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End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

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End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

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aaaaaaaa1

End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

Hi, thanks for reading my message.

Short description: My 13 year old daughter stopped going to school from my place (stays in bed until 2pm) but still goes to school at her mum's place. Arrangement is 50/50, alternating each week.

More context:

- I've been separated from her mother since before she was born. Have always had a lot of contact with my daughter since she was an infant. It's been 50/50 for about seven years. It switched to alternating weeks about three years ago, before that there was more a fortnightly timetable (4-5-3-2, from memory).

- I have ADHD and ASD. I have a booking with a paediatrician for July, as this was the first availability. I had a diagnosis for ADHD done for her with a psychologist late last year, but it was inconclusive. Will be doing another session with a psychologist regarding  ADHD in four weeks. The psychologist is expensive, I don't know if they would be good for a general consultation but could try this. Could go back to the GP who referred to psychologist/paediatrician to see if they can refer to another support.

- I work full time and work from home. Though I am starting a new job in April where I was planning to work more from the office, though working from home may still be an option when my daughter is home.

- My relationship with my daughter is reasonable, I think; I could be wrong. She has been spending most of her time in her room since most of last year. She still eats dinner with me and is open to general communication, not disrespectful. I read to her at bedtime. I find it is mostly positive. But the staying home behaviour, I go in at the requested time for the wake up (7:30am) wake her up and now she's sort of grunting/grumbling (like,  "I may be awake, I may not be"). And then everything I've tried is not getting her out of bed. I've tried raising my voice, I've tried talking calmly. I've tried reminders every 10 minutes. I've tried leaving her to get out on her own.

- The behaviour started at the end of last year when she would stay home maybe one or two days a week. This year it's progressed to staying home the entire week (my last week, she stayed home four of five days, this week, it's been every day, except the school had planned a work from home day and I believe she participated).

- Her mother isn't that helpful with giving me information about what's working at her house, other than telling me she has a good routine and my daughter communicates with her and she suggests we change the arrangement so that my daughter spends more time with her. I'm somewhat sceptical about what she tells me and I wonder if the regimentation at her mum's house might be wearing her out so that she uses my house to recover... but I have no real evidence of this other than scepticism and ill feeling toward her mother.

- I live alone in my home, so when she is with me it is just her and me.. At her mum's home, she has a step dad, a half sister and a step sister who sometimes stays over.

- When my daughter is with me she still goes to her extracurricular activities in the evening, without difficulty.

My thoughts:

On one hand, I believe there's the idea that when teenagers push you away, they need you the most, meaning that there may be something she needs from me in this; if I simply palm her off to her mother, I may be avoiding something. On the other hand, I really don't know what I can do for her other than be patient and try to show her that I'm understanding and accepting, hoping that she opens up and begins working with me on the issue. In the meantime she may miss a lot of school and establish bad habits. Letting her mum have her more often seems like a solution, but I doubt it will be temporary, it will most likely marginalise me as a parent... well perhaps I already am marginalised and this would just formalise it. Not sure if my daughter is behaving this way to deliberately or subconsciously bring about a change of the arrangement. But, although I could put aside my feelings of feeling like a failure as a parent and feeling that I would miss her, I'm not entirely sure it would be better for her to have less contact with me, because if leads to her becoming alienated from me then she might miss the benefit of a good relationship with me throughout her adolescence. But, perhaps I need to adjust to maintaining a relationship with less contact time.

Just wondering if anyone had been in a similar situation? I've known of other separated fathers who have had to relent to having their daughter spend the majority of her time with her mother during adolescence, but haven't heard much of what the experience was like.

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aaaaaaaa1

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

One other detail I forgot to mention (there are so many). My daughter has a high IQ and there is a need for differentiation in school to make the work interesting (otherwise she would feel a loss of self-esteem due to lack of opportunity to develop herself intellectually). This also means that most of the children around her age would seem different to her, and possibly hard to relate with, as her IQ is significantly different from average. She has one close female friend who is also very bright, but outside of that friendship I don't think she has a any other meaningful social connections in school. There are two mutual male friends and I've let all four of them stay over at my place for a sleepover, and she sometimes plays games online with them outside of school. Some of the classes she is in are male dominated and she's mentioned the general mass of boys seem to treat he like a second class citizen (like in chess they behave like she's an easy opponent, even though she's come third or second in the comp a few times). As far as I can tell, most of her teachers are giving differentiation that seems to be reasonably good for her, but I do know that her Maths teacher, who is very good otherwise, seems to insist of regular homework and in lieu of completion of this is making my daughter do work at the class level, which is material she learned four years ago; so, even though she is bright and knows the material, and she thinks her teacher knows this, she still has to be effectively "held back". But I don't think Maths alone would make her not want to go to school. She started school in a state school and they didn't give good differentiation, she only moved to a private school in grade 5,  so I believe she would have some maladjustment in terms of expecting teachers not to adjust the work to suit her if it is too easy for her, so she may feel she just has to accept the way teachers run their classes and put up with it. I have parent teacher interviews next week to try and find out more.

Active scribe
aaaaaaaa1

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

One other thing, if a Reach Out staff member (volunteer?) responds to this post, could you please advise if the coaching program is still active? I went through the intake questionnaire but it didn't seem possible to make an appointment at the end of the process. I'm just wondering if there is something wrong at my end.

Prolific scribe
Chloe-RO

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

Hi there @aaaaaaaa1 ,

The regular ReachOut team will be with you shortly after the weekend to answer your question. 

Cheers

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Iona_RO

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

Message contains a hyperlink

Hi @aaaaaaaa1 

Thanks so much for taking the time to share everything that's going on for you at the moment. It's clear to see you really care about and want the very best for your daughter, which is fantastic to see. It can be tough for most parents though! So you're certainly not alone in any of this. 

You mentioned that your daughter is refusing to go to school most days she's staying with you now, have you been able to talk to her to find out why she's struggling at the moment? We have an article on school refusal here, that may be helpful to have a read through. Have you been in contact with her school at all? Usually they will be able to work with you on a plan to encourage her into coming back to school more often.

It sounds like you've been able to bring issue up with your daughter's mum but she hasn't been as forthcoming with support as you'd like. Do you have a co-parenting plan in place at the moment? If not, here's some great tips on how to put one together. This can be really helpful for keeping communication open and being able to work together to support your daughter.

You also talked about the possibility of your daughter having ADHD/ASD. I'm sure that having these experiences first hand, you will understand a lot of what your daughter may be going through. However, here are some articles specific to teenagers and ADHD that might be helpful too.

The 1:1 parents coaching is still available, and sounds like it might be something that could be a great support for you. You can find out more info and book in a session here.

Active scribe
aaaaaaaa1

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

Hi Iona,

Is there another way to make an appointment for coaching? The webform appears broken, I've tried using two different browsers.

Prolific scribe
Iona_RO

Re: End shared parenting due to school refusal? (daughter, 13yo, ADHD/ASD)

Sorry about that @aaaaaaaa1 - the link seems to be working for me, but if you email us at forums@reachout.com with your contact details, we will pass them onto the coaching service for you. Thanks! Smiley Happy