Hi, your post seemed very familiar to me, as we have been, and to a certain extent, still are in the same situation as you. My daughter has depression but not as severe as your daughter's, but complicated with other mental health issues, such that attending school on a full time basis has been impossible for her. I wish I had lots of answers for you, but I don't, but sometimes it is good to know that you are not the only people to be going through stuff like this. My D has only sporadically attended school for the past 2.5 years. It is difficult and frustrating. She's a good kid, but the number of people, constant deadlines and migraines just make regular school attendance next to impossible. We have tried a number of things, but none of them very successfully. For a start, we let her change school, to where no one knew her and she could be anonymous, this also involved some risk, as it meant that she had very little support at her new school, but she really needed the breathing space it gave her. But this would not be true for all kids. I suppose that our biggest change was our attitude to her schooling. While we value schooling, her health is more important to us. We did our best to downplay the importance of school, figuring that there is nothing education-wise that she can't make up for at some later stage of life, when her mental health is better. So we told her that it is OK not to pass everything, and if she failed everything that we would still love her and support her. Amazingly, despite sporadic attendance, so far she has passed everything. So our attitude has been to ease off as much pressure as we could, give her some choices (but not too many) and just accept that for now, this is her reality. As I said, I don't know if this is any help, so ignore it if you like.
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