Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
When the schoolwork is finished early, what follows is chores and dull jobs until the school day would have ended. The good things wait for the hour they would have waited for anyway.
This is not a punishment and it should not sound like one. It is about a sum the child does without noticing: if home offers the same day with none of the hard parts, no argument about the future will make school the better option. Say the rule plainly and without heat, hold it, and let the comparison do the work for you.
Qur’an and Sunnah
that man will only have what he has worked towards (Quran 53:39). Nothing harsh is meant by it, only that a day tends to give back what has been put into it.
وَأَن لَّيۡسَ لِلۡإِنسَٰنِ إِلَّا مَا سَعَىٰ
that man will only have what he has worked towards
Qur’an 53:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A modelling study found experiential avoidance running as a common function underneath behaviours as different as substance misuse, binge eating and self harm. It is cross-sectional, so the model is a way of reading the data rather than a demonstration of cause. The relevant idea is that pleasant behaviour is often doing a job, and the job here is keeping the harder day out of sight.
Kingston J, Clarke S, Remington B. (2010). Experiential avoidance and problem behavior: a mediational analysis.. Behavior modification doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A child compares today at home with today at school, and whichever comes out nicer is the one that gets chosen again.
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
On a day at home, be the person who supervises rather than the person who keeps them company. The warmth is not cancelled, it moves to the evening.
A plan followed on some days and not others can be worse than no plan at all. Choose the smallest version you are sure you can keep to, and keep to that.
The target is getting through the door, not feeling calm about it. Calm tends to arrive afterwards, and mostly for people who went.