If you google “School refusal chicago north shore”, the fist result is the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago. And what treatment do they propose?
Treatment for school refusal involves correct diagnosis of the underlying problem(s) followed by exposure therapy that returns the child to school as quickly as possible.
This right here is what’s wrong with the world.
Nobody seems to think that maybe there’s a problem with the school! There can only be a problem with the child. Oh sure, we talk about having compassion for kids, but it’s compassion with blinders on. It’s compassion that has decided in advance that the kid needs to go back to school “as quickly as possible.”
What if the child is refusing school because the school is actually harmful? What if the only solution is to send the kid to a different school with a completely different philosophy?
But hardly anyone ever thinks of that, because we’ve been trained to trust authority in the face of all evidence. There’s a reason why the Milgram Experiments show such high rates of compliance.
It’s a tragedy.
It’s a tragedy I hope to correct.