Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Find one adult in the building the child already trusts, and have them meet the child at the entrance. The doorway is the hardest minute of the day.
The job is small and specific: be there at the door, walk with them to their locker, get them started, be findable later on. It turns the worst moment from something faced alone into something faced with someone. Agree at the start how this will wind down, so that in six weeks nobody discovers the child can only come in when one particular person is at work.
Qur’an and Sunnah
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God's command (Quran 13:11). Being accompanied through the frightening part is written into how we are made.
لَهُۥ مُعَقِّبَٰتࣱ مِّنۢ بَيۡنِ يَدَيۡهِ وَمِنۡ خَلۡفِهِۦ يَحۡفَظُونَهُۥ مِنۡ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوۡمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمۡۗ وَإِذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِقَوۡمࣲ سُوٓءࣰ ا فَلَا مَرَدَّ لَهُۥۚ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَالٍ
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off–– apart from Him, they have no protector
Qur’an 13:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A critical review of safety behaviours during exposure found the evidence genuinely mixed, with some studies suggesting early support does no harm, and argued from inhibitory learning theory that these supports usually have to come off for change to last. Neither the enthusiastic reading nor the strict one is quite right. The practical answer is to plan the help and plan its removal at the same time.
Blakey SM, Abramowitz JS. (2016). The effects of safety behaviors during exposure therapy for anxiety: Critical analysis from an inhibitory learning perspective.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A familiar face makes the hardest minute possible, and stepping that help back later is what makes the rest of the building possible.
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
There is a particular good feeling in getting out of something you were dreading. Give it a name at home, because it is exactly what makes tomorrow harder.
Missing school is not one thing. There is pleading that folds, pleading that becomes an hour of protest, arriving late, arriving and then sitting in the nurse's room by eleven, and not arriving at all.
Two weeks away is the point to stop waiting and ask for help. A year away is beyond what one appointment a week can carry.