rather than looking at the interaction between the child and the school, which would be how I'm always thinking about it, what's going on between this child and this school, which is meaning that things aren't working.



00:15:12.921 - Alis

What would you rather use as a term to describe this?



00:15:17.421 - Naomi

I think school-related distress I find quite helpful, also because when we talk about school-related distress, it helps to see the non-attendance as a peak of the iceberg. There's a lot of focus in the press and in the general media about persistent absentees, problems with attendance. And it's often talked about as if attendance is a problem in itself, separate from other things. Actually, in my experience, difficulties with attendance are what you get after a long build-up of distress and then it gets to the point where actually, it's not happening anymore, the child is reluctant to go to school. But there's usually lots of school distress before that and so I think it's more helpful to see it as the peak of what we see, but actually, there's lots of other things going on underneath.



00:16:09.721 - Alis

Okay, that makes sense to me. Would you say that this is a growing phenomenon across the country?



00:16:18.241 - Naomi

Well, I think the evidence seems to show that there are growing numbers of persistent absentees, so children who aren't attending school consistently. I obviously have a particular position because people get in touch with me if their children are having this kind of issue so it's hard for me to know whether it's growing. I know that I am inundated with people asking for help and I think from my experience, it seems to me something that's growing. Something that I have really noticed recently is that often when I'm talking to people who don't have anything to do with my work and who haven't contacted me about my work, they will often either have a child who's distressed by school or they will know someone who's distressed by school. So it has this feeling of being something that a few years ago, maybe people wouldn't have known others who are going through it. Now it feels like most people seem to say, 'Oh, yes, that's happening to my neighbour’s daughter', or, 'Oh, yes, actually, My son's going through that.' That is something I've really noticed an increase in just in the last year or so.



00:17:20.661 - Alis

Do you think there's any correlation between this and COVID and the lockdown situation?



00:17:27.241 - Naomi

Yes, I do think there is. I think COVID had a huge impact on everybody, of which we haven't really come to terms with but I do think that one of the things that happened during COVID is that this idea that school was always there and that whatever happened, school was there and open, just suddenly stopped, didn't it? I think that was quite earth-shattering for a lot of us. I think certainly I would never have... The idea that the government could simply say, 'Right, from Monday, schools are shut', was quite just mind-blowing. I think that for children, the whole experience of COVID was far more significant than it is for adults and the reason for that is that children have shorter memories. They don't have the same basis for expectations about their life that adults do. They are much more in the moment. I quickly noticed that the children in my life, after six months or so of COVID, their memories had faded of what things were like before COVID. They would say things like, 'Did we use to be allowed to go into people's houses?' Because there was that whole period where you had to stand on the front door, or even if you saw them, or you had to meet them outside, or did it use to be okay to stand close to people? It's like, wow, they actually, for them, that's the distant past now. Two years is a long time in the life of a child, much longer so I think that children got a very strong message during COVID, keep away from other people, other people aren't safe. You have to stay at home. You have to keep yourself and your family, and then it was suddenly like, now that's all over, back to school so I think that did have an impact. I also think that for some children, lockdown was a relief. So I talk to some families who say lockdown was just this blessed relief from how distressed they were by school and when we saw that and we saw how different it was, we couldn't then carry on because before, we didn't really know just how different things could be. So I think there was that and I think there was also the aspect that some parents got a closer eye on what their children were doing in school and how much perhaps their children weren't very excited by what they were doing in school. And that also changed how some of those parents felt about school. So I think lots of things came together with COVID.



00:19:52.101 - Alis

With regards to parents and signs of EBSA or school distress, what would you say that parents could look out for in their children that would identify that their children are starting to seriously struggle? The difference between it just being Monday morning and I just don't want to go in, and it's cold and it's raining. But that serious struggling is starting to happen.



