Video Transcript
Another question, how do I handle my teenager refusing to go to school? You know, that’s a good question. Let’s talk about, um, a question I I, if I was able to talk with you for a second to this specific participant, I would wanna ask a question. Do you know why they don’t want to go to school? See, what you did is, your question is, my, my child does not want to go to school, refusing to go to school, whatever it may be. But there’s a question, why are they choosing not to want to go to school? What, is there something that has occurred at school that you either know about or don’t know about? Is it, is it, again, there’s different reasons, different explanations, and, and I can throw out another one. Maybe they got bullied, maybe they are falling behind and they, or maybe they have a teacher that they don’t like. Or maybe something happened socially in their group that they felt rejected. Do you see that? There’s a story behind, I’m, I’m not smart as the others I felt behind. And it’s hard for, to me, make things up or I, I don’t like the teacher. Again, there’s always a story. And if I could emphasize one thing, when we identify a problem, we could focus on the problem We’re doing a lot better if we identify what’s driving the problem. What a good friend of mine referred to as getting to the root of the problem, getting to a root of the issue, what’s driving this? And unless we know that, we’re guessing. So as a parent, I could say, Hey, you’re gonna go to school. I might have a child who’s extremely resistant to that and they refuse to go to school. You know, they walk in the front door and out the back door, or they don’t go at all. So, uh, it we’re, uh, gonna be a lot better off. A lot better off. If we try to understand their why, why is that? And, and if we can identify that, we’re gonna be so much more effective. So much more effective. So my invitation here is, is to identify what is the why and have a conversation, which is a second point. How do I converse with my child about my concerns as a parent? What do I, what should I do, right? Should I force them? Should I, should I make ’em feel bad for not going? What if the most effective thing is to understand their why? Help me understand and also be able to explain my concerns. It’s not that we’re not gonna explain our concerns, it’s how can we help this child understand our concerns and how can we understand their concerns? A mutual conversation that know in some situations, I’m obligated to get my child to school right there, there’s certain laws that I, maybe I need to, but I need to figure this out. I need to figure out what the, working with the teachers, the school counselor, working with the, creating a team approach in this situation so my child feels heard, understood, and we come up with a plan to help them address whatever their fear is or whatever the reason is for them not attending classes.
