Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Physically taking a refusing child should be rare, and only with a young child, two adults at home, two staff waiting at school, and a plan for keeping everybody safe.
It goes wrong easily. Someone gets hurt, a younger sibling watches it happen, and a child learns that the adults will use force, which is not a lesson you can take back afterwards. With a teenager it is off the table on grounds of size and safety alone. When a plan seems to need it, that is usually a sign the earlier steps were too big rather than a sign the child needs handling.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer, though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble (Quran 2:45). A morning that has reached this point needs more people in it than one adult and one frightened child.
وَٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلۡخَٰشِعِينَ
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble
Qur’an 2:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised controlled trial found group acceptance and commitment therapy reduced aggressive behaviour in 101 adults, which shows this kind of work reaching the loud, resisting end of things and not only the withdrawn end. Those were adults in groups, and nothing here tested what to do at a front door. It supports looking harder for a route that does not need force before concluding that none exists.
Zarling A, Lawrence E, Marchman J. (2015). A randomized controlled trial of acceptance and commitment therapy for aggressive behavior.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Force ends one morning and changes what a child believes about everyone involved in all the others.
When not to
If getting a child to school has come to involve force, that plan needs reviewing with a professional before anyone tries it 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 long stretch at home is never neutral time. It teaches two things at once: staying away stops the dread, and staying away is pleasant.
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.