00:20:23.811 - Naomi

Yes. I think often it's when there's a big difference between how a child appears to be at school and appears to be at home. So quite a lot of parents will say, 'School seems to think they're fine, but at home, oh my goodness, it's absolutely awful, you know, we're coping with huge meltdowns and really disruptive behaviour and because school says they're fine, then we think it can't possibly be school.' in fact, parents are often told it's something you're doing at home. I think that's a sign that your child is really struggling to manage, that whatever's going on at school is a bit too much for them, and they're keeping it all in at school, but they're not able to sustain that. Another thing that you might notice is that they're saying they've got tummy aches and it isn't that children make these things up, it's that the way that children express their emotions is often actually through physical symptoms. We all maybe tend to be a bit dismissive when children say they've got a headache or a tummy ache, we think they're making it up. But actually, it may well be that that is what it feels like to them. If they're worrying about something, they do have a tummy ache, rather than worrying about it in a way an adult might worry. So those sorts of things, I think, would be an indication that your child is struggling. There's just a bit too much going on. Also sleep problems, they're not getting to sleep, they're maybe waking in the night, worried. Another thing that parents often tell me about is that their children have a cycle of that they're much more relaxed in the holidays, then when the term times happen, you can see them tense up. They say there's a rhythm where on Saturdays, they're okay. On Sundays, they're gradually getting more tense. I would just be aware of your child's rhythms and how those might relate to what's happening at school.



00:22:06.791 - Alis

Can you give us any ideas of what parents could do to help once they start to see those signs of a struggling child?



00:22:14.221 - Naomi

I think the first thing to do is to go and talk to school and see if things are going on at school that the school is aware of and many schools may be aware of more than you think. I think the other thing is to try and just talk to your child. If your child If your child's quite young and they won't tell you very much about what's going on, then you can play about it with your child. You can do things like play 'school', maybe you get to be the child and they get to be the teacher, or you play it with dolls and you say, 'Oh, let's go to school.' Often children will show you a lot more of what they might be thinking about, what the problems might be through play than they will if you ask them direct questions. I would not necessarily go head in on there because parents are always saying, 'We're always asking what's and the children won't tell us', and that is how children are. But you can make opportunities to find out what's worrying them, to find out what kind of things are going on for them. You might also, if you've got signs like, say, a very explosive child out of school, you might be wanting to think about the length of that child's day. I do sometimes meet children who are really struggling, who go to breakfast club, then they go to the whole school day, and then they have after-school club or a childminder straight afterwards, and they're out of the house for a really long day. And of course, parents do it because they need to go to work, absolutely, but if your child is really struggling, it might be worth thinking about, is there any way that we could shorten that day a bit so that they get a bit more time to just really decompress? Or if you can't, is there a way to build in some time into that day so it's more decompression time? Because, for example, if a child goes to a club after school and the expectation is that it's homework club and we're going to straight away be doing our homework, But then that child hasn't really got any downtime in that time. It's all on. Actually, children lying around in front of the TV gets a very bad press, but actually, they need to have some time when they can just lie around and relax for a bit because that's their decompression time and then they'll be able to do other things again. But you might want to just think about your child's day about, do they have enough time to decompress? Do they have enough time to just go 'blah'?



00:24:25.711 - Alis

Why is it important, this decompression? I know you've studied the brain and how children learn and develop mentally, why is decompression time so key?



00:24:37.051 - Naomi

Well, what's it like for you if you're surrounded with a group of people all day and you have to be behaving in a certain way all day? Perhaps if you're a child, it's quite hard for you to keep up that behaviour all day. You need a bit of time, in my experience, everyone needs a bit of time where they can just go in, shut the door and go, 'Oh'. We used to joke about it when I was training as a clinical psychologist that you had to put on particular clothes, sure you have the same as a head teacher, you dress in a certain way when you are the teacher and you come back, maybe you just put on your pyjamas and you need that time to do that. Children need that too, just as much as adults do. In fact, more. Children need that more than adults do because they're younger.



00:25:18.841 - Alis

What about schools? What could schools do to help? If they're noticing any changes or they're not noticing, but parents are coming in and saying, 'I'm having these real struggles, I think there's this real distress linked to school'. What sort of advice could you give to schools?



