🤍 If you're the parent, you're probably feeling helpless, guilty or judged. Read this first: your child is not "being difficult", and you are not a bad parent. You're in something that thousands of families across Europe are going through right now.
What does "not going to school anymore" actually mean?
School refusal (also called school avoidance or school phobia) is more than skipping the odd day. It's a child who structurally can't make it into school - often with tears, stomach aches, panic or a full emotional shutdown on school mornings. It's not a behaviour problem. It's a distress signal.
A recent Belgian report on YouTube explains it very clearly: more and more children simply can't get into school anymore. Not one or two. Thousands. And the causes keep clustering around the same three themes.
The Top 3 Causes
Child psychologists and school counsellors keep seeing the same pattern in kids who stop going:
😔 1. Depression & anxiety
- No energy to get up
- Panic at the school gate
- Social anxiety and bullying
- Feeling "I don't belong"
- Self-image collapsing around age 10-14
🏠 2. Home situation
- Divorce or ongoing conflict
- Illness or loss in the family
- A parent with their own burnout or depression
- Financial stress the child can feel
- Unsafe home = anxiety everywhere
🧩 3. Autism & neurodiversity
- Sensory overload in noisy classrooms
- Social rules that don't click
- A diagnosis that often comes too late
- Schools that can't really adapt
- Girls especially get missed
📱 + Amplifiers
- Social media & dopamine cycles
- Bullying that continues 24/7
- Sleep deprivation from screens
- Constant comparison with "perfect" peers
- Less offline contact to fall back on
Why Now? School Isn't Evolving
A 12-year-old in 2026 doesn't live in the same world their parents did. They get thousands of inputs a day through TikTok, YouTube, group chats and games. Their brains learn in jumps, their social life runs 24/7, and their self-image is constantly being compared to filtered content.
Then they walk into school - a building that, in most countries, still works the way it did 50 years ago. Rows of desks. Sit still. 50 minutes of one subject. Bell. Next class. Tests about facts any kid can find on their phone in 3 seconds.
What Children Bring Into School Today
Then vs. Now
Then
School was the place where most of the day's stimulation happened. Break actually meant a break. Bullying stopped at the school gate. Autism, ADHD or giftedness were rarely recognised at all.
Now
School is the place where kids are trying to come down from over-stimulation. Break means scrolling. Bullying runs 24/7. Diagnoses come earlier, but most schools don't have the staff or the space to truly adapt.
How To Tell Your Child Is Struggling
- Sunday evening starts with tears, complaints or "stomach ache"
- Tiredness that doesn't go away, even after holidays
- Withdrawing from hobbies, sports or friends
- Suddenly spending much more time in their room, screen time going up
- Grades dropping - even in subjects that used to be easy
- Physical complaints without a medical cause (headaches, nausea)
- Outbursts of anger or total apathy (can't get out of bed)
These are not "teen phases" that will just pass. These are signals that your child is trying to solve something they can't solve alone. The earlier you move, the lower the threshold to come back out of it.
Why This Is So Hard For Parents
Almost every parent going through this describes the same cocktail of emotions: guilt ("should I have seen it coming?"), fear ("what if this lasts for years?"), shame ("what will teachers, family, neighbours think?"), exhaustion ("I'm fighting a 2-hour battle every morning") and grief ("this isn't the child I had last year").
On top of that comes external pressure: compulsory schooling laws, attendance letters, head teachers asking for "more discipline at home", relatives advising you to "be tougher". All while you know: being tougher makes it worse. And doing nothing doesn't feel right either.
Practical First Steps
- Stop forcing on school mornings. Fighting every morning deepens the trauma around school. Bring the intensity down first.
- Listen without fixing. Ask what school feels like, not why they won't go. Emotion first, logic later.
- Take possible diagnoses seriously. Especially for girls, autism, ADHD or high sensitivity are often spotted late.
- Limit evening screens. Not as punishment - as a way to let the nervous system recover.
- Protect yourself as the parent. Your stability is the only anchor that always works. That means you need support too.
- Get professional support early, not late. Families who act early tend to recover months faster.
Who Can Help?
There isn't one single type of professional for this. A combination usually works best:
- Child psychologist: Explores what's underneath the refusal - anxiety, depression, trauma, neurodiversity. Works directly with the child.
- Parent coach: Supports you, the parent. Helps you stay calm, set limits without escalation, and rebuild connection. Focuses on you, not on the child.
- Family therapist / systemic therapist: Looks at the whole family: parents, child, sometimes school and siblings. Especially useful when everyone seems stuck in the same loop.
- GP & school support team: First stop for attendance letters, referrals and formal arrangements with the school.
MentraNova
Through MentraNova you can find child psychologists, parent coaches and family therapists who specialise in school refusal and neurodivergent kids:
- No waiting lists - you can often start within a week
- Matching based on your specific situation (child's age, suspected autism/ADHD, divorce, etc.)
- Online or in person - including evenings, so you don't have to pull your child out of more school
- Separate support for you as the parent alongside support for your child if needed
Find The Right Help, Fast
Tell us briefly what's going on, and we'll match you with a child psychologist, parent coach or family therapist who fits your situation. You don't have to wait until it gets worse.
Frequently Asked Questions
Almost never. Kids who can handle school, go. A child who truly can't is sending a distress signal. "Lazy" is a label that delays the search for the real cause.
Short term, force might win one morning. Long term it strengthens the pattern - school becomes the place of panic. Better: lower the pressure, investigate the cause, and rebuild step by step, perhaps with half days or an adapted plan.
A child psychologist experienced in neurodiversity can make an initial assessment and refer you for formal diagnostics. Girls in particular are diagnosed late or never - don't wait for "obvious" signs.
Yes. Children are emotional seismographs. Conflict, divorce, illness or a stressed parent almost always shows up in the child - often exactly where they're already under pressure: school. A family therapist can surface that pattern and help break it.
The internet is rarely the only cause, but it's a powerful amplifier. Sleep loss, social comparison and 24/7 bullying mean kids start the school day with less reserve. Reworking screen time is almost always part of the recovery.