Help & Advice needed, daughter scared of school

[amyjane]

Hi anyone out there,
in April this year my 12yr old daughter started having panic and anxiety attacks about going to school. She is now seeing an educational psychologist and has been referred to the Child and Adolescent mental health team. She hasn't been to school since May and won't even talk about it as she sees the only way of getting better as never going back to school.
Things are that bad that I am giving serious thought to home schooling.
Does anyone have any advice if they have gone through the same thing or have removed their child from school.
Thanks
amyjane

[Gale]

Do you know why she has suddenly developed school phobia? If it's something like bullying, it might be possible to resolve the problem by cooperating with the school to prevent the bullying or by switching schools. Of course, since she said that never going back to school was the only solution, it seems unlikely.

Why won't she talk about it? It's going to be very difficult to help her out if she won't talk things through with you. No amount of advice is going to help more than communication with her.

General advice that you probably know already: Don't pressure her into going to school or doing anything she doesn't want to, she's probably under enough stress as it is.

By the way, the majority of this site's users are teenagers coping with school related anxiety issues themselves, not parents who have children suffering such problems. This may not be the best place for you to get advice with parenting. Sadly, I can't recommend you any parenting forums that might be more helpful - but a quick Google search for something such as "school refusal" or "school refusal parent" might be worthwhile.