00:25:36.651 - Naomi

I think there are certain things that parents tell me cause their children distress, which schools are often bringing in without necessarily being aware that they can cause distress. So recently I've had lots of parents contact me about behaviour apps, for example, where their children's behaviour is monitored via apps and they are sent notifications of their behaviour all the time. I've also talked to children about schools that have very punitive behaviour systems where you get a behaviour point for something like having your shirt untucked or having too many pairs of earrings in. And if you get three in a day, then you're in isolation the next day. I'm consistently hearing from young people and parents that those things actually are pushing their children towards distress and non-attendance. Schools tend to be quite resistant to that message and I can understand that because these are behaviour systems that they've put in place. But it's my sense that there isn't anybody really doing risk assessments when these things are introduced, these apps are introduced, they're businesses usually, the apps in particular, and that nobody is actually looking at the impact on the young people and that perhaps for quite a significant minority, these things like this, this level of scrutiny, doesn't have the positive effect that the school is hoping. Instead, it has a negative effect. What I'm really meaning there is that I think listening to parents about things like that can really make a difference and evaluating anything like that that you've brought in, thinking that could that be causing problems as well. Attendance awards are another thing I hear about a lot, that young people are struggling with attendance. They often say there's going to be a prize for 100% attendance. What that means is that a young person who's been struggling with their attendance gets to the end of the term and everybody else is celebrated and they're not so it contributes to them feeling negative. But the number one thing I think that schools can do is to think about the relationship that they have with that child, because that's the thing I hear, the positive thing I hear about most. People will say things like, 'It was this one teacher who really took an interest in my daughter and would say, "Hello, how are you?" At the beginning of the day, that was the thing that made the difference and kept her coming in'. In contrast, what I hear from other parents will be, 'It was a really big effort to get her in and the first thing they said to her was, "You've got an extra pair of earrings in. That's a behavior point."' And that's the opposite. So I think how you react to a young person when they come in through that door just can make all the difference as to whether they feel welcome and that they belong there, or whether they feel actually, 'Why did I bother? I'm just going home'.



00:28:22.541 – Alis

I love that term 'belong'. That feeling of belonging is so key. As you say, they spend a lot of hours in that school and they've got to feel like it's theirs.



00:28:32.841 - Naomi

Yeah, and they want to feel welcome. We want them to feel that it matters to us that you're here.



00:28:38.061 - Alis

Yeah, absolutely. You've talked about advice for parents, advice for schools. What advice would you have for the children themselves and the young people themselves? Starting off with primary children, what could you say that might help them recognize that that tummy ache or that headache is actually them starting to feel a little bit distressed about going to school?



00:29:01.851 - Naomi

The way that I talk about these things with children is usually actually by encouraging parents to talk about their own emotional reactions. Children don't like to be put on the spot, particularly if they're anxious about something. I think we can help children reflect on what's going on for them if as parents, and as teachers as well actually, but adults around them, we say things like, 'Oh, I'm meeting someone new at work today, that's making me feel a bit anxious. When I feel like that, I feel a bit of pain in my tummy but then I meet them and actually they were really nice and it was okay.' So you can tell little stories all the time and I talk about this with parents as it being like you're opening up for children the inside processes that go on for you, because young children don't know that everybody else has the same processes as them. They think it's just them who has all these emotions and things, and particularly adults, you know, they think adults are just calm, collected, don't have these same emotions. So if we can open that up for them and say, 'It's completely normal, you'll feel a bit anxious. Maybe Monday mornings, you feel a bit worried because it's the beginning of the week again, and then we feel a bit better and it's okay.' So you can just open that. I think that's the most non-directed way I know of doing it so that the child doesn't go, 'No, it's not like that at all.'



00:30:23.711 - Alis

It sounds like you're suggesting creating a language, if you like, a vocabulary that they can feel familiar with. It's okay to admit these feelings and I've got words that I couldn't necessarily have thought of before. What about older children? I know we're mainly focusing on our primary age, but what about those children that have gone through that transition from year 6 to year 7 or even older? What advice do you give them?



