Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
When a young person will not go in, social fear is the most common thing underneath. Start there, before anyone reaches for words like lazy or defiant.
Ask about the parts of the day with other people in them: the corridor between lessons, the dining hall, being called on, changing for sport, walking in late while everyone looks up. Those answers tend to come out quietly, and they will not come out at all if the child thinks you have already decided they are being difficult.
Qur’an and Sunnah
They have no knowledge to base this on: they merely follow guesswork. Guesswork is of no value against the Truth (Quran 53:28). A guess about why someone will not move is worth very little next to asking them.
وَمَا لَهُم بِهِۦ مِنۡ عِلۡمٍۖ إِن يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا ٱلظَّنَّۖ وَإِنَّ ٱلظَّنَّ لَا يُغۡنِي مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا
They have no knowledge to base this on: they merely follow guesswork. Guesswork is of no value against the Truth
Qur’an 53:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of emotion regulation found that people with social anxiety and depression tend to use expressive suppression more and reappraisal less, meaning the feeling is being pushed down rather than shown. That is one reason social fear can read from the outside as flatness or stubbornness. The review pools cross-sectional studies, so it describes a general pattern and cannot tell you what any one child is doing.
Dryman MT, Heimberg RG. (2018). Emotion regulation in social anxiety and depression: a systematic review of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Naming the wrong cause sends the help somewhere the fear is not, and it costs you the child's trust as well.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Put it the way a grandmother would. Eat your peas and carrots and then you can have your pudding: go in, and then the thing you have been wanting.
Whoever is standing in the hall at half past seven needs to understand the trap as well as the child does. A plan agreed on a Tuesday afternoon will not survive a Wednesday morning otherwise.
The first day back is worse than the weeks before it, not better. Plan for that spike rather than letting it take you by surprise.