Episode 44 -- "The whole family is walking on eggshells"

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“I would like to hear your thoughts on how parents can speak about the elephant in the room. 

My daughter is 15 and we have experienced school refusal for some years now. The lockdown has been great for her and she has enjoyed it. And yet. I know we, as a family, have colluded in her avoidance of any difficult  subjects. 

She rules the household.  If something comes on the TV and she doesn’t like it, we switch it off. We are pretty much forced to focus on the positive of everything. 

She suffers from anxiety and I hate to upset her. However the whole family is walking on eggshells around her. 

To be honest, I don’t think this approach has improved her. She now believes that can’t cope with anything difficult and yet, as a child, she was able to cope with lots of different things. 

I am worried about what will happen when school begins in September and we are forced to confront the school refusal and the fact that my child has narrowed her world.

I myself am coping with the death of my mother and my father’s ongoing health problems and so I’m finding it stressful to only speak about life in a positive way. It’s all a mess and yet from the outside we look like a happy bouncy family.”