Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Two stretches of childhood carry most of this: the first years of school, and the middle years around the move to secondary. Knowing that lets you prepare instead of react.
The early wobble is usually about being apart from home for a long day for the first time. The later one lands when peer opinion becomes the loudest thing in the room and the work gets harder in the same term. Around those points, ask earlier and more often than feels necessary, because a child is unlikely to raise it themselves.
Qur’an and Sunnah
you are sure to be tested through your possessions and persons; you are sure to hear much that is hurtful (Quran 3:186). Hearing hurtful things is named as part of the road, which may help a young person feel less singled out by it.
۞لَتُبۡلَوُنَّ فِيٓ أَمۡوَٰلِكُمۡ وَأَنفُسِكُمۡ وَلَتَسۡمَعُنَّ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُواْ ٱلۡكِتَٰبَ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۡ وَمِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَشۡرَكُوٓاْ أَذࣰ ى كَثِيرࣰ اۚ وَإِن تَصۡبِرُواْ وَتَتَّقُواْ فَإِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنۡ عَزۡمِ ٱلۡأُمُورِ
you are sure to be tested through your possessions and persons; you are sure to hear much that is hurtful from those who were given the Scripture before you and from those who associate others with God. If you are steadfast and mindful of God, that is the best course
Qur’an 3:186read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of studies with adolescents found avoidance, suppression and rumination each linked with more anxious and depressive symptoms. These are associations from questionnaires, so they do not settle what causes what. They do fit the picture of the middle school years as the time when turning away from feelings becomes a young person's default move.
Schäfer JÖ, Naumann E, Holmes EA, Tuschen-Caffier B, Samson AC. (2017). Emotion Regulation Strategies in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review.. Journal of youth and adolescence doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Difficulties gather where a child's world changes shape, so those points are worth watching before anything has gone wrong.
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
Every adjustment should arrive with the date you will start reducing it. Written down at the beginning, while everyone is still reasonable.
A child coming back after weeks away is walking towards a mountain of missed work. Cut that mountain down before the return date, or it will punish them for coming.
Somewhere between five and ten children in every hundred struggle to get to school at some point, and one or two of those need real help with it. Your family is not a strange case.