When the relationship with my children’s school feels like another unhealthy, if not abusive, relationship

growingnai
Feb 2
8 min read

In emotionally abusive relationships, the victim does not feel like they can express themselves safely. The victim is at risk of gaslighting, being invalidated, ridiculed, threatened, mocked or humiliated, and the abuser is likely to justify this behaviour. The victim may be made out to be “oversensitive”, “too much” or “crazy”. The perpetrator uses any of these mechanisms to silence the victim and dominate the relationship. This is how many parents feel when raising their concerns with the school about their children’s experience at school. They feel scared that their voices will be silenced by the authority and expertise of the school over the shared lived experience from the students and parents.

I like to sit around the kitchen table with my children and journal together. We journal in blank journals using colours to outlet or express whatever we feel like. Whilst we do this they sometimes chat about how school is feeling for them. At other times I gently ask them, whilst we’re sat doing an activity or watching TV, and my children tell me how they feel about school. My children tell me that they would prefer not to go to school. They find being told off in front of peers humiliating. They find the pressure to get through the work in the sit-down and listen way incredibly boring and dull. They are worried about the popularity contest VIP chart. They long to play, be in the outdoors and more stimulating environments for their childlike wonder to light up in.

My kids love to learn. They have activity books at home they enjoy working through, they draw, they write stories, their minds are passionate sponges for new information. What they don’t enjoy is learning in the way their school education system is structured and organized.

They love their friends, they love the short amount of time they can play in the school playground. The love art and music. They enjoying learning about science and maths when its done in an interesting way. They are fond of their teachers but become resentful of them because of the academic pressures the teachers are forced to put the kids under. With only one staff member per class, teachers are under impossible pressure to meet the children’s needs for a nurturing, caring and inspiring classroom environment. Instead, there is a heaviness that fills the air, pressures of “getting it right” and “behaving well” take over the classroom like pollution is taking over our air in our streets. My children have become socialized to know how to behave and often “get it right”. They do well at school on most accounts. Statistically, they are what the school need to tick Ofsted’s boxes for behaviour, academic achievement and attendance.

My children wake up ready to play and be active. They are happy to play or read during most mornings. However, once it’s mentioned that it’s time to get ready for school it’s like the black fog fills the air. The kids clearly do not want to go. Once I’ve managed to coax them into getting ready (which takes immense energy and often leads to fall outs between us), they display big signs of dysregulation before we leave the house, doing their worst bickering and fighting against each other at this time. They often tell me they don’t want to go to school. My daughter has an almost constant tummy ache around school times. This tummy ache is not even mentioned during half-term and school holidays. My son’s mask goes up once he knows it’s school. When he’s at home, with enough time, his mask comes down, and he returns into the child I know. The mask he wears for school is defensive and has an “attitude”, but I’ve learnt this is not an intentional way to hurt or disrespect adults, it’s his survival mechanism and how he feels safe in the school environment. His walls go up because his vulnerable childlike self doesn’t feel safe at school.

My children come out of school unhappy, dysregulated and desperate for comfort food. They are incredibly impatient and highly emotional. They behave in a way I never see during the holidays. Of course, my children are as challenging as most other children during holidays but the after-school dysregulation is completely different. It’s like they come home emotionally on fire and I have to spend the whole evening trying to put out the fire, knowing they’ll come home again the same the next day. It’s a completely exhausting and soul-destroying pattern. It’s as if I don’t see my children all week, just a burnt-out version of them. I start to see them come back at the weekends only to then have to go back through it all again during the week.

I know we’re not alone in this. Sadly, this pattern is fairly normal. For many families, children are punished for bad behaviour and forced into masking at home too. Sadly, living in a productivity-driven capitalist society, with socio-economic factors play a large role in this. Parents exhausted from long hours at work, systematic adversity, mental and physical health disabilities may not have the energy to help their children regulate after school, meaning children learn to repress their anger and sadness in order to be well behaved good children for their caregivers and teachers. I believe being able to learn how to feel our sadness and anger without it becoming destructive is one of the biggest tools we need in our generations to come. Our planet is burning, our world leaders are corrupt, we need generations of children who are in touch with their anger and sense of justice in a healthy way, and their sadness at the ill treatment of themselves or others is healthy too. Being nurtured and held as we learn to navigate big feelings is what sets us up for healthy relationships in the future too. One of the most important skills we need for a meaningful happy life.