00:30:52.241 - Naomi

For older children, I think the thing that I see, and this is going to sound really counterintuitive, but the thing that I see that's most destructive for older children is that they start to think there's something wrong with them and that that's the problem. There's something wrong with me because I feel really unhappy at school. Actually, a lot of the work I would do with older children is saying, there's nothing wrong with you. It's okay for you to be just as you are. There are some things that you find difficult in this environment. I think that particularly connects, we were talking earlier about neurodivergence and autism. It's about thinking about different environments work for different people, and maybe that your school environment, as it is right now, isn't really quite working for you. I wonder what it is that does work for you and what changes we might be able to make so that that environment worked better for you. I try really hard not to locate the problem in them. That's partly because from my experience of working with young people therapeutically, when I see them, the first thing I often have to do is go past layers and layers of, 'There's something wrong with me. This is all my fault. I'm letting everyone down.' Layers of shame and guilt about what's happened. That makes everything much more complicated. The other thing, which I would say for parents and teachers to avoid, if they possibly can, is to make dire predictions about what will happen if that young person doesn't keep going back to school because I often meet young people who will say to me at, say, 14, they are really struggling to attend school, and they say things like, 'I'm going to end up under a bridge because I'm not going to get my GCSEs.' You know that someone said that to them with the idea of motivating them to go to school, but it hasn't worked. What instead has happened is that young person has taken it on as 'This is what's going to happen to me.' You've then got a young person in despair because they're saying, 'Not only am I not managing to go to school and my life isn't much fun now, it's never going to get better because I'm never going to be able to do the things I want to do.' So, again, counterintuitively, I would be talking to them about hope and let's think about how you're going to learn and what are the things that really make life worth living for you, and can we do more of those things? It's a bit opposite to what people often recommend, because sometimes people will say things like, 'If a child is struggling to go to school, make home less fun', or I've heard parents say they've been told things like, 'Don't allow them to go out with their friends at the weekends if they're not going to school.' The effect of that can be that the young person becomes really depressed because they're struggling to go to school, and now home is also miserable and boring So actually, I say, do the opposite. If they really love whatever it is, if they love going around the charity shops with you, make the time to do it, because the happier your young person is, the more likely is that they're going to be able to take the steps and learn and go to school.



00:33:55.701 - Alis

It's about building them up. It's about giving them an environment where they actually feel complete and confident and strong enough. 



00:34:05.251 - Naomi

And valued. I think that's it because I think young people who aren't attending school or who are struggling to attend school often feel very like they're not valued. All the things like the 100% attendance things at school make them feel even less valued because they feel like what I do doesn't count. It's not celebrated. I think as your parent, as the parent, it's something you can really do of saying, 'I value you just as you are, whether you're at school or not.'



00:34:32.381 - Alis

That doesn't matter what age of the child. It's letting them know whether they're very young children or teenage. You mentioned autism then, so what about when there's autism or neurodivergence in the mix? How does that complicate matters?



00:34:50.241 - Naomi

Well, I think that a lot of young people who are currently struggling with school either already have a diagnosis of autism or get a diagnosis of autism in the process struggling to go to school. I think that we are recognizing more and more how, many of the ways that school is set up, difficult for lots of kids, but they're particularly difficult for autistic children, that schools are very complex environments with loads of people in them. They are sensory nightmares if you are someone who's sensitive to noise and to smells, all of those things can be particularly difficult for autistic children. Also, lots of the behaviour things that I was suggesting, that I was talking about earlier, the apps and the micromanagement of behaviour, many autistic children become extremely anxious about those, really acutely anxious about those. I think that for many autistic children, school is a particularly challenging environment. I think we're only really starting to recognize that actually, as I say, when I did my PhD on autism, it didn't even occur to me to look at the young people who are out of school.



00:36:01.731 - Alis

What things could schools put into place to meet those needs and make it so it's less of a challenge for them to be in that environment?



00:36:14.921 - Naomi

I think, again, schools vary hugely in what they do. I hear about some great practice that schools have. Some schools have things like sensory circuits in the playground that children can go and do when they need to do it, when they want to do it. Some schools have learning hubs that children can go to, which are like a place to decompress, really, where you can go and be there for a while. Some schools have school dogs that you can go and walk if you need a bit of time out. So providing ways that children can regulate themselves. So basically, if a child is able to say, 'Actually, I need a bit of a break here. There's somewhere for me to go.' Then that could make the difference between that day at school being successful or that child's behaviour escalating and perhaps them ending up in detention or isolation and everything going down a very different route. It's like putting in these things beforehand, putting in these little breakpoints almost, beforehand so that there are options for the child to step out or do something else, so that things don't escalate.



00:37:18.241 - Alis

I think that goes back to your earlier point about relationships and how important that is as schools really knowing the child and being able to pre-empt rather than wait until there's explosion, but actually have those strong relationships where you know what that child needs. The same as parents, taking the time to really know what your child needs in different environments. It's, as you mentioned, different at home to being in school.



00:37:44.061 - Naomi

I so often hear from parents who will say, 'My child had a really good year in year four, and then it just all seemed to go wrong in year five.' I will say, 'What was the difference?' They said, 'The teacher in year four just really got them, really understood them, and there were just no problems. Then in year five, The teacher was like, "Right, no."' It's often about being stricter. They'll often say, 'You're in year five now. Things are stepping up', and everything went to pot, basically so that importance of that teacher who really sees the child is just amazing.



00:38:14.781 - Alis

What successes have you had? Are there any anecdotes where you can share children who had that school-based avoidance or distress? And, actually, some of the things that you've spoken about today, have been put place and they've gone back in and successfully re-joined their school days.



00:38:35.521 - Naomi

Yes, I have heard about young people, but I think I would see success as young people finding ways to learn, whether that means going back into the school environment or not. For some young people, it might not. The way I see success is that that young person is able to see a way forwards and they're able to learn. Sometimes, some of the young people I work with, for example, it might be that they stay out of education until they are 14, and then they go to college, because some colleges will take you at 14, or they go to 16, and then they go back into college. It's that reintegration that I see really as a success, because I don't think we can use just attendance at school as a marker of success, because if a child is attending but deeply unhappy, then that would still look like success. You see what I mean?  So it's the thriving and flourishing that I really think is crucial. Yes, I've worked with lots of children who, weirdly, again it's this paradoxical thing when the pressure was taken off, when parents stopped forcing their children in because the forcing in equals a lot of problems and instead said lets focus on what makes you feel happy and what makes you feel valued, lets see if we can build relationships with schools. those are the children who have often gone back but it has required a lot of flexibility on the part of the school and the parent. I can't really think of examples of children who have gone back into things exactly as it was before and it's all been fine now because usually there are reasons why it has gone wrong and if those reasons are still there, it's going to go wrong again. But I do know that schools do amazing things sometimes, they can be amazingly flexible and it can make all the difference.



00:41:37.081 - Alis

you've given us signs that we can see when things are going wrong, what are the signs parents might look out for of their child thriving and flourishing as you just said? 



00:41:37.256 - Naomi

curiosity, interest, coming out of school telling you about things they have learnt about because they are exited about it, but also interest outside of school, not necessarily in school topics but asking you questions about things. Sparking. You know, parents say 'my child's spark has come back,' and that's the sign of a happy child. Whatever they're interested in, you know, I think parents sometimes divide up the world into things they would like their child to be interested in, like school work, and things that they really wish their children weren't that interested in, like Minecraft and Pokémon but actually if you've got the spark about Minecraft and Pokémon, that's really positive as well and parents sometimes say they listen to their children playing videogames with other children and they can hear the passion and enthusiasm and that is flourishing as well. 



00:41:37.931 - Alis

We've covered a lot, so thank you very much for sharing all of that. My last question is, what key things would you want listeners to take away? I know we're talking to parents here in our conversation. We're also talking to the audience of education professionals, maybe there's different things you'd want different people to take away, but could you sum up key takeaways for us?



00:42:03.581 - Naomi

I think that relationships are the make or break of education, really. We talk so much about curriculum and what children are learning or meant to be learning but again and again, what I hear about when I talk to parents and when I think about my own educational experience, it's the relationships between young people and educators which make the difference to them. I think that's something that any educator can actually try and do. It's hard, it's not easy at all, and it's a hard thing but I think to be a person that a young person can respect and knows that they are respected by. I think the really important thing about that relationship is that there needs to be some element of unconditionality about it. There needs to be some element of 'we're here for you, even though perhaps your behaviour wasn't ideal today.' You know, 'I still like you', really, is what you want be prevailing as a teacher, 'even though you shouldn't have hit somebody.' Because so often what happens is the children whose behaviour is disruptive get those negative messages all the time, but they also get a withdrawal of the positive relationships and actually, those are the children who really need those positive relationships because that will be what will transform their lives.



00:43:21.211 - Alis

Thank you. Thank you for your time, Dr. Naomi Fisher. You've been brilliant and sharing lots of information. We'll put your books in the in the show notes and any links that are relevant to everything that you've shared with us today. So thank you for your time.



00:43:36.761 - Naomi

Thank you very much.



00:43:38.621 - Alis

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