This is where I feel like a lot of parents and teachers are in the same boat. With good hearts, and incredible intentions, we can’t be the regulated caregivers that children need whilst living under the pressure society is putting on us.

So how do we as parents, and teachers, become the emotionally regulated caregivers that our children need? I feel like this should be the main question caregivers, both personally and professionally, should be asking. It’s certainly a question I’ve been asking myself since experiencing trauma that led to a diagnosis of CPTSD and immense difficulty being emotionally regulated. Building to provide an emotionally safe environment for my children to grow up in has been the highest priority since I realized that trauma was affecting how I parented. I certainly haven’t always got it right along the journey and I don’t believe I ever will. Healthy parenting and caregiving isn’t about getting it right. It’s about being accountable to our children when we mess up. It’s about being accountable to ourselves when our current way of doing things isn’t working for our kids and being willing to change and adapt to our children’s needs when that is what’s called for.

Sitting at the dinner table with my children, my parents and my grandad last night, we reflected over shared stories how much times have changed. Each of our childhood stories are vastly different in how we spent our time as children, gifts we may or may not have received, technology, behaviours, discipline, the list goes on.

Talking with parents and teachers the themes of emotional and mental health and childhood development are far more prominent than in the generations before us, and yet our education system was designed during a time when emotional and mental health and childhood development were not considered a real thing. Kids were either good or bad. Well behaved or naughty. Good kids did well at school, naughty kids were disciplined into conformity or excluded and sent elsewhere.

Now there has been a change. Schools are now being taught about how trauma, adversity and special educational needs affect a child’s capacity to be emotionally regulated in class and to learn. School policies have changed to become more inclusive and supportive of different emotional needs and learning styles. If you make a complaint that your child doesn’t feel safe or supported at school it is likely that the school we have a lot of information to throw back in your face as to how they are in fact providing a safe and supportive environment that your child just needs to engage with.

Numerous parents have tried to improve their children’s experience at this school, to the point where multiple children are being removed my parents and transferred to different schools because of how unhappy their children have become at this school. Myself and other parents have decided to set up a Parents Voices and Children’s Voices Group to try and communicate as a group now rather than as individuals with the school about the issues we and our children are facing.

This is where the title of my blog post comes from. I would like to express to the school how my children are feeling about school but I am scared of multiple things which I’d like to address (maybe these are some of the fears other parents felt that have actually removed their kids and changed them to different schools):

1. I’m scared that my children’s feelings and experiences will be invalidated with a blanket reassurance that the school is doing the best it can to provide a safe and supportive environment

2. That individual teachers will face even more pressure on them to be better towards my children. I have had discussions with both my children’s teachers and feel assured that they are both incredibly invested in the well being of both my children. I have a lot of faith and trust in their teachers. It is the pressure on teachers that is the problem; these teachers themselves are incredible.

3. That the head teacher will be offended by these words and reflections on parenting and caregiving and will be defensive rather than collaborative in their response.

4. That the headteacher / culture of the school is more concerned about meeting Ofsted / Academy tick boxes and maintain Ofsted and Academy status quo rather than challenging education structures that are damaging for our children

5. I’m scared this will become a battle between parents and the school / the head teacher. I’m aware that issues children and parents are facing could be triggering. There may be issues raised that the school are already aware of and working on. I hope that it is not felt we are undermining but rather just trying to communicate with a system that hasn’t felt easy or healthy to communicate with.

Can the school admit that they don’t and won’t always get it right? Can they admit that they are currently failing to make the school feel safe, warm and inviting for many children? Can they consult with parents, other organizations and educators to improve this? Can the school stand up to the powers that be when it’s needed in order to validate and listen to the experience of the schools students? Can this be a collaboration of expertise and not a battle of egos?

Please don’t blame teachers. Look at the system. Look at the expectations on teachers and children. The school needs warmth, the teachers deserve that, so do the kids.

Fundamentally, our children are asking for more time to play, more time outdoors, to feel safe from being shouted at or humiliated, to feel like they want to come to school and be a part of the community there. Our children are asking to be allowed to be children.

And then it comes full circle. Can we as parents admit that we don’t and won’t always get it right? Can we as a community admit that we are sometimes also failing to make the community feel safe, warm and inviting for our children? Can we consult with other parents, other organizations and educators to improve this? Can we stand up to the powers that be when it’s needed in order to validate and listen to the experience of the children?

Can we as a society fight to make healthy childhood development a priority?

Content I would love the school to take into consideration: